The Road is a post-apocalyptic story of the struggle of one man to help his young son to survive an unspecified catastrophe that had scourged the world into a burnt out cinder.  Using all the arts of contemporary film making The Road is a harrowing account of ‘the end of days’ as father and son are equally at risk to bands of cannibals seeking to devour them, as they are to death from cold, earthquake or radiation.  In such a grey, lifeless world of utter desolation the father teaches his son about self-survival, human empathy and the power of love so that the boy lives – at least beyond the end of the story.

Several times over the weekend, as Anne and I have made our way through the snow-covered fields and negotiated the ice-covered pavements, I found myself going back over that story, haunted by the sheer horror of what might happen should the tenuous threads that hold civilisation together, actually shatter.  To my admiration for this demonstration of human love, expressed most poignantly when the father is dying, the boy is able to recognise in the genuine humanity of the little family which comes towards him on the beach, the possibility of his own salvation.  Shocked as I was by the degradation of humanity that the film portrays it is the grandeur of human possibilities which remains strongest in my mind.

The Road took me out of my preoccupation with thinking about the politics of schooling, and the raising of children, and reminded me of what really matters in human relationships.  As I looked again at the snow-covered fields sparkling in the late winter sunshine, I realised how few had been the number of children tobogganing on such perfect slopes on the previous days – days in which, to conform to requirements of health and safety regulations, their schools had been closed in case a child might slip, and its parents sue the school for negligence.

Had my own parents, I wondered, been negligent years ago in letting me and my friends play to our hearts’ content in the parks, and batter each other with well-earned snowballs, or did they know – or intuit – that this was a vital part of my learning how to look after myself?

If the worst were to happen (as the current President of the Royal Society has predicted might happen with a 50% probability within a century) are we giving children the physical, emotional and, in particular, the moral strength to deal with the unpredictable?  I am fearful that it is not, for it seems that we are bringing up children – and their parents – to believe that they can live in an ever more uncertain world, not by common sense, but by conforming minutely to endless red tape.

This morning I received an email from a colleague headteacher that exactly reflected on my own thoughts and tied them most specifically to schools in January 2010.  It went as follows:

I have jotted down a few thoughts on the recent nonsense over the snow!  I thought you might enjoy them.  There is an irony to the anger that has been expressed in the media regarding the recent “snow closures” of schools.

For the past decade at least, and with massive acceleration recently, the cumulative impact of interventionist and reactive, populist, political interference in education has led to a world where we are statutorily timid.  Indeed we are required to attempt to bureaucratically eliminate the risk from life.

Which is really odd, because learning surely is a risky activity by definition simply because learning is about thinking, not just conforming (as totalitarian regimes have sought to persuade their people).  The current political rhetoric is all about learning, but in reality it’s all about litigation – OfSTED, safeguarding, health and safety, and everything that serves to utterly choke learning.

Schools now have to assess everything.  They are required to have policies and plans and schemes that predict and offset every possible eventuality so as to make sure that everyone is safe and secure and wrapped up, and away from all the hazards that actually have always existed…. and which always will exist.  Anyone can see that the evil that caused the high profile cases which, in turn, provoked the CRB’s (Criminal Records Bureau) and the security fencing and so on, will always exist.  As they are bound to do, given the contrary nature of human behaviour and natural disasters.  They will never be checked by silly decorative (and expensive) paperwork.

The angry press thundered on about the good old days when we all trudged through the snow whatever. That was fine.  But did they also mention the good old days when we lived with the village pervert?  When husbands hit their wives as a matter of course after a great session on a Friday night?  When bullying was institutionally essential to the existence of empire, never mind encouraged?  Did they talk of the days when children just played in the road and came home at dark and talked to strangers (or got a clip for being rude)?  No, of course not.

This is the problem.  We have a culture that does not know what it wants.  It wants freedom and security, learning and the elimination of risk, true grit and bureaucratic timidity, risk assessments and freedom, litigation and liberty.  It just can’t be done!

