Proposal - a book about reading as a blog here.

I thought that I would have a go at writing a book or booklet about reading and writing aimed at teachers and parents. My thinking is that I'll write it in smallish chunks here on this blog and then when it gets to be big enough, put it together and see if it's worth publishing or indeed if I can! Some of it will inevitably repeat things that I've already written here, so apologies for that.

I'll call the book(s) Reading Book  and then each chunk will have a title thus:

Reading Book: 1.What is language?
Reading Book:  2.What is reading?

...and so on.

My Edward Lear article - Guardian

Happy birthday Edward Lear

'Old Derry down Derry', still known as one of the best painters of exotic birds as well as the master of nonsense verse, celebrates his bicentenary on 12 May

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• • Michael Rosen
  • guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 May 2012 09.00 BST
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One of the best … painting of a flamingo, by Edward Lear. Photograph: Field Museum Library/Getty Images

"Old Derry down Derry" is 200 years old on 12 June. This is the pseudonym that Edward Lear used for his first book of limericks, A Book of Nonsense (1846). It gives a hint of where in the history of nonsense he positioned himself, as versions of "Derry down derry" can be found across the folk-songs and plays of Britain and Ireland. Quite why this deeply troubled man ended up disturbing the decorum of Victorian life and language is not totally clear. His life's love was for art. He yearned to produce a masterpiece of landscape painting but ended up with a series of empty, moody canvases. He was a quiet, atmospheric watercolorist who illustrated his travels with real feeling. He is still known as one of the best painters of exotic birds, but it's the combination of his absurd words and scratchy line-drawings that has survived the best.

The nonsense writing came about during his stays at the Knowsley estate of Lord Stanley, who had hired the young Lear to paint his menagerie. The adults noticed the children disappearing off to the steward's room, and when they found that they were seeking out the funny drawings, poems and stories of the young painter, he was summoned upstairs, where he carried on entertaining everybody. It wasn't entirely easy, with Lear observing: "the uniform apathetic tone assumed by lofty society irks me dreadfully … nothing I long for half so much as to giggle heartily and to hop on one leg down the great gallery – but dare not."

He may not have hopped, but he produced a gallery of people who tore off their hair, ate thousands of figs, murdered themselves with forks, died of despair, and were troubled by dreams, baked in a stove, eaten by a puppy, split in two but mended with very strong glue. This is a catalogue of disruption of bodies even as society was tying them up in corsets and waistcoats – but then Lear's own body was disrupted by his secret and stigmatised illnesses: epilepsy and depression.

Later, he found the voice of ever-wandering creatures – a Pobble, a Dong, a Scroobius Pip and Jumblies – that are often on the hunt for a love they don't find. Perhaps these are skewed versions of Lear himself, just as his mock botanical textbooks are glorious misrepresentations of the Victorians' quest to name everything.

A full calendar of celebrations can be found atnonsenselit.wordpress.com/. Tomorrow I will be attending a plaque ceremony at Lear's home in Stratford Place, London W1 and the day after I'll be performing a Lear tribute with Roger McGough at the British Library. I'm also looking forward to broadcasting Lear from a phone box outside the Story Museum, in Oxford.

Maurice Sendak - my tribute for BBC Radio 4 'Last Word

A story about a boy called Maurice

Once upon a time in Brooklyn there was a boy who found himself. He found himself to be ill, he found himself to be afraid, he found himself to be Jewish. He lay in his bed and he read and drew; and he drew and he read and his head was full of the sound of pictures, the look of words.

He was afraid of everything: the vacuum cleaner, the news of that man Lindberg’s baby being kidnapped. He was even afraid of his mother.

Every now and then his aunties and uncles came in to see him and they leaned over the bed and pulled his cheeks and said, ‘Ache nebbish. I could eat him.’

Eat me? thought the boy, yes, they could.

Why wouldn’t they, with their big eyes and their big teeth and what with them cursing each other as they sat playing rummy, gin rummy and poker:

Chap a chaliera, ch’addich im loch

Such terrible things they would do to each other.

Maybe they could do that to him.

But when they left, they would squeeze him tight and say

Ess, bensh, sei a mensh!

Eat, pray, be good.

And he wanted to be good, he wanted people to be good to him, and sometimes it looked as if this would be.

Once he was sitting and the radio was playing and a sound came out of it that made the world beautiful. A music he had never heard.

What is that? He asked.

I want more of that.

