I'm going to stop doing the blog for a while as I'm busy working on a new book for Dan Collins of Monday Books and being male, I can only do one thing at a time.
I'll leave it all up and you should feel free to continue to add comments (which are often far better than the posts).
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have read the blog, commented on the posts or bought a copy of 'It's Your Time You're Wasting'. I've thoroughly enjoyed doing them both. There might also be some news on the telly front soon, but we'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, if you haven't read the book I'd certainly recommend it.
Apparently some of you are busy pretending to be me on the TES forums and upsetting people. This is an absolute disgrace and an insult to my integrity, so feel free to continue.
Oh, have a look at News from Monday Books for updates now and again.
29 comments:
And I'd like to thank you Mr Chalk for bringing a lot of laughter to some world weary staff here in Brum.
Best of luck with your endeavours.
Will miss you and good luck and can only repeat a comment made some time ago re another post----------------------"it would be great if you could do the same thing , Frank. More people need to know what is happening to education in this country.
12:15"
Agree wholeheartedly, and you could do it judging from these blogs and the book but please dont get "Jeremy Vine"to help you, find a serious adult program maker like those who years ago made television that we could be proud of.
12:37
Half our staffroom are in mourning. You managed to get across the sheer lunacy of what has happened in state education really well.
Thanks and please come back!
Dear Mr Chalk
Thank you for your efforts and I trust that the new book goes well.
As others have said, hope that your return is not too long delayed.
It's a sad day. I've enjoyed your blog for the last year and thought the book was a classic. Spot on observations all the way through.
What's the new book about?
Good riddance. Cynical old git.
Chalk certainly is cynical. He's also sharp, funny and doesn't subscribe to the 'You can't say that!' mentality which is taking over in the UK.
Best Wishes and thankyou for your excellent blog and book.
Follow 'Nick Hood's' profile, it's rather amusing. He's either a used car salesman or a soft-arsed teacher, I'm not sure which.
Nick - you're a tosser, the world's moved on. And your cars look crap.
Best wishes Frank, this blog has been a breath of fresh air amid all the lies, government spin, cowardice and distortion.
Read Nick Hood's blog if you ever have difficulty sleeping. It's just like those other TES approved teaching blogs- shit boring, pc and hand wringing.
Don't go Frank. Your irreverent style and sense of humour is such a welcome relief.
Only teaching book I've ever read that I could relate to. Straight talk, very funny and sound ideas on how to change things.
Sorry to see you go
Echo the above comment. I've never read anything else that made me stop reading, look up from the book and say:
"This is my school!"
All the best with your next one.
Well Frank, I think you did more in the last twelve months or so to publicise and try to do something about the bad things in education than the Unions have in ten years.
You deserve our gratitude and I think you would be pleased to hear that you made me laugh out loud on many an occasion.
Thanks
Yes, may you have very good luck there, Mr Chalk. Just don't forget those who supported you through the 'wilderness years' when you're coining it, OK?!
Mine's a large bottle of Jamesons, by the way...
a great book and a great blog, frank.
when will the trendy 60s polytechnic-influenced ideologues realise that it's the poor who suffer from crap schools, all the way. not the rich.
as a lifelong labour voter and recently retired teacher, i despair at what has happened to our schools in the last 30 years.
i started teaching at a secondary modern-just-turned-comprehensive in birmingham in 1971 and watched it decline over the following 33 years to the point where i was in tears most days.
our children's futures are being destroyed in the name of ideology.
i would never vote tory, but i will never vote labour again, either.
Please carry on with the blog! Don’t write another book, the English language cannot sustain another prolonged attack of banality and right-wing toss.
This blog has been a breath of stale air and is an inspiration to all semi-illiterate reactionaries everywhere – as well as the hundreds of shit writers the width and breadth of an average broadband connection.
Please reconsider.
Tucker Jenkins.
Now that Frank's gone, maybe 'Tucker Jenkins' could show us some of his own no doubt hilarious, observant and hard hitting writing.
Or there again, maybe not...
Do keep blogging, without alenorei's comments how are we to maintain an insight into the mind of a fascist.
Jobrag
Well, I've just started blogging about my experiences teaching in the UAE (Middle East), if anybody's interested. I can't claim to match Frank's standards, but give me a bit of time - it's gonna be a hard act to follow!
Oh, sorry you are going; you will be sadly missed.
What is the new book about?
well. I can't wait for the book to come out. What is it about?????????????? Drool??? At long last things are being described as they are.Thanks for that!!!
Jobrag and Tucker Jenkins - do you really think Frank is a 'fascist' just because he seeks to expose the parlous state of our country's poorer schools? Do you really believe our education system is a thing of perfection?
If you think the former, you need to acquaint yourself with actual Fascism. If you think the latter, you need to acquaint yourself with poor schools and the children who suffer in them.
As it happens, I've read 'It's Your Time You're Wasting'; I wouldn't agree with everything Frank writes, and I don't recognise all the scenarios, either. But it's rather juvenile, if i may say so, to resort to 'Young Ones'-style insults. As someone of the left, though increasingly, the centre, I think Frank makes an important contribution. OK, it's not one I read in my paper every day but I do hear it in the staff room, and increasingly so.
Helena
Re-read my comment I'm not calling Frank a fascist but alanorei.
Jobrag
Helena, can you actually read? Where in my comment do I call Frank a fascist?
His views are consistently right wing, and in a democracy there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m just pointing out how easy it is to agree with the populist right wing sentiments espoused on this site, like most of the sycophants who comment on this blog do. Also, there are reactionaries on the left of the political spectrum too. Indeed, you may think I’m one.
However, at no point would I ever call anyone a fascist without significant evidence. A reactionary yes, a fascist no.
Anyone who throws around that word without good cause lessens the meaning of the word considerably. Frank gives me no reason to think he is a fascist. It was a phrase that never entered my head.
Also if anyone on this site believes that under a labour or conservative government there will be sustained action to alter and change the current ethos prevalent throughout our school system, then they are living cloud cuckoo land. There is not the political will or the financial backing within the political establishment to do so.
I was close to the truth when I said this site attracts its fair share of “semi-illiterate reactionaries”. Thank you, Helena, for confirming my worst fears.
Tucker Jenkins.
I think you'll find it's the left wing sentiment which is 'populist' these days, Tucker, old bean.
Try and find a right-wing view on telly, for instance.
Take the NHS... the envy of the world, apparently. Well, that part of the world's population which envies being told to shit in their beds and die of C-Diff, perhaps.
Same with our allegedly 'world class' education system. Yeah, right, do me a favour. I work at a school which is so bad they ought to close it, burn it down and prosecute half the staff. We chuck kids out every summer who we all know have not the slightest hope of doing ANYTHING with their lives. If it's 'right wing' to hate this, then sign me up.
And sycophancy? Ha ha. Agreeing with an anonymous blogger none of us actually know can't be sycophancy, can it? It's just 'agreeing'.
As for you picking up 'Helena' and others who don't see the world the same way you do, I think you mean 'semi-literate'.
COME BACK FRANK, MISSING YOUR POSTS IN OUR STAFF ROOM AT LEAST!!!
AngryofSheffield, you don't work at Myrtle Springs do you by any chance? I day a day there on Supply and the words Shit and Pit spring to mind...Yewlands and Chaucer were little better.
frank
missing my daily fix
come back!!!!
i found a good student blog at
year11student.blogspot.com
interesting stuff about a year 11 student
In Frank's absence there are some fantastic blogs here: www.osltraining.co.uk
Don't know how the hell you're churning out a second book - I can't get past the first chapter of mine!
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