Science syllabuses across the country are being updated this year - a result of Michael Gove's "educational reforms".  Syllabus-alterations happen a lot though, so it's pretty much par for the course.  Some topics within a subject get shelved and others get brought in (oh, and in case you're wondering, the plural of syllabus can be both syllabi or syllabuses). 
    The new Science schemes are heavier on content than the previous bunch and there are a few nastier topics to contend with, but on the whole they cover the same basic stuff.  One thing I'm glad to see the back of however is the topic of paint drying.
    Let's be clear about this: I'm not telling a joke.  The OCR GCSE Chemistry syllabus I've taught for the last five years had, as part of unit C1, the Science of paint drying.  A subject so boring we have a phrase for it to mean "the ultimate in boring-ness". 
    Apparently, someone at the head offices of our exam board decided that paint drying was a topic which would help inspire the next generation of Scientists. 
    Was it a joke?  Did someone submit the topic as a prank and it got approved so they just kept their heads down?  Was the chief of the exam board married to someone who worked for Dulux?  Had money changed hands??  It's a bad sign when the story of how something got into the syllabus is more intriguing than the topic itself.

    So imagine you're a teacher.  You care about your subject, you think it's important.  You also know many of the teenagers in front of you are probably tired and don't really want to be in school.  Most of them are patient because they know you want to help them, but a few are poised to kick off if they get bored. 
    And you have to stand there and explain to them why they need to learn about paint drying.  Do you fess up and go with the honest, although soul-crushingly familiar words "we've got to learn it because it's on the syllabus"?  Or do you lie and tell them this is the most exciting, most relevant topic in the world?
    One thing I've learnt about myself as a teacher is that I'm really bad at faking it.  A few years ago, when I was newer to teaching, I tried to fake enthusiasm for a topic in order to motivate the students.  They saw through it immediately of course, and I decided to just be myself.  
    But the idea of "putting on an act" is very interesting.  As a teacher you have a similar job to an actor in many ways.  You stand before an audience, deliver some content, keep them interested for the whole show and make sure there's a clear narrative to what you say.  But teaching isn't acting, and I'll try to explain why. 
    You're often taught, during teacher training, that it's important to put on a persona for the classroom, some kind of character to preserve your own sanity.  The idea is that you are "tim" when you're in the office but you become "Mr James" when you step through the classroom door. 
    I remember one of the tutors on my training course demonstrating this one morning.  He marched into the room and yelled for silence (a room of adults) then he took a register as "Mr Grunthorpe".  I even got told off for saying "yup" rather than "yes, sir" when he said my name.  He kept it up for ten minutes, before he paused, grinned at everyone and went back to being Frank. I can't deny it, it had an impact. 
    I know other teachers who are very good at this.  I've seen them.  One minute they're talking to me in the office as "Horace" and then suddenly they're "Mr. Nipperhosen" or whatever.  I'd like to say you should always be yourself in the classroom but there's a good reason for all this persona-stuff.  One story in particular will demonstrate this painfully well. 
    I was at chess club one Thursday evening.  The student I was playing outwitted me brilliantly with a discover checkmate after ten minutes.  I was impressed, surprised and entertained so, as we sat laughing at my defeat, I let slip the words "Jake you clever *@$^#!"  Argh.    

