Poem: Perhaps...

 Perhaps...

...during Lockdown

some Number 10 partygoers

stumble out of the door

and throw drunken gags at each other

and one says,

‘Hey, for a laugh, let’s go find one of

these hospitals 

where people are dying

and cheer’em up…’

and they stumble into cabs

and get to where Dick Whittington

heard the bells of London 

where the Whittington Hospital looks out over London

and they manage to get the works lifts to work

they jam in

ride to the 5th floor

to the intensive care ward

where visitors are strictly forbidden

and they crash into the ward

cheering and laughing

‘No need to bring your own booze

we’ve brought it.’

And they see us there

inert, plugged into tubes and lines

staring blindly 

trying to live

and they say to us

‘Hah! you think you’re in a bad way?

What about us?

We’re smashed.

It’ll be hell in the morning

but what the fuck!

You’re no bloody fun, are you?

Let’s go, guys..’

And out they stream

out of the hospital

into the night street

and one of them finds

Dick Whittington’s cat

in stone 

a statue of a cat

on the pavement

and it becomes the funniest thing

that any of them have ever seen

It’s a cat

it’s a fucking cat

It’s a statue of a fucking cat

and they have this great idea:

‘Let’s piss on it,’ one of them says

And that’s even funnier. 

Dissolution Street (a new take on Dylan's Desolation Row)

 

The King is in the counting house, eating bread and money,

He thinks if he talks like Julius Caesar, we’ll think that he is funny.

Plato has found a way to play chess, using tanks and guns

‘Who cares?’ says Henry Ford, ‘we’ll make ten thousand suns.’

John and Yoko close the curtains and get beneath the sheets

They can hear the bombs outside, falling on Dissolution Street.

The banker says to the poor man, ‘You’re helping keep things great.’

An unborn baby arrives in hell and says ‘Sorry I am late.’

Louis Braille’s lost his sight and says people keep giving him bad looks.

They say they know how to handle him, they take away his books.

King Midas tells the multitude there’s always plenty to eat

The queue at the food bank stretches down Dissolution Street

They found that the judge was lying, so the judge changed all the rules

They found gold beneath the playgrounds, so they sold off all the schools

Doctor Death went to hospital, where he met up with Dr Who

Doctor Death said he was out of cash, so he sold the hospital too.

The Sheriff of Nottingham was saying that it was honest to cheat

As he strung up Robin Hood on  the gibbet  on Dissolution Street.

The doctor’s telling me the good news, my foot won’t be falling off

The nurse is telling me I’ve got no lungs so I don’t need to to cough.

Another nurse is telling me, ‘Move!’, cos I often fall out of bed.

The doctor’s telling me more good news, he says I’m not brain dead.

The diary’s open on yesterday but I don’t know who I’ll meet

They say I’m deconditioned, now I’m on Dissolution Street.

The Queen says that it’s awful how people resent her fur coats.

The real problem she says is people arriving in small boats

They will eat every one of you, she says to you and me

The safest thing for all of us, is if we push’em into the sea

One or two can come ashore and as some kind of treat

They can be nurses or clean the floors in Dissolution Street

From the other end of the corridor, I hear a woman scream

I lean out of bed and ask the nurse, ‘Can I stay in my dream?’

He says, ‘You’re dead anyway, so you’re missing the bad weather.

This is the last place on earth where we’re all working together.’

They bring in the last machine they have, I could see my heart beat

I might be dead now, I think,  but we can leave Dissolution Street.

 

This year's Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling Test for Key Stage 2

 In the past, I  have made many criticisms of the way 'Grammar' is taught in primary schools. My main points are:

1. Grammar was only introduced into primary schools as a way of assessing teachers (Bew Report 2011). It was introduced on the basis that grammar has 'right and wrong answers'. This is false. Many of the questions asked on GPS papers create false binaries. That's because language is full of acceptable variants ie different but totally OK ways of saying and writing things. We shouldn't be fibbing to children that everything on the GPS curriculum is a matter of right or wrong. This is particularly the case with punctuation. 

