About me

Thanks for your interest. I have been fortunate enough to have lived many lives and assumed many personas along the way. I may share some of these here but the short version is that I am a former engineer, and educator, now pursuing a PhD. I live in Fife, having been an economic migrant from the South East of England in 1991.

I’ve always been technically-minded, and found myself in the REME by the time I was 20. This service gave me huge benefits which have served me my entire life, not least securing me a career in flight simulation, first as a Systems Engineer and then as a Project Manager. If I am honest, these were the very best days of my professional life; once I had moved North, I never again encountered the integration of intellect, wit, humility, and entrepreneurship I experienced as the norm in the flight simulation business. There were great mentors and role models; genius designers and engineers; pragmatic administrators and a focus on solutions that I have never seen in my most recent career in education, more of which shortly. For now, let the irony of it sink in¹.

A global downturn in aviation in 1991 brought unexpected redundancy and the need to find a port in the storm. Scotland was a temporary move, only ever meant to fill a gap. I took a contract with a company that I knew to be out of its league in the flight simulation marketplace, thinking I would return to civilisation after a few months. I got stuck once the family moved up and discovered what a wonderful place Scotland is to live and grow up. Work-life balance swung firmly toward life, and I tolerated five years of “regional” corporate ineptitude before taking a sabbatical in China to build a war-chest of funds and capacity enough to go it on my own.

My software company was based in offices in Cowdenbeath, and made code and database solutions for tourism, health and engineering for six years. We provided training courses, too, and an internship for young locals aspiring to be programmers. All was healthy until a client defaulted on his over-extended account, killing the company and almost bankrupting me. Although I have no regrets, I found myself in a desperate place with only one door open that I could see, which was to become a teacher². I had been working with a youth organisation for a few years and served on the Children’s Panel and so thought it might be a logical move, at least until my brother Quasimodo and I got ourselves straightened out again.

I went to Moray House and took the PGCE in Physics and Mathematics, having not long graduated from the Open University with my degree. That year at Edinburgh was, looking back, a year of alarm bells ringing as I entered a culture alien to anything I’d experienced before. I quickly found myself laughing at the serious faces people were making as they articulated the most naïve and ridiculous pronouncements on political matters of importance to their immediate agenda. The first of these was during a probationer training session on “enterprise education” in which it was clear that the speaker had absolutely no idea what enterprise looked like in the real world. This was soon joined by “sustainability”, another educational agenda lobbied, pushed, promoted and “embedded” by people with no clear idea what the word means. Challenge any of it, or call it out as a neo-liberal device to sustain the Victorian principles of our³ education system, and you start ruffling feathers. So, my education career in schools and at the University of Edinburgh has been characterised by the best application of my technical and personal skills for the advantage of the children or students in my care⁴, and the damning of my words and actions by people who present as evangelists of some kind, deluded by their own unhappiness. The former led to recognition, promotion and awards, at the same time as the latter led to disciplinary or pseudo-disciplinary action⁵.

This is not to say that there aren’t good people in education but there are an awful lot of other people, too. Some of them are given responsibility. If it were guns, these are the people you would want on the other side, in front of you.

Like I said, I have no regrets. All of these paths have led to where I am now, and I am thankful for the joy I have in being alive, reasonably healthy and able to enjoy the privileges I have today.

Nick Hood CPhys FInstP MRAeS SFHEA LRPS
Fife

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References

Kruger, Justin, and David Dunning. 1999. “Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77 (6): 1121–34. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121.

Footnotes

1. This is a great moment to read Kruger and Dunning (1999).

2. “Those who can’t do, teach.” Yes, and maybe those who can’t teach, get promoted.

3. By “our”, I mean every education system I have encountered.

4. I always cared for them all, even the ones I didn’t like.

5. By “pseudo”, I mean that in the University, the tools used were intimidation and non-specific charges by unnamed colleagues, drawn out over extended periods with the intention of making the problem go away (“going on the sick”, for example, also used in schools). Ultimately, these lead to an awkward conversation with the Head of School, the outcome of which was to be told to read the dignity at work policy again. No evidence of wrongdoing was ever offered.