Another context, another time. Here is William Morris talking in 1877. Think Oliver Letwin:
"Working men of England, one word of warning yet: I doubt if you know the bitterness of hatred against freedom and progress that lies at the hearts of a certain part of the richer classes in this country; their newspapers veil it in a kind of decent language; but do but hear them talking amongst themselves, as I have often, and I know not whether scorn or anger would prevail in you at their folly and insolence. These men cannot speak of your order, of its aims, of its leaders, without a sneer or an insult; these men, if they had the power (may England perish rather!) would thwart your just aspirations, would silence you, would deliver you bound hand and foot forever to irresponsible capital."
A place where I'll post up some thoughts and ideas - especially on literature in education, children's literature in general, poetry, reading, writing, teaching and thoughts on current affairs.
Thursday 31 December 2015
What is Children's Literature III
In 'What is Children's Literature II' I raised the question of 'introjection' and self-blame in relation to 'Hansel and Gretel' and 'Where the Wild Things Are'. My view is that this is the key process by which we perceive ourselves as individuals, and the key process by which we accept or acquiesce in the matter of how we are ruled. I think that our systems of nurture and education - including children's literature - are necessary components in this process. By 'necessary', I don't mean 'desirable' but 'necessary' in the logical sense: without such components the process of ruling would not be so easy or possible.
First a clarification: in any power relationship, the less or least powerful might 'introject' the views of the more or most powerful. That's to say, the un-powerful view the world or their own lives from the point of view of the powerful. This may or may not lead to self-blame. I think I could make an argument for saying that we are living in an era of introjection. In the handling of the economy since the bankers' crash of 2008, we have been on the receiving end of multiple messages from the most powerful media outlets which have 'explained' that 'we' are the problem. It is our services and welfare that causes us to be 'living beyond our means'. To my mind, this is a classic case of the media asking of us to take up the point of view of those who rule us. That viewpoint is not a universal one. There are others such as: a state borrowing money is not the same as a household living beyond its means; the huge amounts of untaxed wealth in the possession of a tiny minority would enable us to relieve any deficit problems we have; if the government invested more in projects which had the potential to grow the economy, this would shake out as increasing government revenue through taxation and/or relieving the tax burden of paying for the unemployed, underemployed, underpaid. Without me (or anyone else) agreeing with those views, I want simply to say that such views exist as alternatives. They are also not ones which ask people to introject the view that 'we, the people' are to blame for the crisis.
To illustrate how introjection and self-blame is enacted, I can tell the story of listening to the radio and hearing how the commentator was asking a low-paid worker about the 'deficit'. The low-paid worker was saying that she wanted and needed more pay. The commentator 'explained' that the deficit had to be reduced. In other words, the deficit (deemed, without dissent as 'the problem') was ultimately a problem that could only be solved if the low-paid worker remained low-paid. Presumably, if the low-paid worker became even marginally less poorly paid, then any problems the economy might face (again, as deemed by the ruling consensus) would be this low-paid worker's fault. The interviewer was, in effect, guiding we listeners to thinking of ways in which we too might be to blame for these perceived difficulties.
Anyone reading this might well be able to think of other examples in this era in which the poor and vulnerable have been used as examples of 'the problem', rather than the fact that it being the system that is making them poor and vulnerable. I'll offer another: the system allows for or enables various kinds of 'relief' for the well-off in terms of taxation. One way to describe these could be to call them 'benefits'. Well-off people benefit from various kinds of tax-relief, tax-avoidance, tax-efficiency and tax-dodging. Meanwhile, some poor people receive 'benefits'. The whole conversation about 'benefits' has been aimed at presenting the benefits as a problem: people receive too much, there are too many people 'on benefits', it's unfair on those who don't receive benefits, people who receive benefits are lazy and unworthy, the benefits 'bill' is causing the 'economy' to go down. Meanwhile, the well-off are also receiving benefits. As these result in the government receiving less money, surely these 'benefits' are just as much a 'problem' as any actually or ostensibly caused by the poor receiving benefits. Apparently not. That's because the process being put in action is introjection and self-blame. The system is asking poor people to accept the view that it is the relatively tiny amounts of money they receive that is the problem.
I also think that integrated with these examples of introjection and self-blame are certain (not all) aspects of our nurture (including education) systems. English schools have increasingly become exam and testing hothouses. In the wake of high-stakes, centrally run, public exams and tests, many schools implement a teach-test regime. To be clear, this is not to blame teachers. Of course teachers do this, because the apparent wisdom suggests that the more you teach-test, the better the results at the end. (By 'teach-test', I mean the process by which teaching is seen as coming in short chunks of knowledge-transmission, which conclude with a test which proves whether the chunk of knowledge has 'stuck'.) The exam system claims to be fair because it supposedly shows who has acquired the knowledge and skills and who hasn't. The system says that we need to know who can and who can't acquire knowledge, otherwise (in the famous analogy) we would have brain surgeons who didn't know anything about the brain. Or surgery.
Now let's unpack some of this: in the lead-up to exams, it's the job of the teacher to suggest to all the candidates that they can all succeed. So, the teacher does all she can to help the pupils do well. She breaks up the knowledge into parcels that, she thinks, will enable the pupils to recycle as answers in the test. This is in reality 'the knowledge' being passed on. It is specialised parcelled-up exam-ready chunks of knowledge. These chunks may or may not have much to do with the knowledge required in building better lives for the people acquiring the knowledge or indeed by future society. The only importance lies in acquiring it. However, it's quite clear that the pupils don't and won't all acquire it. In fact, it pans out that every year, more or less the same distribution of pupils across getting all of it, most of it, some of it, very little of it, and none of it, occurs. It's as if the script has already been written. But the rhetoric around exams is precisely the opposite: you can all do it, you can all do well, you can all succeed if you try. So, what are we to make of the situation after the exam when people discover that they didn't succeed? (Let's leave the successes out for the moment!) Surely, if I don't succeed, I can only come to one conclusion: it's my fault. After all, I was told that everyone can succeed if we try hard enough. And yet the system is created which means that that is impossible. The long and short of it is that introjection and self-blame are built in to the system - at the very least for those who fail. And, given that only a tiny few succeed in all exams, most of us experience some self-blame in relation to some exams.
Now, we can shrug our shoulders and say, 'Well that's how the system works: like it or lump it.' Or, we might at the very least imagine a world in which this was not so deeply ingrained into the daily experience of education. We might imagine systems of assessment geared to improving education rather then incurring self-blame? We might imagine a much lighter touch (basically, fewer) high-stakes exams. We might imagine education which rewarded and affirmed non-examined work - projects, publications, productions - across the arts, humanities, technology and science. We might imagine education which rewarded and affirmed co-operative, collaborative ventures of many kinds. The social and psychological burden of self-blame could at least be relieved without any erosion of knowledge- and skills-acquisition. In fact, quite the opposite: crucial and necessary forms of knowledge and skill are acquired through non-examined, non-examinable activities like these.
So, both on a national level in terms of how we view ourselves in society, and on an educational level, it is easy to see how introjection and self-blame work on us. Now, my question is whether the literatures that we offer children and young people contribute or counter this? I don't think there is an easy or obvious or simple answer to this. It's quite possible that they do both, sometimes within the covers of the same book. So, again with 'Where the Wild Things Are', the book invites Max (and the reader?) to speculate about how they themselves can be an 'agent' (take action) in their own destiny. On the other hand, as I have tried to pointed out, any possible cause for Max's crisis outside of himself are invisible. He is the sole author of his own state of mind. So, the book conveys introjection and self-blame whilst suggesting that it's possible to overcome this all by oneself.
This is of course only one example amongst thousands. What other models are there? Are there books which avoid introjection and self-blame? If so, how?
First a clarification: in any power relationship, the less or least powerful might 'introject' the views of the more or most powerful. That's to say, the un-powerful view the world or their own lives from the point of view of the powerful. This may or may not lead to self-blame. I think I could make an argument for saying that we are living in an era of introjection. In the handling of the economy since the bankers' crash of 2008, we have been on the receiving end of multiple messages from the most powerful media outlets which have 'explained' that 'we' are the problem. It is our services and welfare that causes us to be 'living beyond our means'. To my mind, this is a classic case of the media asking of us to take up the point of view of those who rule us. That viewpoint is not a universal one. There are others such as: a state borrowing money is not the same as a household living beyond its means; the huge amounts of untaxed wealth in the possession of a tiny minority would enable us to relieve any deficit problems we have; if the government invested more in projects which had the potential to grow the economy, this would shake out as increasing government revenue through taxation and/or relieving the tax burden of paying for the unemployed, underemployed, underpaid. Without me (or anyone else) agreeing with those views, I want simply to say that such views exist as alternatives. They are also not ones which ask people to introject the view that 'we, the people' are to blame for the crisis.
To illustrate how introjection and self-blame is enacted, I can tell the story of listening to the radio and hearing how the commentator was asking a low-paid worker about the 'deficit'. The low-paid worker was saying that she wanted and needed more pay. The commentator 'explained' that the deficit had to be reduced. In other words, the deficit (deemed, without dissent as 'the problem') was ultimately a problem that could only be solved if the low-paid worker remained low-paid. Presumably, if the low-paid worker became even marginally less poorly paid, then any problems the economy might face (again, as deemed by the ruling consensus) would be this low-paid worker's fault. The interviewer was, in effect, guiding we listeners to thinking of ways in which we too might be to blame for these perceived difficulties.
Anyone reading this might well be able to think of other examples in this era in which the poor and vulnerable have been used as examples of 'the problem', rather than the fact that it being the system that is making them poor and vulnerable. I'll offer another: the system allows for or enables various kinds of 'relief' for the well-off in terms of taxation. One way to describe these could be to call them 'benefits'. Well-off people benefit from various kinds of tax-relief, tax-avoidance, tax-efficiency and tax-dodging. Meanwhile, some poor people receive 'benefits'. The whole conversation about 'benefits' has been aimed at presenting the benefits as a problem: people receive too much, there are too many people 'on benefits', it's unfair on those who don't receive benefits, people who receive benefits are lazy and unworthy, the benefits 'bill' is causing the 'economy' to go down. Meanwhile, the well-off are also receiving benefits. As these result in the government receiving less money, surely these 'benefits' are just as much a 'problem' as any actually or ostensibly caused by the poor receiving benefits. Apparently not. That's because the process being put in action is introjection and self-blame. The system is asking poor people to accept the view that it is the relatively tiny amounts of money they receive that is the problem.
I also think that integrated with these examples of introjection and self-blame are certain (not all) aspects of our nurture (including education) systems. English schools have increasingly become exam and testing hothouses. In the wake of high-stakes, centrally run, public exams and tests, many schools implement a teach-test regime. To be clear, this is not to blame teachers. Of course teachers do this, because the apparent wisdom suggests that the more you teach-test, the better the results at the end. (By 'teach-test', I mean the process by which teaching is seen as coming in short chunks of knowledge-transmission, which conclude with a test which proves whether the chunk of knowledge has 'stuck'.) The exam system claims to be fair because it supposedly shows who has acquired the knowledge and skills and who hasn't. The system says that we need to know who can and who can't acquire knowledge, otherwise (in the famous analogy) we would have brain surgeons who didn't know anything about the brain. Or surgery.
Now let's unpack some of this: in the lead-up to exams, it's the job of the teacher to suggest to all the candidates that they can all succeed. So, the teacher does all she can to help the pupils do well. She breaks up the knowledge into parcels that, she thinks, will enable the pupils to recycle as answers in the test. This is in reality 'the knowledge' being passed on. It is specialised parcelled-up exam-ready chunks of knowledge. These chunks may or may not have much to do with the knowledge required in building better lives for the people acquiring the knowledge or indeed by future society. The only importance lies in acquiring it. However, it's quite clear that the pupils don't and won't all acquire it. In fact, it pans out that every year, more or less the same distribution of pupils across getting all of it, most of it, some of it, very little of it, and none of it, occurs. It's as if the script has already been written. But the rhetoric around exams is precisely the opposite: you can all do it, you can all do well, you can all succeed if you try. So, what are we to make of the situation after the exam when people discover that they didn't succeed? (Let's leave the successes out for the moment!) Surely, if I don't succeed, I can only come to one conclusion: it's my fault. After all, I was told that everyone can succeed if we try hard enough. And yet the system is created which means that that is impossible. The long and short of it is that introjection and self-blame are built in to the system - at the very least for those who fail. And, given that only a tiny few succeed in all exams, most of us experience some self-blame in relation to some exams.
Now, we can shrug our shoulders and say, 'Well that's how the system works: like it or lump it.' Or, we might at the very least imagine a world in which this was not so deeply ingrained into the daily experience of education. We might imagine systems of assessment geared to improving education rather then incurring self-blame? We might imagine a much lighter touch (basically, fewer) high-stakes exams. We might imagine education which rewarded and affirmed non-examined work - projects, publications, productions - across the arts, humanities, technology and science. We might imagine education which rewarded and affirmed co-operative, collaborative ventures of many kinds. The social and psychological burden of self-blame could at least be relieved without any erosion of knowledge- and skills-acquisition. In fact, quite the opposite: crucial and necessary forms of knowledge and skill are acquired through non-examined, non-examinable activities like these.