2. The grammar in the Grammar curriculum is only one of several ways of describing language. It is particularly weak because it views language as a set of rules and rigid descriptions. Many of these rules are based on the way grammarians described the way Latin was written down hundreds of years ago. Another way of viewing language is that it's based on a set of choices. We choose what to say and how we say it according to many things going on in our heads and going on around us ie 'contexts'. We can, for example, identify some of these contexts as 'genre' (ie what kind of speech or writing is this?), 'participants' (ie who is speaking or writing? who is listening or reading), 'theme' or 'subject' of the piece of language we're looking at. 

This tells us that language is always and actually 'language in use'. If we are really interested in what children can do with language, we need to help them see and explore the differences and variations of language being used in actual and real situations. GPS takes language out of language-in-use and creates artificial sentences and demands that children 'spot' the rules or terms.

3. There is an error in the GPS grammar which says that a given word 'is' a given term eg the children are asked to say things like, 'That word 'is' an adjective.' Or,  'Those words are a 'fronted adverbial'.' One problem with this is that the terms keep changing. For example if I read, 'that's my book', I was taught in the 1950s/60s that the word 'my' 'is' a 'possessive adjective' or it 'is' a 'possessive pronoun' or even that it 'is' a 'determinative possessive pronoun' (!). It's now called a 'determiner'. So what 'is' it? Which one of the four is it? 

4. There are some big problems with the way these terms have been given and fixed. The most notable of these is 'tense'. In written ancient Latin, it made sense to say that a given 'verb form' was matched to a given way of talking about time. The grammarians could say that that verb form meant it was eg  'present' or 'past' and so on. In modern  English, this is clearly not the case. We use verb forms in flexible ways. We can use what GPS calls the 'present tense' in a passage that indicate the 'future' or the 'past'. What's more, we have other words to indicate time, words like 'tomorrow' or 'yesterday'. All this adds up to the idea that it would be better to talk about 'time aspect' (or some such) to indicate that we have whole structures to show what time frame we are using: a mix of verbs, adverbs, phrases, clauses and these are dependent on the 'contexts' that I mentioned before. The whole apparatus about 'tense' in GPS is false. 

5. The most pernicious aspect of GPS (formerly SPaG of course) is the crass way in which it's been used in relation to pupils' writing. It has reduced some children's writing to what I've called 'writing by numbers'. That's to say, a given so-called 'grammatical' feature has been identified as necessary for a child to reach the 'right' level of writing. This makes 'grammar' the master of what makes 'good' writing. But 'grammar' should at most be a means of describing some aspects of language not of prescribing how the 'best' writing should be. Again, if we worked on the principle of 'language in use' and used the 'contexts' I mentioned we would get to the idea of children learning how to use language in the best way for a given situation. We need different kinds of language for different situations.

6. There are some hidden messages in GPS: one notable one is what it says about class and culture. It elevates one particular language use above all others: a poorly defined 'formal' English as being universally suitable and desirable. This downgrades many other forms of English, speech,  local, diverse, and informal uses of language that have been part of culture and life for hundreds of years. 

I isolated some questions on this year's KS2 GPS test and posted my very short thoughts on Twitter. I've copied these and that's what follows now.

Question:

Circle the two determiners in the sentence below.

 In an hour, we will be getting on our train.

My comment: 

EAT THAT YOU 50s and 60s EDUCATED FOLKS! 'OUR' IS A 'DETERMINER'. IF YOU DARE CALL IT WHAT YOU USED TO CALL IT YOU ARE A LOSER.

———-

Question:

Insert a hyphen in the correct place in the sentence below.

 We were very busy in the run up to the school play. 

My comment: 

IS THERE A POINTLESS RULE THAT YOU CAN'T PUT A HYPHEN IN 'SCHOOL PLAY'? REALLY? DOES THIS MATTER? I'M GOING TO START PUTTING A HYPHEN IN FROM NOW ON.