When he felt strong, his mother and father would take him to Manhattan and he would look up and down the canyons, he would look up and down the buildings and if he was good, but only if he was good, they would take him to FAO Schwartz, the biggest and best toyshop in the world.

But if he was bad, they would go nowhere and he would sit at the table with the corn flakes packet and the ketchup bottle and the pickle jar and he would make the canyons on the table, looking up and down. Up and down.

Your brother says we should burn camphor for him,  his mother said to his father.

Bubbemeisse! Said his father, old wives tales.

My sister says the shmalts in the soup goes to his chest, said his mother to his father.

Meshugas, said his father, crazy stuff.

The news wasn’t good. It was terrible. It was worse than terrible. All the photos had been killed.

Who could do such a thing? How could there be a world where every single photo from the heim, from the old country, could be killed?

So he had been right all along to be afraid.

Exactly.

How do you know you’re not next?

So the boy decided he would be a man and he would look for reasons to be alive.

He looked everywhere.

He found more of that music.

That was a good reason.

He found some poems.

That was another.

He found, he found that there were things you could say to your mother and there were things you could say to your father so that once you had said them, made it better that  you had said them.

And there were things you couldn’t say.

So?

You don’t have to say everything.

You could go tell someone else and kvetsh about them to him.

And he did find someone

And it was everything.

If he had shpilkes, the nerves – he could tell him.

If everything was dreck – bad – he could tell him.

If he was in mittandring – in the midst of awful stuff – he could tell him

And do you know, he thought, it’s just the same the other way around.

I listen when he has shpilkes, when it’s dreck for him, when he’s in mittandring.

This is good, he thought.

And so it was in the midst of all that, he found that his pen and his pencil could make faces and feelings.

All he had to do was sit long enough in one place and he could do it.

And he did it and he did it and he did it.

With the pen and the pencil he could tunnel into his mind and find how the world was a place that kept forgetting how to love

With the pen and the pencil he could ride the subway back to his cot-bed in the apartment in Brooklyn with the sound of his aunts and uncles playing cards and his mother telling him he had been bad, his father saying that there was no mazumme in the shmatte trade, there was no money in the rag trade.

With the pen and the pencil he could go out into the world and some people said to him, Maurice, you’re good. You’re not just good, you’re very good.

Which was nice.

And some people said he was bad because he was a child-scarer.

Which wasn’t so nice.

But hey, as his father, said, so they call you pisha! (so they insult you!)

That’s their problem

And it was.

Broadcast BBC Radio 4 Friday May 11 2012
Hear the recording here: The Sendak piece is the third item in the programme:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01h7cf0

Edward Lear show with Roger McGough and me:

Nonsense! The wonderful world of Edward Lear

Sunday 13 May 14.30 – 16.00

The British Library Conference Centre

The Jumblies, the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo, The Dong with the Luminous Nose and of course The Owl and The Pussycat, are just a few of the fabulous nonsense poems of the remarkable Edward Lear, who was born 200 years ago. Join wonderfully entertaining poets Michael Rosen and Roger McGough, plus special guests, for this glorious celebration.

Suitable for all ages

Tickets priced £7.50 (£5 concessions and children) available at http://boxoffice.bl.uk, by calling 01937 546546 (Mon - Fri, 09.00 - 17.00) or in person at the British Library.

Why the problem is NOT the 'deficit'.

For people not following me on twitter and facebook, I'm posting this link here, having posted it on twitter and facebook. It is stark evidence of how capitalism reaches a point in which it is unable to unleash its own productive forces and grinds to a halt. It shows that it is downright lies to claim that the  country's problem is 'the deficit' as if it is this that is dragging us back or down! The problem is that the massive wealth (£750 billion pounds) produced by the work of millions of people is sitting in the safes of corporate Britain. Capitalism is unable to get it making useful things we need.

Every time we hear commentators and politicians going on about the deficit, we must, must remind them and everyone around us that this money exists sitting doing nothing.

Here's the article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/budget/9150406/Budget-2012-UK-companies-are-sitting-on-billions-of-pounds-so-why-arent-they-spending-it.html

The billions we're not allowed to talk about

I think I get to feel most irritated when I hear or read allegedly balanced commentators talking about the 'debt crisis' or the 'deficit' as if it's a bit of the weather that blew in with the westerlies. Then, further to that, they talk as if how we behave is indeed conditioned by this fact of nature: talking of  'necessary action', 'tough decisions' and the like.

By presenting it in this way, it serves very nicely to obscure from us what has happened, what is being done and  why. 