    This was how I'd respond if someone outside school had outwitted me as cleverly as this year 11 had done.  But I let my mouth run away and acted like a normal person.  He froze, as did I, and then he laughed even harder.  The head-of-year happened to be in the room though and I was taken aside and spoken to. 
    If I'd said that to a stranger (who I was mysteriously playing chess with) there would have been no issue of course.  But teachers are expected to act and speak a certain way.  If you swear at someone in Tesco's you're just rude.  If you swear at a student, that's a different matter.
    Now this may come as a surprise to you, but I'm a human being, as are most teachers.  Sometimes we say silly things, sometimes we make off-colour jokes and sometimes we use naughty language.  In other words, we act like ordinary people.  But when you're in a classroom you've got other people's kids in front of you and you want to be a good role model.  Many parents would be very unhappy if you acted like a normal person.
    I remember once talking with a priest and I said something which surprised him.  His reponse was to blaspheme loudly in the middle of church.  For what it's worth, this made him seem more human to me, a real person who spoke like regular folk do, but I could imagine someone writing to the archbishop in complaint.
    My point is that the chess-playing incident was an example of me letting my guard down.  As a result of this I decided to make a real effort to be "Mr James" and I discovered two things about myself.  One, I wasn't very good at acting and two, it actually made me a less effective teacher.
    None of the students I currently teach have ever met the old "Mr James" but, to give you an idea, I was briefly nicknamed "The Colonel" at my first school.  I strode around the playground with a determined authority.  I never smiled, I never told jokes and I didn't take any nonsense.  I made my sense of authority on Science clear.  Nobody could question or challenge me.  But I really sucked at it.  
    I wasn't good on discipline, I just snapped and shouted at people.  I wasn't someone pupils could talk to if they needed help, I was the austere guy who bled knowledge.  And I couldn't keep it up.  I was spending so much time on acting that my love of Science got buried beneath my desire for people to believe the tough-on-discipline act.  So I threw the whole thing out the window and decided to just be myself and talk about Science. 
    For me, teaching isn't about performance, it's about shifting gear.  The person I am in front of a class is always there inside me, I just keep him subdued when I'm not in school.  The same way people chanting at a football match aren't faking their enthusiasm.  They don't act like that in the grocery store (nobody sings boisterous songs at the frozen peas) but their love of the sport is 100% bona fide.  They aren't putting on an act when they go to a match, they just uncage a different side of themselves. 
   So, when we cover a subject I'm not  fired-up about, I can't fake enthusiasm for it and, if I'm honest, those lessons are probably not my best. 
    I went to school with a guy who could act though.  He was one of those people who could vanish into a role, so much that you didn't even recognise him.  That's not a joke either.  I once went to see him in a play where he was a mentally-deteriorating soldier suffering from PTSD.  And you'll notice my wording there.  He wasn't playing this character...he WAS this character.  I'd gone along expecting to see my mate playing a soldier.  Instead I saw the soldier. 
    I'd known this guy since I was 12, yet I didn't recognise the person in front of me.  It didn't look like a performance, it was just a different guy.  But that's what made him such a good actor.  He could somehow change his brain, voice, mannerisms and movements to bring a character to life.  I still feel like that soldier was a real person.  If he saw me teaching however, he'd still recognise that I was basically tim james.
    When I'm in front of a class I'm probably a little bit more hyped-up than when I'm sitting at home talking about crumpets or whatever.  But the guy I become when I teach is still me.  I'm not pretending to be anything I'm not.  In fact, when I'm teaching is probably when people are seeing the real me.  I just watch my language a bit more.  So if I am acting, I'm playing a character who is 99% myself anyway.

Image credits:
Kevin Spacey: global teacher prize
Syllabus writer: hpkuk
Chess game from The Seventh Seal: blogspot
Tarantino: blogspot

Me as a Teenager  
    Anyone who’s known me since I was a teenager knows I’ve always loved Science.  Actually, that’s not technically true.  I’m pretty sure the day of my year 12 Chemistry coursework, after screwing up my results and spilling concentrated Lithium Hydroxide all over my fingers I may have uttered the words “I b****y hate Chemistry!” to my best friend, but barring that one morning, I’ve always loved it.
    There is a question which I think is worth answering though.  Why am I a Science teacher rather than a Scientist?  To be clear, I do consider myself a Scientist because a Scientist (to me at least) is someone who tries to think Scientifically.  But I don’t make my living from doing Scientific research, I make a living by standing in front of people who don’t want to be there and telling them about Science.  Why do I do this strange thing?
     The head-teacher of our school was once sitting beside me at the year 11 prom and asked me this very pertinent question.  “So, tim, it’s clear you love Science, but why did you become a teacher rather than a researcher?”  At the time I gave him the stock response I always give, which I’ll get to later, but I thought I’d take some self-indulgent time to explain (for those who are curious) what motivates someone to do this job.