Just as every one of our ancestors were on a journey, so too were their Roads unpredictable.  Likewise today our individual Roads are made by walking.  If anyone doesn’t know how to walk – mixing my metaphors I’m afraid – they won’t know how to dig themselves out of a snowdrift, recharge their souls by wondering at the beauty of a starlit night, or know what to do when everything around them collapses into chaos.

Related posts:

1. Review: The Road to Whatever: Middle class culture & the crisis of adolescence by Elliott Currie

“Education is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena,” wrote Vaclav Havel the President of the Czech Republic, a man once derided and imprisoned for his political beliefs, a courageous man, and one of the deepest thinkers of our time.

You have to think very carefully about that statement.  It is not so immediately obvious as the classical description based on the Latin word “educare” meaning “to lead out,” but it is not far from Milton’s definition of “a generous and complete education… fitting a man to perform.”  But hidden connections, especially in a society where children see their education as measured by achievements in separate, and largely disconnected, subjects, poses a profound question about the nature of our education system.  Do we really measure what actually matters?

I wonder how many people saw the connection between three items in The Guardian of December 2^nd?  The first was an opinion piece written by Sue Gerhardt whose book Why Love Matters; how affection shapes a baby’s brain shows that chasing parents back to work just when their young children need them most will cost the country dear in the long run. Gerhardt explained that the first two or three years of life are the crucial windows of opportunity when various systems that manage emotions are put in place such as self-control, empathy, emotion and motivation.  To develop these emotional connections children need to develop strong bonds with those people they regard as safe and familiar and who, above all else, love them.

It is simple-minded of governments, Gerhardt concluded, to force parents into work as being the most effective way to end child poverty.  She notes that many chronic welfare dependants have themselves experienced economic deprivation, social exclusion and emotional trauma as children and, as a result, have become the teenage parents, the substance abusers, the aggressive, unreliable, under qualified, psychosomatically ill, emotionally unskilled, unemployable people who are such a financial burden to society.  All children need to develop strong bonds in the earliest years of life with people they regard as safe and familiar, and who, above all else, love them.  Front-loading the system in fact.

The second article, Primaries failing to teach basic skills, now seems to be the routine annual rehearsal of league tables and SATS results.  Something which delights the media.  They should not be so cavalier.  A majority of children in one-third of London’s primary schools fail to achieve the recommended standards of achievement for literacy and numeracy.  This problem has been going on for a long time, so long in fact that it led to the third news item; UK plummets in education table for teenagers.  According to the most recent OECD findings British children have fallen from 19^th place out of 30 ten years ago for the proportion of youngsters between 15 and 19 in full time education, to 26^th place out of a possible 28.  All that despite massive increases in funding.

If the proof of the pudding is in the eating then surely the proof of a successful education is how many youngsters want still more of it?

By such a yardstick England stands condemned… and the reason very obviously goes right back to the limited support so many youngsters get in their homes, which deprives them of the emotional energy to make the most of primary education.  Having failed by the age of eleven they quickly come to despair in their secondary years so the last thing they want is more schooling.  It is incredibly sad for it makes England the dunce in the OECD corner.

See Chapter Three, and Reference 35 of Overschooled but Undereducated, and the whole of the Briefing Paper

Related posts:

1. Making the Connections, and Closing the Gaps – Is it really that hard?
2. Component 5 : Making Connections: The use and misuse of information communication technologies in young people’s learning
3. Suggested Reading List 4: Making Connections: The use and misuse of information and communication technologies in young people’s learning

William Hogarth’s set of four satirical cartoons, Canvassing for Votes, published in 1758, showed prospective parliamentary candidates pouring beer down the throats of their constituents in the expectation of buying their votes.  We smile tolerantly at such stupidity, and reassure ourselves that nothing so stupid could happen nowadays, thanks to the rules that apparently govern parliamentary elections and electioneering expenses.

But we are not that clever, nor are we above making false promises.  Regrettably we are no more honest, it seems, than in Hogarth’s time as was shown earlier this year in the Cash for Honours scandal, and more recently in the abuse of parliamentary expenses.  Every generation needs a Hogarth to show up the shallowness of political sound bytes as we prepare for the final sprint to the 2010 Election.  Elections are won or lost by a party’s ability to capture the floating voter.

