As educators we are, in contemporary state and (as am I, retired) a huge group with diverse experience. I believe we too often ‘suck it up’ in terms of what comes down to us from on high. We are far too reactive, in a grudging and passive way, and insufficiently bold when it comes to being proactive professionals.

We need to speak out more often. We allow ourselves to be beaten around our professional ears in a sadly supplicatory manner. We need to be confident, bold and forthright, speaking out in confidence but with our utterances predicated on careful thinking. Too much happens we let happen through non-response.

We speak a language to each other ‘below the table’ out of the hearing of superordinates. We need to come of of the professional closet and reveal our thinking in a wider domain. We need to abandon fright and hesitation