————

 Question: 

Circle the co-ordinating conjunction in the sentence below.

 I started drawing a car, but then I changed my mind because I had a better idea.

My comment: 

THIS IS AN EG OF ADULTS TRYING TO TRICK CHILDREN BY 'DISTRACTING' THEM WITH A 'WRONG' ANSWER. WHAT'S THE POINT?

————

My comment on the fronted adverbial question:

The absurdity of terminology:  the 'fronted adverbial' in 'With big smiles on our faces, we lined up for the class photo' clearly describes 'we', not 'lined up'. Therefore it's adjectival in content! But that term doesn't exist!

———-

Question:

Insert a colon in the correct place in the sentence below.

 Many fossils are not as big as people think some are so small that you need a microscope to see them. 

My comment:

THAT’S OK THANKS, I'LL USE A FULL STOP. MORE MISLEADING RUBBISH.

———-

My comment re ‘dashes’’:

There are two questions which ask you to put dashes in the correct place! What's with the fetish about dashes? Life is possible without putting dashes anywhere. More rubbish.

———-

Question:

Insert a semi-colon in the correct place in the sentence below.

 The suitcase was heavy the box was lighter but more awkward to carry.

My comment:

[ACTUALLY I'D PREFER TO USE A FULL STOP. IT'S NOT MORE 'CORRECT' TO USE A SEMI-COLON THERE. MISLEADING NONSENSE.]

————

Q12 requires you to make 'warm' and 'cool' antonyms! Absurd rubbish.

————-

Question:

Circle the correct verb form in each underlined pair to complete the

passage below.

William Shakespeare, the famous writer, is / was born in Stratford-

 upon-Avon in 1564 and later will move / moved to London where he will become / became an actor. Even today, Shakespeare’s plays

 are performed / performed around the world.

My comment:

WE KNOW WHAT ANSWER THEY WANT BUT IN FACT USING 'IS' AND 'WILL BECOME' IS PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE IN SOME CONTEXTS. THEY ARE NOT 'INCORRECT' FORMS.

—————

My comment on active-passive

On the 2022 KS2 GPS test there are three questions on active-passive forms. Three? Imagine being the examiners saying to themselves: 'Let's really hit'em with the passive, this year.' Like, why? Is it a 2022 thing?

—————————-

Why trying to stay alive is political

 It's easy to think of politics as the stuff they talk about on politics shows. Being ill at a time of national crisis, has brought me face to face with the fact that politics is about the everyday thing of being alive or - as in my case - trying to stay alive or finding that other people are trying to keep you alive or helping you get on your feet again (rehab). So it is that I've found that at every stage of coming home, there has been a constant political conversation and row going on about - for example - funding of the NHS, how the government approached the idea of an epidemic (social health policy or leave it to the market?), our attitude to old people, sick people, disabled people and vulnerable (so-called) people.

Then again, the partygate scandal has ripped a hole in the idea that the government is on our side when it comes to wanting to protect us. It shows them as thinking of themselves as a special case, as people who don't need to abide by the rules they set for us. I see that as analogous as to the way public health and education are run: - largely by people who are looked after by private medicine and who are educated in private schools. There is an inbuilt separation (or that they build in the separation) between them and us whilst at the same time giving themselves the right to run our health and education according to their world view.

Meanwhile, it doesn't take long to hear people on phone-ins or on social media slagging off the NHS, nurses, doctors, schools, teachers and conjuring up images of the people working in this sector as lazy, unfairly rich, unfairly leisured. In fact, the people who talk this way have turned any praise of nurses, doctors, teachers, assistant teachers into political statements. Believe it or not, there's a journalist who has posted a picture on twitter of nurses and doctors having a pizza together and claimed that in doing so they were doing just what Johnson did with Partygate. One problem: the photo of the nurses and doctors having a pizza was before lockdown! I'm particularly enraged by this because the nurses and doctors in the photo are the very people who helped save my life. What this makes me think is that this person's sneering tweet has made a statement by me like 'I"m grateful to people at the Whittington who saved my life' into a radical political statement! That's where we're at.