Teaching Myth 1: Long Holidays and a Short Working Day
    Something I hear a lot is that teachers must be lazy because we don’t do a 9 – 5 shift.  Obviously teachers work 9 – 3:10 and spend their holidays lounging around, being fed grapes by servants.  And the holidays are enormous.  We get two weeks at Easter, two at Christmas, three half-term breaks and a six-week Summer, which I'm currently enjoying.  That’s 13 weeks of holiday while the average non-teaching job offers 5.6 (28 days to be precise).  It certainly does look like teachers get an easy ride.  Except there’s a few details worth considering.
    According to the Department for Education’s most recent survey (2014) the average secondary school teacher works 55.7 hours per week.  If those were the official contract hours it would actually be illegal because an employer is not permitted to demand over 48 hours per week from their employees.
    According to the Trades Union Congress, the average person in the UK works a 43.6 hour week, so if we multiply that by the number of weeks the average person in the UK works (46.4 weeks) we learn that a non-teacher in the UK typically works 2,023 hours in a year.  By contrast, the average teacher who works 55.7 hours a week for 39 weeks ends up working 2,172.
    The average teacher works 149 more hours per year than a non-teacher.  That’s roughly 21 extra working days.  I’m not claiming teachers work harder than non-teachers though.  We probably don’t.  But while non-teachers are running a year-long marathon of gradual grind, teachers are running sprints for a month, then taking a rest.  During term time I work insanely hard and then put my brain in a vat of ice every half-term break. 
     Teaching suits a very particular personality type.  The “give it everything you’ve got and then crash” personality.  I couldn’t sustain the level of energy required to be a teacher for 46 weeks straight.  But I can definitely keep it going for a couple of months, provided I have a week off every now and then.
     I’m also not trying to argue that teachers have it tougher than other people.  I’m just trying to remind everyone that although teaching may look like a nice relaxing job, it sure as shoot isn’t. 
Teachers aren’t doing their job because it’s easy.  They do 13 months’ worth of work in 10, so complain all you want about us getting long holidays.  We earn them.  Booyah!

Reason 3: Science can make people happy
    Science is one of the most exciting and optimistic things you can study becuase the world is beautiful.  It’s astonishing, weird, incredible, and full of unending mystery.  Nature is elegant and Science is exquisite. 
    We didn’t exist for 13.8 billion years of time and we won’t exist for countless trillions after we die.  We are privy to the grand spectacle for 70 or so years and it's a waste of that time if we don't try to appreciate all this majesty and complexity.  How lucky we are to be given such an opportunity. 
    I'm a Science teacher because when I look at the world around me, I’m filled with joy and hope.  I want to share that with others.     
 
Reason 4: I like Teaching people stuff
    Seems like an obvious one but it’s hard to pin down what this feeling is exactly.  I think every teacher knows the feeling they get when a kid suddenly goes “oh! I get it now!” and you’ve helped them see something they couldn’t before.  I can’t really explain or analyse it any deeper than that, but there’s something wonderful about helping someone else grasp something.  It doesn’t happen every lesson of every day with every student.  But when it does happen it’s something really special.
   
Reason 5: I want to make a difference
     As I said earlier, teachers don’t get paid a whopping amount in terms of money.  But we are paid in the kinds of memories few other jobs have.  As a teacher we have such potential to influence the lives of people for the better.  To quote Socrates (one of the first great teachers) “the direction in which education sets a man will determine his future happiness”.  Teachers have the ability to help shape a person and knowing I’ve made a difference to someone’s life is something I never want to give up.
    When I did my GCSE exams, I began holding Science revision sessions at my house for my friends.  They’d come along and I’d crash-course them through the GCSE.  After the exam, several of them came up and thanked me, saying they wouldn’t have passed without my help.  And wham, it hit me that this was something I wanted to do with my life.
    The reason I’m a teacher, the real reason, the deep reason, is because it gives me the chance to make a difference.  Sometimes it’s a small one; nothing more than making a pupil laugh when they’re in a bad mood, sometimes it’s a big thing, helping students pass their exams or choose a career path.
     I remember the teacher who began it for me.  My year 10/11 Chemistry teacher, Mr. Evans.  We’ve all got a teacher like that in our past, I suspect.  The one who pushed a button in our brain we didn’t even know was there, who showed us what we were capable of.
    By incredible providence, Mr. Evans was followed for me by another inspiring teacher, Mr. Miller.  He’s the person who persuaded me to consider teaching as a career.  I had reservations about it for a long time, but Mr. Miller was the one who pushed me into it and the thing is, he probably didn’t even realise he was doing it. 
    And then at University, my research supervisor was the person who trained me to think like a Scientist and stretched my brain further than I thought it could reach.  I didn't really know what my intellectual limits were until he took me to them.
    The point is, these three guys will be with me for the rest of my life.  The impact they had on me is profound and can’t be understated.  I’m a very happy person who loves what he does and I’m so grateful I was put on this path.  That’s why I’m a teacher, because I want to make a difference to other people, the way they made a difference to me.
    The reason I’m a teacher is in the thank-you cards I get at the end of the year.  It’s in students shouting my name as I walk past them in town.  It’s in the hand-shakes I give pupils after they’ve finished their exams.  It’s in the times my students make me laugh so hard I can barely breathe and in the tear-filled goodbyes I say to beloved classes.  It’s in knowing I’ve had an impact, even a small one, on someone else’s life. 
 