So, both on a national level in terms of how we view ourselves in society, and on an educational level, it is easy to see how introjection and self-blame work on us. Now, my question is whether the literatures that we offer children and young people contribute or counter this? I don't think there is an easy or obvious or simple answer to this. It's quite possible that they do both, sometimes within the covers of the same book. So, again with 'Where the Wild Things Are', the book invites Max (and the reader?) to speculate about how they themselves can be an 'agent' (take action) in their own destiny. On the other hand, as I have tried to pointed out, any possible cause for Max's crisis outside of himself are invisible. He is the sole author of his own state of mind. So, the book conveys introjection and self-blame whilst suggesting that it's possible to overcome this all by oneself.
This is of course only one example amongst thousands. What other models are there? Are there books which avoid introjection and self-blame? If so, how?
Monday 28 December 2015
Cameron's Christian Christmas message
Every so often, I find myself returning to what Cameron said this Christmas. Here's how it was reported in the Daily Mail
“As a Christian country, we must remember what his birth represents: Peace, mercy, goodwill and above all, hope. I believe that we should also reflect on the fact that it is because of these important religious roots and Christian values that Britain has been such a successful home to people of all faiths and none.”
Daily Mail Dec 24 2015
Of course, it's immensely irritating that I am only 'reflecting' on these things because Cameron told me to. In fact, I'm wondering why it's the job of a prime minister to act as some kind of national priest, therapist, cultural historian and guru. Anyway, he has - and I've fallen for it. Here I am reflecting and reflecting.
So first up, is 'As a Christian country...' This of courses raises the question of what is a 'Christian country' but it also raises the matter of what does it mean to be a 'we' of a 'country'. I mean, a country does things according to what governments tell it to, like go to the vote, select a football team (or four teams in our case), go to war and so on. But in terms of how we lead our lives, most of the time we don't do it as a 'country', we do it mostly in the groups we find ourselves in: where and how we are employed, where and how we eat, sleep, love, take pleasure and the like. Anyway, it's clearly the duty of politicians to keep on talking about 'country' as if using that word sums up our existence, even though every day we live non-nationally. Politicians have to keep saying 'country' so that we focus on them, as if they represent everything we do, think and say.
So that's part of the problem with 'Christian'. If you're not Christian (I'm not) this really does give us a problem. It's not that someone like me fails to acknowledge how Christian Britain's social and political practices have been but if you say 'it's a Christian country', I am entitled to ask, where do I fit in then? Am I 'tolerated'? Am I a guest? I don't feel like a guest. I don't want to feel like a guest. I don't want to walk about feeling grateful for being allowed to exist here.
One way to get an angle on that would be to imagine how Cameron could have phrased that instead. He could indeed have pointed out some stuff about Christmas and its history, how most people in this country have celebrated it and are still celebrating it and then there could have come a great big 'but' - and after that 'but' he could have said how wrong it would be to summarise what this country has been and is purely and only in those terms. Instead, he said that the multi-faith and no-faith society owes it to Christianity.
Now, that's a piece of cultural history that really won't wash. 'Toleration' and non-discrimination were hard-fought battles in which, for example, people in his party in, say, the nineteenth century were utterly opposed to people of no faith and discriminated against 'Roman Catholics' - let alone those of non-Christian faiths. However it was that the multi-faith society was arrived at, it wasn't purely and only a result of what Christians thought, believed and did. Might it not have been a good idea for Cameron to acknowledge that? I wouldn't expect Cameron to remember that Charles Bradlaugh went to prison because people in his party found it intolerable that he wouldn't take a Christian oath to be sworn in to the House of Commons - nor would they allow for the requirement that it should be a Christian oath to be abolished! But that was part of how and why 'non faith' is tolerated.
Even so, what is the political purpose of saying that people with a faith other than Christianity or people of 'no faith' owe our rights to be like that to Christianity? Why wasn't it possible for a Prime Minister to simply welcome the fact that this is part of how the 'country' lives in its diverse ways, rather than attempting to corral us all under the umbrella of being thankful or grateful to Christianity for our right to exist? Some people thank their God for their right to exist. I thank the people who fought for all our basic freedoms and are still fighting for many more, for my right to exist and none of these are down exclusively to Christianity.
And even within Christianity, some of these freedoms are a result of deep disputes, battles and bloodshed between Christians. That is hardly represented by the one word 'Christianity' because we are entitled to ask, 'whose Christianity'? So, it's not only the people of all faiths and none who Cameron invited to be corralled under his umbrella but also all Christians, many of whom owe their existence to their disagreements and battles with the strand of Christianity that Cameron belongs to and represents.
Anyway, that's enough reflecting at Cameron's bidding for today.
“As a Christian country, we must remember what his birth represents: Peace, mercy, goodwill and above all, hope. I believe that we should also reflect on the fact that it is because of these important religious roots and Christian values that Britain has been such a successful home to people of all faiths and none.”
Daily Mail Dec 24 2015
Of course, it's immensely irritating that I am only 'reflecting' on these things because Cameron told me to. In fact, I'm wondering why it's the job of a prime minister to act as some kind of national priest, therapist, cultural historian and guru. Anyway, he has - and I've fallen for it. Here I am reflecting and reflecting.
So first up, is 'As a Christian country...' This of courses raises the question of what is a 'Christian country' but it also raises the matter of what does it mean to be a 'we' of a 'country'. I mean, a country does things according to what governments tell it to, like go to the vote, select a football team (or four teams in our case), go to war and so on. But in terms of how we lead our lives, most of the time we don't do it as a 'country', we do it mostly in the groups we find ourselves in: where and how we are employed, where and how we eat, sleep, love, take pleasure and the like. Anyway, it's clearly the duty of politicians to keep on talking about 'country' as if using that word sums up our existence, even though every day we live non-nationally. Politicians have to keep saying 'country' so that we focus on them, as if they represent everything we do, think and say.
So that's part of the problem with 'Christian'. If you're not Christian (I'm not) this really does give us a problem. It's not that someone like me fails to acknowledge how Christian Britain's social and political practices have been but if you say 'it's a Christian country', I am entitled to ask, where do I fit in then? Am I 'tolerated'? Am I a guest? I don't feel like a guest. I don't want to feel like a guest. I don't want to walk about feeling grateful for being allowed to exist here.
One way to get an angle on that would be to imagine how Cameron could have phrased that instead. He could indeed have pointed out some stuff about Christmas and its history, how most people in this country have celebrated it and are still celebrating it and then there could have come a great big 'but' - and after that 'but' he could have said how wrong it would be to summarise what this country has been and is purely and only in those terms. Instead, he said that the multi-faith and no-faith society owes it to Christianity.
Now, that's a piece of cultural history that really won't wash. 'Toleration' and non-discrimination were hard-fought battles in which, for example, people in his party in, say, the nineteenth century were utterly opposed to people of no faith and discriminated against 'Roman Catholics' - let alone those of non-Christian faiths. However it was that the multi-faith society was arrived at, it wasn't purely and only a result of what Christians thought, believed and did. Might it not have been a good idea for Cameron to acknowledge that? I wouldn't expect Cameron to remember that Charles Bradlaugh went to prison because people in his party found it intolerable that he wouldn't take a Christian oath to be sworn in to the House of Commons - nor would they allow for the requirement that it should be a Christian oath to be abolished! But that was part of how and why 'non faith' is tolerated.
Even so, what is the political purpose of saying that people with a faith other than Christianity or people of 'no faith' owe our rights to be like that to Christianity? Why wasn't it possible for a Prime Minister to simply welcome the fact that this is part of how the 'country' lives in its diverse ways, rather than attempting to corral us all under the umbrella of being thankful or grateful to Christianity for our right to exist? Some people thank their God for their right to exist. I thank the people who fought for all our basic freedoms and are still fighting for many more, for my right to exist and none of these are down exclusively to Christianity.
And even within Christianity, some of these freedoms are a result of deep disputes, battles and bloodshed between Christians. That is hardly represented by the one word 'Christianity' because we are entitled to ask, 'whose Christianity'? So, it's not only the people of all faiths and none who Cameron invited to be corralled under his umbrella but also all Christians, many of whom owe their existence to their disagreements and battles with the strand of Christianity that Cameron belongs to and represents.
Anyway, that's enough reflecting at Cameron's bidding for today.
What is children's literature II - the politics of nurture from a child's point of view
In recent years, a good deal of criticism - both academic and journalistic - has focused on 'messages' and ideology. There's been a tendency by all of us to try to read these messages off any given book or text. We may have said that a given book is 'racist' or 'sexist' and a lot has been written since at least the 1940s about the 'class' focus of many or most children's books. In a similar vein, people have looked at the representation of disability, sexuality or any group thought to be 'marginalised' by writing for children.
Behind these concerns lie some assumptions along the lines of: 'when we read we are influenced by what we read'. We can all point to books or passages in books which we say influenced us but in truth we don't really know how this happens. After all, books are just inanimate objects. Strictly speaking, they can't influence us. We interpret the squiggles on the page using our previous life-experience and experience of texts. It's possible that the saying, 'the book influenced me' should be 'I influenced the book'! The person who makes the meaning is the reader.
That figure 'the reader' is not a free-floating balloon, above and separate from society though. The reader is 'in' class, gender, race, culture, ethnicity, sexuality and all the other ingredients of social being. The reader brings all that with them to the book.
With children's books, this means that an adult reader can only read it as an adult. This adult might imagine what a child 'might' think of a book, or the adult might remember what it felt like to read the book as a child, but ultimately, the adult is an adult. At one level, we all know this and there's no concealment or pretence otherwise. But I'll pose a problem: if I am right (or just a bit right!) about the subject of children's books being the relationship(s) between children and adults in nurture, then all adult criticism of children's books is written from one side of this relationship. Is it possible therefore that some of the ideological and emotional content of the books is hidden from us? I once asked some 11 year olds to do some improvisations and writing around the moment of abandonment in 'Hansel and Gretel' - strictly speaking the second moment of abandonment, where the children discover that the birds have eaten the bread that Hansel has been dropping on the route into the forest. I asked the 11 year olds to imagine what Hansel or Gretel were thinking and they wrote internal monologues. One girl wrote 'What have we done wrong?'.
I've often thought about this. In 'adult discourse' about relationships we might find people talking about how children might blame themselves and suppose they are responsible for events that impinge on them, even when none of it is their fault. They might 'introject' the outlook of others. So, when the children in the story hear their parents saying that they can't afford to feed them anymore, introjection would lead a child to say that it's their fault that the family hasn't got any food and so the children (they themselves) 'deserve' to be abandoned.
In all the times I've read or heard 'Hansel and Gretel', I've never had this thought. It's always been one of sadness or terror at the moment of abandonment. This particular child 'played out' a feeling of introjection that is a symptom of adult-child relationships. It's not impossible for adults to know this, remember this or empathise with this. I'm suggesting that a child-reader at that moment had access to that feeling without having encountered (I would guess) any of the psychological discussion that takes place in child psychology journals and the like.
I would argue that this is all ideological. Nurture is not some neutral or natural phenomenon. Nurture is governed and determined by what society or parts of society demand it should be. When we parent our children, this is not separate from what others around us are doing, or what are the 'prevailing ideas' on how best to do it. Education (seen here as part of nurture) is ruled tightly by governments and powerful forces in society so that it does what those governments and groups want it to do. So when a child introjects the adults' needs and desires, it takes place in contexts ruled by adults from within nurture, from within their position - which in relation to the child is 'powerful' but in relation to society is less powerful than the makers of education and the dominant ideologies around child-rearing.
So, one kind of criticism of children's literature can try to unlock the ideologies of nurture from a child's point of view. As I say, this is not simply a psychological question. Any aspect of nurture arises out of social requirements and social structures. In 'Where the Wild Things Are', the mother sends Max to his room. Why? Where does this bit of behaviour come from? For a start, a child has to have a room in order to be sent to it. Second, a parent has to have the authority to be able to do the sending. Third, a parent has to have the ideology (born from these circumstances and others) to think that 'detaching' the child will have some kind of useful or positive outcome. And, because it is a book, and not life (!) the makers of the book imply that they think this too. From a 'childist' point of view, the book could be read as a reinforcement of adult power from within a particular standard of living ('class'). Now, bearing in mind the 11 year old and her response to Hansel and Gretel's abandonment, we could ask, why is Max having to deal with the Wild Things on his own? Why are they HIS Wild Things? He is just a little boy. Whatever his Wild Things are, they are at some level or another a consequence of his relationship with those who are nurturing him, but the book has in a sense 'introjected' this into his own, lone confrontation with his Wild Things. Or, to put it crudely, 'it's my fault that I am angry and only when I am less angry will I be 'good' and deserving of hot dinner.'
But what if bad things had happened to Max (or to the child reader)? What if society's views on how best to nurture are 'bad'? Or at the very least, not good enough, or full of assumptions that we might want to question? Now, we are face to face with the 'ideology of nurture' as expressed through this book. And we might ask, is it possible for a young child to question any of these, as I am doing now? The answer to that will be in part in how that child is being nurtured. A child in a family where being sent to your room is unheard of might indeed be in a position to at least wonder why this has taken place...
Behind these concerns lie some assumptions along the lines of: 'when we read we are influenced by what we read'. We can all point to books or passages in books which we say influenced us but in truth we don't really know how this happens. After all, books are just inanimate objects. Strictly speaking, they can't influence us. We interpret the squiggles on the page using our previous life-experience and experience of texts. It's possible that the saying, 'the book influenced me' should be 'I influenced the book'! The person who makes the meaning is the reader.
That figure 'the reader' is not a free-floating balloon, above and separate from society though. The reader is 'in' class, gender, race, culture, ethnicity, sexuality and all the other ingredients of social being. The reader brings all that with them to the book.
