Wilshaw-Gove: Punish the Poor

The Wilshaw-Gove assault on 'bad' parenting fits in with a longstanding attitude to the poor, peddled by those in power: it is poor people's fault that they are poor. It goes without saying that this is self-serving hypocrisy.

There are two things that endanger the position of those who peddle this stuff:
the poor 'getting' it that their poverty is caused by the system by which the rich and powerful stay rich and powerful;
the poor not being dutiful, cowed, passive and obedient.

The main instruments available to the rich and powerful to do their peddling are propaganda and punishment. In Victorian times, they could rely on the churches to do some of the propaganda, as it waged war on 'sin'. Literature - often for children - was useful too because it made the cause of the problem of poverty, poor people's families. This 'located' the problem of poverty there, rather than in the banks and factory-owners' offices. Fathers could be depicted as violent drunks who could only be 'redeemed' by innocent, dying children. Interestingly, some literature critiqued or opposed some or all of this view - 'A Christmas Carol' in its full text, for one, is an angry story created to oppose some of these ideas about the poor - especially the one that suggested that they needed to be culled or left to die.

Punishment was available with transportation and imprisonment - even for debt, but also through punitive conditions in the Workhouse - again as Dickens rails against in 'Little Dorritt', 'Nicholas Nickleby' and 'Oliver Twist'.

Part of this punishment reflex derives from Puritan or Calvinist ideas about industry and moderation being the best ways to show one's adherence to the Christian way. This was one of the motors of both the Reformation and the success of early capitalism. People like Gove and Wilshaw know that they can't explicitly claim that their ideas about fining 'bad' parents derive from this source. Instead, they couch it in phoney egalitarian terms: that the punishment would lead to equality. And they say this whilst creating the most rigid testing and exam system that this country - and possibly any country - has ever known, an exam system which determines failure from a very early age and goes on determining it all the way to 16. Anyone with children at school at the moment is aware of how the emphasis on high-stakes, centralised testing linked to league tables and competition between schools, has made a good deal of secondary education revolve around termly or even weekly testing, linked to streaming.

So, even as Wilshaw and Gove (and side-kick Nick Gibb) talk up breaking the link between poverty and failure, they have embedded failure at the heart of the education system. The great advantage of making failure so central to the system is that the long-term result is that people end up blaming themselves for their failure. The myth is that everyone can succeed if they try hard enough, so if or when you don't succeed, the only reason for this must be that 'I' didn't try hard enough. Anything else is an 'excuse' put about by dangerous lefty 'progressive' teachers and teacher-trainers.

However, the emphasis on testing and exams ties the hands of teachers who can see that one of the reasons why some children find it hard to 'get' subject-knowledge in schools is that they have little experience of the written-language and methods of arguing ('compare and contrast', 'inference', 'abstraction' etc) in their out-of-school lives. The way some successful children and students 'get' it is through their out-of-school reading for pleasure, visits to museums and discussions at dance, theatre, music, art clubs and the like i.e. the extra-curricular 'progressive' agenda! The emphasis on testing and exams makes it harder and harder for schools to bring aspects of these activities into school. When teachers try to they are accused of being 'progressive' and depriving the poorest of children of having the tools with which to get hold of the content-heavy curriculum - and yet, I would argue, it is the very presence of these tools in the lives of those children who get it out of school that enables them to succeed.

The Wilshaw-Gove method of talking about this though is purely punitive - both punitive within the school system through its built-in failure and of course punitive through fines and imprisonment. For all its egalitarian whitewash, this is in reality more of the same: selection, segregation, failure and punishment - all reinforced by lashings of self-blame. What better way to police the system than through people ending up with the bitter pill of self-blame.

And let's not forget that this is being peddled at the precise moment that the bankers' crisis has given our rulers the excuse to shift wealth even more than ever, away from earners towards the owners of capital.