And finally the stock reason
     When people ask why I’m a Science teacher it’s usually in the middle of conversation and they want a quick response.  So I have an answer ready.  It’s just as true as the other reasons.  And, like almost all the best quotations about Science, it comes from Carl Sagan.  On this occasion, the opening chapter of his magnificent book The Demon Haunted World.  Sagan, when asked why he was so passionate about teaching Science, said:
     “When you’re in love, you want to tell the world.”
 
I do what I do because of love.
I love Science.
I love being a teacher.


Image credits:
Playground: dailygenius
Bert&Ernie: wetpaint
Neil Degrasse Tyson: techinsider
Einstein: autodidactproject
Niels Bohr: tumblr
Jason Statham: tumblr
Walter White: momentumbooks
Hoodies: Mirror

    His Holiness Pope Francis will probably not hear about my blog so I should make it clear I'm not writing to him, I'm writing about something he said recently.  As part of World Youth Day, Pope Francis said "we are living in an age of sin"..."I’ll say it clearly with its first and last name – is gender" and “Today, children are taught this at school: that everyone can choose their own sex. And why do they teach this? Because the books come from those people and institutions who give money."
    The Pope has made it clear in this statement that he opposes the genderqueer movement and seems to be especially worried about what's being taught in school.  This struck a pretty big nerve with me because I am one of those school teachers who is educating people about sex and gender and (as I said in last week's blog) I come down very much in support of genderqueer rights.
    So this is a tricky one and I don't want to get into theology.  I'm not a theologian and, as I've said before, I keep my religious stance very private, both online and in the classroom. 
    I could be a passionate atheist, I could be a devout Catholic.  I'm not going to say, so I'm going to ask you to avoid making any assumptions.  Unless I've spoken to you personally, you probably don't know what I believe about God.  But this isn't a dicussion about God, it's about Biology. 
    The Pope has openly criticised my position.  I could stay quiet on the whole thing, but I feel that would be cowardly.  I'm not afraid of discussing difficult topics in Science and Philosophy, so I decided I would write a few  words about my thoughts on what the Pope has said this week.

Can you disagree with the Pope?
    I'm well aware that in writing this blog post I will upset some readers and I am sorry.  It's not my purpose to cause pain, but I am (obviously) going to be disagreeing with his Holiness.  This is very dangerous ground for some because of an oft-quoted and oft-misunderstood dogma of the Catholic faith: the doctrine of Papal Infallibility.
    Papal Infallibility is the teaching that the Pope can, on some issues, be regarded as unquestionably correct, meaning if he teaches something as part of his infallibility, whatever he teaches is to be taken as true.  Therefore, if I try to argue that the Pope is wrong about something I am challenging not only him, but his percieved infallibility and therefore the Catholic Church as a whole...which I'm not wanting to do.
    However, the teaching of Papal Infallibility is a little more subtle so we need to be abundantly clear on what it means.  In fact, Papal Infallibility has a very precise definition, laid down in 1870, which states that the Pope must clearly declare what he's saying to be an infallible decree.  So, unless the Pope himself is defining one of his own teachings as part of the Infallibility doctrine, people are allowed to challenge and question him.
    Most Popes do not invoke the infallibility right because most Popes are not idiots, most Popes are pretty sensible.  Pope Benedict 16th once said "the Pope is infallible in very rare situations" and Pope John 23rd said, rather bluntly "I am not infallible". 
    Popes know they make mistakes, of course they do, they're usually highly educated men with backgrounds in Philosophy and Catholic history.  Popes are human and they are well aware of it, so they don't use their infallibility to decree whatever they want.  In fact there is a very short list of declarations which have been decreed "infallible" by the Catholic Church and most of them relate to the nature of Jesus or the Saints.
    So, to challenge what Pope Francis said earlier this week is not challenging his Papal Infallibility, because he did not declare what he was saying to be infallible.  Catholics can disagree with him, atheists can disagree with him and nobody is crossing any religious boundaries by doing so. 
    I'm not attacking Pope Francis as a person, either.  For what it's worth, while I do feel he is mistaken on this issue, a lot of the time I have a great deal of respect for his teachings.  He strikes me as a wise man who wants to focus on the Christian doctrines of substitutionary atonement and the love of Jesus...I just think he's misinformed on the Biology but that's fine, he's not a Biologist!

