Layer 43 Having A Laugh

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One of the benefits of retirement from headship is the intellectual stimulation that’s suddenly available, and accessible, and very, very enjoyable. I love my days being filled with conversation, books, newspapers, music, the Internet and Radio 4.

Ever since head teachers were bludgeoned into the role of bureaucratic functionaries who just do as they’re told - who just exist to ‘drive up standards’ - they were no longer required to think about the needs of children and teachers, and they were no longer allowed to be alternative centres of thinking about pedagogy, teaching and learning. Their independent action research into how to improve attitudes to learning, to reading, to mathematics and science, etc, was no longer welcome, and in many cases no longer tolerated. Talk about ‘Leaders of Learning’!

Teams of ‘experts’ had devised the National Literacy Strategy, for example, and the role of the head was to ensure the strategy was implemented in their schools. So no more nonsense about holistic learning, reading and writing across the curriculum, the integral role of speaking and listening, genuine purposes for writing and research, a sense of audience for creative writing, and so on. No more rubbish about children enjoying school, or developing a love of learning.

Al of those strands of thinking now had to be abandoned, and the teachers were to be directed to do whole-class teaching and decontextualised and meaningless exercises to practice ‘grammar for writing’, ‘connectives‘, adjectival phrases, and “wow words”! Not just a return to ‘basics’, but a kind of turbo-Victorian approach to children learning by rote to operate within the dominant culture.

These are the intellectual depths to which teaching was supposed to descend - the idea that good writing consists of long sentences full of ‘connectives’, multi-syllable words (whether or not the children fully appreciate their meaning), fancy descriptions, and the kind of vocabulary that may be quite common in some middle class homes but certainly isn’t in the majority of working class homes, where, incidentally, the language is nevertheless, more often than not (because not all of the working classes are thick and ignorant, you see) vivid, lively, colorful and witty. It also tends to be concise, direct and appropriate.

I used to despair of teachers who started out in their careers, and often went through their entire careers, thinking that working class language and expression was inferior and unfit for purpose. I well remember a snooty teacher that I had for ‘A’ Level French who hated the Midlands accent that was prevalent in my school and scolded us for our ‘lazy’ and ‘slovenly’ pronunciation, and for our ways of speaking. I remember asking myself why I should have any respect for this self-made toff (RIP Mr Hottot) who clearly had no respect for (or understanding of ) me and my vast extended family, my friends and my neighbours. I felt a very real need to give him at least a sharp verbal slap, but of course I also wanted to get through my French exam.

The only thing I remember learning from this guy was the word ‘palimpsest’ (See Layer 1). He obviously loved the word, and thought it made him sound educated and terribly bright when he used it. The second time he tried to teach it to us he started off by asking our small group of ‘A’ Level hopefuls (only half of whom passed the exam) if we knew what it meant. When I told him the meaning he asked me how I knew it (!), and was somewhat taken aback when I explained that he’d already introduced us to the word - the previous year. It’s still not exactly a word that’s always on the tip of my tongue. I reckon I could get through life without it.

I’ve known plenty of teachers (and head teachers) down the years who had a built-in conviction that non-standard English needed to be driven out of the classroom and replaced with ‘correct’ English. They found it very hard to come to terms with the idea that if the community they work in has its own modes of speech, its own local grammar and syntax, and its own vocabulary and pronunciation, then it was perfectly entitled to have those things, and entitled to resent any teacher whose attitude was elitist, snobbish and discriminatory.

It seems incredible to me that as part of their basic training young teachers aren’t made aware that their job is to validate and show respect for children’s current usage of language, and to work towards children becoming aware of ‘Standard English’ and ‘Received Pronunciation’, and to be able to use them appropriately when any situation requires it, such as in tests. (Though one might argue that examiners have no right to penalise any child who chooses to write in the vernacular in a test.)

Teachers who see themselves as missionaries, or elocutionists, who descend on working class communities with no respect for the local culture and a determination to impose their fundamentalist beliefs about speaking and writing on the children they work with, and attempt to make the children feel ashamed of their community languages, accents and dialects, should be sent packing. To the contrary, the system goes on encouraging them in their self-appointed role.

However, I digress. All I’m really saying is that the life of head teachers in the current climate is intellectually stultifying, and the biggest challenge on offer is to learn how to work the system and survive in their job, whilst dealing with a daily diet of problem-solving, administration and supervision that is hardly very intellectually stimulating the first time around, let alone the 10th or 20th.

Not that most heads are looking for intellectual stimulation, of course, but wouldn’t it be NICE if the education system offered them some possibilities and encouragement to think at a high level about what they’re actually doing to and for children. Like, for instance, providing for all the developmental needs of children and enabling them to grow their emotional, social, physical, instinctual and spiritual intelligences, as well as their intellects. The system still doesn’t promote intellectual development and critical thinking, of course - just memorisation, fact acquisition, and test-passing ability.

