Collapse of dialogue

This is the blog I hoped never to have to write.  Those who listen to the songs of the ‘60s will remember Paul Simon singing “A vision softly creeping/Left its seeds while I was sleeping/And the vision that was planted in my brain/Still remains/Within the sound of silence.”  A haunting phrase… “the sound of silence.”

I started my teaching career a year after that song was written in 1965.  I loved teaching, I enjoyed my subject and was fascinated by the way in which youngsters grow.  Coming from that generation who, having played on the bombsites of English cities and treasured whatever toys we could find, this was the time when an older generation gave freely of its energy to us youngsters in the belief that we would, in our turn, make most positive contributions to the life of our country.  We were expected to be practical idealists.

After twenty years teaching I helped set up Education 2000, the predecessor to this Initiative, to remind the English that, important as schools might be, they could never be good enough to provide children with all the education that they needed.  Ten years into that and I went to Washington D.C. and began exploring the implications of emerging research on how humans learn for the possible restructuring of schools.

Steadily a vision of what that might look like – a world that respected the inquisitiveness of children, and provided them with the very best teachers that society could create – was planted in my mind.  Last year I finished writing my book Overschooled but Undereducated that, according to one reviewer, “may well be the most important and significant book that young people and those involved with them will ever read.”  Because it was going to be November before this book was published, and with a General Election in the offing, the Initiative published in the late summer an analysis of the implications of all of this for policy and sent it as a Briefing Paper, with a personal letter, to every MP.

We received acknowledgements from less than 10% of the 660 Members.  While one Scottish Member wrote, “this Paper is highly pertinent, stimulating and timely and [if] the key points were adopted [they could] bring about the dramatic difference that is needed to develop a ‘world class’ education in this country,” most of the other comments seemed to be platitudes, for few had read it.  We heard nothing from the Minister, his Department or from the other Party’s’ spokes people, or any Member of the Select Committee on Education.  We heard from only five of the Headteachers of the 300 or so English independent secondary schools.  We received no feedback whatsoever from any of the Headteachers of one entire Education Authority.  We had just one response from all the Professors of Education in English universities, but not a single response from any of the 140 Directors of Children’s Services across England.  Just how depressing is that?

What has happened?  Paul Simon sang of “In restless dreams I walked alone, [through] narrow streets of cobbled stone.”  Ordinary dialogue in England seems to have dried up as the pace of professionally directed formal statements, and counter statements, has increased.  There are more news bulletins than ever before, but less genuine personal conversation.  Twenty years ago when I wrote to a Minister I always got a response – not necessarily the one I wanted – but I always realised that my message had got somewhere.  Equally, a letter or phone call to a Chief Education Officer always got a response and the possibility of taking the matter further.

But not now… for all is silence.  Rather than possibly making themselves vulnerable through becoming involved in dialogue, the advice to those in authority seems to be ‘don’t say anything.’  There is an impenetrable wall of silence.  “Fools”, Paul Simon sang, “You do not know/Silence like a cancer grows.”  And visions – possibly grand visions – are lost in the “wells of silence.”  When people feel that it is no longer worth saying anything the trust so necessary for holding civil society together, disintegrates.

See Chapters Eight and Nine of Overschooled but Undereducated

This article is tagged: Education, paul simon, resistance to change.