Isn't it a matter of opinion?
    As I've said in pretty much every blog post (so much that my regular readers can probably chant it along with me now): you are entitled to your opinion, but you can't have an opinion about nature. 
    When the Pope talks about sex and gender he is talking about the natural world.  Not only that, he's talking about the easily observable natural world.  If the natural world says one thing, you can't challenge it by saying "well I disagree".  Reality doesn't work like that.  If the evidence says x, you are only allowed to challenge it with counter-evidence, not your gut feeling.
    If you want to defend the Pope, go for it, I'm willing to be argued around.  But saying things like "well that's just your opinion" doesn't carry much weight with a Scientist .  So, I do think the Pope is wrong but I'm not advocating satanism, I'm not trying to oppose God,  I'm not being paid for saying this and I'm not going on opinion or gut-feeling.  I believe the Pope's mistake is simple: 

It's not about Choice
    I'm not going to pick up on the Pope using "gender" and "sex" synonymously, that would be a little pedantic because we know exactly what he means.  He's objecting to the idea of teaching children "that everyone can choose their own sex" (he means gender). 
    Well, the thing is, I agree with him 100%.  You can't choose your gender and it would be inaccurate to teach that you can.  For the same reason you can't choose the number of legs you have.  If a teacher got up and told her class "you can have as many legs as you want" I'd be first in line to object.  The Pope is actually right; it would be wrong to teach children that gender is a choice, but that's not what schools are teaching, that's not what Biology is saying and that's also not what the genderqueer movement is about.
    The Pope seems to think that trans and genderqueer people are naturally born cisgendered (male in a man's body for instance) and then choosing to be something else.  This is not the case at all.  Gender does not seem to be something you can choose, but it can mismatch the typical anatomy.  Look at the story of David Reimer, the male person who was raised female and ended up killing himself due to depression.  Gender is an inbuilt thing and you can't easily change it. 
    The Milton Diamond study points to genetic components being involved and the work of neuroscientists like Zhou, Chung and Swaab have shown that gender is most likely determined by neural architecture, specifically the BSTc region of the brain (there are likely other factors but this seems to be a principle one).
    Genderqueer people choose their gender no more than a person chooses the colour of their skin.  In fact, many genderqueer people, given the choice, would choose not to be genderqueer as it can lead to all sorts of legal, social and cultural problems.  Genderqueer people are often made to suffer because of their identity.
    If we replaced the word sex/gender in the Pope's words with the word blood-type then it would read "children are being taught they can choose their blood type" and that would definitely be wrong.  But no Biologist or Biology teacher is teaching that because blood type, like gender, seems to be something you are born with.
    Granted, a very small number of people do make a mistake and decide they are genderqueer when they are not, but (as I said in my previous blog) that number is, at most, 5% of the trans community.  95% of people are a lot happier after transition.
    The number of people who identify as genderqueer is less than 1% i.e. the majority of children do not identify as genderqueer.  Some boys might try makeup on and some girls might dress in army fatigues but this isn't the same thing.  A trans person isn't just dabbling with being feminine or masculine as all children do...it's their entire life.
    Likewise, letting children know that some people are genderqueer doesn't mean every child will decide they are as well.  After all, letting children know some people get A grades, doesn't mean that every child will suddenly get As (it don't work like that guv).  
    But what it might do is give the genderqueer students the confidence to admit to themselves, and to others, that they are genderqueer, without feeling any shame over something which is natural.  Being genderqueer is natural in the same way having green eyes is natural.  Uncommon, yes, but not a chosen thing. 
    If we rephrase the Pope's wording to reflect what the Biology is telling us it would read "children are being taught in schools that gender is something you're born with".  And who could possibly object to teaching children that?  

Image credits:
His Holiness, Pope Francis: cruxnow