“The biggest shake-up of education since the 1944 Education Act” proclaims the media while Mr Gove loses no opportunity to explain that this will revitalise the economy and strengthen individuals to accept greater responsibility for themselves.   We live, he and the Prime Minister tell us in most difficult times.

The 1944 Education Act was born in difficult times; conceived by an academic Tory in the midst of war, it was actually birthed by a former communist by then the first Labour Minister of Education.  Its tentative first steps were guided by a new Minister, George Tomlinson, a man whose own education had ended at the age of fourteen.

While Ministers and their civil servants were sorting out the minutiae for a national system of secondary schooling (England being one of the last countries in Europe to do this) a most remarkable man – remarkable in the sense that he saw nothing remarkable in what he did – set out to explain in everyday language to the eight million men and women whose children would attend these schools, just what kind of education they would receive.

John Newsom set out his thoughts in what became a truly successful bestseller entitled The Child at School published by Pelican at one shilling and sixpence (7 ½ new pence).  Newsom reminded his audience of the most basic of all facts that “children are, first and foremost, children, they are only school children second.”  Then he wrote “Education is ultimately a political issue, for it is concerned with a child’s relationship to the world both as a child and a future adult.  In other words, until you have decided what the relationship between man and God or man and other men should be, and what form of political economic society you would like to see, you cannot tell what sort of education a child should have.”

“This is where the difficulties begin,” warned Newsom for “much of English education is a medicine sold under a label that does not tell you what it is intended to cure.  We have prescribed the physic for diagnosing what the patient needs, and sometimes its magic bottle labelled Education.  Cure for all Ills can have disastrous results, like many medicines which are taken too liberally, or for the wrong complaint.”

The English are uncomfortable when forced to define abstract principles, especially about something so personal as our own, or our children’s education.  Some cling to the metaphor of filling an empty mug, others of a potter at his wheel while some prefer the gardener with his watering can.  “Not good enough,” said Newsom to his eight million audience as they sat down of an evening to consider their own children; “you need to go back to John Milton with his ‘oft quoted “I call a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously…”

Magnanimity was as interesting a concept to focus on for Newsom at the end of WWII as it had been for Milton as the Civil War raged around him and men fought to the death with their own sons.  Magnanimity means bigness of soul, generosity of spirit; it is about the moral courage which derides resentment, rancour or jealously.  It means developing personal strength so that you can support others.  It means going the extra mile.  Quoted by the humble, pipe-smoking John Newsom, it was about reminding parents that their children needed to grow up strong enough to develop personal courage, endurance, self-sacrifice, initiative, discipline and common purpose, as much in their private lives, as in their public responsibilities.  This was the Civil Society that the Puritans dreamed of, and which idealists in the late ‘40s still strove to create.  Why don’t we?

Newsom concluded “It is important to think a little about the purpose of education, before attempting to judge whether individual schools are doing their job properly or not.”  Over to you Mr Gove before you jump to too many conclusions based simply on objective statistics.  Magnanimity does not show up mathematically, but it is the essence of a responsible society.

See Chapter Nine of Overschooled but Undereducated

No related posts.

The BBC series Yes Minister was some of the finest political satire ever seen on television.  Hacker (Paul Eddington) infuriated his Permanent Secretary (Nigel Hawthorne) by his ability to pick up what seemed the right issues, and then confuse these with his need to win votes.  In one particular episode Hacker, as Minister of Administrative Affairs, is given the additional responsibility of sorting out local government.  Interviewing him on The World at One the redoubtable Ludovic Kennedy says, “You have, Mr. Hacker, an ever increasing empire; it has been said that you are now Mr. Town Hall as well as Mr. Whitehall!”

