Teaching Accountabilty or Power grab

Accountability is a euphemism for the exercise of power.

Accountability has been a 'fad' for the last thirty years.

'Let's make people accountable!'

Yes, I agree we have to be 'accountable' or 'report' to someone-the question is to

WHOM should we be accountable?

In the family children are accountable to Mum and Dad.

In the workplace we all should be accountable to a line manager who is more skilled and knowledgable than we are.

But in the real world, who is accountable to whom? What do we find?

Too often, it is the skilled expert, eg the lowly teacher, who is accountable to some self-seeking , pen-pushing , petty bureaucrat, who knows nothing whatsoever about the skills he is supposed to be 'monitoring' or 'assessing'.

In teaching, a professional teacher is often  required to be accountable to a line manager who is not skilled in his/her area of expertise.

Teachers are accountable to everyone - administrators, parents-even students.

Can you imagine a plumber being accountable to a a salesman; carpenter to an academic, or a doctor to a an electrician?

No?

Well why then are we teachers accountable to pen-pushing administrators and career bureuacrats who know nothing about education?

I'll tell you why:

Because they like the power and they want it!

It's not accountablility-it's a power grab -and they want it!

Because we have all been to school -we think we know about education!

The same argument could be used to justify a garbage-collector being chosen as head of the BBC because he has a television.