Consider education.  Do the politicians need the votes of the teachers or the parents?  It is simple if you do the sums.  There are probably 20 times as many parents (an average of say 1.25 parents to every child) as there are teachers/teacher assistants/administrators and other support staff.  It is all too obvious.  To say something that appeals to parents which might reduce their level of anxiety and lighten their consciences, would win many votes, but to remind parents about their responsibility to prepare their children for school, and then to consistently back up the agreed and stated policies of that school, would make a massive impact on who gets the teacher’s vote… but it would probably have relatively little impact on the parents.  At the time of a general election to be critical of teachers wins votes: to suggest that schools should take on ever more of what earlier had been the responsibility of parents, wins still more votes.

At the State Opening of Parliament on the 18th November the Queen declared “Legislation will be brought forward to introduce guarantees for pupils and parents to raise educational standards.”  The proposed Bill claims to provide guarantees for parents and pupils, and will set out what they can expect from a twenty-first century school system.  It is said that families will be made more aware of what they are entitled to expect from the schools.  A new school report card will be introduced.  But, of course, there is very little about what school teachers have the right to expect from parents.  There are few votes in that.

And that is the problem.  Twenty-first century politicians are no better than their eighteenth century predecessors in failing to recognise that what the country needs of its elected leaders is leadership.  Leadership requires moral courage to do the right thing in the long-run, and does not fall for the offer of a free drink.

See Actions 3, 4 and 9 of the Briefing Paper and
Chapters Eight and Nine of Overschooled but Undereducated

No related posts.

Whether Ed Balls at the Labour Party Conference, calling for greater parental support to improve the behaviour of young people was doing this as a political strategy to attract voters or not, is largely immaterial, for the reality on the ground is often dreadful.  The behaviour of young people reflects (1) their home background, (2) the role of the school, and increasingly (3) the influence of their peer group.  For too long caring teachers and politicians looking for immediate solutions have implied that, at a time of massive social change, schools had better try to do everything.  After all it is only the school part of the equation that governments can legislate for, as parents tend to do whatever they believe they should do, and peer groups (especially in adolescence) are remarkably resistant to being told anything!

Politicians are as reluctant as their advisors to accept that they have less power than well-thought-out people’s belief systems.  And it is parents’ belief systems that matter.  Writing just after the Second World War John Newsome, who had recently become Director of Education for Hertfordshire, did his best to address this issue by writing a short guidebook for parents entitled The Child at School.  He wrote at a time when the majority of post-war parents had not, themselves, had any form of secondary education beyond the age of fourteen.

Newsome wrote “Education is ultimately a political issue, for it is concerned with a child’s relationship to the world both as a child and as 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 and economic society you would like to see, you cannot tell what sort of education a child should have.”  Strong words, well expressed; issues which society ignores at its peril.  He went on, “The most significant thing is… to provide the individual child with the best that the nation can provide, not only because the child has eventually to perform an economic function in society, but because the child in his or her own right, as a personality, needs education for its full development as much as [it needs] food or shelter.”

“Children are children first” wrote Newsome, “and only school children second.”

“Behaviour”, he wrote, “is determined much more by the standards set by the home, than by the school, for children of primary age are influenced much more by the conduct of their parents than by that of their teachers.”  You can’t make a more direct statement than that.  His words should re-echo down the years: “Parents can do a great deal to make the path less hard.  They can provide in the home the sort of educational influences which are necessary to compliment what is being done at the school.  It is not so much a question of discussing at breakfast… the vagaries of French irregular verbs, but it does mean doing all you can do to see that your child is exposed to influences which are likely to assist him or her to develop intellectual curiosity, form standards of judgement, and delight in high standards of achievement.  Above all it means behaving as if you respect his efforts to find truth, and sympathise with his difficulties; in other words it means going on with your own education.”