Not quite appreciating the irony of the comment, Hacker grins broadly, “Well, it’s awfully flattering for you to put it that way…”  Then comes Kennedy’s shattering response.  “It wasn’t me who put it that way Mr. Hacker, it was The Daily Mirror.  I was merely seeking confirmation that you are now this country’s chief bureaucrat…”

Michael Gove, as Shadow Secretary for Education, is an able politician set upon an important mission to relieve education of its suffocating bureaucracy.  Infinitely more savvy than the fictitious Hacker, Gove’s earlier experience as a leader writer for The Times ensures that he gives his former colleagues just the lines which they like, and leaves few banana skins behind him.  An ardent Tory, he stands for a modernised yet traditional approach to the curriculum, and wants schools to be run by parents and commercial sponsors, not by elected members of the community.  Gove praises the City Technology Colleges which, as Kenneth Baker explained to me as he established these in 1988, “would enable us to break up the powers of the LEAs.”  Twenty-one years ago potential sponsors such as BP, British Gas and IBM (as well as academics like myself) rejected the idea, not because we were in any way against the development of technology and scientific education (which Gove suggested in a recent speech), far from it, but because we believed that the running of schools – however difficult this might be – was the prime responsibility of democratically elected local councillors.

That was a generation ago, a time when next year’s politicians were still in short trousers, with or without blazers and ties.  Since then that social cohesion for which England now yearns, and for which Gove’s Shadow Cabinet colleague Iain Duncan Smith is such a powerful advocate, has left us struggling in 2009 with ‘Breakdown Britain.’  Gove places his faith in Academies.  Academies are just  like any other school except that they are released from many of the regulations that central government has imposed on all state schools, and are administered not by locally elected representatives, but by private sponsors.  An Academy is in effect master of its own destiny, concerned entirely for itself.  Under the old local authorities if a school down the road was in trouble, resources were diverted from other parts of the system to improve it.  Now, if that school down the road goes to the wall, it creates an opportunity for an Academy to swallow up its pupils, and itself grow bigger.

‘Survival of the fittest’, business people argue, is the only way to go.  But Darwin knew that human life was more complicated than that; species evolve when they can build on opportunities created by others, as do today’s evolutionary psychologists who note “selfishness beats altruism within groups; [but] altruistic groups beat selfish groups every time.”  By sweeping away all the local authority arrangements for creating a fair balance of resources, Michael Gove could find himself having to sort out the endless contentions that will inevitably arise between all the warring factions.  With so much at stake they will appeal to natural justice, not to the laws of economic survival.  Even Solomon, in all his wisdom, wouldn’t want to do that job.

Gove in his crusade to enable schools to think for themselves must not destroy all the middlemen (locally elected officials) or else he will be driven crazy by some 20,000 headteachers banging on his door, all at the same time, pleading that they are special cases.  The last thing he wants (or we need) is for him to be Chief Bureaucrat.

See entire Briefing Paper

Related posts:

1. Dr. Keith Robinson, Chief Executive of the Wiltshire County Council and Chairman of the Association of County Chief Executives

In late August a copy of the Briefing Paper on the design faults at the heart of English education was sent to all MPs.  Within 40 pages it distilled all the thinking of the Initiative (which itself depends on the writing of hundreds of eminent researchers and practitioners) and set out Ten Actions which would need to be taken by an incoming government.  By mid September, not having heard anything from Michael Gove, other than a polite acknowledgement that he had received this, I sent him a personal letter… the sort of “pep” letter that I might have written years ago when I was tutoring bright sixth formers as they prepared to sit the Oxbridge Scholarship Exam.

Before setting four or five practice questions to sharpen candidates’ powers of critical analysis, I used to advise sixth formers on the need to make a good impression on the examiners by showing in advance that, while they would be able to answer these set questions well, they should show a bigger view of their academic future than could be gained from their essay answers.  “Speak up for yourself”, I used to say, “and prove that there is more to you than simply what you’ve been taught.”

I wrote in a similar vein to Michael Gove, “What you say, and how you say it in Manchester, will establish the persona that you will have to live with.”  This I suggested was an opportunity to ally himself with one of England’s greatest thinkers and philosophers, John Milton, and call for, as he had in 1644, a complete and generous education (to) fit a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously, all the offices both public and private of peace and war.  That, I suggested, would be a clarion call around which many citizens in our diverse culture could surely rally.

