Stuff and Nonsense

Good grief. Labour are at it again. This time it’s the even more bonkers than usual suggestion that parents should be given the right to “vote out” the senior management teams of failing schools and “vote in” the senior management team from an “accredited” school.

I see a couple of problems with this. First, the aim is to have 500 “accredited schools”. Well, there are around 30,000 schools in the uk. So thats a 1 to 60 ratio. I would challenge any school management team no matter how good they are to manage a second school as effectively as the first without declining standards in the first. Unless the rate of failing schools is less than 2 in 60 then this means every accredited school will be split between two schools and there will be an inevitable decline as the performance of each reflects the split loyalties and time. If the rate is higher than 1 in 60, you won’t even find 500 accredited ones to start with!

Of course, I’m probably missing a huge amount of information that may make this idea sound slightly more plausible but hey, most soap-box ranting is under-informed, especially on the net so why should my blog be any different?

I am sure of my ground on one point though. Parents should not be given any more power over schools than they currently have. The problem is this. There are a lot of poor (morally, emotionally, not financially) parents out there. There are a lot of parents who rarely read to their children for example. There are more still who fail to hear their children read regularly. Unfortunatel,y those parents least likely to take an active part in their children’s education – the “high achieving” workaholic salary ladder slaves with mortgages and cars they can’t really afford unless they work so much they don’t see their kids – are precisely the types who will turn up to vote out a failing management team because their kid can’t read without realising that their kid can’t read because they never do it at home where it really counts.

As in all things of course, it’s a bell curve. The parents I describe above are at one end of the curve. There are parents who can’t spare the time to actually parent at the other end of the curve working double shifts just to pay the heating bill. In between there is a broad range that are doing their best and doing a good job but the problem is everyone has a vote and most parents’ experience of education is limited to just being a parent. They are not qualified to teach or to manage teachers. They do not understand the pressures that teachers are under; they do not even understand for the most part the laughable way in which the national curriculum calls for more hours to be taught each day than exist in any actual school day. (Don’t believe me… go ahead, get a copy. Add up all the recommendations. It comes to about 6 hours a day. Now how long, less lunch, breaks, registration, religion (grrrr) is left in your kid’s school day? a lot less than 6).

For crying out loud, most people you will meet in life are very likely to be insufferably stupid anyway (note: this opinion may be as a result of my acknowledged anti-social outlook and like most statistics “most” may be completely bogus.) The chances of getting a sensible reasoned decision on anything from a sample of “the public” are slim at best and parents, myself among them are well, you know, The Public.

Fixing education is simple.

1. Don’t have a national curriculum then leave wriggle room for teachers. Either give them free reign and let the cream rise or mandate the teaching so even the crap teachers can do some good and the really creative ones will go off and do something creative.

2. Have governing bodies made up of seasoned retired teachers who can serve for up to five years following their last full time teaching post. They should have the power to separate the wheat from the chaff. They should get paid.

3. Don’t try to kid parents that it is school’s job to teach their kids to read, write and add up. This is the parents’ job. The teacher’s job is to add some structure and to make sure the gaps are filled in.  This should be made clear to parents. Stop trying to come up with nannying tactics that make parents think that they can devolve their child’s education to the school alone.

It’s not much is it? I could go on… how about not letting kids move on a year until they’ve reached the required level of attainment in the current year. If they don’t get it, they do it again until they do. Sure, it would be chaotic at first, it would have to be flexible and schools would have to adapt and have the resources to adapt to their local mix of abilities. But no-one would leave school not being able to read, write and add up unless they also needed so much help that they needed help to live independently anyway.  Did you see that program “Kids can’t count”?  quite shocking. Lots of poor teaching going on there admittedly but I’d bet that the most chronic under achievers are not getting the support for learning from home that they need either.

Rant over. I feel better even though it’s highly likely that no-one is reading this and less likely still that anything will change because of another whiny blog post.

This story from the BBC seems to highlight what to me seems an intractable problem with faith schools and religiosity in general. Is anybody really surprised that the report commissioned by Ed Balls found that schools from faiths with opposing views of middle east conflicts explained their age-old enemies’ faith using “inappropriate” and “inflammatory” language? Why would they do anything else? Those faiths believe they are fighting a religious war. Actually I applaud them. How the schools in the report describe other faiths is how the parents who send their children to a faith school describe those other faiths so at least it’s consistent for the kids and it’s honest even if it’s not healthy. By “not healthy” of course, I mean no more unhealthy than the brainwashing of children that religious doctrine of all faiths depends upon for that faith’s continued existence. You see, even I’m not averse to a bit of political correctness  - or at least even-handedness.

Pandering to Governments’ desire to appease everyone and offend no-one is not high on the agendas of most faiths and consequently not high on the agenda of most faith based schools. Until the G-men come knocking and their central funding is at risk a faith schools is going to do what its community of parents and donors expects it to do – educate its pupils in the same way as they are “educated” at home.