See Actions 3 and 4 of the Briefing Paper

Related posts:

1. The “Helicopter Parents” Hovering over their Adult Children
2. Curious Teenagers, Busy Parents and Market Forces: Changing the face of education in the 21st Century

There is a new word being heard around the block – internship.  Traditionally it meant newly-qualified medical graduates understudying experienced doctors, but Alan Milburn’s Report, “Unleashing Aspirations,” expands the definition to mean young people shadowing experienced professionals so learning some of the tricks of their trade.  Internships are similar to apprenticeships.  However, as the media has been quick to point out, youngsters need parents with good connections if they are to find a quality internship which could well give them a hefty start on their career ladder.

William Pitt the Younger learnt the skill of premiership from his father, and Brunel learnt most of his engineering skills in his father’s workshop.  Alan Sugar has given an entrepreneurial edge to the meaning of apprenticeships, and this week’s Press has given an aura of social privilege to internships.  Both depend on the advice given by the Earl of Chesterfield to his son in 1746: “Do not imagine that the knowledge which I so much recommend to you, is confined to books, pleasing, useful and necessary as that knowledge is; the knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.”

Interest in apprenticeship and internship has increased as faith in the classroom has decreased.  This is bound to continue as the English finally accept that the separation of thinking from doing is as stupid as the separation of the academic from the vocational.

In the late 1920s my father attended a small West Country grammar school where every boy studying for Higher School Certificate (A Levels) had also to learn a craft skill.  My father studied under a Birmingham silversmith, and his eventual work was accepted by the Silversmith’s Guild to be assayed.  At university he decided against engineering, and became a priest.  Remaining an enthusiastic engineer at heart he and three colleagues completely rewired his vast Victorian church in the 1950s.  As a keen little boy I tried to help out by holding the trailing light to illuminate where the men were working, but my concentration frequently faltered, plunging the men into darkness.  Eventually this prompted my father to give me some of the best advice I’ve ever had: “if you don’t learn to think like I’m thinking you will never understand what I am trying to do, and you won’t know what you think you will need to do next!”

That was the advice he had learnt from the old silversmith, probably born in the 1850s; it’s what I have said to my own sons, and what I said to six-year-old Amelie last week.  That is what intergenerational learning is all about.

See Part Three of Briefing Paper

Related posts:

1. A Journey Towards an Understanding of Learning: A Headteacher travels with Education 2000 to the 21st Century Learning Initiative
2. The messiness of human learning
3. Learning How to use the Brain

Sometimes it takes far too long for me to pick up a gem.  The gem that struck me so strongly last evening was contained in an email sent by a friend of an “Obituary” notice that it seems first appeared in The New York Times in 2007 and has subsequently been reprinted in very many other places. 

Do read it.  Don’t just mourn.  Act upon it.  Men and women with common sense don’t need the micromanagement of top heavy governments.  If common sense disappears then individuals become fair game for governments to push around.

“Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: Knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm; Life isn’t always fair; and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an Elastoplast to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband; churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault. Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason. He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame, and I’m A Victim.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.”

No related posts.

It is said that there is really nothing new in the world, and that which comes around once will inevitably come around again.  Most of us can testify to the truth of this.  But even I was brought up short by a letter in today’s Post from the Department of Children, Schools and Families informing me that they had just appointed the Jigsaw Research agency to carry out a survey on the levels of satisfaction expressed by people/organisations like us who, they describe, as ‘customers’ of the Department.

The word ‘customer’ hit me in the face.  I read the letter a second time.  The word customer is used five times.  Me, a man who, on behalf of the Initiative, has written many times to the Department to comment on policy decisions… does that Department really think that I am in a ‘customer’ relationship taking, and presumably rejecting if I have the choice, what the Department might assume is a service they offer, or are organisations like ourselves not potential partners with central government?  Partner, or customer?

Then I remembered, to my amazement that I had received such a letter once before – it was back in 2003 when the Department traded under a different name, the Department of Education and Employment, and that letter had used the word ‘customer’ six times.  Later this morning I looked up the manuscript of a book that I was writing at the time (Master and Apprentice: Reuniting thinking with doing, not as yet published) I thought that readers of this blog might find the following extract from the beginning of Chapter 17, entitled “Pilgrim or Customer” interesting.  It’s quite lengthy, but read it as you will.  It goes as follows.