With children's books, this means that an adult reader can only read it as an adult. This adult might imagine what a child 'might' think of a book, or the adult might remember what it felt like to read the book as a child, but ultimately, the adult is an adult. At one level, we all know this and there's no concealment or pretence otherwise. But I'll pose a problem: if I am right (or just a bit right!) about the subject of children's books being the relationship(s) between children and adults in nurture, then all adult criticism of children's books is written from one side of this relationship. Is it possible therefore that some of the ideological and emotional content of the books is hidden from us? I once asked some 11 year olds to do some improvisations and writing around the moment of abandonment in 'Hansel and Gretel' - strictly speaking the second moment of abandonment, where the children discover that the birds have eaten the bread that Hansel has been dropping on the route into the forest. I asked the 11 year olds to imagine what Hansel or Gretel were thinking and they wrote internal monologues. One girl wrote 'What have we done wrong?'.
I've often thought about this. In 'adult discourse' about relationships we might find people talking about how children might blame themselves and suppose they are responsible for events that impinge on them, even when none of it is their fault. They might 'introject' the outlook of others. So, when the children in the story hear their parents saying that they can't afford to feed them anymore, introjection would lead a child to say that it's their fault that the family hasn't got any food and so the children (they themselves) 'deserve' to be abandoned.
In all the times I've read or heard 'Hansel and Gretel', I've never had this thought. It's always been one of sadness or terror at the moment of abandonment. This particular child 'played out' a feeling of introjection that is a symptom of adult-child relationships. It's not impossible for adults to know this, remember this or empathise with this. I'm suggesting that a child-reader at that moment had access to that feeling without having encountered (I would guess) any of the psychological discussion that takes place in child psychology journals and the like.
I would argue that this is all ideological. Nurture is not some neutral or natural phenomenon. Nurture is governed and determined by what society or parts of society demand it should be. When we parent our children, this is not separate from what others around us are doing, or what are the 'prevailing ideas' on how best to do it. Education (seen here as part of nurture) is ruled tightly by governments and powerful forces in society so that it does what those governments and groups want it to do. So when a child introjects the adults' needs and desires, it takes place in contexts ruled by adults from within nurture, from within their position - which in relation to the child is 'powerful' but in relation to society is less powerful than the makers of education and the dominant ideologies around child-rearing.
So, one kind of criticism of children's literature can try to unlock the ideologies of nurture from a child's point of view. As I say, this is not simply a psychological question. Any aspect of nurture arises out of social requirements and social structures. In 'Where the Wild Things Are', the mother sends Max to his room. Why? Where does this bit of behaviour come from? For a start, a child has to have a room in order to be sent to it. Second, a parent has to have the authority to be able to do the sending. Third, a parent has to have the ideology (born from these circumstances and others) to think that 'detaching' the child will have some kind of useful or positive outcome. And, because it is a book, and not life (!) the makers of the book imply that they think this too. From a 'childist' point of view, the book could be read as a reinforcement of adult power from within a particular standard of living ('class'). Now, bearing in mind the 11 year old and her response to Hansel and Gretel's abandonment, we could ask, why is Max having to deal with the Wild Things on his own? Why are they HIS Wild Things? He is just a little boy. Whatever his Wild Things are, they are at some level or another a consequence of his relationship with those who are nurturing him, but the book has in a sense 'introjected' this into his own, lone confrontation with his Wild Things. Or, to put it crudely, 'it's my fault that I am angry and only when I am less angry will I be 'good' and deserving of hot dinner.'
But what if bad things had happened to Max (or to the child reader)? What if society's views on how best to nurture are 'bad'? Or at the very least, not good enough, or full of assumptions that we might want to question? Now, we are face to face with the 'ideology of nurture' as expressed through this book. And we might ask, is it possible for a young child to question any of these, as I am doing now? The answer to that will be in part in how that child is being nurtured. A child in a family where being sent to your room is unheard of might indeed be in a position to at least wonder why this has taken place...
Thursday 24 December 2015
What is children's literature?
I've written about this before, but I don't think I've been good at explaining myself.
Currently there are three main theories on who children's books are for:
1) for children
2) for adults
3)...though some have a 'dual audience' .
1. The first theory works on the basis of saying that if a child likes/enjoys/reads/listens to a book that seems to be intended for them, it's a 'children's book'. Fair enough.
2. The second theory is that adults (writers, editors, publishers, teachers, librarians etc) 'use' what we call 'children's books' for their own ends. Writers 'use' the writing in order to live out or play out their anxieties, hopes, desires which in effect means 'using' children to enable them to achieve objectives of their own. Others might 'use' children's books in order to 'improve' the child or 'save' the child or 'improve' society. This might be anything from widening literacy, to encouraging a belief in God, or encouraging 'questioning', or saving the children from sin and so on.
3. This third theory poses the idea that much of children's literature is 'looking over the shoulder' of the child or beyond the child to an adult - parent, carer, teacher. So, from the writing through to the packaging, the reviewing, or the recommending an adult conversation is going on which is in part about the satisfactions that adults get from the books. So there are key moments or scenes or asides which are there for adults' enjoyment.
My theory doesn't negate these but suggests that something else is going on too: so let's call this theory 4.
4. Every day thousands of conversations go on about how we, as adults bring up and educate children. These are the chats we have with each other; but by 'conversation', I also mean all the newspaper articles, books, college courses, TV programmes etc etc about how we look after, educate, treat, punish, control, entertain, feed children. It's in effect millions of words a day. Mostly, these are conversations that go on between adults without children having a say in them. So paediatricians don't discuss with children what dose to use in an anaesthetic, say. Thousands of articles are written every day about what kind of education to give children. Most of these involve adults observing or researching or commenting on children analogous to a kind of anthropology or journalism or travel writing that observes the 'other' and writes about 'the other'. (Just occasionally, though, people investigating the 'other' are beginning to think up ways in which the 'other' can devise these observations...but that's a different matter). Anyway, all these different kinds of writing and media are a 'discourse' ('conversation') about 'nurture' - that is, how adults care for children.
Alongside these conversations (this 'nurture discourse'), there is 'children's literature'. I think most children's books are part of this nurture discourse. Either openly or covertly, the adults who make children's books discuss through the books (and TV programmes and films etc) how nurture happens. The one key difference from all the other parts of the nurture discourse is that the bottom line is that they are written and created in ways that will make children want to read, listen or watch them.
What this means is that I think children's books are not simply about or for children; they are not simply about or for adults; not simply about or for a 'dual audience' - I think they are talking to or addressing the nature of the relationships between adults and children. They are really trying to talk about how it is these two sides of the nurturing process go on: children and parents; children and teachers; children and wider family; children and strangers etc. Even when books 'get rid' of the parents or parent figures early on, that very literary 'motif' is about how in real life, most children don't 'get rid' of their parents: in other words it's a fantasy based on a wish or desire. So it addresses the relationships that take place within nurture but it does it in reverse or through its opposite i.e. through what it isn't.
Meanwhile, in hundreds of different ways, children's books tackle questions of how adults 'control' or try to control children or fail to control them or promote the idea that they shouldn't be controlled. Many in the past and some in the present talk to the idea that children can or should or might 'help' or 'redeem' adults in some way or another - in the 19th century in a rather grotesque tradition, they had to die to do that! All the thousands of books about children or pre-teens or teens forging an identity for themselves, 'discovering' themselves pretty nearly all involve some kind of discovery about how the adult world is treating the child world. In other words the 'identity' being forged is in fact being forged through the interactions with people who are trying to nurture (or not trying, or failing to try etc) the person forging the identity - even when the person escapes in order to forge it, the very fact that it's an escape is also part of the 'nurture discourse', part of nurture relationships.
One key consequence of this is that children's literature tends to side with the leading child protagonist(s) in a book. The child is nearly always the agent of the action, the doer, the changer. Even when the child is wrong, or mistaken, or 'bad', in the end it's the child's point of view that will help the book to succeed with readers. This makes it different from all that adult nurture discourse which is almost entirely written from the perspective of what should we adults be doing 'to' the child or 'with' the child. Most children's books are written from the perspective of (in effect) what should 'I', the fictional child do 'to' or with parents, teachers, wider family, strangers etc. But, as we should never forget, 99% of these books are not written by children. So the complicated pattern is: adults write and create books in which they conjure up a child's point of view of the relationship between adults and children.
To take a classic example: Where the Wild Things Are. As many people have pointed out, the book is 'about' a boy trying to deal with his anger. But what is the context: his anger is directed to or against his mother i.e. his main carer, nurturing him. The first pages are 'about' that relationship. The adult decides that the anger has to be dealt with by separating the child, exiling the child. It is a model of what a punishment can be, might be - perhaps some might think should be. Everything that follows is a consequence of this punishment of separation. It poses the possibility (I'm not saying it prescribes it or even favours it) that by being separated the child has the space and time to 'discover' or 'control' his anger. In fact, 'anger' is manifested by another set of interactions with surrogate adults - the Wild Things. You could conjure up any picture of 'anger' - could be tomatoes, or wasps, or armchairs. So, in some symbolic way, Max ends up controlling some kind of wild adults i.e. an inversion of the usual process of nurture. Then he returns and finds that there is a symbol of attachment waiting for him, some hot food. So, his mother 'detached' him, he 'found' himself, comes back and someone is saying you are now OK to be 'attached' again. It is a model (again I'm not saying whether I agree or disagree with it) of the nurturing process. It addresses the relationship between a child and an adult, (and other adults) rather than being simply or only or purely 'about a child'. In effect, author and book-creators are discussing nurture in such a way that children can get involved, enjoy, speculate, reflect on it - as opposed to, say, this blogpost!
Now, we might say, all this is still 'using' the child so that adults can work out what they think about nurture (are we doing it right? wrong? not enough? too much of this or that or the other? ) but that's a slightly different matter. In fact, I think this is the 'shadow' hanging over many(most? all?) children's literature: a question we might frame as: what are these adults working out or 'playing out' about the nurturing process in this book or these books? What is the vision or objective behind this 'playing out'? What is the implied ideology about nurture that is going on? (bearing in mind that an 'implied ideology' is not necessarily the one that the reader (child or adult) accepts, takes on board, notices, or is convinced by!)
Currently there are three main theories on who children's books are for:
1) for children
2) for adults
3)...though some have a 'dual audience' .
1. The first theory works on the basis of saying that if a child likes/enjoys/reads/listens to a book that seems to be intended for them, it's a 'children's book'. Fair enough.
2. The second theory is that adults (writers, editors, publishers, teachers, librarians etc) 'use' what we call 'children's books' for their own ends. Writers 'use' the writing in order to live out or play out their anxieties, hopes, desires which in effect means 'using' children to enable them to achieve objectives of their own. Others might 'use' children's books in order to 'improve' the child or 'save' the child or 'improve' society. This might be anything from widening literacy, to encouraging a belief in God, or encouraging 'questioning', or saving the children from sin and so on.
3. This third theory poses the idea that much of children's literature is 'looking over the shoulder' of the child or beyond the child to an adult - parent, carer, teacher. So, from the writing through to the packaging, the reviewing, or the recommending an adult conversation is going on which is in part about the satisfactions that adults get from the books. So there are key moments or scenes or asides which are there for adults' enjoyment.
My theory doesn't negate these but suggests that something else is going on too: so let's call this theory 4.
4. Every day thousands of conversations go on about how we, as adults bring up and educate children. These are the chats we have with each other; but by 'conversation', I also mean all the newspaper articles, books, college courses, TV programmes etc etc about how we look after, educate, treat, punish, control, entertain, feed children. It's in effect millions of words a day. Mostly, these are conversations that go on between adults without children having a say in them. So paediatricians don't discuss with children what dose to use in an anaesthetic, say. Thousands of articles are written every day about what kind of education to give children. Most of these involve adults observing or researching or commenting on children analogous to a kind of anthropology or journalism or travel writing that observes the 'other' and writes about 'the other'. (Just occasionally, though, people investigating the 'other' are beginning to think up ways in which the 'other' can devise these observations...but that's a different matter). Anyway, all these different kinds of writing and media are a 'discourse' ('conversation') about 'nurture' - that is, how adults care for children.
Alongside these conversations (this 'nurture discourse'), there is 'children's literature'. I think most children's books are part of this nurture discourse. Either openly or covertly, the adults who make children's books discuss through the books (and TV programmes and films etc) how nurture happens. The one key difference from all the other parts of the nurture discourse is that the bottom line is that they are written and created in ways that will make children want to read, listen or watch them.
What this means is that I think children's books are not simply about or for children; they are not simply about or for adults; not simply about or for a 'dual audience' - I think they are talking to or addressing the nature of the relationships between adults and children. They are really trying to talk about how it is these two sides of the nurturing process go on: children and parents; children and teachers; children and wider family; children and strangers etc. Even when books 'get rid' of the parents or parent figures early on, that very literary 'motif' is about how in real life, most children don't 'get rid' of their parents: in other words it's a fantasy based on a wish or desire. So it addresses the relationships that take place within nurture but it does it in reverse or through its opposite i.e. through what it isn't.
Meanwhile, in hundreds of different ways, children's books tackle questions of how adults 'control' or try to control children or fail to control them or promote the idea that they shouldn't be controlled. Many in the past and some in the present talk to the idea that children can or should or might 'help' or 'redeem' adults in some way or another - in the 19th century in a rather grotesque tradition, they had to die to do that! All the thousands of books about children or pre-teens or teens forging an identity for themselves, 'discovering' themselves pretty nearly all involve some kind of discovery about how the adult world is treating the child world. In other words the 'identity' being forged is in fact being forged through the interactions with people who are trying to nurture (or not trying, or failing to try etc) the person forging the identity - even when the person escapes in order to forge it, the very fact that it's an escape is also part of the 'nurture discourse', part of nurture relationships.
