Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Chalk's Laws of Teaching

In response to a recent enquiry by someone who wants to put them up on his Staffroom Wall (Don't! It will only end in tears...), here's a list of them:


Chalk's First Law: "In any meeting, it is not possible to make a suggestion so ridiculous that it will not be taken seriously and earnestly debated"

Chalk's Second Law: "The frequency of 'buzzwords' and jargon in a person's speech is inversely proportional to their general competence"

Chalk's Third Law: "No new idea in teaching has ever worked"

Chalk's Fourth Law: "No situation is ever resolved to the satisfaction of all parties concerned"

Chalk's Fifth Law: "Pay no attention to what 'Research' has shown or what an 'Academic' has announced. It is invariably nonsense."

Chalk's Sixth Law: "Always judge on appearance. You will never be Politically Correct, but you will also never be wrong."

Chalk's Seventh Law: "The IQ of the teachers at a given school is proportional to the IQ of the pupils at that school."

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chalk's First Law might have gone on to say that it is not possible to make a suggestion so ridiculous that it will not become government policy within three years.

Anonymous said...

Followed by another one that says that said law will be recognised as ridiculous within 5 years after massive waste and expense, to be replaced by one more ridiculous

Anonymous said...

-and every great new idea will have been seen 20 years ago by the older and more cynical staff who will therefore be labelled obstructionist this time around.

The TEFL Tradesman said...

Only seven laws, Chalk!? Could do better! I want to see at least a dozen by break time, otherwise it's detention for you, my little waster!!

Anonymous said...

Maybe the Eighth should be

"Those who can, teach. Those who can't, become management"

Anonymous said...

Surely those who can't teach end up in Teacher Training Colleges.

Those who fail at teaching teachers end up as School Inspectors ...

leogex said...

The 9th(in addition to Fee's);

All attention will be focused on those who don't want to learn,dragging down those who want to learn.

Anonymous said...

My contribution is:

"The smaller the school, the weirder the staff"

Anonymous said...

It used to be - the taller the teacher the more prone to sarcasm.
And the shorter the teacher the more likely to teach languages or geography.

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