Thursday 4 October 2007

For the love of... ART?!

Another failing has reached my attention - mainly since I was stuck in the thick of it, just days ago. Art teachers, hardly surprising but worth mentioning, are idiots. The lot of them. Hell, I bet they don't even know the first thing about the subject.

It's like the old saying - "If you can't do anything else, teach. If you can't do that, teach P.E. And if you can't cope with that either, teach Art."

Due to some tool screwing up the timetabling, Year 11s have been forced to switch to a whole new Art teacher mid-way through a GCSE COURSE! How badly is that going to affect their grades?

From the evidence, VERY badly. Hardly anyone in this particular art glass is anywhere near a pass grade yet. Most are hovering around E/F/G grades. And when I say hardly anyone, that is no exaggeration. It is the majority of the class.

Granted, our new Art teacher couldn't really have done anything about our previous teacher's failings at her job. To be frank, she was useless in every meaning of the word. She broke people's art projects, took time off for illnesses which, as it appeared, didn't affect her a great deal (she came into school many days to "catch up with things", and she looked fine. But she insisted she couldn't teach us and apologized in the most shockingly un-meaningful way I have ever known.) and generally didn't know a great deal about Art in itself, or what our GCSE course entailed. Half the stuff which we allegedly "should've done" last year in Art wasn't even set for us at the time, which has played a major part in dragging everyone down.

But the new teacher isn't much better either. Only now, in October of our final year, just weeks away from our mock exams and a few months from our real exams, does she tell us how far behind we are. Why did she not tell us from what she could see of our previous work with our previous teacher? Because she doesn't have a clue what we did with our previous bloody teacher! So now, with barely time to turn things around, she tells us, and me specifically, that we're doing horribly. Nice timing.

What angered me even more, is that after taking in our sketchbooks, she clearly didn't look at them before compiling these reports on our progress. Half the stuff she claims I haven't done, I have - it's all in my book, not hard to find if you opened the damn thing.

I, personally, am taking a great deal of GCSEs. Far more than the majority of students. Since Year 10, I have worked toward the goal of passing each and every one of them. Being told that you've fallen behind almost irreperably given the time left is one f*cking huge blow.

Art teachers are idiots. They have failed their students. They have failed at their craft. I hate them all.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

art glass? erm spelling mistake...but oh well....

atomfox said...

I don't think art teachers are that bad, you've clearly just had a bad experience of them. I think we have the school to blame, as usual.