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Hats off to our blessed BBC again. Last night’s schedule on BBC4 was a brilliant piece of programming. Thank goodness the state of childhood in contemporary Britain is coming under more and more scrutiny.
I was too late getting back from the funeral gathering in Ruislip to watch the 8.00pm programme, Child of our Time, but will catch up with it on BBCi later this evening, or tomorrow. And how great is that? - being able to catch up with great programmes on the Internet, any time you like. (Virgin TV also has it on Catch Up)
A Revolution in Childhood was 90 minutes of discussion by a panel of experts about the preceding programme, and about whether childhood in Britain really is ‘in crisis’.
The most memorable contribution was about the ‘commodification’ of childhood by parents, teachers, and society as a whole. And we all know this is true: many children are deprived of experiences that adults regard as merely ‘play’ or a ‘waste of time’, and only allowed experiences that adults regard as ‘investments’ with a clear ‘pay off’ in terms of their contribution to measureable achievement or attainment.
The most memorable statistic concerned the numbers of children who are allowed to play outside the home or the garden these days. Hardly any. And virtually none are allowed to venture beyond their own street. In other words, children have no freedom. They’re deprived of a human right. All in the name of their own safety and well-being. And who’s to say this is wrong?
Does it matter? Of course it bloody matters.
I recall the freedom and fun of my own childhood. I went to school on foot, on my own. I went to the shops on my own. I walked to and from the shops through a corner of the local woods that adjoined the estate, that were full of bluebells in the Spring.
We roamed freely throughout the estate, and sometimes beyond, especially when we reached the stage of having bikes. There were various parks, playgrounds and open spaces, and we used them all, from breakfast to tea time. We played cowboys and Indians with guns and bows and arrows, in and out of the shrubberies, across the open plains, and all around the great lakes - or ponds, as our parents called them. It was brilliant.
We didn’t go to music tuition, or have music tutors come to our homes. We didn’t have tutors coming to our homes for extra maths and English. We didn’t go to swimming classes, judo, dance, drama, or after-school playgroups.
We didn’t have computers or multi-channel colour TVs in our bedrooms (or our homes).
Yes folks, we were deprived. Except . . .
We had freedom, and fun, and we were allowed to play, just play, unsupervised. We had our human rights. We had our imaginations, and our freedom to create - dens, hideouts, go-carts, tents, ‘track’ bikes.
The unsupervised bit was important, as the programme highlighted. These days adults - parents and teachers alike - assume they need to be more or less constantly in attendance on children, ready to butt in and intervene at the first sign of disharmony, and at great cost to the emerging social and emotional intelligence of the children.
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A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896
Into my heart on air that kills
Into my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
Blue Remembered Hills is a unique TV drama written by Dennis Potter, the blessed Dennis Potter, in 1979. Adult actors dress up in shorts, knee length socks, tank tops, snake buckle belts and braces and play the roles of children, playing and freely roaming in the fields and woods of rural Shropshire. I remember well watching it when it was first broadcast - the sheer audacity of this innovative drama, and its incredible insight into the world of children with all its cruelty, naivety, hilarity and pathos.
Well done BBC for thinking to broadcast it again near the end of this evening about childhood.
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~martinh/poems/housman.html
http://www.yorksj.ac.uk/potter/bluehill.htm
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The final programme of the evening was a rendition of Shostakovich’s Symphony #10 featuring Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra. (Shostakovich - crazy name, crazy guy.)
It seems a quarter of a million children are currently learning to play a musical instrument in Venezuela, thanks to The System.
Young children are given a musical instrument of their choice, and allowed to play around with it, get to know it, and experiment with getting sounds out of it. If they like the instrument and want to keep it, and if they’re keen to learn how to play it, then they’re given free tuition.
As soon as a child attains some level of proficiency then they’re encouraged to share what they can do with absolute beginners. Skills are cascaded from peer to peer.