I was born in 1946 and so have spent all my life under the protection of the kind of social policy that my parents (born in 1919) dreamed of - and indeed worked to bring about. At the core of it are free schools, free health, child benefit, unemployment benefit, free higher education and a free social service system. Added in, was some degree of state-run transport and heavy industry. Various versions of this social policy were won and brought in during the middle years of the twentieth century across western Europe and north America. (Let's leave Communist countries out of it for the moment.) 

We have to be clear: a combination of governments and leading capitalists across this western landscape are saying over and over again 'we' can't afford to have this any more.' How curious! To take the example of Britain in this, they want us to believe that a Britain in 1946, shackled by debt, bomb damage and labour shortage could afford this, but a Britain in 2012 capable of producing massive wealth cannot?! Yes, that is precisely what they want us to believe and the servile commentators foist this nonsense on us morning, noon and night.

Their alibi is 'debt'. Big bad debt. And cunningly, they make debt everyone's problem as if the debt owed (or owned) by a bank or a nation state is the same as the debt  you and I owe a mortgage or credit card company. They say, we are all part of 'our' debt, we must all worry about it equally, we are all responsible for it and because of it, 'we' can't have the kind of universal provision people had in 1950. In fact, they're telling us running up 'our' debt was either each of our individual faults or it was the fault of the people we voted for.

Meanwhile another story is told which says:  debt is good. When we study history and economics at school, our teachers told us what a brilliant invention banking was because it enabled merchants and fledgling capitalists to raise money prior to their ventures, bringing together workers and materials, to produce and distribute goods and services for the benefit of all. (One of the great leap forwards for the world, they say,  was ridding it of the chains of the stigma of 'usury' ie making  interest (or, as some narratives put it, excessive interest) from lending money. So, not only does this story say, 'debt is good', it also says that 'usury is good'.)

So, for capitalism to work, it needs debt. Very few enterprises can start or make leaps forward  from the assets held by an individual or a group of people (a company). And the great enterprises which make this possible are of course banks and because usury is good, the banks make more and more money by collecting the interest payments. All good, say the commentators. 

Bankers are clever people who suss out the best enterprises, companies and individuals to lend money to: that is, people who will go on and on and on and on and on paying the interest. (It's not, as happens between individuals, those people who pay back the loan or 'principal' very quickly. Such speedy re-payers are not profitable to the bank.) The job of bankers then is to scour the world for suitable debtors, or, indeed suitable chunks of debt. Banks can buy debt off another lender so long (in their ideal world) as the interest payments carry on coming in. And of course banks can borrow money ('leverage') to buy debt. Loans to buy loans. Debts to buy debts with debts getting bigger and bigger. 

At the end of these long chains of money-lending, there must be people who can pay it back. For people to pay it back, there needs to be something being made, services being provided: work, work that produces stuff or distributes stuff or provides stuff that people need or want.

But here lies a big problem for the money-lenders. People who run companies have to make a profit.(Profit is good.) To make a profit, companies have to keep costs down. They have to keep costs down because they are in competition with each other. (Competition is good, says the dogma. Debt, usury and competition all good!). The key way to keep costs down is to 'cut labour costs' - that's to say, keep the wage bill down. 

The three main ways to do this are: doing something to the wages (freeze or cut), sacking workers often through automation but also through 'cutbacks', getting governments to raise prices by pulling their 'economic levers' whilst freezing the wages. All this will help companies make profits.

One problem: it cuts back on the ability of workers ('consumers') to buy the stuff that the capitalists make. Pay people less, they buy less. Or, in technical terms: whoops! 

Now back to the bankers looking all over the world for people to lend money to. At any given moment, there is, as it were, a league table of good debtors sitting on the bankers' walls - good debtors because they will never stop paying interest; good debtors because they will pay higher interest payments than the next debtor. Now this is the key point: top of the debtors' league table in the period leading up to this crisis was...other moneylenders! Mortgage companies, credit card companies (more often than not, subsidiaries 

of the banks themselves) and of course governments. 

Now., remember that there is a strong motor within capitalism trying to pay workers less ie making them less able to pay for goods and services. So, billions of people are confronted with two pressures: to buy more, to take home less pay. 

In the middle of this push-me, pull-you is tax. Tax according to the same dictum that says, debt is good, usury is good and competition is good, is bad. Tax is bad. Tax is bad because it takes money 'away from the economy' (ie people aren't spending it on the goods and services (and debt!). Instead government is spending  it on these other touchy feely things like education, health, social services. 