One key consequence of this is that children's literature tends to side with the leading child protagonist(s) in a book. The child is nearly always the agent of the action, the doer, the changer. Even when the child is wrong, or mistaken, or 'bad', in the end it's the child's point of view that will help the book to succeed with readers. This makes it different from all that adult nurture discourse which is almost entirely written from the perspective of what should we adults be doing 'to' the child or 'with' the child. Most children's books are written from the perspective of (in effect) what should 'I', the fictional child do 'to' or with parents, teachers, wider family, strangers etc. But, as we should never forget, 99% of these books are not written by children. So the complicated pattern is: adults write and create books in which they conjure up a child's point of view of the relationship between adults and children.
To take a classic example: Where the Wild Things Are. As many people have pointed out, the book is 'about' a boy trying to deal with his anger. But what is the context: his anger is directed to or against his mother i.e. his main carer, nurturing him. The first pages are 'about' that relationship. The adult decides that the anger has to be dealt with by separating the child, exiling the child. It is a model of what a punishment can be, might be - perhaps some might think should be. Everything that follows is a consequence of this punishment of separation. It poses the possibility (I'm not saying it prescribes it or even favours it) that by being separated the child has the space and time to 'discover' or 'control' his anger. In fact, 'anger' is manifested by another set of interactions with surrogate adults - the Wild Things. You could conjure up any picture of 'anger' - could be tomatoes, or wasps, or armchairs. So, in some symbolic way, Max ends up controlling some kind of wild adults i.e. an inversion of the usual process of nurture. Then he returns and finds that there is a symbol of attachment waiting for him, some hot food. So, his mother 'detached' him, he 'found' himself, comes back and someone is saying you are now OK to be 'attached' again. It is a model (again I'm not saying whether I agree or disagree with it) of the nurturing process. It addresses the relationship between a child and an adult, (and other adults) rather than being simply or only or purely 'about a child'. In effect, author and book-creators are discussing nurture in such a way that children can get involved, enjoy, speculate, reflect on it - as opposed to, say, this blogpost!
Now, we might say, all this is still 'using' the child so that adults can work out what they think about nurture (are we doing it right? wrong? not enough? too much of this or that or the other? ) but that's a slightly different matter. In fact, I think this is the 'shadow' hanging over many(most? all?) children's literature: a question we might frame as: what are these adults working out or 'playing out' about the nurturing process in this book or these books? What is the vision or objective behind this 'playing out'? What is the implied ideology about nurture that is going on? (bearing in mind that an 'implied ideology' is not necessarily the one that the reader (child or adult) accepts, takes on board, notices, or is convinced by!)
Monday 21 December 2015
More pages from the Alice manuscript: Alice meets a man lying in a doorway
Another find from Christ Church College, Oxford - the Alice manuscript - more pages:
Alice was walking down the street when she came across a lump in a doorway.
She bent down to look closer and saw that it wasn't really a lump, it was a person.
'Are you a person?' said Alice.
'Only in a manner of speaking,' said the man - for it was a man.
'Why are you lying in this doorway?' Alice said.
'Where else do you suggest I go?' the man said.
'Home.' said Alice, 'Why don't you go home?'
'Well, now,' said the man. 'I would most certainly go home right now, if I had one.'
'You haven't got a home?' asked Alice.
'Let me explain,' said the man, 'some people deliberately lose their home so that they can get money from the Blatherment, but they're putting a stop to all that.'
'Is that good?' said Alice.
'That puts things right,' said the man.
'Now what?' said Alice.
'Well,' said the man, 'now I don't have a home and I don't have money. That evens things up nicely. I used to have no money but I had a home and that can't be right, can it?'
'Have you got anything to eat?' said Alice.
'Nope,' said the man, 'you see: that matches too - no home, no money, no food.'
Alice felt in her pocket and she still had some of the cake she found earlier. She hoped it wasn't any of that funny food that made her bigger. Or was it smaller? She was just about to hand some to the man, when he stopped her.
'No, no, no, no,' he said, 'that just encourages me.'
'Encourages you to do what?' said Alice.
'Encourages me to live,' said the man.
'Oh, I see,' said Alice, but then she thought that encouraging someone to live sounded like quite a good idea.
'I'm not sure that what you're saying makes sense,' said Alice.
'Look, the way to make people better off,' said the man, 'is to make them poorer. At the moment, I'm doing the poorer bit and at some time later, I'll be better off. Just you see.'
'How long till then?' said Alice.
'Maybe a couple of years,' said the man.
'Won't you need to eat in that time?' Alice asked, 'and it's getting cold. It's not good for you getting cold.'
Just then the door opened. Alice and the man looked in and they could see now that it was some kind of bank.
Maybe they'll let him go in there, thought Alice, but just then two men came out, talking:
'We've turned the corner,' said one.
'Things are getting better,' said the other.
They closed the door of the bank behind them, locked the door several times and walked on.
Alice sat down next to the man in the doorway.
'You see, it's what I said' he said to her, 'things are getting better. Good news, eh?'
'Yes,' said Alice...'I mean...er....'
But she couldn't finish what she was saying. She wasn't sure that 'getting better' quite said it all.
She looked at the man.
He was lying down again and he had shut his eyes.
Alice was walking down the street when she came across a lump in a doorway.
She bent down to look closer and saw that it wasn't really a lump, it was a person.
'Are you a person?' said Alice.
'Only in a manner of speaking,' said the man - for it was a man.
'Why are you lying in this doorway?' Alice said.
'Where else do you suggest I go?' the man said.
'Home.' said Alice, 'Why don't you go home?'
'Well, now,' said the man. 'I would most certainly go home right now, if I had one.'
'You haven't got a home?' asked Alice.
'Let me explain,' said the man, 'some people deliberately lose their home so that they can get money from the Blatherment, but they're putting a stop to all that.'
'Is that good?' said Alice.
'That puts things right,' said the man.
'Now what?' said Alice.
'Well,' said the man, 'now I don't have a home and I don't have money. That evens things up nicely. I used to have no money but I had a home and that can't be right, can it?'
'Have you got anything to eat?' said Alice.
'Nope,' said the man, 'you see: that matches too - no home, no money, no food.'
Alice felt in her pocket and she still had some of the cake she found earlier. She hoped it wasn't any of that funny food that made her bigger. Or was it smaller? She was just about to hand some to the man, when he stopped her.
'No, no, no, no,' he said, 'that just encourages me.'
'Encourages you to do what?' said Alice.
'Encourages me to live,' said the man.
'Oh, I see,' said Alice, but then she thought that encouraging someone to live sounded like quite a good idea.
'I'm not sure that what you're saying makes sense,' said Alice.
'Look, the way to make people better off,' said the man, 'is to make them poorer. At the moment, I'm doing the poorer bit and at some time later, I'll be better off. Just you see.'
'How long till then?' said Alice.
'Maybe a couple of years,' said the man.
'Won't you need to eat in that time?' Alice asked, 'and it's getting cold. It's not good for you getting cold.'
Just then the door opened. Alice and the man looked in and they could see now that it was some kind of bank.
Maybe they'll let him go in there, thought Alice, but just then two men came out, talking:
'We've turned the corner,' said one.
'Things are getting better,' said the other.
They closed the door of the bank behind them, locked the door several times and walked on.
Alice sat down next to the man in the doorway.
'You see, it's what I said' he said to her, 'things are getting better. Good news, eh?'
'Yes,' said Alice...'I mean...er....'
But she couldn't finish what she was saying. She wasn't sure that 'getting better' quite said it all.
She looked at the man.
He was lying down again and he had shut his eyes.
Wednesday 16 December 2015
Refugees are the new bad people
Refugees are the new bad people.
We always need bad people.
We love having bad people.
We wouldn't be able to get by without bad people.
We like having bad people in newspaper headlines.
We like having bad people talked about on the radio.
Bad people make us feel better than them.
We are glad we are good and they are bad.
People come on TV and tell us that they are
going to deal with the bad people.
They are going to stop the bad people.
They list what the bad people do
and it's all bad.
And there are always too many bad people
doing things that stop us doing good things.
So the people on the TV have plans for the bad people:
new laws are needed
new places to put the bad people
more people in uniform to make sure the bad people
don't spread.
This talk about bad people
makes us like the people who come on TV
to tell us these things.
We'll feel safer if these TV people are in charge.
C'mon, we say, deal with the bad people now
do bad things to the bad people
that's the way to show we are good
we have no choice
sometimes we just have to be bad to be good.
C'mon.
We always need bad people.
We love having bad people.
We wouldn't be able to get by without bad people.
We like having bad people in newspaper headlines.
We like having bad people talked about on the radio.
Bad people make us feel better than them.
We are glad we are good and they are bad.
People come on TV and tell us that they are
going to deal with the bad people.
They are going to stop the bad people.
They list what the bad people do
and it's all bad.
And there are always too many bad people
doing things that stop us doing good things.
So the people on the TV have plans for the bad people:
new laws are needed
new places to put the bad people
more people in uniform to make sure the bad people
don't spread.
This talk about bad people
makes us like the people who come on TV
to tell us these things.
We'll feel safer if these TV people are in charge.
C'mon, we say, deal with the bad people now
do bad things to the bad people
that's the way to show we are good
we have no choice
sometimes we just have to be bad to be good.
C'mon.
Thursday 10 December 2015
3 blogs as one article:'Good writing', 'well-edited writing', teaching, assessing, helping pupils write, publishing
(I've put all three posts as one article here. Please feel free to copy it, print it, distribute it, discuss it, use it, share it. My only request is that you credit me with having written it!)
THREE
ONE
The kind of writing that teachers are supposed to teach in schools is the kind of writing that comes up in exams.
This kind of writing is geared towards what can and must be assessed according to mark schemes.
People who advise teachers or tell teachers how to teach writing produce booklets, books, text books, courses on how to teach writing.
What they mean is that these are booklets, books, text books and courses on how to teach the kind of writing that comes up in exams.
Meanwhile, people called 'writers' write stuff that is not the same as the kind of writing that comes up in exams.
The booklets, books, text books and courses for writing that comes up in exams are full of formulae for what makes good writing. They mean writing that is good for exams.
These formulae are such things as Vocabulary Connectives Openings Punctuation, Wow words, and stuff to do with 'fronted adverbials', 'embedded relative clauses', 'noun clauses'.
In fact, under instruction from these booklets, books, text books and courses, the application of these formulae has come to mean 'good writing'.
It is not 'good writing'. It is 'writing for exams'.
Meanwhile, people called 'writers', write stuff that is not the same as the kind of writing that comes up in exams.
When you read the kind of writing that children do under the influence of the booklets, books, text-books and courses, you realise that a good deal of it starts to sound the same.
You notice strings of adjectives, a good deal of adverbs, many randomly inserted relative clauses, odd sounding 'fronted adverbials' (which the children will have been told may also be called 'time connectives').
I might say this is not 'good writing'.
It's what I would call 'bad writing'.
To which you might say, 'What is good writing?'
Fair enough.
How do we decide what is 'good writing'.
I don't think we can decide what is 'good writing' according to tiny differences of percentage marks.
I think we can come up with a loose general feel of what is 'good writing' perhaps on a three-grade scale of 'very good', 'good' 'not so good'.
Really? What criteria?
First - 'first impression'. That's a valuable resource to think about when thinking if something is good writing or not. You could 'grade' that first impression on my 3 grade scale. Perhaps.
One criterion, I would say is 'surprise'. Is there anything about this piece of writing that is unusual, different, grabs the attention, surprises? A lot, a little, or not at all? (3 grade scale, again)
Another: is there anything going on in this writing that keeps my attention? Are there things going on with this writing that keep me interested? Or am I dozing off? Am I losing interest? (3 grade scale)
Another: (more complicated and theoretical) how has this writer 'transformed their sources'. This rests on the theory known as 'intertextuality'. This theory says that what we all do is write with the 'already'. We use the resources of language, and forms of language (e.g. literary forms, 'the essay', the story', 'the play', 'the newspaper article' and so on) that are in our heads or that we have just come across. A piece of writing that we do, 'transforms' these. That is 'originality'.
As we read a piece we will have a sense of shadowy shapes of previous writings - maybe because we're reading 'a recount' - it's like all other recounts BUT has it in anyway slightly differently or interestingly departed from that. Other times the shadowy shape might be a 'motif' or 'scene' or 'type' e.g. 'boy meets girl' or 'I walked into the building' or whatever. Has the writer simply taken these without modifying them, or does it feel as if the writer has done something different and interesting? i.e. has the writer transformed his/her sources in interesting (or not so interesting) ways? (3 grade scale)
So, if you were to take these four forms of assessment, and put each on a scale of 1-3, would you be able to come up with a 'mark'? If three of you looked at a piece of writing, and you averaged out your scores would you arrive at a set of pieces of writing which genuinely varied from what were 'very good', 'good' and 'not so good'.
Now all this is relatively trivial and unimportant, if you can't then do something with this which would help all the writers (children or adults) to write more (rather than less) interesting things. So, what might help?
Share the writing with explanations as to why and how you arrived at the conclusions the readers came up with for that loose grade - so all three categories of writing ('very good', 'good' 'not so good') are shared. Do we agree with that classification? Why don't we agree?