To any secular onlooker, all religions of the world suffer from one obvious problem. They each believe they are right. Of course in these days of political and multi-cultural correctness that invades every aspect of our daily lives, you will find religious leaders clamouring to be the first to declare how their faith understands and accepts different cultures and viewpoints. This is of course completely inconsistent with the tenets of most faith groups. The very thing that marks them as a faith group is their belief in one god or another, one messiah or another or one interpretation of their chosen scripture against another. To say that they believe, that they have FAITH in this view or that view (or “facts” as some will falsely represent their views) and then in the same breath to say that they understand and accept the views of another group is nothing more than a bare-faced lie. They are simply paying lip-service to the media and government who will “crucify” (insert your preferred method of mutilation and murder here, I intend no religious bias) them if they don’t follow the line about tolerance.

So the report’s outcome hold no suprises for me and perhaps for no-one. It has just highlighted a much broader issue. Should faith schools exist at all? I have some views on that you won’t be shocked to hear, but that’s for another post.

p.s. Whilst I’m sure you will find typos or genuine grammatical gaffes above, the lack of a capital G for god is intentional. A capital implies that “God” is a thing or someone. I don’t believe this and since I’m doing the writing, I will decide which words I will treat as proper nouns.

Alan Turing withoubt any doubt was a hero. Like many during a time of war he applied his unique talents to the benefit of the nation then and now. There can be no doubt that The Few that Churchill spoke of could count Turing and his bletchley park cohorts among their number.
There can be no more doubt that the way he was treated after the war for his homosexuality was despicable; no right minded person could think otherwise. But the laws of the time were exactly that. They were of their time. They were the laws of a society that hadn’t itself grown up. In the fifties particularly, Science itself still considered homosexuality a mental affliction. The Hobson’s choice of prison or chemical castration from which Turing was forced to choose after conviction are abhorrent to most of us now and rightly so.

And so it was that when I came across a petition on the number 10 website to have the Prime Minister apologise for Turing’s treatment at the hands of the state that I very nearly added my support. But then I stopped. Why should today’s goverment apologise for unjust laws two generations ago? It’s not the first time and I’m sure it won’t be the last but come on, really? What’s the point? It’s not like the pm is contemporary with the legislation or the events. We’re not talking missing weapons of mass destruction and illegal wars in the lifetime of the current government!

I just don’t understand what it is about society today that a portion must lobby the goverment of the day to apologise for the wrongs of previous incumbents. After all, goverments are a little like companies. There are 60 million shareholders and every few years we get to elect a whole new board of directors. We give them powers to make decisions and laws and we, the society of the moment abide by those laws for the most part because our democracy ensures that the law works for most people most of the time.

If you really want an apology for fifty year old injustices I suggest you lobby not today’s government but your own grandparents, and their peers who were the very society who, collectively and very likely out of apathy rather than malice allowed bad laws to last even beyond their generation. To be fair, the focus of the multitide in post-war Britain was unlikely to be laws relating to homosexuality so even “apathy” may be a bit strong. But whatever the justification, it certainly is not something that today’s politicians should be expected to apologise for.

The government today can only be accountable for things enacted in its name during its lifetime. Stop looking for someone to blame and recognise the past when you see it.

I feel buoyed this morning by the news that Obama is to become president. Strange. I’m not sure why I am so interested. Perhaps it’s just age, perhaps parenthood but I do detect within myself a modest amount of anticipation – eagerness even – about what this man may achieve.

Some of the excitement is without doubt because I feel that the first African-American president heralds a change in attitude of a nation and because of the domination of that nation, to a degree, the world at large. I’ve always believed that he should win but I admit I was of the extremely cynical view that the peoples of the United States would never elect an African American president. I’ve rarely been so pleased to have been proved wrong. I recognise that this is one of those genuinely historical moments. It’s akin to watching the Berlin Wall falling (literally, falling), the release of Nelson Mandela or the premiership of Margaret Thatcher. Though the first female prime minister of the UK seems rather tame by comparison to the others, it was a change that changed Britain and the world so deserves a mention. Obama as president feels bigger though. It feels bigger than all of these.

As a parent it’s no overstatement to say that I actually feel as though the world just became a safer place for my children. I’m a UK citizen. My family and I enjoy peace and security that lots of people can only dream of and yet still I feel the world just got safer. Very strange that the appointment of one man to office (I know, he’s not there yet but you know what I mean) can have such an effect on one who is frankly, usually dismissive of world affairs and politicians generally. I think (I hope I get this right)  it was Winston Churchill who said “Any person who seeks public office is eminently unsuitable for the job.” I’ve always liked that and to a large degree I believe it but today I believe it a little less.

With an early start this morning I managed to hear the last few minutes of Obama’s speech and very impressive it was too. Passionate, yes. But measured, practical, restrained and even to a non-US citizen, uplifting. One can’t help but feel that this man realises the challenges the USA faces.

As a final, possibly trite, observation I must say that whenever I have heard George Bush Jnr. speaking I have felt the sort of discomfort one feels when someone clearly unsuited and incapable is thrust unfortunately into a public speaking role. Listening to Bush over the last two terms has felt like being perpetually stuck at the worst wedding speech you could imagine. The delivery is so bad it has you squirming in your seat, embarrassed by proxy.

Regardless of his policies, Obama’s eloquence alone; the simple fact that he is capable of delivering a speech or answering a question in what feels like a genuine, knowledgeable and passionate tone will be a huge boon to America’s profile worldwide. Like it or not citizens of the United States, the only American most people will ‘know’ is the one who appears on their TV with the sub-title President. This is who they think ALL Americans are. For the past 8 years the world has seen you, unfairly, as bumbling idiots.  That is about to change.