In your own time - What you’re discussing on the TES forums this week

26th March 2010, 12:00am

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In your own time - What you’re discussing on the TES forums this week

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/your-own-time-what-youre-discussing-tes-forums-week

Are 3D glasses and bleep tests a step too far?

A curious classroom craze appears to be spreading - pupils wearing 3D glasses.

TES forum user Giraffe reports that local pupils have taken to removing them from the cinema after watching the latest sci-fi blockbuster, before taking out the lenses and putting them on at school: “There are scores of Ronnie Corbett look-alikes wandering the corridors.”

Homepatch has also witnessed this phenomenon: “I’ll own up on here and nowhere else. I confiscated a pair last week - and then wore them for half the lesson myself. Half the senior management team were out that day ...”

Pinkflipflop thinks that the craze is brilliant. “I am impressed with the fact they managed to get them out of the cinema in the first place ... our place literally strip searches you to make sure you aren’t hiding any to take home!”

And it’s not just schools in Britain that have been affected by the fad. “I’m in Melbourne, Australia, and the trend has caught on quite a bit here,” Cotzo writes. “They think it makes them look a lot smarter. It’s weird without the lenses. I also had to confiscate a baby’s dummy from a Year 9 student. What teenagers think is cool blows my mind.”

Residents of the online staffroom are less impressed by a suggestion from the Government’s chief medical officer that pupils undergo “bleep” tests.

Sir Liam Donaldson is interested in copying the physical evaluations, used in California and Texas, where pupils have to run between two markers laid out 20 metres apart before the beep sounds.

Harshbutfair has a better idea to improve students’ fitness: “Here’s a radical suggestion - perhaps they could stop building on school playing fields?”

“Tut tut,” replies rihlana. “If they don’t sell off the school playing fields, where is all the money for the new ICT suites to come from?” And then a scary thought dawns on her. “How long will it be before the beep test scores are added to the Ofsted criteria?”

Lilyofthefield has an even more alarming idea. “Shit, what if they start asking the staff to take fitness tests?” she writes. “If my progression through the pay scales had ever depended upon an eight-minute mile, 10 press-ups or a vault over a box, I’d be languishing on #163;400 a month. Though look how much that might save the school in pay rises.”

This week’s poll

Would you consider teaching overseas?

YES 52%

NO 48%

Next week’s question

Should pupils be forced to take ‘bleep tests’ to gauge their physical fitness?

Vote at www.tes.co.ukpoll.

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