How might we learn from each other? What aspects of someone else's writing might help me with mine? What aspects of my writing might help you with yours?
TWO
But what about correctness? What about producing correct writing?
To which I say:
1. Writing is much more varied than the curriculum allows for. Many kinds of writing do not operate according to the rules of continuous, formal, non-fiction prose.
As examples:
poetry,
some passages within fiction,
song lyrics,
posters,
many parts of newspapers and magazines - especially headlines, sub-heads and summaries or 'boxes', billboards,
plays,
film scripts,
powerpoints.
None of these 'forms' of written language are trivial or unnecessary or unimportant. To ignore them is to misrepresent what 'writing' is.
2. Even continuous, formal, non-fiction prose is open to variation and change. A comparison over, say, 50 years of newspaper editorials would find a great difference in some key aspects of sentence structure and length, use of colloquialisms, use of 'non-sentence' forms as sentences and so on.
3. The correctness we usually talk about when we say 'correctness' is about a specific set of punctuation 'rules', prescribed conventions of grammar and spelling. As I say, these only apply regularly and mostly in the circumstances of formal, continuous, non-fiction prose. In other words, they are used for that purpose. However, this is not the same as 'good writing'. It is quite possible to deliver a piece of writing using that specific set of conventions whilst being extremely dull, illogical, pointless, repetitive, hackneyed, imitative and so on.
4. This leads me to think that in an ideal world we would have two categories: 'good writing' - (which I have tried to cover in the previous blog) and 'well-edited writing'.
5. I think we should teach how to do 'well-edited writing' in schools. I don't think we need to do it all the time. I don't think we should kid children and students that 'well-edited writing' is the same as 'good writing' nor that all 'good writing' needs to 'well edited' according to the rules of formal, continuous, non-fiction prose - especially when writing those other 'forms' that I have listed above. These operate according to other conventions or indeed, sometimes, invented conventions.
I think that if we keep the two fields of 'well-edited writing' and 'good writing' separate we can also say that for certain purposes, it is vital and necessary to apply 'good-editing' to 'good writing' - especially when we 'publish' what we write in written form (as opposed to when we perform it).
6. We can teach 'good-editing' in many different ways. There isn't only one dull prescriptive way of doing it. We can use games, editing each other's writing, making deliberate 'mistakes' and seeing if we can spot them. We can 'investigate' of continuous formal non-fiction writing to see whether we can deduce the rules being used. We can look at the other varieties of written language to see how they are not using those rules. For example, we could go on expedition and look at billboards, or examine ads in newspapers or on TV and see how punctuation and sentence grammar are laid to one side for the sake of putting over powerful messages (or messages that are attempting to be powerful).
7. We should not let the 'good editing' tail wag the 'good writing' dog. We should not penalise 'good writing' for not being 'well-edited'. If we want to mark 'good editing' then that's fine, we can give it marks. But let's not pretend it's anything else other than 'good editing'.
THREE
The final part of this set of thoughts on writing and teaching concerns what I've been calling 'publishing'.
In an ideal world, schools would be even more of publishing houses than they are. That's to say one of the in-built functions and purposes of a school would be to publish the thoughts and ideas and experiences of the people in and at that school.
Of course, this goes on to a limited extent in most schools and in some schools a good deal. To be precise, I mean by 'publishing' any of the following and any others that people can think of:
wall displays,
assemblies
cabaret evenings
booklets
books
blogs
school bulletins
plays
sketches
magazines
concerts
shows
posters
videos
films
powerpoints
radio shows
tv programmes
And these wouldn't be one-offs or exceptions but a continuous part of what everyone would understand 'school' to be: 'I go to school to write things or perform things or publish things for the....magazine, the show, the book that my friend and I are writing....' and so on.
The school would make every effort to help pupils develop the means of knowing how to produce these, whether that means typing, printing, distributing, rigging lights, sound-recording, directing shows...and so on.
What I've called 'editing' in the previous section would be part of this. It would be understood that the written side of publication involves 'good-editing'. Adults and older pupils how know how to do this, can help those who are less confident to do it. The purpose of editing is to make the written products intelligible to the most number of people.
I am suggesting here that a school geared to see 'writing' in this way, is a school showing pupils (and all the adults too) that writing has a purpose, writing is for an audience, and that audiences help you write better.
In an ideal world, schools would be even more of publishing houses than they are. That's to say one of the in-built functions and purposes of a school would be to publish the thoughts and ideas and experiences of the people in and at that school.
Of course, this goes on to a limited extent in most schools and in some schools a good deal. To be precise, I mean by 'publishing' any of the following and any others that people can think of:
wall displays,
assemblies
cabaret evenings
booklets
books
blogs
school bulletins
plays
sketches
magazines
concerts
shows
posters
videos
films
powerpoints
radio shows
tv programmes
And these wouldn't be one-offs or exceptions but a continuous part of what everyone would understand 'school' to be: 'I go to school to write things or perform things or publish things for the....magazine, the show, the book that my friend and I are writing....' and so on.
The school would make every effort to help pupils develop the means of knowing how to produce these, whether that means typing, printing, distributing, rigging lights, sound-recording, directing shows...and so on.
What I've called 'editing' in the previous section would be part of this. It would be understood that the written side of publication involves 'good-editing'. Adults and older pupils how know how to do this, can help those who are less confident to do it. The purpose of editing is to make the written products intelligible to the most number of people.
I am suggesting here that a school geared to see 'writing' in this way, is a school showing pupils (and all the adults too) that writing has a purpose, writing is for an audience, and that audiences help you write better.
Schools can do writing for a purpose by being 'publishers'
The final part of this set of thoughts on writing and teaching concerns what I've been calling 'publishing'.
In an ideal world, schools would be even more of publishing houses than they are. That's to say one of the in-built functions and purposes of a school would be to publish the thoughts and ideas and experiences of the people in and at that school.
Of course, this goes on to a limited extent in most schools and in some schools a good deal. To be precise, I mean by 'publishing' any of the following and any others that people can think of:
wall displays,
assemblies
cabaret evenings
booklets
books
blogs
school bulletins
plays
sketches
magazines
concerts
shows
posters
videos
films
powerpoints
radio shows
tv programmes
And these wouldn't be one-offs or exceptions but a continuous part of what everyone would understand 'school' to be: 'I go to school to write things or perform things or publish things for the....magazine, the show, the book that my friend and I are writing....' and so on.
The school would make every effort to help pupils develop the means of knowing how to produce these, whether that means typing, printing, distributing, rigging lights, sound-recording, directing shows...and so on.
What I've called 'editing' in the previous section would be part of this. It would be understood that the written side of publication involves 'good-editing'. Adults and older pupils how know how to do this, can help those who are less confident to do it. The purpose of editing is to make the written products intelligible to the most number of people.
I am suggesting here that a school geared to see 'writing' in this way, is a school showing pupils (and all the adults too) that writing has a purpose, writing is for an audience, and that audiences help you write better.
In an ideal world, schools would be even more of publishing houses than they are. That's to say one of the in-built functions and purposes of a school would be to publish the thoughts and ideas and experiences of the people in and at that school.
Of course, this goes on to a limited extent in most schools and in some schools a good deal. To be precise, I mean by 'publishing' any of the following and any others that people can think of:
wall displays,
assemblies
cabaret evenings
booklets
books
blogs
school bulletins
plays
sketches
magazines
concerts
shows
posters
videos
films
powerpoints
radio shows
tv programmes
And these wouldn't be one-offs or exceptions but a continuous part of what everyone would understand 'school' to be: 'I go to school to write things or perform things or publish things for the....magazine, the show, the book that my friend and I are writing....' and so on.
The school would make every effort to help pupils develop the means of knowing how to produce these, whether that means typing, printing, distributing, rigging lights, sound-recording, directing shows...and so on.
What I've called 'editing' in the previous section would be part of this. It would be understood that the written side of publication involves 'good-editing'. Adults and older pupils how know how to do this, can help those who are less confident to do it. The purpose of editing is to make the written products intelligible to the most number of people.
I am suggesting here that a school geared to see 'writing' in this way, is a school showing pupils (and all the adults too) that writing has a purpose, writing is for an audience, and that audiences help you write better.
What's the difference between 'good writing' and 'well-edited writing'?
In response to my blog about assessment, I will reply: But what about correctness? What about producing correct writing?
To which I say:
1. Writing is much more varied than the curriculum allows for. Many kinds of writing do not operate according to the rules of continuous, formal, non-fiction prose.
As examples:
poetry,
some passages within fiction,
song lyrics,
posters,
many parts of newspapers and magazines - especially headlines, sub-heads and summaries or 'boxes', billboards,
plays,
film scripts,
powerpoints.
None of these 'forms' of written language are trivial or unnecessary or unimportant. To ignore them is to misrepresent what 'writing' is.
2. Even continuous, formal, non-fiction prose is open to variation and change. A comparison over, say, 50 years of newspaper editorials would find a great difference in some key aspects of sentence structure and length, use of colloquialisms, use of 'non-sentence' forms as sentences and so on.
3. The correctness we usually talk about when we say 'correctness' is about a specific set of punctuation 'rules', prescribed conventions of grammar and spelling. As I say, these only apply regularly and mostly in the circumstances of formal, continuous, non-fiction prose. In other words, they are used for that purpose. However, this is not the same as 'good writing'. It is quite possible to deliver a piece of writing using that specific set of conventions whilst being extremely dull, illogical, pointless, repetitive, hackneyed, imitative and so on.
4. This leads me to think that in an ideal world we would have two categories: 'good writing' - (which I have tried to cover in the previous blog) and 'well-edited writing'.
5. I think we should teach how to do 'well-edited writing' in schools. I don't think we need to do it all the time. I don't think we should kid children and students that 'well-edited writing' is the same as 'good writing' nor that all 'good writing' needs to 'well edited' according to the rules of formal, continuous, non-fiction prose - especially when writing those other 'forms' that I have listed above. These operate according to other conventions or indeed, sometimes, invented conventions.
I think that if we keep the two fields of 'well-edited writing' and 'good writing' separate we can also say that for certain purposes, it is vital and necessary to apply 'good-editing' to 'good writing' - especially when we 'publish' what we write in written form (as opposed to when we perform it).
6. We can teach 'good-editing' in many different ways. There isn't only one dull prescriptive way of doing it. We can use games, editing each other's writing, making deliberate 'mistakes' and seeing if we can spot them. We can 'investigate' of continuous formal non-fiction writing to see whether we can deduce the rules being used. We can look at the other varieties of written language to see how they are not using those rules. For example, we could go on expedition and look at billboards, or examine ads in newspapers or on TV and see how punctuation and sentence grammar are laid to one side for the sake of putting over powerful messages (or messages that are attempting to be powerful).
7. We should not let the 'good editing' tail wag the 'good writing' dog. We should not penalise 'good writing' for not being 'well-edited'. If we want to mark 'good editing' then that's fine, we can give it marks. But let's not pretend it's anything else other than 'good editing'.
To which I say:
1. Writing is much more varied than the curriculum allows for. Many kinds of writing do not operate according to the rules of continuous, formal, non-fiction prose.
As examples:
poetry,
some passages within fiction,
song lyrics,
posters,
many parts of newspapers and magazines - especially headlines, sub-heads and summaries or 'boxes', billboards,
plays,
film scripts,
powerpoints.
None of these 'forms' of written language are trivial or unnecessary or unimportant. To ignore them is to misrepresent what 'writing' is.
2. Even continuous, formal, non-fiction prose is open to variation and change. A comparison over, say, 50 years of newspaper editorials would find a great difference in some key aspects of sentence structure and length, use of colloquialisms, use of 'non-sentence' forms as sentences and so on.
3. The correctness we usually talk about when we say 'correctness' is about a specific set of punctuation 'rules', prescribed conventions of grammar and spelling. As I say, these only apply regularly and mostly in the circumstances of formal, continuous, non-fiction prose. In other words, they are used for that purpose. However, this is not the same as 'good writing'. It is quite possible to deliver a piece of writing using that specific set of conventions whilst being extremely dull, illogical, pointless, repetitive, hackneyed, imitative and so on.
4. This leads me to think that in an ideal world we would have two categories: 'good writing' - (which I have tried to cover in the previous blog) and 'well-edited writing'.
5. I think we should teach how to do 'well-edited writing' in schools. I don't think we need to do it all the time. I don't think we should kid children and students that 'well-edited writing' is the same as 'good writing' nor that all 'good writing' needs to 'well edited' according to the rules of formal, continuous, non-fiction prose - especially when writing those other 'forms' that I have listed above. These operate according to other conventions or indeed, sometimes, invented conventions.
I think that if we keep the two fields of 'well-edited writing' and 'good writing' separate we can also say that for certain purposes, it is vital and necessary to apply 'good-editing' to 'good writing' - especially when we 'publish' what we write in written form (as opposed to when we perform it).
6. We can teach 'good-editing' in many different ways. There isn't only one dull prescriptive way of doing it. We can use games, editing each other's writing, making deliberate 'mistakes' and seeing if we can spot them. We can 'investigate' of continuous formal non-fiction writing to see whether we can deduce the rules being used. We can look at the other varieties of written language to see how they are not using those rules. For example, we could go on expedition and look at billboards, or examine ads in newspapers or on TV and see how punctuation and sentence grammar are laid to one side for the sake of putting over powerful messages (or messages that are attempting to be powerful).