If they don’t like their instrument and can’t make progress with it then they can chop it in for a different one. And so on. Brilliant.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/15/MNGS4N006J1.DTL&feed=rss.education
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There’s a guy who works with inner-city kids in a part of South London where there’s an epidemic of gangs and stabbings, who teaches them to play brass instruments from about the age of 8. Lets call him Fred. As soon as the kids can play a few notes they become part of a brass band. The band is funded by a charity, and the lessons are free.
Fred says that his life was changed forever the day someone gave him a trumpet and he discovered he could play notes on it as well as all the kids who were academically successful. In fact he could play better then the ‘bright’ kids.
Hugh Massakela tells the same story, only his was set in South Africa, and the guy who gave him the trumpet was Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, of anti-apartheid fame.
http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/solidarity/huddlebio.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Masekela
We’re still working towards equal opportunities in our country. We’re still feeling the effects of the abolition of free music lessons in most State schools. We no longer consider there’s time for learning to play instruments during the school day in most of our test-oriented, target-chasing State schools. Learning to play an instrument is either an optional extra, or just not an option at all.
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Recently a good friend of mine told me about an encounter she’d had with a very large, very tall young man in a school playground where she was collecting her child at the end of the day.
The young man politely introduced himself as someone she had had the misfortune to try to teach at a time in his young life when he was pretty much unteachable. Many’s the day she was almost reduced to tears of despair.
This guy was desperate to be a footballer, but unfortunately he was not very good at it. He went through secondary school making himself and other people very unhappy, because he couldn’t take what the school was offering, and the school couldn’t give him what he needed.
But there came a day when someone invited him on to a basketball court, put a ball in his hands, and he suddenly discovered he could dribble, pass and shoot better then anyone else. Bingo.
He got better and better, keener and keener, and grew and grew in confidence and self esteem. He soon applied for and was given a scholarship to learn how to be a basketball player in an American university. He’s now studying for a degree, and doing well with a whole range of subjects.
He apologised to my friend for the hard times he’d given her. She apologised to him for the way in which the education system had let him down for so many years, and very nearly condemned him to a lifetime of failure.
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Not all of the BBC’s brilliant output is serious, educational and informative.
The News Quiz on Radio 4 this evening was back to its very best, like it was in the Linda Smith day. The blessed Linda Smith, dearly departed, far too young.
Have I Got News For You this evening was also superb - incredibly funny. Some of it trenchant satire, lots of it lightning-fast wit and word-play. Fabulous.
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Bo Diddley died this week. The blessed Bo Diddley, instigator of chugging, hollering rhythm and blues, inspiration to hundreds of singers and guitarists, including the Animals, who did a whole song about him on a mid-sixties album, a track called The Story of Bo Diddley. RIP, dear Bo.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-diddley3-2008jun03,0,5485671.story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhuEV17YZes
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=e4654e1b-ea07-41f5-ab79-a9cf1f74a438
The blessed John Peel was back on BBC TV this evening as presenter of Rock Family Trees, just his voice - his unique voice, his dry wit and his deadpan delivery. I miss him so much. Someone else who made a major contribution to the culture of the nation and the enjoyment of millions. Someone who was loved by those millions, who died far too young.
A wonderful late-night BBC4 programme to end the day - an hour of the blessed Mark Lawson talking to Alexei Sayle - enfant terrible and pioneer of ‘alternative’ comedy. I love his new relaxed intellectual “Marxist Father Christmas with a foul mouth” looks and persona - “I just think we should make the world a better place”. Amen to that.
He’s someone else who says, “God bless the BBC”.
And he still maintains that it’s all about “Satisfaction with yer werk”, and not popularity as such.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Sayle
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And finally . . .
More synchronicity. Yesterday I cleared a batch of old tax discs out of the holder in my car. About seven years’ worth. This evening’s ‘guest publication’ on Have I Got News was Velologist Magazine. Velology is the collection and categorisation of expired tax discs. People pay money to have them in their collection. Weird.
Having recently mentioned Parade magazine in a blog I then discovered that people pay up to £40 a pop for old copies of this terrible little mag. Weird. Wonder what a tax disc is worth.
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