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Wednesday 11 September 2019

The burden of optimism

Teaching is an optimistic profession. The endeavour is predicated on a construct that things we do today will yield a better tomorrow for all to enjoy. It is not easy. For those working in challenging communities September is difficult because we have to start again all the way back at the beginning. Children, many of whom will have been malnourished and neglected over the holidays, arrive back at school behind where they were at the end of July. And deprivation is writ large across the rising percentages of children who start their reception year non-verbal and still in nappies.

Teachers and school leaders who confront these challenges with optimism and positivity, who don't blame the parents or the wider society for the extra work, deserve better from their politicians. It's hard enough already in education to build a better tomorrow without the fault-lines and fissures in society being nakedly exploited to the pursuit of power.

I would like to think that I have some empathy but I simply cannot compute how anyone could watch Boris Johnson on the news and not see him for the shameless, deceitful opportunist that I perceive him to be.  

At the same time I understand just as many others look at Dominic Grieve, Yvette Cooper and John Bercow and see the 'enemies of the people' as they are portrayed by the tabloids. I also know that these divisions are being deliberately exploited to allow smaller and smaller extremist groups at the right and left of British politics to drown out the reasonable centrist voices.

I wonder if to help us that there may be a political equivalent of Occam's razor - which simply states that where there are two possible explanations for something you should prefer the simpler. 

Where there are two politicians suggesting contrasting ideas we should prefer the more selfless.