7. We should not let the 'good editing' tail wag the 'good writing' dog. We should not penalise 'good writing' for not being 'well-edited'. If we want to mark 'good editing' then that's fine, we can give it marks. But let's not pretend it's anything else other than 'good editing'.
Back in the room with Blair
You know that moment when hypnotists on TV say
'And you're back in the room'?
And the people who were hypnotised don't remember
anything of what they saw or did?
It's like that with me and Tony Blair.
He comes on TV and the moment I see his face
and hear his voice, it's as if he's just said,
'And you're back in the room.'
and I've forgotten all about the dodgy dossier
I've forgotten all about the war in Iraq
I've forgotten all about the deaths
he is just
saying really interesting things about
how good it all was when he was in charge.
I look at him and think,
'I'm back in the room...
and whatever he said was the problem with Iraq
it's better there now
and whatever he might say is the problem with anywhere
in the world
will be better if we drop bombs on it,
I'm back in the room
and ready to listen to him,
I'm back in the room.
'And you're back in the room'?
And the people who were hypnotised don't remember
anything of what they saw or did?
It's like that with me and Tony Blair.
He comes on TV and the moment I see his face
and hear his voice, it's as if he's just said,
'And you're back in the room.'
and I've forgotten all about the dodgy dossier
I've forgotten all about the war in Iraq
I've forgotten all about the deaths
he is just
saying really interesting things about
how good it all was when he was in charge.
I look at him and think,
'I'm back in the room...
and whatever he said was the problem with Iraq
it's better there now
and whatever he might say is the problem with anywhere
in the world
will be better if we drop bombs on it,
I'm back in the room
and ready to listen to him,
I'm back in the room.
Wednesday 9 December 2015
Dangerous, murderous group
As a long standing Labour Party member
who was proud to have supported the invasion of Iraq
I would like to alert you to the dangers of
Stop the War.
They are a dangerous, murderous group.
I deeply resent the fact that some people
in Stop the War say that I am part of some
dangerous, murderous group when all I ever
did was vote for the invasion of Iraq.
I can see no connection between the invasion of Iraq
and being dangerous or murderous.
The Stop the War people on the other hand
have a direct link with being dangerous and murderous.
You can tell it from the name:
Stop the War.
There, that says it all, doesn't it?
That's why we must stand together
and fight for a safer, stronger Britain.
who was proud to have supported the invasion of Iraq
I would like to alert you to the dangers of
Stop the War.
They are a dangerous, murderous group.
I deeply resent the fact that some people
in Stop the War say that I am part of some
dangerous, murderous group when all I ever
did was vote for the invasion of Iraq.
I can see no connection between the invasion of Iraq
and being dangerous or murderous.
The Stop the War people on the other hand
have a direct link with being dangerous and murderous.
You can tell it from the name:
Stop the War.
There, that says it all, doesn't it?
That's why we must stand together
and fight for a safer, stronger Britain.
Buy it, want it, need it, buy it, want it, need it...
Excuse me for being obvious but I've been thinking about 'consumerism'.
Human beings have always had needs. As hominids emerged in evolution, co-operating to hunt and survive, they/we made tools and hunting weapons in order to do that. That said, when I went to Grimes Graves I was told that neolithic people also produced flints that were identical as those used for hunting and skinning but hoarded them. So, there are piles of brand new, unused flints in mini-hoards. The reckoning is, is that they are for some kind of ritual or religious purpose, perhaps as votive offering to the gods thanking him/her/them for enabling the hunt or wishing that the god/goddess brings it to fruition. Either way, it's a 'surplus' of objects that these people have made - beyond practical needs or use. In other words, early on in societies, humans discovered they could produce stuff beyond utility.
Between then and now, humans also discovered that you can produce objects for play and leisure and that these can be sold. They discovered that even the most basic items of basic, essential need can be sold - the clothes we absolutely need to cover ourselves against the weather, and of course foodstuffs. And then beyond that, even, humans found that we can sell images of ourselves to each other, we can sell ideas, we can sell each other (slavery, prostitution, football players). Even the 'basic-need' products can be turned into items that appear to be more worthy than others based on what they look like rather than what is in their content: a packet of crisps can be more 'desirable' than a bit of protein that I need. We now live in a world where virtually anything and everything, anybody, any feeling is itself marketable, or, just as importantly, can be used, adopted or adapted to make something else marketable.
For all these things to be sold, they have to be produced. You have to have a system (or several interlocking systems) of production. The present system involves bringing people together in order for owners to make profits. That's the only system available today. Now, when politicians talk, they talk as if the function and purpose of production is to bring us all these goods that we consume. So, when they talk about 'the economy' or 'Britain doing better' and the like, and 'living standards' they imply that this is all about the pleasure we get from going beyond subsistence into consuming the things we like and want and desire. What's more, in order to reach this point of pleasure, we have to have the profit-making system. Otherwise we wouldn't have all that pleasure and gratified desire. (Let's leave to one side for the moment, that millions don't get to gratify the desires created by the system because they don't have the means (money) to get what they want!)
So, our consumerism becomes the justification for profit-making. Profits, we should remember, are what's pocketed by owners. The need to make a tiny group of people rich becomes, in their language, the essential and only way in which we can become satisfied. Their wealth is our means to become happy, they are telling us. We must help them become rich. (Of course they don't express it exactly in those terms.)
This puts into context the kinds of 'news' reports we hear which talk about retail sales as a problem for all of us. So, if Tesco's sales, say, are going down, the news report invites us to share in the worry about this. We hear about how this or that is going to 'stimulate' demand. We need to be buying more, they tell us. We need to be buying more so that these firms can 'do better'.
Now, pull back from that. Do we need to be buying more because we need what they are selling us? OK, sometimes. But not all the time. And not all of the stuff they say we need. In fact, they're not bothered whether we need it or not. We just have to have it - not because we actually need it, but in order for the owners to secure the profits they need. We consume for them. Not for us. And yet it 'feels' as if it's for us. 'I'm going to buy another jumper.' Not 'I'm going to buy something that will help Jumper Inc. owners be richer.'
(As I say, this is in its own way, very obvious. And very Christmassy. Which I enjoy, by the way. I am not Scrooge.)
Human beings have always had needs. As hominids emerged in evolution, co-operating to hunt and survive, they/we made tools and hunting weapons in order to do that. That said, when I went to Grimes Graves I was told that neolithic people also produced flints that were identical as those used for hunting and skinning but hoarded them. So, there are piles of brand new, unused flints in mini-hoards. The reckoning is, is that they are for some kind of ritual or religious purpose, perhaps as votive offering to the gods thanking him/her/them for enabling the hunt or wishing that the god/goddess brings it to fruition. Either way, it's a 'surplus' of objects that these people have made - beyond practical needs or use. In other words, early on in societies, humans discovered they could produce stuff beyond utility.
Between then and now, humans also discovered that you can produce objects for play and leisure and that these can be sold. They discovered that even the most basic items of basic, essential need can be sold - the clothes we absolutely need to cover ourselves against the weather, and of course foodstuffs. And then beyond that, even, humans found that we can sell images of ourselves to each other, we can sell ideas, we can sell each other (slavery, prostitution, football players). Even the 'basic-need' products can be turned into items that appear to be more worthy than others based on what they look like rather than what is in their content: a packet of crisps can be more 'desirable' than a bit of protein that I need. We now live in a world where virtually anything and everything, anybody, any feeling is itself marketable, or, just as importantly, can be used, adopted or adapted to make something else marketable.
For all these things to be sold, they have to be produced. You have to have a system (or several interlocking systems) of production. The present system involves bringing people together in order for owners to make profits. That's the only system available today. Now, when politicians talk, they talk as if the function and purpose of production is to bring us all these goods that we consume. So, when they talk about 'the economy' or 'Britain doing better' and the like, and 'living standards' they imply that this is all about the pleasure we get from going beyond subsistence into consuming the things we like and want and desire. What's more, in order to reach this point of pleasure, we have to have the profit-making system. Otherwise we wouldn't have all that pleasure and gratified desire. (Let's leave to one side for the moment, that millions don't get to gratify the desires created by the system because they don't have the means (money) to get what they want!)
So, our consumerism becomes the justification for profit-making. Profits, we should remember, are what's pocketed by owners. The need to make a tiny group of people rich becomes, in their language, the essential and only way in which we can become satisfied. Their wealth is our means to become happy, they are telling us. We must help them become rich. (Of course they don't express it exactly in those terms.)
This puts into context the kinds of 'news' reports we hear which talk about retail sales as a problem for all of us. So, if Tesco's sales, say, are going down, the news report invites us to share in the worry about this. We hear about how this or that is going to 'stimulate' demand. We need to be buying more, they tell us. We need to be buying more so that these firms can 'do better'.
Now, pull back from that. Do we need to be buying more because we need what they are selling us? OK, sometimes. But not all the time. And not all of the stuff they say we need. In fact, they're not bothered whether we need it or not. We just have to have it - not because we actually need it, but in order for the owners to secure the profits they need. We consume for them. Not for us. And yet it 'feels' as if it's for us. 'I'm going to buy another jumper.' Not 'I'm going to buy something that will help Jumper Inc. owners be richer.'
(As I say, this is in its own way, very obvious. And very Christmassy. Which I enjoy, by the way. I am not Scrooge.)
How might we talk about 'good writing' in schools?
The kind of writing that teachers are supposed to teach in schools is the kind of writing that comes up in exams.
This kind of writing is geared towards what can and must be assessed according to mark schemes.
People who advise teachers or tell teachers how to teach writing produce booklets, books, text books, courses on how to teach writing.
What they mean is that these are booklets, books, text books and courses on how to teach the kind of writing that comes up in exams.
Meanwhile, people called 'writers' write stuff that is not the same as the kind of writing that comes up in exams.
The booklets, books, text books and courses for writing that comes up in exams are full of formulae for what makes good writing. They mean writing that is good for exams.
These formulae are such things as Vocabulary Connectives Openings Punctuation, Wow words, and stuff to do with 'fronted adverbials', 'embedded relative clauses', 'noun clauses'.
In fact, under instruction from these booklets, books, text books and courses, the application of these formulae has come to mean 'good writing'.
It is not 'good writing'. It is 'writing for exams'.
Meanwhile, people called 'writers', write stuff that is not the same as the kind of writing that comes up in exams.
When you read the kind of writing that children do under the influence of the booklets, books, text-books and courses, you realise that a good deal of it starts to sound the same.
You notice strings of adjectives, a good deal of adverbs, many randomly inserted relative clauses, odd sounding 'fronted adverbials' (which the children will have been told may also be called 'time connectives').
I might say this is not 'good writing'.
It's what I would call 'bad writing'.
To which you might say, 'What is good writing?'
Fair enough.
How do we decide what is 'good writing'.
I don't think we can decide what is 'good writing' according to tiny differences of percentage marks.
I think we can come up with a loose general feel of what is 'good writing' perhaps on a three-grade scale of 'very good', 'good' 'not so good'.
Really? What criteria?
First - 'first impression'. That's a valuable resource to think about when thinking if something is good writing or not. You could 'grade' that first impression on my 3 grade scale. Perhaps.
One criterion, I would say is 'surprise'. Is there anything about this piece of writing that is unusual, different, grabs the attention, surprises? A lot, a little, or not at all? (3 grade scale, again)
Another: is there anything going on in this writing that keeps my attention? Are there things going on with this writing that keep me interested? Or am I dozing off? Am I losing interest? (3 grade scale)
Another: (more complicated and theoretical) how has this writer 'transformed their sources'. This rests on the theory known as 'intertextuality'. This theory says that what we all do is write with the 'already'. We use the resources of language, and forms of language (e.g. literary forms, 'the essay', the story', 'the play', 'the newspaper article' and so on) that are in our heads or that we have just come across. A piece of writing that we do, 'transforms' these. That is 'originality'.
As we read a piece we will have a sense of shadowy shapes of previous writings - maybe because we're reading 'a recount' - it's like all other recounts BUT has it in anyway slightly differently or interestingly departed from that. Other times the shadowy shape might be a 'motif' or 'scene' or 'type' e.g. 'boy meets girl' or 'I walked into the building' or whatever. Has the writer simply taken these without modifying them, or does it feel as if the writer has done something different and interesting? i.e. has the writer transformed his/her sources in interesting (or not so interesting) ways? (3 grade scale)
So, if you were to take these four forms of assessment, and put each on a scale of 1-3, would you be able to come up with a 'mark'? If three of you looked at a piece of writing, and you averaged out your scores would you arrive at a set of pieces of writing which genuinely varied from what were 'very good', 'good' and 'not so good'.
Now all this is relatively trivial and unimportant, if you can't then do something with this which would help all the writers (children or adults) to write more (rather than less) interesting things. So, what might help?
Share the writing with explanations as to why and how you arrived at the conclusions the readers came up with for that loose grade - so all three categories of writing ('very good', 'good' 'not so good') are shared. Do we agree with that classification? Why don't we agree?
How might we learn from each other? What aspects of someone else's writing might help me with mine? What aspects of my writing might help you with yours?
This kind of writing is geared towards what can and must be assessed according to mark schemes.
People who advise teachers or tell teachers how to teach writing produce booklets, books, text books, courses on how to teach writing.
What they mean is that these are booklets, books, text books and courses on how to teach the kind of writing that comes up in exams.
Meanwhile, people called 'writers' write stuff that is not the same as the kind of writing that comes up in exams.
The booklets, books, text books and courses for writing that comes up in exams are full of formulae for what makes good writing. They mean writing that is good for exams.