Sod the Magna Carta

Sod the Magna Carta - which was mostly about Baron Power - which they got and have never let go of. 
If we're going Medieval, we can have John Ball, one of the leaders of the Peasants' Revolt, preaching this sort of thing in and around 1380. (Peasants' Revolt 1381)

'My good people, things cannot go well in England, nor ever shall, till everything be made common, and there are neither villeins nor gentlemen, but we shall all be united together, and the lords shall be no greater masters than ourselves. What have we deserved that we should be kept thus enslaved? We are all descended from one father and mother, Adam and Eve. What reasons can they give to show that they are greater lords than we, save by making us toil and labour, so that they can spend? They are clothed in velvet and soft leather furred with ermine, while we wear coarse cloth; they have their wines, spices and good bread, while we have the drawings of the chaff, and drink water. They have handsome houses and manors, and we the pain and travail, the rain and wind, in the fields. And it is from our labour that they get the means to maintain their estates.'

Politicians and 'What makes us British?'

So we all go about our business day to day 

not thinking about 'what makes us British?' 

and then someone comes along 

and sticks a microphone in front of you 

or is writing an article in a paper and says,

 'What makes you British?' 

and then, some people on the receiving end of that, 

try to think up stuff, 

and they say things like, 

'democracy', 'humour', 'oak trees', 'fish and chips' - 

and it turns out that these things aren't 'British' - 

either because other people have got them too, 

or because it's not really something 'British' they're talking about but it belongs to only part of 'Britain' 

or because it turns out that it's a mash-up 

with something that was picked up in times of the British Empire or was brought in by migrants… 

But on we go, on the jolly old John Bull merry-go-round 

of politicians trying to puff themselves up, 

hanging on to their jobs, 

dripping with expenses dished out for their tea-cups or bathroom taps, 

lecturing us on how we're supposed to behave, 

persecuting or moaning about people on benefits, 

singling out migrants or Muslims or foreign leaders they helped get into power….

Who predicted today's Iraq disasters? US intelligence in 2003

According to someone called Paul Lambert on Comment is Free:All 16 U.S. Intelligence agencies, told George W. Bush in January 2003 that:

'the invasion of Iraq . . . would be likely to spark violent sectarian divides and provide al-Qaeda with new opportunities in Iraq and Afghanistan . . . Analysts warned that war in Iraq also could provoke Iran to assert its regional influence and "probably would result in a surge of political Islam and increased funding for terrorist groups" in the Muslim world'.

Open letter to people of all religions, all faiths.

Dear all

I am an atheist and someone who hopes that one day we will have secular education in all schools.
I am an atheist who believes in religious toleration. On that basis, I think we have common ground.

I believe I am living in a country that does not believe in religious toleration. This is in spite of much talk about 'British values' which apparently refers to such things as 'democracy', 'freedom' and - ironically, 'religious toleration'!

I believe that I am living in a country that does not believe in religious toleration because one faith is being singled out for special treatment. This is not toleration, it is discrimination.

We know the examples:
highlighting segregation of sexes in schools where there are Muslims whilst it goes on for many different reasons in the education system as a whole, between schools, or within schools;
highlighting Muslim dress whilst the religious dress of other faiths is not mentioned...

So, my position is this: while we are in a situation in which we do not have universal secular education with religious toleration, we should aim for an end to all forms of 'cherry-picking' and 'selectivity' . We should oppose any attempt by politicians to select this or that part of one faith's practises as 'objectionable' whilst failing to notice that equivalents are practised by other faiths.

With this in mind, may I plead with practitioners and leaders of all faiths to regard these selective attacks on Muslims as an attack on you and indeed on all of us?

May I plead with you to point out to politicians exactly how some of  their statements about Islam or about Muslim religious practices, could if applied consistently, apply to you?

At present, they are getting  away with being selective because, in part, we do not hear your voices saying, 'Us too!'

