Take twenty kids with rubbish GCSEs, one celebrity chef, a classroom and some guest teachers, and you have Jamie’s Dream School. A second chance at education is being offered to those for whom it - for whatever reason – didn’t work out the first time.

Of course, with this being on the telly, the teachers aren’t following the National Curriculum. And they aren’t teachers. They’re celebrities. Good ones, though: It’s not Chanelle from Big Brother attempting to explain longshore drift, or Wayne Rooney calculating Pythagoras’ theorem. These are eminent, and actually pretty awesome stars: Science with Robert Winston; Art with Rolf Harris; English with Simon Callow and History with David Starkey.

Ah, yes. Starkey. Inevitably, 99% of the coverage of this show will be about how Starkey ran his lesson like it was the 1930s. “You’re all here because you failed”, he thunders, by way of introduction. The kids, who don’t need any excuse to holler over each other, immediately take exception to this, and he’s lost before he’s even started.

Even when he calls the fat kid, er, fat, there’s a sense of righteous indignation over how rude he’s been – despite the fact that they same kids bawling at him have to put down their mobile phones to do so.

His hard style and no-bullshit lecturing probably works fine in the environments he’s used to - five hundred rapt Cambridge students who have actually heard of him and give a toss about the subject – but with a room full of bored kids that he’s already annoyed, he’s got no chance.

More upsetting was Rolf Harris’ turn at teaching impressionist painting. By the end of his hour, he’s almost in tears, feeling that he’s let the kids down. He just can’t give the required attention to the ones that need help, instead having to fire-fight to shut up the dickheads and loudmouths. Even in this group, there are people who are genuinely interested in learning, keep their heads down and do the work, and there are the loudmouths who can’t sit still without offering an opinion on absolutely everything that anyone says, regardless of who else is talking.

And that’s their biggest problem: They’re not stupid, they just never shut up, and don’t really care for authority. Because the authority figures have always just told them to shut up, whether they were being cheeky or trying to make a valid point. With a series of cameras on them, the attention seekers in the group have an extra incentive to play up. Starkey’s inexcusable rudeness was just the icing on the cake for people who see the classroom as a captive audience for their incessant witless witterings.

Comments

1. Thea says:

   March 4, 2011 at 7:31 pm

   AGREE AGREE AGREE This is what a real classroom is like – and although the programme is using real celebs who know a thing or to about their subject , they are not as yet using people who can teach at this level. The level is somewhere between armed combat and so different its intriguing AS a real life teacher who has spent much time with kids uninterested in learning and more interested in texting. I feel sorry for these “inspiring Pedagogues”. Tip 1-. Do not speak-, do absolutely nothing – yes nothing at all, with a bit of luck the kids will run out of steam and start to become suspicious and wonder what you are up to. You can then TRY and answer one, maybe two questions before the end of the lesson. TIP 2 – divide and conquer – set one group up against the other – setting tasks – might work and get competiton going if they are bored enough. Tip 3 Tell them the cameras are all there for secret X factor auditions. They will be so impressed that they will make themselves into soloists, duos or groups and sing(directly at the camera) – yes you won’t teach them anything – but at the least YOU will be laughing. Good luck for the rest of the programme.

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