These formulae are such things as Vocabulary Connectives Openings Punctuation, Wow words, and stuff to do with 'fronted adverbials', 'embedded relative clauses', 'noun clauses'.
In fact, under instruction from these booklets, books, text books and courses, the application of these formulae has come to mean 'good writing'.
It is not 'good writing'. It is 'writing for exams'.
Meanwhile, people called 'writers', write stuff that is not the same as the kind of writing that comes up in exams.
When you read the kind of writing that children do under the influence of the booklets, books, text-books and courses, you realise that a good deal of it starts to sound the same.
You notice strings of adjectives, a good deal of adverbs, many randomly inserted relative clauses, odd sounding 'fronted adverbials' (which the children will have been told may also be called 'time connectives').
I might say this is not 'good writing'.
It's what I would call 'bad writing'.
To which you might say, 'What is good writing?'
Fair enough.
How do we decide what is 'good writing'.
I don't think we can decide what is 'good writing' according to tiny differences of percentage marks.
I think we can come up with a loose general feel of what is 'good writing' perhaps on a three-grade scale of 'very good', 'good' 'not so good'.
Really? What criteria?
First - 'first impression'. That's a valuable resource to think about when thinking if something is good writing or not. You could 'grade' that first impression on my 3 grade scale. Perhaps.
One criterion, I would say is 'surprise'. Is there anything about this piece of writing that is unusual, different, grabs the attention, surprises? A lot, a little, or not at all? (3 grade scale, again)
Another: is there anything going on in this writing that keeps my attention? Are there things going on with this writing that keep me interested? Or am I dozing off? Am I losing interest? (3 grade scale)
Another: (more complicated and theoretical) how has this writer 'transformed their sources'. This rests on the theory known as 'intertextuality'. This theory says that what we all do is write with the 'already'. We use the resources of language, and forms of language (e.g. literary forms, 'the essay', the story', 'the play', 'the newspaper article' and so on) that are in our heads or that we have just come across. A piece of writing that we do, 'transforms' these. That is 'originality'.
As we read a piece we will have a sense of shadowy shapes of previous writings - maybe because we're reading 'a recount' - it's like all other recounts BUT has it in anyway slightly differently or interestingly departed from that. Other times the shadowy shape might be a 'motif' or 'scene' or 'type' e.g. 'boy meets girl' or 'I walked into the building' or whatever. Has the writer simply taken these without modifying them, or does it feel as if the writer has done something different and interesting? i.e. has the writer transformed his/her sources in interesting (or not so interesting) ways? (3 grade scale)
So, if you were to take these four forms of assessment, and put each on a scale of 1-3, would you be able to come up with a 'mark'? If three of you looked at a piece of writing, and you averaged out your scores would you arrive at a set of pieces of writing which genuinely varied from what were 'very good', 'good' and 'not so good'.
Now all this is relatively trivial and unimportant, if you can't then do something with this which would help all the writers (children or adults) to write more (rather than less) interesting things. So, what might help?
Share the writing with explanations as to why and how you arrived at the conclusions the readers came up with for that loose grade - so all three categories of writing ('very good', 'good' 'not so good') are shared. Do we agree with that classification? Why don't we agree?
How might we learn from each other? What aspects of someone else's writing might help me with mine? What aspects of my writing might help you with yours?
Tuesday 8 December 2015
They're conjuring up solutions which involve moving millions of us
We wake up this morning to Donald Trump
saying that Muslims shouldn't be allowed into the US
and Toby Young saying that those who don't want Britain
to be officially Christian should leave.
In France, Marine Le Pen rises and rises saying
of France for the French.
In the past, our rulers and their supporters had a great urge
to redraw the map. They took out their pens
and moved borders and frontiers;
they drew lines in the sand.
They created countries where they didn't exist before
and put kings and presidents in power
who would willingly accept whatever we suggested
by way of raw materials coming out
and our finished goods going in.
We created 'spheres of influence'
and 'strategic interests'
which our commentators refer to today as if
these are unquestionable facts,
as if we are entitled to have these 'spheres of influence'
and 'strategic interests' wherever we want to.
In the middle of the twentieth century
some rulers remembered that old tradition
of moving millions of people from one part
of the earth to another,
or arriving somewhere and eliminating
all who lived there.
Why not do that sort of thing right where we live, they thought
and millions were moved or killed.
The world woke up in 1945
and decided that this was probably not a good idea.
For some, in the here and now
that 1945 view seems a bit previous:
they are saying now:
"Those people in 1945 were jumping the gun.
Surely there is something to be said
for conjuring up solutions which involve
standing on a traffic island
directing the flow of people:
you leave, you stay, you go, you come,
and this is how we can preserve what is fine
and good about our nation."
We all like what is fine and good
though we may not necessarily connect it with
this thing called 'nation'.
Especially if this thing called 'nation'
was itself involved at times
in those old habits of moving millions,
and eliminating millions
for the benefit, supposedly,
of that nation.
I mean, the point is surely not that
a nation is itself what is fine and good
(even when it's being foul and bad)
but that we try to find what is fine and good
for everyone.
But, hey, that is so 1945.
saying that Muslims shouldn't be allowed into the US
and Toby Young saying that those who don't want Britain
to be officially Christian should leave.
In France, Marine Le Pen rises and rises saying
of France for the French.
In the past, our rulers and their supporters had a great urge
to redraw the map. They took out their pens
and moved borders and frontiers;
they drew lines in the sand.
They created countries where they didn't exist before
and put kings and presidents in power
who would willingly accept whatever we suggested
by way of raw materials coming out
and our finished goods going in.
We created 'spheres of influence'
and 'strategic interests'
which our commentators refer to today as if
these are unquestionable facts,
as if we are entitled to have these 'spheres of influence'
and 'strategic interests' wherever we want to.
In the middle of the twentieth century
some rulers remembered that old tradition
of moving millions of people from one part
of the earth to another,
or arriving somewhere and eliminating
all who lived there.
Why not do that sort of thing right where we live, they thought
and millions were moved or killed.
The world woke up in 1945
and decided that this was probably not a good idea.
For some, in the here and now
that 1945 view seems a bit previous:
they are saying now:
"Those people in 1945 were jumping the gun.
Surely there is something to be said
for conjuring up solutions which involve
standing on a traffic island
directing the flow of people:
you leave, you stay, you go, you come,
and this is how we can preserve what is fine
and good about our nation."
We all like what is fine and good
though we may not necessarily connect it with
this thing called 'nation'.
Especially if this thing called 'nation'
was itself involved at times
in those old habits of moving millions,
and eliminating millions
for the benefit, supposedly,
of that nation.
I mean, the point is surely not that
a nation is itself what is fine and good
(even when it's being foul and bad)
but that we try to find what is fine and good
for everyone.
But, hey, that is so 1945.
Monday 7 December 2015
Poem The Front National - what are your plans?
le Front National.
Enfant de Vichy,
la dernière fois que tu était le gouvernement
tu as donné l'adresse de mon grand-oncle et tante
aux Nazis.
Comme ça, les Nazis les ont trouvés et déportés
à Auschwitz d'où ils ne sont pas rentrés.
Quels plans as-tu cette fois-ci?
The Front National.
Child of Vichy
the last time you were the government
you gave my great-uncle and aunt's address
to the Nazis.
That was how the Nazis found them and
deported them to Auschwitz, from where they
never came back.
What are your plans this time?
Sunday 6 December 2015
The deadly terrifying threat of murderous Corbyn supporters
"One of the most deadly, terrifying things ever to have
happened to anyone ever,
is the sight of gangs of screaming, murderous,
dervish-like Corbyn-supporters, demanding
that people like me should stop supporting the bombing of Syria.
Let's get this straight,
bombing Syria is good, wholesome, clean and kind.
Of course people will be killed.
These will be ISIS-IS-ISL-Daesh people or Daesh-ISL-ISIS-IS people
or IS-Daesh or ISL-ISIS who we have
identified.
They are easy to identify. They are fascists.
Fascists like the ones in Spain in 1936.
Or Nazis in Germany in 1933.
Or in Italy in..er...then.
Or in Chile with Pinochet.
That's what ISL-IS-Dash are.
Just the same. No difference.
We British got rid of them.
Well, OK, not in Spain but that's different.
And not Pinochet either, actually.
But that's different too and I don't want to go into that just now.
Please don't interrupt.
And OK we didn't get rid of the Nazis entirely on our own.
Some others helped us.
A bit.
Not very much.
Anyway, we were freedom fighters then
fighting for the freedom of the British Empire
which was entirely free for everyone in the
British Empire - Africa, India, West Indies,
all free.
And we defended that.
We fought for freedom in Iraq
when we were threatened by Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Are there any Weapons of Mass Destruction there now?
No.
Exactly.
And there are a lot fewer people there.
That's thanks to us too.
And that's the kind of thing we're defending now.
Apart from Corbyn and his terrorist supporters.
When we kill with our planes
that is good, kind killing because
the only people that will be killed
will be the Nazi-Daesh-ISL-Franco-ISIS thing,
unlike the foul, despicable terrorism of Corbyn's supporters
which is jeopardising the very heartbeat of democracy.
We will not waver.
We are valiant for truth.
Saturday 5 December 2015
What happened when 'we' bombed the oil field the other night?
When 'we' bombed the 'oil field' the other night,
was there just oil and a field there?
Or were any of what are known as 'human beings' there too?
The kind that get the oil out of the ground.
The oil that we don't talk about,
when we talk of war and peace and democracy
and doing things for the good of the people,
the people like those who work in
oil fields...
Newly found Alice in Wonderland pages come to light
NEW ALICE IN WONDERLAND MANUSCRIPT COMES TO LIGHT
Alice sat down on a bench.
A very important-sounding voice said, 'You can't sit here.'
Alice looked round. She couldn't see anyone, so she went on sitting.
'You're sitting on me,' the voice said.
Alice looked down. She realised that it was the bench talking to her.
'I am Military Bench,' said the bench, 'and we will fight them on the beaches.'
'Who?' said Alice.
'We've done it before and we'll do it again,' he said.
'Yes,' said Alice, 'but who?'
'There's only one word for them,' said Military Bench, 'because that's what they are.'
'Who though?' said Alice.
'And we will stand by our French friends,' Military Bench went on.
Alice looked up and saw that the scribes were there too, and they were clapping.
'What a remarkable speech,' they chorused.
'One of the best speeches ever,' they chorused.
'The best leader they haven't got,' they chorused.
Just then Alice heard a booming sound far off.
'What's that?' said Alice.
'That,' said Military Bench, 'is the sound of greatness. We have shown the world we won't take it lying down. We will meet force with force and farce with farce. An eye for a tooth and a tooth for a leg.'
The scribes applauded.
'Oh,' said Alice, 'no one will be hurt, will they?'
'Aha,' said Military Bench, 'only the bad ones.'
'And we're on the side of the good ones?' said Alice.
'Yes and no,' said Military Bench, 'in this particular case, the two sides, as such, are both bad. Apart from us. We're good.'
'Good,' said Alice,'I wouldn't want to be bad.'
'And, because they're bad, we're getting at the bad ones.'
'Which bad ones?' said Alice.
'The bad ones,' said Military Bench.
Another boom went off in the distance
'And no good ones will be hurt?' said Alice anxiously.
'Well, we won't actually know whether they will be or won't be. Or if we do know, we won't be telling you. I can swear to that on my father's grave,' said Military Bench.
'Ah, his father,' said one of the scribes.
'Ironic!' said another.
That's a funny name, thought Alice, so his full name must have been 'Ironic Bench'.
I would like to find out more about him, one day, she thought.
The Bench seemed now to be puffing itself up, getting bigger and bigger, so Alice thought she'd walk on.
And she did.
LikeCommentShare
Friday 4 December 2015
How Corbyn lost Oldham.
I am very grateful to this newspaper for giving me an opportunity
to respond to the Oldham by-election - and indeed to respond
to every aspect of Corbynism since it first appeared.
I was one of the first to notice Corbyn's jumper
as a key part of why he would fail to win the Labour
leadership contest and though I wasn't entirely right
in that matter, I think I can say with confidence that
he would have won it by more votes had he worn
a suit and tie.
Again, I spotted the fact that Corbyn has spent a
lifetime on the backbenches. I don't think anyone
had noticed that before, so I made that public.
More importantly, I've been able to write and
talk about that again
and again. And again and again...and how Corbyn has
split the Labour Party. The Labour Party used to
be united. All the time. In the Blair era, the Labour
Party had a great, charismatic leader who united
the party round the need to kill people in the
Middle East. This was a major achievement
and everyone in the press - and therefore the world -
are in great admiration of him for doing that.
The moment Corbyn came in, he gave support
to the little ragbag of outsiders, losers, has-beens
and wannabees, while the people who could really
unite the party have been pushed to the edges.
That's why I am so glad that the TV companies
give these great unity-creators such a good
airing day in day out, to come on to the TV
and explain how bad Corbyn is. This unites
the party. Obviously.
Now to Oldham: well not literally. I've never been
there. Oldham was a disaster for Corbyn.
If he hadn't been the leader, Oldham would
have been a 100% Labour-voting constituency.
No one would have voted Tory, UKIP or LibDem.
As it was, thousands of people refused to vote for Corbyn.
Even so, there is clearly something wrong with the people
of Oldham because some of them did actually vote Labour.
I look forward to being on Question Time, Any Questions,
Sky News, ITV News, Channel 4 News, Channel Five,
Five Live, World at One, the Daily Politics, to put
these crucial ideas across.