While I was by no means certain that Michael Gove would actually see my letter – I had earlier met him briefly three times and he had written to say that he had found my soon-to-be-published book of value – I urged him to treat these questions seriously because, and I picked my words most carefully, “it is important to add some deep insights into education to your already strong journalistic and political skills.”

Here were my four questions:

1. Why, given the wealth of England’s intellectual tradition, is it the Finns and the South Koreans (two vastly different countries), rather than the English who head up the OECD league tables for academic achievement?
2. Why has England become such a dysfunctional society when it was we who pioneered parliamentary democracy in the 17^th century?
3. Why, given their idealism, do so many newly-qualified teachers leave the profession after only a few years, and why is there such a shortage of candidates for headship?
4. Why, given what is now known about the malleability of the young brain, does England spend more on the education of 16 year olds than 5 year olds, so resulting in larger classes when young children need more individual attention, and smaller classes when what the adolescents really needs is to work things out for themselves?

Not having heard from him (not surprisingly because he is obviously very busy) I thought I should send to him, as well as to Ed Balls and David Laws, a kind of three-page crib sheet on these major issues as they prepared for their Party conferences.  That crib sheet, entitled It’s Really Very Simple, is up on the website for you to download.

So with all that ‘coaching’ how well did Michael Gove, as the candidate for the expectant vacancy as Minister of Education, do in his presentation to the Manchester Conference?

You should read his speech for yourself, as it is available in full on the Conservative Party website.  Then you can come to your own conclusions.

As for me, I continue to be impressed by his zeal and sympathy for those children whose home backgrounds have not done enough for them.  However, I can see why – though it disappoints me – he didn’t ally himself with John Milton for, as yet, Michael Gove’s thinking is too much that of the politician, and has a long way to go before matching the grandeur of the philosopher.  The question, as of now, is whether he can lift his public statements away from all-embracing criticisms of what he sees as a secret underground army of evil bureaucrats, and an equally sweeping condemnation of “faddy ideologies imposed on our schools, which ignore the evidence of what really works in education,” to a view of what “being educated” does to a man or woman.  (Incidentally, did Gove include this Initiative in that condemnation for the emphasis we place on the learning strategies that go with the grain of the brain as being a “faddy ideology?”  I sincerely hope not.)  Gove was totally right to deplore the dumbing down of academic standards but he should turn his anger on his colleagues in the House of Commons, rather than the teachers, most of whom deplore that dumbing down as much as he does.

As to those four questions, while he ignored answering question 1 by substituting Sweden, America and Canada (probably Ontario) as political models that he saw fitting his own theory, he was simply not prepared for the other questions.  The second one about why England has become such a dysfunctional society with such a weak form of democracy, he simply ignored.  Then he completely missed the point of question 3 by not attempting to explain why such high-flying entrants to the teaching profession don’t stay the course for very long.  As for question 4 it seems that Gove has unwittingly been so ‘house-trained’ by government and Party procedures, that the suggestion of moving resources from one sector to another just has not occurred to him (any such cross-subject thinking does not readily occur if people are educated in the narrow and prescriptive manner he appears to commend).

So, my conclusion?

The candidate really means well.  He has lots of energy, has an engaging personality, handles the media well but still has not mastered his Brief.  Furthermore, he risks antagonising the very people whom he has to persuade to work with him – the teachers.  The best teachers command the respect of pupils because they know how to respond to the intellectual needs of each of them; to talk about introducing military discipline into the corridors of schools is a travesty of what teachers are about.  In the case of the job Gove is applying for, when it may well become available in early summer, any candidate who can’t provide convincing answers to these four questions will fall flat on his face because these are the issues that the country understands are at the root of all the problems.  If these are not sorted out all the most imaginative initiatives that Gove or others can think up, will fall fowl of the retched design faults that haunt English education.

Post Script:  No sooner had this Review been written than David Cameron in his concluding speech to the Conference confirmed that the Party, if elected, would move quickly to open opportunities to private organisations to run schools, with money provided by government, and would be allowed to make a profit in so doing.  A Review of this speech will follow shortly.

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1. Quotes and Questions