Confronting Toxic Mindsets and the Dismissal Epidemic
It’s a dilemma that’s as insidious as it is ubiquitous, as destructive as it is dismissive. It’s a dilemma born from the lips of our own colleagues, echoing within each department and reverberating through the corridors of our schools with the unsettling frequency of the Silent Hill radio static. This dilemma, my friends, is the casual dismissal of complex issues through language rife with logical fallacies.
Blindness and/or Bullshit
Behind the curtain, school leadership apparently wields wizard-like power, but their decisions more often resemble a game of drunken pin the tail on the donkey—aiming for ass but hitting fuck knows what. From ignoring critical issues like misogyny, harassment and toxic behaviours to treating valuable expertise like unwanted leftovers, the fallout is ionising. Don your hazmat suit as we wade through the toxic swamp of leadership ignorance that’s contaminating schools.
The title is an unfortunate coincidence but not a day goes by without bumping into a colleague who has been ‘gaslit’ by SLT. This could manifest as a sanction downgraded by a member of gaslighters, who wasn’t a witness to the event. Or upon interviewing a future HM Belmarsh inhabitant about a classroom incident, SLT will suggest that:
“when he told you to go fuck yourself, I think he was actually saying to ‘go look at yourself’, you misheard”?
Some member of SLT
The only thing lacking here is a Jedi-style, wave of the hand.