When one group is attacked, we are all unsafe. You too. Please do not ever think that by politicians attacking one faith, your faith is made secure. Please speak out, call the politicians to account and show that their cherry-picking and selectivity for what it is: prejudice, discrimination or just cynical vote-seeking.

Thank you for reading this.

Michael Rosen

(please feel free to share this with anyone you like)

Statement from Christine Blower, Gen Sec of NUT re Birmingham schools

Here's a statement from Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, on the Ofsted reports into Birmingham:

"From an unsigned and undated letter has grown this so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ affair.

The highly inflammatory deployment of an anti-terrorism chief to head up the inquiry, the unprecedented and clearly political inspection of 21 schools by Ofsted, and the public squabble between Theresa May and Michael Gove has not been positive for Birmingham schools and the children they educate.

There seems to be a redefinition of ‘extremism’ from the Secretary of State for Education, and as yet lots of speculation and not a little hyperbole.

What all this does show is that if schools sever their connection with a local authority, the levers to monitor or effect change available at local level are lost.

What is clearly needed is local authorities with powers to monitor and support schools, clear national agreement on the importance of Personal, Social, Health and Economic education (PSHE) and the need to promote community cohesion and the aim to create schools in which individuals feel at ease with themselves and are respectful of difference. Knee jerk reactions from government on the basis of personal predilections are not what is required.

Any issues which arise in a school should be capable of discussion and resolution at a local level and be addressed speedily and proportionately.

The charge of Islamophobia will stick to this affair unless the schools and their wider communities are seen to be engaged in the solution rather than castigated as being the problem."

David Hughes, vice-chair of Park View Academy Trust - statement

"Here is the full statement from David Hughes, the vice chair of Park View academy trust. He stressed that he was not a Muslim himself, but a practising Christian."

NOW HERE IS THE GOVERNOR'S STATEMENT

"I have been a governor at Park View school for 17 years and I'm immensely proud of what's been achieved here and what's been done, and very distressed about what happening to undo that work ...

On behalf of staff, students and parents who have worked so hard improve their schools, we are extremely disappointed to confirm that Ofsted has graded Park View, Golden Hillocks and Nansen schools as inadequate and put them into special measures.

We support the role of Ofsted in holding schools to account in a fair and transparent way, but we wholeheartedly dispute the validity of these gradings.

Park View, Golden Hillocks and Nansen are categorically not inadequate schools.

Our Ofsted inspections were ordered in a climate of suspicion created by the hoax Trojan letter and by the anonymous, unproven allegations about our schools in the media. Ofsted inspectors came to our schools looking for extremism, looking for segregation, looking for proof that our children have religion forced upon them as part of an Islamic plot. The Ofsted reports find asbsolutely no evidence of this because this is categorically not what is happening at our schools.

Our schools do not tolerate or promote extremism of any kind. We have made a major commitment to raising all students' awareness of extremism. People who know and have worked with our schools are appalled at the way we have been misrepresented.

Our schools serve some of the most disadvantaged communities in Britain. In spite of this, 75% of students at Park View achieved at least five good GCSEs last year, including in English and maths. This makes it the best school of its type in England. Golden Hillocks and Nansen are on course to get the best results ever. Quite simply, this is because we believe our role is to break the links between demographics, deprivation and destiny.

We refuse to let our students' backgrounds limit what they can achieve, and who they can become.

The speed and the ferocity with which Park View school in particular has been condemned is truly shocking. Park View school has helped transform the lives of local families by realising their hope and ambition for educational success. School communities at Park View, Golden Hillocks and Nansen that have worked hard to turn round failing schools are being condemned when they should be being celebrated.

The problem here is not extremism or segregation or religious indoctrination, all the things that Ofsted looked for but failed to find in our schools. The problem here is the knee-jerk actions of some politicians that have undermined the great work that we do here and undermined community cohesion across Birmingham and across many of our cities. They have put Muslim children from these communities at substantial risk of not being accepted as equal, legitimate and valued members of British society, and they have allowed suspicion to be cast on the aspiration of their parents and anyone else who believes that these children deserve the same rights and excellent standard of education as any other child.