Now here come the commentators, who cast this debate about tax as if it is an argument about what's in the kitty, what's in the pot,and that this is the limit of 'our' wealth. This is a conjuror's trick, a sleight of hand. As you can see from everything above, there is a huge amount of business going on outside of the matter of governments taking taxes from us and spending it. At the core of this 'huge amount of business', is of course 'business'! That is the business of making profits. (Profit is good) Making a surplus of money, or wealth. As we've seen so far, there are two main ways of making these profits: companies making and distributing goods and services; lending money. (The third main way is through renting out stuff - houses, 'plant' etc). 

And here's the mystery, the money that dares not speak its name, the untouchable secret: the total capitalists' wealth. What is it? Where is it? What's happening to it? Who's got it? And, most importantly, why is it always outside of the debate of what 'we' can afford, what 'our' governments can spend money on, 'our' deficit. It's rather as if we're playing cards in a room where the kitty 'we' are allowed to gamble with is restricted to what's on the table...other than that there's a door at one end of the room which is the door to the safe. In there, are billions of quids which 'we' at our end of the table can't touch. All the arguments and rows going on around the table about who's got what are taking place as if the money in the safe doesn't exist. In fact, to pursue the analogy even further, everything we do round the table seems to end up with more money piling up in the safe! When somebody says, 'hey let's send out for fish and chips', somebody pops up with, 'but we can't afford it.' . Then we all look at the kitty, and think, oh that's true. Meanwhile, the safe is stacked full of money for thousands of fish and chip meals! 

Now that analogy breaks down in one very important way. Work is not sitting playing cards and gambling. Work is the business of making and distributing goods and services that people need and want. Capitalists pay workers to do that but at the end of the year the price they get for the goods and services they sell must come to more than what they pay to the workers plus what they pay for  the cost of plant and rents and interest. If it doesn't come to more the capitalist either goes bust or borrows some more money. 

So where are we now? What point have we arrived at in history where the 'truth' seems to be that 'we' can't afford to have the social provision that we used to have? 

Bankers lent money beyond the point debtors could afford to pay the interest. 

Now ask the question, why couldn't they afford to pay the interest? It's because they weren't (or aren't) being paid enough. Why aren't they being paid enough? Because capitalism (the system which is lending people money)  is about paying people as little as possible, ideally less and less. Why are they being paid less and less? So that profits can be made. (Debt is good, usury is good, competition  is good, profits are good, taxes are bad!)

Yes, there are huge profits sitting in the safe at the other end of the room, at the other end of town, at the other end of the country. And even if these profits sometimes take a dip, make no mistake, whether they are 'frozen' as massive assets of real estate or luxury goods, or whether they are simply rising less quickly, profits  go on and on and on and on. The super-rich are superly rich and, in these times of 'recession'  when 'tough decisions' are being made they are getting richer and richer and richer. And please, they don't really get rich by paying themselves big salaries. They get rich by collecting profits (from dividends, rents and interest) at the end of the year. 

So, this is a story about how we are tricked into thinking that what 'we' can afford is just or only about how governments tax us and spend the money, it's about how we are tricked into not looking at what's in the safe or indeed  not even noticing that there's a door to the safe right next to us! That safe is the holy of holies where we must not trespass. We must never imagine a system where what's in the safe should be as much part of the discussion about 'what we can do' as what governments do about taxation. 

At the moment, there is only one alternative on offer: the one that says what's in the safe is not ours. And yet, it was only possible to stuff it full of money because people worked and worked and worked making and distributing the goods and services. 

Note: in the last three years, the super-rich in the UK (the top 1000) have increased their wealth (ie got even richer) by £155 billion. That's just about the same as what 'our' deficit is - the one they keep telling us must be paid back through our taxation  and because of that 'we' can't have the social provision we've been used to. £155 billion in the safe at the end of the room! 

Action research - what is it?

At various times on this blog I've referred to 'action research', a term not used very often in the UK but quite well known in the north America and Australia. My view is that given that we don't live in Utopia, we still have to come up now with ways of working which are better than top-down, diktats.

Here's the wikipedia entry on 'Action Research'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_research

You can make this matter as theoretical or as practical, as short or as long as you like. I've just supervised 5 excellent students who developed projects of their own across a term in primary and secondary schools in classroom and after-school or library contexts. Next spring, I will be supervising another ten whilst being a co-convenor of the poetry 'action research' project we run at the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education 'Poetry Write Now'.

The previous blog shows teachers in the midst of a piece of Action Research of their own devising.