.
A young woman in her twenties was stabbed to death in the Bellenden area of Peckham last night, according to the radio this morning. I drove through that part of the city at the weekend, and to look at it on a sunny afternoon you’d never imagine such things could happen there. Decent streets full of decent Victorian terrace housing, nice shops and restaurants, good-looking people going about their business. So much for appearances.
Because of my personal connection with this area - I have friends who live there and friends who work there - I now find myself wondering about the victim and the circumstances of her death. What was she like? Was she one of those well-dressed good-looking people I noticed on Saturday? Or was she one of the noisy, rowdy, aggressive types you can come across on buses and in bars and pubs? Women with ‘attitude’.
Not that it should make any difference. No-one deserves to live more than anyone else, and no-one deserves to die more than anyone else. Killing is vile and obscene, no matter who it happens to.
Whoever was responsible for this crime was either in the grip of dangerous and destructive emotions, or was a psychotic, a psychopath. We can be sure of that. If the latter, then were they being treated for their illness? What sort of treatment were they being given? Had they been identified as being in need of treatment? And if not, why not?
If the former, then why has this individual not been taught how to exercise control over destructive emotions? Has their experience of our education system made any difference at all to their ability to recognise the onset of overwhelming and destructive emotions, and their experience in school offered them strategies for coping with such swamping?
Has their experience of formal education taught them anything at all about allowing anger to grip them and drive them? Have they learnt anything about self-control? About the sanctity of life? About the foolishness of carrying dangerous weapons, and a willingness to use them? About human values?
And if not, why not? Was it because there are no exam passes to be gained in these areas of learning, and because time taken to concentrate on these forms of learning is time taken away from the ‘subjects’ that will be examined?
Did they spend any time studying the effects of desires such as revenge? Maybe this was a revenge killing. Maybe it was another girl who committed this crime, or someone committed it on behalf of a girl who had been insulted by someone, or who’d had her boyfriend taken from her by a rival. Have any of our young people spent sufficient time studying phenomena such as jealousy and envy, and how these afflictions often turn into destructive and seemingly uncontrollable emotions?
How on earth are young people supposed to know about combating and neutralizing intense and harmful emotions? How on earth can they be expected to resist the surrounding culture’s insistence that you must to inflict physical violence on anyone who shows you ‘disrespect’? Anyone who ‘cuts their eyes’ or ‘sucks their teeth’ at you? Anyone who ‘blanks’ you? Anyone who comes on to ‘your’ estate or ‘your’ part of town who doesn’t live there themselves?
Well-meaning commentators really have no idea about how life is really lived on the streets in the inner cities. Those same streets of respectable terraced houses contain hundreds of angry and explosive teenagers and young adults, even older adults, who live all their days with anger and hatred in their hearts, often with drugs in their veins (including legal drugs like alcohol) and no understanding of why they feel the way they do, let alone what they should do to change anything. The same applies to the sprawling estates and the tower blocks.
They feel lonely, unloved and hopeless. They can even be one of those who live with family and friends - because those people are also suffering from various sorts of emotional and spiritual sickness. They hate themselves, they hate the world, and they’re ready to inflict their unhappiness and their hatred on other people. Nobody who is basically happy or even content most of the time will go out with intent to kill, with intent to use a weapon. We’ll come to the pursuit of happiness in a moment.
Sullen, resentful, angry, mean-spirited individuals roam our streets. They don’t know why they feel this way, and they have no idea how to stop feeling this way. And in a sense, why should they? Why should they care? Nobody ever cared about them. Their lives have been full of bullying and regimenting, often by a system of schooling that makes them do the very things they hate doing and deprives them of opportunities to do the things they most enjoy doing. There are hundreds of wonderful teachers, but they’re not at liberty to really affect the timetabling, the scheduling, the cramming, the rote-learning, the deprivation of individual liberty, and choice, and self-determination.
I even fear for four year olds, who, on entering many a nursery soon find that they are expected to fit a mould, and do everything to order, everything to suit the teachers. Some can ‘fit in’, and some can’t. The roots of disaffection and low self-esteem can start here, or in the home, or both. God help those for whom it’s both.
Is it any wonder that kids bond together on the basis of their mutual resentment and hostility to what they’re made to endure? Even if they can’t love one another, because they have no capacity to love, they can at least ‘respect’ one another, and earn extra ‘respect’ points from one another on the basis of how rebellious, how assertive, how aggressive they can be. And so it goes.
They need smart trainers, they need drugs, they need ‘bling’, and they’re prepared to go out and rob and steal to get these things. And why do they concern themselves with material things to such a degree? Well - what else is there? They have no-one to love, no-one to love them, no capacity for love, and nothing else in their miserable, mean lives that could be called a passion. Nothing that fills them with delight, or a sense of accomplishment, or enthusiasm, or plain enjoyment.
They watch violent DVDs, in which tough guys ‘take care of business’. They play video games, in which the same things happen. It’s kill or be killed. This is how the world is, isn’t it? They listen to music whose lyrics extol aggression and ‘toughness’, whose ethic is basically do your own thing, get what you want, show the world how rough you can be, especially if anyone tries to get in your way. Ideal music for wimps and losers and messed-up teenagers trying to work out who they are and where they belong, if anywhere.
