Dear Mr Gove By Jess Green: Watch This Poet Slam Education Secretary Over Reforms

Dear Mr Gove By Jess Green
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Mr Michael Gove, you have well and truly been slammed. Poetry slammed. By a poet. A young, passionate poet who is giving you what for over your "dark ages" curriculum and has resonated with thousands of others.

The poet in question is Jess Green, who addresses the education secretary through a brilliant five minute-long spoken word poem and takes him to task over education reforms.

"A lot of the mainstream press make out that teachers are lazy and take long six-week holidays and are selfish but it is not until you go into a classroom you realise how hard it is," Green told The Independent. "I have been working in schools for the past three years and I come from a family of teachers and I have seen how downtrodden teachers have become.

"They are being asked to reach completely unrealistic targets and for pupils to make huge levels of progress regardless of whether they have come from a privileged private school background or have just come into the country from a war zone."

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And her words have certainly struck a chord with other teachers - and students; the video has been viewed more than 137,000 times.

One student wrote underneath the video: "My best friend picked up simultaneous equations in one week... I was struggling to do basic ones 2 years after we first started learning. I can paint a canvas in 4 hours to high quality, yet my sister spent 3 weeks producing work that she still cannot smile about. We all learn in different ways and at different speeds AND we all have different talents. We should not be judged by whether we can do maths, science or english and give the correct answers in set amount of time. It's ludicrous."

"As a child going through education in this country, it is the most soul-crushing-damaging period. It crushes your creativity, aspirations, motivation."

One teacher added: "Perfectly put Jess, you are so spot on.. I have been teaching for 8 years and have been made to feel guilty just trying to spend weekends actually relaxing and doing what I enjoy doing, but no instead I sit here writing another 'Hot Lesson' that will be scrutinised in some after school meeting. It will probably take 3 hours to write a lesson plan for one single one hour lesson by the time I have found resources and ideas that might just motivate students at the Short Stay school I currently work."