And it is important you know we will now be challenging all these reports through the appropriate legal channels."

Politicians try to herd us into their version of 'us'

One of the complicated things about governments targeting minorities is that on the surface it is about 'the other'. It's about what's wrong with 'the other'. 'The other' is a bin into which a set of objections are put. These objections are always 'common sense' as with Farage saying that this or that is 'natural'. He says he finds it problematic that people on a train are talking in a foreign language - even though his wife seems to talk to their children in a foreign language! But of course he was trying to hit a button, 'the other' is doing 'other-ish' sorts of things and 'we' all agree, don't 'we'? When we discover that in other circumstances he tolerates people 'talking foreign' we realise that his objection is empty, it has no meaning. What he really means to do with the statement is define his version of 'we' and 'us'. He is putting his arm round an imaginary 'us' and defining it as 'we who don't like foreigners, eh?' This is much more important than any 'content' to the objection itself.

This is what's happening with the Birmingham schools. The 'other' has been defined as 'Muslim' and Gove et al are trying to recruit non-Muslims to an 'us'. Because these are politicians, they are hoping that this act of saying there is a 'we' who are against this Muslim stuff, this 'we' will also vote for them, thanking them for defining 'us' like that. They hope that we won't read what the governors and teachers are saying. They just hope that they will be able to create a big enough 'we' to be glad that 'we' have got a Tory Party to fight for 'us' and our 'right' to be different from the Muslim 'them'. 

Today's statements by David Hughes and others in and around the schools is a big snag for them. They have said they are not Muslims but clearly are saying that they are in a 'we' or 'us' with Muslims. This is very awkward for the government. Not impossible to overcome. They will vilify and sneer. They will recruit willing servants to 'express anxieties' about the 'them'. And above all they will be highly selective in their objections. That is to say, that many of their objections to what they say that Muslims say and do, can be found in other institutions with Christian and Jewish emphasis. For example, some Academies are not 'faith' schools but have e.g. a 'Christian ethos'. 

I am an atheist. I am in favour of all schools being secular. For the time being, this battle has been lost. In the meantime, any attempt to single one religion out from the others as specially problematic, needs to be looked at very carefully. Is any kind of selectivity going on? Gove et al appear to have undergone some kind of conversion in relation to these schools: one year they are stunningly brilliant and should expand…a couple of years later they are failing schools….Is the approaching General Election a factor? Are we about to be flung into a great bog of politicians trying to herd people into their version of 'us'?

Hurrah for mortgages, say the zero-hour contract workers (re-write)

Hurrah for mortgages, say the zero-hour contract workers.

You want a house?
You want a mortgage?
You want to get on the first rung of the housing ladder?
You want to be part of the property-owning democracy?
Are you happy that this is what the government is doing for you?

Yes - hurrah for mortgages, say the zero-hour contract workers,
and thanks to you,
there are now many more of us
on zero-hour contracts.

Jolly good, they say back to the zero-hour contract workers,
thanks to you not having a mortgage
you won't be "sub-prime"
you won't trigger a crash

Hurrah for mortgages anyway, say the zero-hour contract workers
we love our property-owning democracy
even though we're not property-owning.
We love spending most of what we earn
so we can't save to buy our way into
the property-owning democracy

And thank you, David Cameron
for telling us on the Today Programme
of your "thrill"
that day you walked through the door
of your first flat
knowing that it was yours.

Everyone on zero-hour contracts
cheered
when you said that…

Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah.