Interview with me from Ant Group

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/18qJGSf_e4vjfoh5VU4lSU3cZToOgZKYR/view

Paste this into your browser.

Enjoy!

Review of 'What is a Bong Tree?'

 By Chris Malone:

"I will try to put my finger on what I loved about What is a Bong Tree. I loved reading it so much that I carried it round the house, allowing myself a break from chores to read another chapter. I engaged in conversation by commenting in pencil in the margins; ‘Yes!’ ‘Haha!’ declaiming, underlining and asterixing.

Michael Rosen says you need stamina to read the ‘whole lot’ but I disagree with him on this point only. The collection is an easy read, especially if, like me, you are interested in the wide-ranging subjects of education, culture, politics, art, poetry, interculturalism, words and relationships. In my view, you simply need time to read the whole lot, and as the chapters are short, your pleasure can be spread over as long a time as you like. No hurry. I was aiming for the final section, ‘Politics, Education, Culture,’ as this attracted me most, but I started at the beginning and indulged in the autobiography, literature and poetry on the way. When I reached the penultimate chapter, ‘Languages of Migration,’ I stopped. I didn’t want the book to end.

The collection of 41 talks and articles in What is a Bong Tree is a luxuriant read with recurring themes and ideas grounded in real (unprivileged) life, with a consistent air of authenticity. Great to read aloud as the words on the page emanate from Michael’s own voice. The storying of the everyday.

So why did I love this book so much?

Firstly, the conversational tone (many of the chapters form written records of speeches and lectures) invites the reader’s participation. The oxymoron of oral writing. I liked this because it made me feel powerful as a reader. I was gifted autonomy. I was enticed to become a literature activist too.

Secondly, I know that I have become a changed person after reading it. Thirty years in the education machine, especially inspecting and working in local authorities, had drummed closed questioning into me. Michael’s ever-present cry that we ask the questions we don’t know the answers to, will stay with me. Embedded. As will his plea for children to choose their own reading material, and for classes to dance the words. We can hope that we will see an end to the stultifying extracts for counterproductive and indeed discriminatory SATs. Exam questions and the need to decode the code … not many of us have seen all this play out as a school parent non-stop for over 40 years, or noticed that the spinners in the newsagent used to be full of ladybird books, but now house spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Throughout the book, numbered lists of suggestions enrich the debate, for example in School Rules, the 10 Elements of Successful Arts Education.’ This book is no mere cerebral indulgence, the collection offers a wealth of practical approaches to effective teaching, at home and in the classroom.

Dive in, and this book might change you too …

Thirdly, as I am sure there will be for many readers, there were several personal hooks which propelled me into my own memories and values. Reading the book was reminiscent of those wonderful Open University units of the 1980s. My TMA (tutor marked assignment) would be entitled, What is a Bong Tree? and they would all laugh. I stormed out of a good traditional university literature degree, to study through the OU. I never felt as proud of my naïve life-changing decision as when I read Michael’s words about the lack of connection being made between English literature and the battle of ideas. Until we read Orwell. That was me, too. The Elizabethan World Picture didn’t provide me with the insight I needed into Greenham Common. Orwell did. And Steinbeck. And D102. And of course, having proudly taught innumerable children to read using a dynamic combination of techniques adapted to each child’s learning style, I revelled in the chapters that lambasted synthetic phonics. The good old days overlayed by Nick Gibbs got a ‘Haha’ in the margin. I passed the eleven plus, attended a secondary modern, and am proud of this. It was the year grammar schools were meant to end, and it grounded me. ‘Emil and the Detectives,’ ‘Junior Voices’. My childhood.

Fourthly, I loved the inclusion of Michael’s poetry, and the well-argued claim that literature is for adults and children together, when books come off the page, become social and belong to everyone. The hot potato poem, the torch, the lift, corned beef, the homework book … and the threads joining today’s experiences to Gradgrind, Miss Havisham, Trabb’s boy. These all resonated with me, as did the claim that English poetry books for children have traditionally featured dead, white, English men.

I also learnt lots of interesting things, about Michael’s unusual Jewish home experiences, peppered with Yiddish, and about the real meaning of Heim. Domestic life as a home university. How many fathers read Great Expectations to their children in a tent? I am sure that many mothers, like mine, ‘collected bits’ for school on walks. This selection is intensely and overtly personal, and gains impetus from that, but it also recognises the equal value of the full range of home experiences. In fact, by the end of the book, Michael upends it all. ‘I mean, just who is culturally deprived?’ ‘Teachers educated away from vernacular and oral working-class cultures have a unique chance to make up for this deprivation in our lives.’

Finally, I revelled in a disrupter’s portrayal of words: words don’t just bob about like lottery balls, they stick together, have secret strings. We can indeed subvert the power relationships between texts and utterances. The current education system in England is, we know deep down, all about ‘conform, conform, conform.’ As Michael says, ‘My son Joe did streets last term and the teacher didn’t even take them into a street.’

So, what is a bong tree? Now I understand, as I wallow in my bath of ideas, it is not only a nonsense, it allows the reader power. Agency. Brilliant!"

As if in a dream I hear the radio playing Ukrainian patriotic songs

As if in a a dream

I hear the radio playing Ukrainian patriotic songs

and lovingly produced discussions

about the history of Ukraine

and admiration pouring out of my radio and TV

for the brave people of Ukraine

daring to stand up to this terrible invasion

and I felt warm and sad at the same time

wrapped in the care and kindness of it all

and I was pouring out my admiration too,

and images from the TV came to me from last night

of hundreds of people squashed into a station subway

trying to get out on a train to Poland

and more sounds from the radio

of people on the border shivering and hungry and crying

not knowing if they could get out

while arcs of light flashed over apartment blocks

and the morning showed the cold grey ruins of people's homes

and I heard the words of sympathy

from our leaders

while they explained that Ukrainians

would need visas or relatives in Britain

if they want to come here

and I wasn't sure that people crushed

into the subway would have visas

or relatives here, would they?

so if they don't have visas and relatives

what happens to them in the freezing cold

on the Polish border?

and I thought about the care and kindness

coming out of my radio

and I felt uneasy

that I remember other invasions

other bombings,

and the same radio and TV stations

pouring out hours of words

on why similar bombings and invasions

were necessary and good bombings and invasions

and why those resisting were crazy and bad

and of course - as always -

why there wasn't room for people of those countries

to get out and come here

and I was left looking for the principle being defended here.

This principle can't be that it's wrong to invade

other countries.

The principle can't be that it's wrong

to bomb civilians.

The principle can't be that we must help

those who resist invasions.

The principle can't be that we must help

refugees.

But then I thought,

what's the matter with me?

what is the matter with me?

why am I looking for a principle?

Well, not a principle that lasts

or a principle that is valid in all places.

Our leaders' principles are things

they pick up, boast about

and then drop

in the hope that we can't remember anything

from before last week.

Or that we don't notice what else they do

in other parts of the world.

One moment they are friends with people

who are tyrants or backers of tyrants

and the next they are explaining to us

that the tyrants are tyrants

and friends of tyrants are the friends of tyrants

as if we didn't know that the tyrants are tyrants

and that they themselves are friends

with the friends of tyrants

as if we hadn't noticed this

as if we had now forgotten this.

And this is a cycle

that goes on and on turning,

it's turning in my mind

remembering my parents

talking of the leaders of their time

chumming up with Nazis

corporations selling oil to the Nazis

oil they would use to bomb us

and my parents talking of uncles and aunts and cousins

who criss-crossed the very same land

that the refugees are crossing now,

one who escaped

the rest who didn't

and it's a cycle

it's a cycle that grinds millions into the ground

burnt, dismembered, starved, maimed

and I am listening to the radio.

And I am listening to the radio.