Layer 52 Liberals, Leaders and Learning.

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For everyone who's either entering retirement, or looking ahead to that wondrous time, perhaps with some trepidation, there was a very encouraging feature article on ex-Pres Jimmy Carter in yesterday’s Guardian magazine.

During the past three decades, since leaving office, 83 year old Jimmy, who's still going strong, has written 25 books and has refused to sell out by grovelling for pots of money from the ‘lecture’ circuit on the back of the Carter ‘brand’, such as it is or was.

The man has integrity. He’s been busy pursuing a liberal agenda, seeing himself as a spiritual leader rather than a political one, championing unpopular causes. At 83 he still finds life exciting, challenging, gratifying, adventurous. His Carter Centre employs 150 people - “Waging Peace; Fighting Disease; Building Hope”, Advancing Human Rights and Alleviating Suffering. Way to go, Jim.

I always liked Carter. He can be proud of the fact that under his presidency the USA took some ‘revolutionary’ steps: establishing human rights as the basis of foreign policy, discontinuing support for fascist dictators who happened to support America’s ‘economic framework’, and never dropping a bomb or launching a missile. The man had principles. He refused to let the USA go on abusing its power and its weaponry. How things have changed.

America is clearly back to seeing itself as having the God-given right to run the world, and a Boss mentality. Consultation? Fuck off. Collaboration? What for?

What an incredible arrogance for any country to think that it can manage the whole world, and force the rest of the world bend to its will. So might is right . . . And right-wing Americans can’t understand why so many millions around the world despise them. Those foreigners - they’re ungrateful assholes, right?

Thank God for Obama. He understands this stuff, and is a brilliant advocate for liberal Americans who really do get it. He may not get elected this time around, though he surely must (please!), but he’s got the ear of the nation, come what may. And he won’t stop bending that ear, or cease from bashing enlightenment into the darkness.

His eloquence matches his passion and his clear sight. The only question now is whether the majority of Americans are ready for ‘change’, just as we Brits were in ‘97 after the Thatcher project finally hit the buffers in a train wreck of mangled ideology and sleaze.

In ‘97 all but the hard core of conservative Brits were finally convinced that social justice and decency were the way to go. Pity we didn’t quite manage to go there, thanks to Blair and Bush and their ilk. So Cameron’s now our next best hope? Ha! But a parliament with no overall majority could be interesting for a while.

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The blessed Jeremy Hardy, on the News Quiz last week, was right about people generally being rubbish at managing things, which is as true of the private sector as the public sector. Things stay crap because the majority of those in charge haven’t a clue how to create permanent, sustainable improvement. Even if they see the need for improvement.

But Labour’s closet neo-con administration, clueless and panicking, are increasingly attentive to officials and advisers of a right-wing bent who continue to beat the drum for privatisation and the out-sourcing (and the shedding of direct responsibility) of everything in sight.

Today's Observer, meanwhile, on its front page, trumpets "Schools Get Ultimatum: Improve Or Face Closure. Team Of 'Superheads' To Tackle Crisis".

Crisis? What crisis? "The major announcements by Ed Balls are part of an attempt to to claw back political ground from the Conservative party, which is pulling ahead in the polls."

The BBC’s sports editor, on Radio 4, did a piece on why British national teams more often than not fail to reach the finals of major competitions. Management! Oh dear, what a pathetic roll-call of duffers we’ve had. I’m convinced that our teams would have done a lot better if they’d been left to work out tactics themselves as an anarcho-syndicalist collective.

Management claim the credit when things go well, so they should take the blame when things fall apart, as they surely have, time after time. The Boss mentality has infected sport as surely as it’s infected the rest of our national life. The Boss says jump, and everybody has to jump, regardless of whether the Boss is an idiot or not.

It’s the same with the teaching profession - where attitudes are moulded and where young people are exposed to models day after day of teachers managing the learning of young people for better or for worse. And if teachers model ways of reaching learning objectives that require the involvement, commitment and understanding of those who are meant to benefit from the system and from the organization, then that sends out powerful messages about how to reach objectives.

Our traditions demand the opposite - children are expected just to passively do whatever teacher says they should do. Active engagement with their own learning, and agreeing their learning objectives - even just sharing what those objectives are supposed to be - usually isn’t on the agenda.

This has to change.

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Another news item today said that we’re eating fewer and fewer oranges. Children can’t even manage to peel oranges. Parents aren’t passing on the skills. As Jeremy Hardy said, it doesn’t matter - kids have all got knives anyway.

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Another news item last week. Imperial College, London University, one of our most prestigious technological and scientific establishments, has announced it’s no longer going to use ‘A’ level results - the so-called ‘Gold Standard’ - as the basis for deciding admissions.

WHAT!!?? BLOODY HELL!!

So what are they going to do? Easy. They’re going to assess applicants through their own tests and interviews. Wow!

They’re going to assess their thinking skills, their problem-solving ability, their creativity, their general knowledge, subject specific knowledge, etc. Revolutionary stuff.

Credit will given to those who would be the first in their family to attend university; credit will be given to those from schools which do not achieve good A-level grades.

Looks like the earth may be beginning to move a little.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article3999109.ece