Poem for Tony Benn Memorial Event June 5 2014

Poem for Tony Benn Memorial Event, Camden Town Hall, June 5 2014


Mme Le Pen,

la raison pourquoi
on a donné une étoile jaune
à l'oncle et à la tante de mon père

la raison pourquoi
on a demandé qu'ils devaient attacher
une affiche disante 'Entreprise juive'
à leur étal de marché

la raison pourquoi
ils ont fuit leur asile
dans la rue Mellaise à Niort

la raison pourquoi
ils se sont réfugiés à Nice

la raison pourquoi
on les a arrêtés et on les a transportés
à Paris, à Drancy, à Auschwitz et a leurs morts

est parce que
les officiers de Vichy
ont fait un 'Fichier juif' des juifs étrangers
et l'a donné aux Nazis au moment exacte
que la Résistance a dit bienvenu aux juifs
bienvenu aux étrangers

et c'est ça, la raison pourquoi
je vous dis ces choses
Mme Le Pen.

Mme Le Pen

the reason why
they gave a yellow star
to my father's uncle and aunt

the reason why
they told them they had to fix a sign
saying 'Jewish Business' on their market stall

the reason why
they fled from their refuge in the rue Mellaise
in Niort

the reason why
they took refuge in Nice

the reason why
they were arrested and transported
to Paris, to Drancy, to Auschwitz and to their death

is because the officials of Vichy
made a 'Jewish File' of foreign Jews
and gave it to the Nazis
at the exact moment
that the Resistance was welcoming
Jews and was welcoming foreigners

and that's the reason why
I am telling you these things
Mme Le Pen.

Is 'decoding' the same as 'reading'?

I've mentioned something in the past which I've called 'phonics drift'. This is really just a gag to describe what I think some exponents of phonics do.



So, phonics exponents will say that phonics teaches children to 'decode'. Children learn the 'alphabetic code' through phonics. If this is all they said, there might be some argument but not a lot. We might say, for example that phonics won't necessarily teach all children the alphabetic code. We might say that because English isn't absolutely 'regular' that phonics alone won't teach you to access the 'true' sound of every word. We might say that because there are big variations in the way that people speak (accent and dialect) that making a particular sound match a particular letter is not always simple. We might say that some children will get the alphabetic code in other ways or including other ways. As a result of these things we might say that phonics doesn't solve all the problems there are for all children in all circumstances. However, at the heart of the statement, 'phonics teaches children to decode' holds good in many circumstances.




But then it emerges that what phonics people want to really say is that 'phonics teaches children to read'. Now this is another matter altogether.




So, going back to 'decoding': the way in which phonics people test whether people can decode is to set decoding tests. The only way they know how to do that is to ask people to say words out loud. So, really the statement, 'phonics teaches children to decode' is really only ever known by saying 'phonics teaches children to say words out loud'. As we all know - and indeed as the Phonics Screening Check shows - we can say out loud words that have no common shared meanings - the so-called nonsense meanings. (Incidentally, as with Lewis Carroll's 'Jabberwocky' even nonsense words have 'connotations' and we will have great fun giving nonsense words meanings derived from words or parts of words that they sound like.)




Now, the key question I'm posing here though is whether 'saying words out loud' is the same as 'reading'?




When pushed, most of the phonics exponents I've met will say, no, reading does imply 'understanding' and 'decoding' is not the same as 'understanding' . So, the question that some of us ask, is how do we get from 'decoding' to 'reading with understanding'? Do all children do that simply be learning how to 'decode' - that is, by doing phonics?



Here is how one phonics exponent puts it (as posted up on my twitter account earlier today:




"By learning to 'decode', you can match words to ideas and knowledge through reading."


Yes, it's possible, 'you can'. On the other hand 'you might not'. Or, 'you might not be able to'. Or 'you might find it difficult'. Or, 'sometimes you might be able to and other times you might not be able to'. And so on.


Why should that be?


Because the 'sound of words' (i.e. what you have 'decoded') is not the same as the 'meaning of words'. And, 'the meaning of words' is not the same as 'language'. In other words you can 'decode' a word without knowing its meaning, so decoding it will not by magic release its meaning. Something else will have to have happened in your life for the meaning to be apparent.


