If the tabloids can use sensational headlines, then so can I.

And of course this posting is self-indulgent, but have you not noticed the title of the blog: mikeandenglish?

I visited a friend and former teaching colleague today who has also now retired from the job. He had retrieved personal teaching memorabilia from the school where we taught together and was showing me some of this, including the following correspondence I intended to have with the then Secretary of State for Education John Patten – one of the bigger knob-heads of the Tory years – and which I had circulated to the English team for their ‘entertainment’ back in 1993, and which I do so again here now.

I hadn’t forgotten this gem from my many missives to people in positions of educationally destructive and dumb authority, but I don’t believe I had retained this full set. I did throughout my teaching career confront any government lunacy thrust down my teaching throat and have recently complained on this blog that not enough of us in the profession did this in the past, and certainly do not do so now. I make no apology for that: even given the current demands of the job, it doesn’t take much to write a letter of conviction, and as a Head of English not that long ago working through target mania and specific, quite nasty, scrutiny of results and so on of my Department, I understand the pressures yet the need to fight on. That said, it is clear from this example of banter that I achieved little in my past assaults apart from the catharsis it provided, as necessary as this was.

Here’s the exchange: