Let's not take education international league tables lying down

I'm guessing that it'll soon be time for international education tables  to be published. These league tables rank countries according to the scores of some school students sitting exams in the 'main'  subjects. These are taken up by politicians as evidence that the education service is doing badly, better, worse, really well etc etc. and is used for election purposes as a judgement on how well (or badly) a political party is doing.

I'm going to suggest that it's dangerous to get mixed up with this, even when the data appears to support something that we believe.  As others have pointed out, there are a lot of problems with these international tables, particularly in the matter of how the exam candidates in the different countries are selected, how significant, relevant, reliable or valid the tests themselves are, and how relevant or significant 'place' is in a league table because it can mean that there is a huge difference between 'places' or a tiny one - as with football league tables. 

However, there is yet another problem: these tests end up being statements on a country's education system and yet they omit key questions on this matter of how a country's education system fits a country. A country's education system is to a great degree a product of what those in power in a given country want it to be. Those in power want the education system to produce a set of finished students (school graduates, if you like) in a shape that suits their vision of society. We are entitled to ask several questions about this: is this vision of society worthwhile, valid, fair, just, equitable? If it is, fine - we can ask whether the education system really does match these high standards? If the society fails in key areas of fairness, justice, equitability, we can ask if the education system sustains this lack of fairness, lack of justice and inequitability or whether it challenges it? In other words, we reframe a view of education as have 'values'. Not in an abstract sense, but judged according to some external minimal values around e.g. democracy, freedom, freedom of expression, equitable material levels of existence. We could be more precise and talk about rights to do with the availability of cheap or free health care for all, an equitable taxation system, free or cheap child care and care of the aged, a fair benefits system for the disabled and so on. 

So, then we could ask a whole set of different questions about the worth or value or use of an educational system in relation to something other than itself.  

None of this is 'revolutionary' - some might say it should be. It's totally within the paradigm of a kind of UN view of what countries and the world might be like. 

I've summarised it like this:

Imagine if there were criteria other than PISA exams by which to judge internationally an education system! How about eg best able to support and extend democracy? Best able to hold government to account? Best able to develop a critical public discourse? Best able to stimulate and sustain a strong arts-in-society scene? Best able to sustain nationwide fitness? Best able to deal with climate change, urban and rural planning? Free and cheap transport, health, social services? All requires ‘education’!

At the moment we are channelled into accepting that a country’s ‘education’ is judged on exams in a few subjects and not on what society asks education to do for that society. What’s a ‘good’ education if it eg supports a tyranny?

In a purely theoretical sense, couldn’t you have Nazi Germany coming out of the present international education league tables, top?

Anyone up for 'endorsing' Thackeray?

On Oct 22 2013 the Guardian cited Thackeray with great approval:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/22/beheading-videos-facebook

This Thackeray? 

(pssst just because people in public like one bit of what a person has written, it doesn't always follow that they 'endorse' all of it. )

THE WHITE SQUALL

by William Makepeace Thackeray

On deck, beneath the awning,
  I dozing lay and yawning;
  It was the gray of dawning,
    Ere yet the sun arose;
  And above the funnel’s roaring,
  And the fitful wind’s deploring,
  I heard the cabin snoring
    With universal nose.
  I could hear the passengers snorting—
  I envied their disporting—
  Vainly I was courting
    The pleasure of a doze!

  So I lay, and wondered why light
  Came not, and watched the twilight,
  And the glimmer of the skylight,
    That shot across the deck;
  And the binnacle pale and steady,
  And the dull glimpse of the dead-eye,
  And the sparks in fiery eddy
    That whirled from the chimney neck.
  In our jovial floating prison
  There was sleep from fore to mizzen,
  And never a star had risen
    The hazy sky to speck.

  Strange company we harbored,
  We’d a hundred Jews to larboard,
  Unwashed, uncombed, unbarbered—
    Jews black, and brown, and gray;
  With terror it would seize ye,
  And make your souls uneasy,
  To see those Rabbis greasy,
    Who did naught but scratch and pray:
  Their dirty children puking—
  Their dirty saucepans cooking—
  Their dirty fingers hooking
    Their swarming fleas away.

  To starboard, Turks and Greeks were—
  Whiskered and brown their cheeks were—
  Enormous wide their breeks were,
    Their pipes did puff alway;
  Each on his mat allotted
  In silence smoked and squatted,
  Whilst round their children trotted
    In pretty, pleasant play.
  He can’t but smile who traces
  The smiles on those brown faces,
  And the pretty, prattling graces
    Of those small heathens gay.

  And so the hours kept tolling,
  And through the ocean rolling
  Went the brave “Iberia” bowling
    Before the break of day—

  When A SQUALL, upon a sudden,
  Came o’er the waters scudding;
  And the clouds began to gather,
  And the sea was lashed to lather,
  And the lowering thunder grumbled,
  And the lightning jumped and tumbled,
  And the ship, and all the ocean,
  Woke up in wild commotion.
  Then the wind set up a howling,
  And the poodle dog a yowling,
  And the cocks began a crowing,
  And the old cow raised a lowing,
  As she heard the tempest blowing;
  And fowls and geese did cackle,
  And the cordage and the tackle
  Began to shriek and crackle;
  And the spray dashed o’er the funnels,
  And down the deck in runnels;
  And the rushing water soaks all,
  From the seamen in the fo’ksal
  To the stokers whose black faces
  Peer out of their bed-places;
  And the captain he was bawling,
  And the sailors pulling, hauling,
  And the quarter-deck tarpauling
  Was shivered in the squalling;
  And the passengers awaken,
  Most pitifully shaken;
  And the steward jumps up, and hastens
  For the necessary basins.

  Then the Greeks they groaned and quivered,
  And they knelt, and moaned, and shivered,
  As the plunging waters met them,
  And splashed and overset them;
  And they call in their emergence
  Upon countless saints and virgins;
  And their marrowbones are bended,
  And they think the world is ended.

  And the Turkish women for’ard
  Were frightened and behorror’d;
  And shrieking and bewildering,
  The mothers clutched their children;
  The men sung “Allah! Illah!
  Mashallah Bismillah!”
  As the warring waters doused them
  And splashed them and soused them,
  And they called upon the Prophet,
  And thought but little of it.

  Then all the fleas in Jewry
  Jumped up and bit like fury;
  And the progeny of Jacob
  Did on the main-deck wake up
  (I wot those greasy Rabbins
  Would never pay for cabins);
  And each man moaned and jabbered in
  His filthy Jewish gaberdine,
  In woe and lamentation,
  And howling consternation.
  And the splashing water drenches
  Their dirty brats and wenches;
  And they crawl from bales and benches
  In a hundred thousand stenches.

  This was the White Squall famous,
  Which latterly o’ercame us,
  And which all will well remember
  On the 28th September;
  When a Prussian captain of Lancers
  (Those tight-laced, whiskered prancers)
  Came on the deck astonished,
  By that wild squall admonished,
  And wondering cried, “Potztausend,
  Wie ist der Strm jetzt brausend?”
  And looked at Captain Lewis,
  Who calmly stood and blew his
  Cigar in all the hustle,
  And scorned the tempest’s tussle,
  And oft we’ve thought thereafter
  How he beat the storm to laughter;
  For well he knew his vessel
  With that vain wind could wrestle;
  And when a wreck we thought her,
  And doomed ourselves to slaughter,
  How gayly he fought her,
  And through the hubbub brought her,
  And as the tempest caught her,
  Cried, “GEORGE! SOME BRANDY-AND-WATER!”

  And when, its force expended,
  The harmless storm was ended,
  And as the sunrise splendid
    Came blushing o’er the sea;
  I thought, as day was breaking,
  My little girls were waking,
  And smiling, and making
    A prayer at home for me.

  1844.

How selective outrage works: how about this for a bit of endorsing?

"Mr Gove praised the work of inner city primary schools like Thomas Jones in west London where pupils were reading “A Christmas Carol” and “Oliver Twist” by the age of 11" (Independent May 9 2013)



"The Jew stopped for an instant at the corner of the street; and, glancing suspiciously round, crossed the road, and struck off in the direction of the Spitalfields.
The mud lay thick upon the stones, and a black mist hung over the streets; the rain fell sluggishly down, and everything felt cold and clammy to the touch. It seemed just the night when it befitted such a being as the Jew to be abroad. As he glided stealthily along, creeping beneath the shelter of the walls and doorways, the hideous old man seemed like some loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime and darkness through which he moved: crawling forth, by night, in search of some rich offal for a meal."