What's more,  'text' - passages of writing - cannot simply be described as 'words'. Passages of writing are made up of very complex arrangements. The words are held together by grammar and they can come in more or less complex sequences, with all kinds of add-ons, interruptions, time-changes, allusions, idioms. Again this is not revealed through 'decoding'. This is only revealed by exposure to the meaning of such passages of writing. 

(I would plead with anyone interested in any of this to compare a full transcription of people talking with a passage of writing.)

There is a big difference between 'varieties of spoken language' and 'varieties of written language'. The two spheres - spoken and written - often use different tactics, different methods. To take one example: much of what I've written in this blog today, is written in a way that I wouldn't usually speak. It is written in 'written-ese'. Part of learning to 'read with understanding' is 'getting' how 'written-ese' works.


One of the ways we 'get' meaning from 'written-ese' is through a great deal of exposure to 'written-ese' and the most pleasurable way of doing this is through hearing and sharing books and comics and written stuff that is fun for the particular age group trying to 'get' it.


Now let's go back to what the phonics exponent said:


" By learning to 'decode', you can match words to ideas and knowledge through reading."

No mention here of getting to what she calls 'ideas and knowledge' through a lot of exposure to 'written-ese'. Quite the opposite - she  is suggesting that you get to 'reading' through learning to 'decode'. So she has got to 'reading' through - and only through - 'decoding'. 

This is what I mean by 'phonics drift'. 

She has downgraded or eliminated the need for a good deal of exposure to 'written-ese' - whether through the ear  (as with reading to children) or through 'sharing' where a child will both hear and follow the text on the page - which any parent sharing a book with a child will end up doing at least  some of the time. Either the child or the adult will notice or point out words. 

In this way of 'reading' - clearly, there is a mix of 

hearing the sounds of words 

hearing the sound of 'written-ese', 

seeing the sentences, 

seeing the words, 

seeing the letters, 

and getting the meaning. 

It's all mixed up.

In the discussion I had with this phonics exponent, she repeated the position that this mixing up is NOT what happens. She claimed that it's a sequence: decoding first, meaning later. But millions of people have learned to read without it being 'first decoding, meaning later'. We've learned to do both. 

Now, another phonics exponent came on to my twitter account to denounce this very process. She said that it 'confused' children because it gave them different 'cues' in order to read. 

This is the theory of 'first, fast and only'. According to this theory, the point at which your child is learning to read, you should not do any other methods of reading other than decoding (teaching children how to 'say words out loud') through systematic, synthetic phonics. If you play with magnet letters on the fridge, stop it. If you read 'Where the Wild Things Are' and you point to the word 'another' as you turn over the page - don't. If you look at a picture and back at a word and let the child say the word because they've linked it to the picture, don't. 

Just finished - a book about education

I have just finished the first draft of a book primarily for parents called 'Good Ideas' - on ideas to do with thinking, talking, writing, playing, doing and looking. 

It's not about 'education' in the sense of schooling, but it's all about education in the sense of...er....education. 

It'll be out in September. 

I see that the Sunday Times is calling it a 'rival' to Gove. 

Not really.

Oradour and the vote for Le Pen

In Oradour-sur-Glane, site of one of the worst Nazi atrocities during the war (over 600 civilians massacred in one afternoon with no apparent motive other than reprisals against the whole region's resistance to occupation and the advance of an SS regiment towards the Normandy landings) - Marine Le Pen's Front National scored over 20% of the vote. 

That means she has successfully detached the party from fascism and Nazism and Vichy-ism. She has done this by making out that she is fighting for France. She has done the classic thing of alternating between saying the enemy is the 'other' (immigrants etc) and the 'big guys' (in this case the EU). The truth is that of course fascism is not against the big guys. It makes a historical marriage between fascists and the big guys...or put it the other way round: the big guys make a historical compromise with the fascists.