In October 2002 I had been invited to address a major conference of teachers in Birmingham when, late the evening before, I was told that my time slot was being cut as a “very important speaker from Downing Street” had expressed his willingness to address the conference at short notice.  I came out of my session breathless as Tony Blair walked up on the stage.  For an extremely busy man he spoke most eloquently about the importance of education and roused the spirits of teachers like a general facing his troops.

Listening carefully, I was struck by two things.  He yet again reiterated his favourite political mantra – real Adam Smith stuff – that competition was the best way of raising standards in schools and therefore it was totally right that parents should hold the schools accountable for the education of their children.  He then went on to exhort the teachers to think of all possible ways of improving secondary schools, and invited the audience to let him know what we thought.

As it happened I was flying to Tokyo that evening, so I had an opportunity to think about what the prime minister had said and, as I did so, found myself drafting a letter to him.  I kept the letter short.  I congratulated him on his personal commitment to education – and I meant everything I said.  My second point was, however, a rebuke: every time that you or any other politician tell parents to hold the school accountable for the education of their children, I said, you deliver a devastating, perhaps unintentional, subsequent message, namely that it is the school’s job not the parents’ to bring up their children to be fully responsible adults.  I then went on to make the argument that it was in the failure to appreciate the biological opportunities of adolescence that secondary education was failing.  I indicated that modern research is showing that the practice of secondary education simply does not match the opportunities which we now know exist in the adolescent brain.  “Only by restructuring secondary education to reflect what we now know about the adolescent’s deep need to experiment, and take increasing control of their own learning and progression, can we ever hope to get the improvements, Prime Minister, that we all seek.”  I concluded by suggesting that, in verifying what I’d said he should not refer my letter to the Department of Education “who see every problem as having a school-based solution,” but rather to those neurologists and psychologists with a professional interest in adolescence.

I was disappointed, but I suppose not surprised, to get the standard Whitehall-style reply: The Prime Minister thanks you for your letter, but you will appreciate he is too busy to reply, so we are referring your letter to the Department of Education.  Why bother, an inner voice kept saying, the invitation to a dialogue was surely empty rhetoric.  Yet I did write again, but heard nothing until, some three weeks later, I had a curious letter from the Customer Focus Team at the Department of Education.  It said: “As part of our continuing programme of listening to our customers we are researching what customers think of the quality of our replies to letters…  you are one of our recent customers.”  Six times the letter referred to me as a customer.

“Customer”?  Is that what we are to think of ourselves as – a model based on how much money we spend on a range of alternatives?  Are parents simply the customers of a school, rather than partners in the complex task of bringing the next generation of children into adulthood?  Are children customers of what their parents might have to offer?  Whose children are they in any case, the parents’ or wards of the state?  Or are they simply young customers in the making?  We seem to have got this all the wrong way around.  Neither the church nor the government should ever control what is taught in the school, as Marx argued in 1875, for it is better that the state should be educated by the people.

‘Customer’ surely defines a specifically materialistic concept of life.  My life has worked on a very different model, namely that of John Bunyan’s pilgrim, a man making his troubled way through life with a heavy load upon his back, beset on all sides by temptations and threats to belief.  A very human kind of being who could see beyond him the House Beautiful, yet could still flounder in the Slough of Despond.  A Pilgrim moved by the story of the Good Samaritan to know that, however rough the going was for him, there were always others who were worse off.  A man who grew stronger with every obstacle that he learned to overcome.

Pilgrim or customer?  A creator of his own eternal destiny, or a purchaser of a range of goods and services as defined by someone else?  A thinker able to take responsibility for his own actions, and willing to accept responsibility for working for the common good, or a man who, in his frustration that nothing he has so far pulled off the shelves of a supermarket quite suits his taste, searches for yet another perfect brand?  That one has to raise such a question about who we think we are – pilgrim or customer – has to be a sign of the moral confusion of our times.  And these are confused times.

That was six years ago.  We thought we were confused then… are we not infinitely more confused now?  If either I, or other people, could have challenged the concept of customer as the overriding description of the relationship of ourselves to central government in 2003, might we just have avoided the horrendous implications of the financial crisis that is now upon us?  Think on such matters.

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