How private education, inherited wealth and tax avoidance help the disadvantaged to catch up...

The government ‘helps’ the disadvantaged ‘catch up’


by hindering them from getting time doing activities


that those who are ahead do


(read for pleasure/open interpretation/oracy time/the Arts/cultural visits)


and they assist the ‘ahead’


thru private education/inherited wealth/tax avoidance .

Reception Class to recite: 'We are units of cultural capital..."

Hello Reception! 

Say after me: 

“we are units of cultural capital 

which can be unitised and monetised 

in terms of potential productive output 

even though we have no idea 

what kind of work will be available for us to do

 in 14 years time.”

We need to prepare 2 year olds for things that will prepare them for the kinds of thing that prepare them for...

I'm producing a series of books 

that prepare 2 year old children 

for books that prepare children 

for the work they need to do 

when they're preparing to use books 

that prepare them for 

the Phonics screening check.

You Wait Till You're Older - the curriculum as progress towards the workplace

When you're at college 

they say

this is just a holiday; 

you wait till you get out and face life

and see what work is really like.

When you're in your last years at school 

they say

you wait till you get to college, or university

you'll see what it's like to really get your head down and study something that the rest of your life depends on - there'll be no hiding place then. 

When you're doing your GCSEs 

they say

you wait till you do your last two years at school

you'll see it's much harder, much more intensive,

much more to learn, much more to know, and if you fall behind, you won't get into college or university and that's a choice you want to be able to make and not miss out on the chance just because you weren't prepared to work hard now.

When you're doing your first years at secondary school, 

they say

you wait till you're doing your GCSEs you'll 

have to really get your head down and learn much more stuff than we're giving you now, this is just a taster, but you had better get used to it, so that it won't come as so much of a shock then. 

When you're in your last years at primary school

they say

you wait will you get to secondary school

it's going to be a big, big surprise when you see

how much homework you'll have to do

so you might as well do plenty now to get in the swing of it, and remember: 

the marks you get now, go with you to secondary school and will determine what GCSE's you do, and you know: what GCSEs  you do will determine whether you go to university or not. 

When you're in the first years at primary school

they say 

that you have to get used to doing this

kind of work because coming up soon there's going to be plenty more work like this and it's best to learn now how to do it, or you won't know where you are when it comes along later

and suddenly you'll find that you're left behind 

When you're in nursery school, 

they say

it's best to get used to sitting down for hours on end to get used to what you'll have to do when you go to university. 

When you're in playgroup, 

they say

it's best to not run around all the time and get in some time sitting still and listening so that you get a feel of school and college and life and work. 

When you're in that time before playgroup

they say 

that you've got to get used to the time when your parents aren't there, and you've got to do just as you're told because one day, you'll have exams which decide what you're going to work at for the rest of your life. 

Family history and photos for Holocaust Memorial Day #HMD2018

On the left, the photo was taken in Bielitz now Bielsko-Biala in Poland in 1938/9. From the right in the photo you can see: my father's aunts Bella and Stella, and Stella's son Michael. Michael was put on train to Russia and he never saw his mother and Bella again.

The photo on the right is of Stella and Bella's brother, my father's uncle, Oscar (Jeschie) born in Oswiecim, who fought in the Austro-Hungarian army in 1914-18 war (this is his infantry regiment uniform). He moved to France. When the German army invaded France in 1940, he fled to Niort, Deux-Sèvres, was put on a 'fichier juif' (list of Jews), given a yellow star, had his possessions 'aryanised' (seized by Vichy France).


He fled to Nice, where Jews were not being handed over to the Nazis and where a guy called Donati had requisitioned boats to ferry Jews to north Africa. Italy was defeated by the allies at that very moment, so the Nazis invaded Nice and the surrounding countryside and captured the Jews waiting to be ferried out, including Jeschie and his wife or partner Rachel who like hundreds of others were hiding in the Hotel Excelsior.

They were taken to Drancy transit camp, then deported from Paris Bobigny on convoy 62, November 23, 1943 to Auschwitz and neither were seen again by any of my relatives. Auschwitz was built next to the Polish town of Oswiecim, where Jeschie was born.

These photos (and others) lay hidden in a closet in a sealed up box until the end of 2016, when my cousin Teddy in America went into the house of Stella, Bella and Jeschie's nephew in Manchester, Connecticut and opened up the box. Jeschie and Rachel are commemorated on a monument in Sedan, in the Ardennes where they lived.

There don't seem to be any monuments anywhere for Jeschie's brother Martin (who lived in either Metz or Sedan), or for Stella, Bella, and their siblings, Willi, or Genia ; two more brothers, Morris (my father's father) and Max lived in the US.

Michael (in the photo on the left) survived by fighting in the Polish Free Army, ended the war in a Displaced Persons Camp, came to England on the way to the US but ended up staying. He lives in Stanmore.

PS I only discovered last week that Jeschie's uniform here was for a mostly Polish regiment in the Austro-Hungarian army (raised in Wadowice) and that he fought in nearly 40 battles in the First World War on the same side as the German Army.

My father and his sister Sylvia both of whom lived first in the US and then in London didn't ever know any of the events that happened to Jeschie and their aunts and uncles who lived in Poland and France. I 'tell' my father about them in my memoir.

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A place to collect expressions, phrases, quotes, sayings in your room?

I see more and more articles and talk about language as if it's 'words' or 'vocabulary'. Language is made up of words in use, in the way we interact socially and as part of our behaviour. Words are not 'language' until they are linked together in 'syntax', with invisible links, that don't announce themselves as 'syntax'. 

Bearing this in mind, in addition to your 'wow words' wall, why not create a wall where people can contribute expressions, quotes from songs, overheard bits of conversation on buses, funny notices, misprints in newspapers, witty headlines and shop names, poignant lines from plays or novels, famous sayings or quotes that say something that people think are important. 

You could have a couple of 'editors' who 'moderate' the contributions. This could involve a discussion about what it means to moderate and why it's become necessary. 

Every so often have discussions about all these quotes and examples of clever or interesting or odd examples of 'language in use', or use any of them as starting points for writing. This is what writers have done for hundreds of years...collect other people's examples of writing and use them as starting points for new writing. 

The best help you can give for writing

The best help you can give for writing (schools or wherever): imitation, invention, investigation, interpretation and audience, ie saying ‘we can write like that, we can make stuff up, we can wonder why a bit of writing is like that, we can discuss that and we can share what we write, and we can do all these things over and over again in as many ways as we can possibly think up.'