And as for developing curiosity, creativity, imagination and a love of learning for its own sake - you’re ‘avin a laugh!

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Football - the great working class pastime cum plaything and business opportunity for oligarchs, tycoons and rich scumbags from around the world - available free on ITV last night (if you don't count the cost of the brainache adverts): the Champions League Cup Final, live from Moscow. Manchester United v Chelsea.

Football’s become a bit like language really - once the humble property of ordinary people, but lately colonised and now ‘owned’ by those who like to consider themselves the elite, the good and the great, who consider they have the right to make the rules and to impose the terms on which it’s practiced and enjoyed.

At least this is the case in funky old Britannia, where no-one has any qualms any more about selling their souls and their assholes to the devil, or the Murdoch corporations, or Sky TV, or whatever. Mass culture in Britain is increasingly the BBC v The Rest. The People’s Media v Commercial Interests.

Which is why just a few hundred thousand ‘subscribers’ can now watch Test cricket live, or most football matches live, instead of the millions of people (children included, since they also have ‘rights’) who would like to, and indeed feel they ought to be able to.

Though there are increasingly few members of the populace who were brought up on the notion that everybody - regardless of class or financial means - has the right to share in the riches of our national cultural life: even humble street sweepers, shelf stackers, labourers, child minders and others on minimum wages and part-time hours, who may not have two pennies to rub together when all their bills and taxes have been paid.

(They don’t pay Income Tax? Well they DO pay near enough 20% VAT every time they buy a bog roll or a pair of shoes or a pen or pencil. Which means they pay proportionately more in tax than middle class folks, who in any case are able to afford accountants who show them how to avoid paying tax. So stick that in your anti-egalitarian pipe and smoke it.)

Interestingly the football clubs of Spain and Germany are still at least 51% owned by the fans themselves, joined together in ‘sporting associations’. (Was this the origin of our ‘Association Football’? I’ve never really thought about it.)

In those countries they have maintained a member-owned tradition and a commitment to allow young people to experience being football fans in some of the finest stadiums in Europe. They still have ‘affordable’ prices for entry - 100 Euros can still buy you a ticket for the entire season at Barcelona’s Camp Nou.

Well that’s where a political tradition of anarcho-syndicalism gets you, Mr Scudamore, Mr Abramovich. But you’re not really interested in that, are you? It’s just noses to the trough, as far as you’re concerned. And those that can’t get near to the trough can just fuck off as far as you’re concerned.

I just wish Bill Hicks, who was satirizing the shit out of commercialism and its domination of cultural life, 20 years and more ago, was still around with his courage and his explosive wit and his insightful wisdom. I miss him badly. He was a good man. He made me laugh - like no-one else ever did, or probably ever will again.

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You can read David Conn’s excellent column on the state of football, its finances, and the impact of the ’free market’ on the national team, in yesterday’s Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/may/21/premierleague.championsleague

As for the match last night - it was brilliant. As it would have been had the players been ‘earning’ less than half of what they currently gorge themselves on. As it would have been had Barcelona and Bayern Munich been able to afford those particular players, and been in the final instead of Glazer’s United v Abramovich FC.

Well done the Uefa president, Michel (Liberty, Fraternity, Equality) Platini, for continuing to draw our attention to the fact that the success of the top English clubs has been “built on an unsustainable level of debt which, in all fairness, is distorting the level playing field in Europe”. In all fairness, I reckon they should just kick us out of Uefa.

So don’t laugh about the German teams not doing well in the Champions League any more. At least Germany insists on keeping football as the people’s game, and keeping live football affordable. It’s not the decent and egalitarian social-democratic Germans who are the nationalist neo-fascists these days - it’s us.

We‘re the ones who consider ourselves entitled to all the power, the prestige and the glory, at any cost. To ourselves, (our own people, our own game, our own national team,) or others. (Yes folks, I can bring politics into anything, even Uefa and the Bundesliga!)

Though by all means have a damn good laugh that there aren’t any decent German footballers any more. Over the years I think they’ve had more than their fair share of luck and good fortune. The wheel of fortune has certainly turned, in more ways than one. So sorry Herr Ballack - you were the only German in the Final, and you were crap. Your glory-seeking off-target shooting from free kicks and from miles out of range was rubbish. You were having a laugh.

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PS John Terry is a wuss. Fucking hell, man. You just missed a penalty, that’s all. I can’t feel sorry for you. Think of all the money you’re earning. Fuck the glory. Fuck your ego. I’ll save my pity for the poor fuckers who can’t afford to get into Stamford Bridge, and will never be able to afford to watch you and your vastly over-paid pals kicking a football, except on a screen, of course. Down the pub, maybe. The few that still remain in working class Britain, that is, and can afford a pub license for Sky.
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