I'm not actually an MP anymore but I do have a place
in the House of Lords though I haven't been able to get
there recently as I am spending more time with my
yacht.
to respond to the Oldham by-election - and indeed to respond
to every aspect of Corbynism since it first appeared.
I was one of the first to notice Corbyn's jumper
as a key part of why he would fail to win the Labour
leadership contest and though I wasn't entirely right
in that matter, I think I can say with confidence that
he would have won it by more votes had he worn
a suit and tie.
Again, I spotted the fact that Corbyn has spent a
lifetime on the backbenches. I don't think anyone
had noticed that before, so I made that public.
More importantly, I've been able to write and
talk about that again
and again. And again and again...and how Corbyn has
split the Labour Party. The Labour Party used to
be united. All the time. In the Blair era, the Labour
Party had a great, charismatic leader who united
the party round the need to kill people in the
Middle East. This was a major achievement
and everyone in the press - and therefore the world -
are in great admiration of him for doing that.
The moment Corbyn came in, he gave support
to the little ragbag of outsiders, losers, has-beens
and wannabees, while the people who could really
unite the party have been pushed to the edges.
That's why I am so glad that the TV companies
give these great unity-creators such a good
airing day in day out, to come on to the TV
and explain how bad Corbyn is. This unites
the party. Obviously.
Now to Oldham: well not literally. I've never been
there. Oldham was a disaster for Corbyn.
If he hadn't been the leader, Oldham would
have been a 100% Labour-voting constituency.
No one would have voted Tory, UKIP or LibDem.
As it was, thousands of people refused to vote for Corbyn.
Even so, there is clearly something wrong with the people
of Oldham because some of them did actually vote Labour.
I look forward to being on Question Time, Any Questions,
Sky News, ITV News, Channel 4 News, Channel Five,
Five Live, World at One, the Daily Politics, to put
these crucial ideas across.
I'm not actually an MP anymore but I do have a place
in the House of Lords though I haven't been able to get
there recently as I am spending more time with my
yacht.
Wednesday 2 December 2015
Important Speech on why we should go to war, just released.
"We can drop bombs through the eye of a needle.
We can't always find the needle.
But we drop the bombs anyway.
And they land very accurately.
On..er...whatever's there.
Which is good, isn't it?
"There will be civilian casualties.
That's true.
But these will be less important than our civilian casualties
...er...yes.
I think we're all agreed on that.
"Every time a bomb falls out of one of our planes
onto the people of the Middle East,
our credibility with the people of the Middle East
goes up...er....yes.
We will strain every tissue to bring people
together to discuss how to bring an end
to the killing
apart from the killing we're doing.
And the people of the Middle East
are with us on this.
They're always very grateful to us.
They love us.
And always have done.
All the way back to..er...Kitchener..
and Gordon.
Great men. Much loved.
"We are very sympathetic to the er...
plight of the refugees.
Yes, there will be refugees
as a result of our bombing action
we know that,
but you can rely on us
to...er...send them back,
where we will bomb them.
You can rely on us to do that.
I would like to make a point about Russia.
We don't trust Russia.
They say they're killing ISL people.
If they are, they're doing it in the wrong way.
If they're not, they should be.
Yes.
And Assad.
Assad is the most evil person to have ever
walked the earth.
He kills innocent civilians.
Can you imagine that?
We are doing all we can to
remove his enemies from the face of the earth.
That's what we're doing
and we know why we're doing it.
And none of us want the Russians in there
instead of us.
A quick point about Jeremy Corbyn.
He may look like a weak, useless, pacifist.
And he is.
He is very, very weak.
Very, very useless.
And very, very pacifist.
He's also a crazed killer.
Incredibly dangerous.
And with the potential to bring Britain to its knees
in the blink of an eye.
He and his evil marxist henchmen
sympathise with terrorists.
I can put my hand on my heart
and say we on this side of the argument
have never ever sympathised
with terrorists anywhere.
You will know for example
that we have never in anyway
ever ever had anything to do with
Northern Irish Protestant paramilitaries
directly, indirectly, through intermediaries
or secretly through our secret services.
Never. Ever. Not ever. Or ever.
Nor any terrorists in Libya.
Or in Syria.
Oh, no Syria is different.
Sorry, as you were.
In Syria we sympathise with moderate terrorists.
Who do their terrorism moderately.
There are about 70,000 of them.
The moment we bomb ISL
the 70,000 moderate terrorists will come
rushing out of their houses and
head for Assad and get him.
There may be some Russians in the way.
Yes.
We have figured that out.
But...er...we haven't figured out what to do
about that yet.
But the 70,000 moderate terrorists
will get that sorted.
Russia isn't the big bear it once was.
No, really it's just an old threadbare teddy.
A threadbear.
Sorry, for that levity in a moment of deep, deep seriousness.
Which reminds me:
"No government takes the decision lightly to go to war...
that's why we keep doing it again and again
...er...not lightly.
So, I would like to plead with you
to stay united with us on this.
After all, there's no one else out there who's united.
Thank you.
Vote for war.
We've got to keep this economy going somehow.
Keynes wasn't right.
But Keynes for killing makes sense.
Pump prime the arms economy, stimulated growth.
You see, everything connects.
When they don't there's trouble.
And when there's trouble we pour oil on troubled waters.
Oil? Who mentioned oil?
Not me.
You must be thinking of someone else.
Thank you.
Bombs away!
Chin chin.
The Walrus and the Carpenter are very sorry to have to eat the Oysters
Whenever I hear politicians saying how terribly sorry they are for bombing people, I always reach for these verses to give me a bit of insight:
A loaf of bread,' the Walrus said,
Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed —
Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed.'
But not on us!' the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!'
The night is fine,' the Walrus said.
Do you admire the view?
It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!'
The Carpenter said nothing but
Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf —
I've had to ask you twice!'
It seems a shame,' the Walrus said,
To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!'
The Carpenter said nothing but
The butter's spread too thick!'
I weep for you,' the Walrus said:
I deeply sympathize.'
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
O Oysters,' said the Carpenter,
You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none —
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one."
Comments from the 'Comments' thread, following 'Dear Ms Morgan' this week
On the thread following my 'Dear Nicky Morgan' article in Tuesday's Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/dec/01/religious-education-atheism-humanism-schools-pupils-gcse#comments
I wrote some replies to comments. they are four different 'replies' and are in different places on the thread but I've put them together here - numbered separately:
1. re atheism: the belief that both 'theoretical' and 'practical' atheists have is that they can live their lives without reference to the supernatural. They enact their lives in that way, every second of every day. Mostly this is unremarkable and looks like doing one's daily stuff. Even so, it does mean that such things as coincidences, accidents, lucky breaks, gifts etc are not connected in any way to thanking deities or hoping deities will help you. That requires 'belief' that the everyday is sufficient. Some people think a lot about this. Others just get on with it.
That said, the crunch point comes for many atheists when serious mishaps and tragedies occur or indeed when such people (me) think about our own birth and death and/or the universe. Again, many atheists just do it. On the other hand, many think about how these moments are in fact 'material' or 'just there' or 'part of the mystery of the universe' etc. So long as the supernatural is not involved in such people's conclusions, what we have is a set of beliefs about birth, death, the universe and some view on whether life has a 'meaning' or 'purpose' or not.
I'm not sure why many people above think that none of this involves a set of 'beliefs'. In my experience, many atheists (who may also call themselves humanists or vice versa - people really don't get too worried about names, you know), think long and hard about this stuff and in effect, carry around a portable, invisible 'book' that explains or justifies their actions across life, across the death of their loved ones, and towards their own death. How do you think we cope when, say, our parents die, or - as in my case - when my son died? We have to figure out how this fits in to daily existence. We don't write a sacred book about it, but we still have words and thoughts to help us put it into how we can go on and live the next day and the day after.
Again, I'm not sure why this seems to give some people above cause to imagine that an atheistical existence is merely a negative state of 'not religion'. Maybe that's what it looks like from the outside, observing atheists, but to live that way, is a different matter - even if some of us express it as 'no, I don't do religion' or some such.
2. Many people have pointed out that there is the word 'religion' in the title 'Religious Studies' and that 'explains' why humanism or atheism is not in that course of study. The online article provides a link to:
'The Religious Education Council of England and Wales document: 'Curriculum Framework'.
If people with the view that there is no place for humanism in RS, could take a few moments to read who recommended that there should be a place for it and why (see the section headed 'Purpose', perhaps they could or should argue with them about it, rather than me. After all, these were representatives of a wide range of religious organisations.
It's quite clear that RS at GCSE goes far beyond talking about specific religions. Its remit is to talk about values, and the purpose of life.
Why not have a look to see what it says?
3. Some people above appear to be saying that atheism and non-religious views have no history or belief system. In fact, there is a long history to this, some of it being a struggle with the ruling orders here such people found themselves. But then how, in the context of religious explanations for the cosmos, human destiny and human purpose, did people come to the conclusion that they didn't need any form of supernatural being to guide them or believe in?
That is a fascinating history involving individuals, groups, movements. A literature past and present supports it. There are many significant documents, court cases, examples of imprisonment - and worse - from all over the world. As I said in the article, some of this goes back to ancient and classical times. Rather than simply saying 'there is no history' or 'there is nothing to teach', why not google 'atheism' 'atheists', 'humanism' 'humanists' and see where it takes you. Even the history of Charles Bradlaugh - mentioned in the article is worth a read. If not, try Lucretius. Or Baron d'Holbach.
4. Just to clarify, Religious Studies is 'about' religion, not worship. I am in favour of it. The committee that advised the government recommended that 'non-religious worldviews' should be included. They glossed 'non-religions worldviews' in a footnote saying 'including humanism'. This parity of esteem was not carried through to the RS GCSE syllabus - which is NOT a compulsory subject. You choose it. There IS mention of humanism in the syllabus but no parity of esteem Because of that, the Sec of State's comments were challenged in court and the case won. However, so far the govt have not budged.
1. re atheism: the belief that both 'theoretical' and 'practical' atheists have is that they can live their lives without reference to the supernatural. They enact their lives in that way, every second of every day. Mostly this is unremarkable and looks like doing one's daily stuff. Even so, it does mean that such things as coincidences, accidents, lucky breaks, gifts etc are not connected in any way to thanking deities or hoping deities will help you. That requires 'belief' that the everyday is sufficient. Some people think a lot about this. Others just get on with it.
That said, the crunch point comes for many atheists when serious mishaps and tragedies occur or indeed when such people (me) think about our own birth and death and/or the universe. Again, many atheists just do it. On the other hand, many think about how these moments are in fact 'material' or 'just there' or 'part of the mystery of the universe' etc. So long as the supernatural is not involved in such people's conclusions, what we have is a set of beliefs about birth, death, the universe and some view on whether life has a 'meaning' or 'purpose' or not.
I'm not sure why many people above think that none of this involves a set of 'beliefs'. In my experience, many atheists (who may also call themselves humanists or vice versa - people really don't get too worried about names, you know), think long and hard about this stuff and in effect, carry around a portable, invisible 'book' that explains or justifies their actions across life, across the death of their loved ones, and towards their own death. How do you think we cope when, say, our parents die, or - as in my case - when my son died? We have to figure out how this fits in to daily existence. We don't write a sacred book about it, but we still have words and thoughts to help us put it into how we can go on and live the next day and the day after.
Again, I'm not sure why this seems to give some people above cause to imagine that an atheistical existence is merely a negative state of 'not religion'. Maybe that's what it looks like from the outside, observing atheists, but to live that way, is a different matter - even if some of us express it as 'no, I don't do religion' or some such.
2. Many people have pointed out that there is the word 'religion' in the title 'Religious Studies' and that 'explains' why humanism or atheism is not in that course of study. The online article provides a link to:
'The Religious Education Council of England and Wales document: 'Curriculum Framework'.
If people with the view that there is no place for humanism in RS, could take a few moments to read who recommended that there should be a place for it and why (see the section headed 'Purpose', perhaps they could or should argue with them about it, rather than me. After all, these were representatives of a wide range of religious organisations.
It's quite clear that RS at GCSE goes far beyond talking about specific religions. Its remit is to talk about values, and the purpose of life.
Why not have a look to see what it says?
3. Some people above appear to be saying that atheism and non-religious views have no history or belief system. In fact, there is a long history to this, some of it being a struggle with the ruling orders here such people found themselves. But then how, in the context of religious explanations for the cosmos, human destiny and human purpose, did people come to the conclusion that they didn't need any form of supernatural being to guide them or believe in?
That is a fascinating history involving individuals, groups, movements. A literature past and present supports it. There are many significant documents, court cases, examples of imprisonment - and worse - from all over the world. As I said in the article, some of this goes back to ancient and classical times. Rather than simply saying 'there is no history' or 'there is nothing to teach', why not google 'atheism' 'atheists', 'humanism' 'humanists' and see where it takes you. Even the history of Charles Bradlaugh - mentioned in the article is worth a read. If not, try Lucretius. Or Baron d'Holbach.
4. Just to clarify, Religious Studies is 'about' religion, not worship. I am in favour of it. The committee that advised the government recommended that 'non-religious worldviews' should be included. They glossed 'non-religions worldviews' in a footnote saying 'including humanism'. This parity of esteem was not carried through to the RS GCSE syllabus - which is NOT a compulsory subject. You choose it. There IS mention of humanism in the syllabus but no parity of esteem Because of that, the Sec of State's comments were challenged in court and the case won. However, so far the govt have not budged.