Because they certainly don’t belong in the world where decent people who have studied and worked hard have a decent life. They don’t know how to do those things and they don’t care to either. They have no idea how to engage, and no-one reaches out and shows them either. It’s play the game our way, or get out.
None of these things are new, of course. It’s just the intensity nowadays. Nobody dares to challenge feral kids on the streets and on the buses because of the likelihood they’ll be kicked or stabbed, or even shot. They was a time when an adult might receive a mouthful of ‘cheek’ for intervening in rowdiness or disorderly or drunken conduct, but nowadays that would be a mild comeback compared with the likely consequences for trying to be a good citizen. We’ve all heard the cases of guys killed or stabbed outside their own homes because they dared to challenge a noisy gang.
A couple of weeks ago I was visiting Ashburton, in rural Devon, and heard about a shopkeeper who was stabbed in his shop in the middle of the high street, in the middle of the day, for no apparent reason. It can happen anywhere.
Nobody who is spiritually and emotionally intelligent can possibly carry a knife. Therefore nobody who is spiritually and emotionally intelligent can possibly commit knife crime. This is the glaring truth. So why aren’t we helping young people to become spiritually and emotionally intelligent? The glaring truth tells us that it’s because we don’t care to, we don’t see the need to, and all too often we don’t know how to. We might pay lip service to these things, but we don’t seriously do anything about them, especially in our toughest areas, our toughest schools.
Whereas - there are lots of kids who have done well in examinations and tests of so-called academic ability who have committed, and will commit in the future, all sorts of crimes. What does this tell us about where our priorities lie as a nation?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Here’s the latest news report from the ITN website:
Gang culture based on drugs and violence has replaced family to become a way of life, a leading chief constable has warned.
Barbara Wilding, the Chief Constable of South Wales, said tribal loyalty had replaced family loyalty in some deprived areas.
She said custody could only provide a short term solution, with policies based primarily on enforcement "set on sand".
Ms Wilding reportedly said: "In many of our larger cities, in areas of extreme deprivation, there are almost feral groups of very angry young people.
"Many have experienced family breakdown, and in place of parental and family role models, the gang culture is now established. Tribal loyalty has replaced family loyalty and gang culture based on violence and drugs is a way of life."
The remarks come after the murder of 16-year-old Ben Kinsella, who was stabbed to death in Islington, North London, at the weekend. He became the 17th teenager to be murdered in London this year.
Ms Wilding, a former Deputy Assistant Commissioner at the Metropolitan Police, said the focus should be on tackling the complex social and economic causes that underlie criminal behaviour.
Ms Wilding, who read criminology at London University, was awarded a CBE for services to policing in the Queen's 80th birthday honours list.
Home secretary Jacqui Smith has vowed to tackle knife crime in the UK in the wake of the latest fatal stabbing. She said: "This is only something that we can solve if we come together - Government, police, young people, community groups - in the same way that we've done tackling guns and gangs."
------------------------------------------------------------
Oh really, Ms Smith? Has anyone ever heard such a load of platitudinous and meaningless nonsense? If they do it in the same way they’ve tackled guns and gangs then surely they shouldn’t bother? Her ‘vow’ doesn’t mean a thing. She’s completely missing the point, which was very well made by Barbera Wilding in the speech reported on by ITN.
But as for doing what Ms Wilding suggests and “tackling the complex social and economic causes that underlie criminal behaviour“ - we haven’t even begun to reach a consensus on what they are and how much effort and resources we’ve prepared to devote to such work. Time to begin, anyone?
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/itn/20080702/tuk-family-breakdown-blamed-on-gang-cult-dba1618.html
More news from ITN:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/itn/20080702/tuk-woman-dies-after-knife-attack-dba1618.html
A woman has died after being stabbed in south east London.
The victim, believed to be in her 20s, received a wound to her upper body during the attack at around 11pm outside a Lidl supermarket just off Peckham High Street. The woman was taken to Kings College Hospital but was pronounced dead shortly after midnight.
The controller of a nearby taxi firm said a group of ten to 20 girls were seen at the scene of the crime shortly before or at the time of the incident. The man, who did not wish to be named, added that it was a well-known trouble spot.
He said: "It is happening around here almost every night. At around 7 to 8pm people arrive and start drinking in the streets. They lose their brains and it turns violent."
The incident comes amid growing concern over knife crime in the capital. Hundreds of teenagers took to the streets as part of a protest following the death of 16-year-old Ben Kinsella over the weekend. He became the 17th teenager to die a violent death in London since the beginning of the year.
.
Showing posts with label knives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label knives. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Layer 48 Eevnin Stannad, Standards, Evil Bastards.
.
News from Yahoo:
Astrologers Tell Nepal’s Deposed King To Stay In Palace.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080531/tod-uk-nepal-king-astrologers-a914664.html
Man Wins Compensation For Too Many Germans.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080531/tod-britain-germany-tourism-offbeat-6058bda.html
Michael Jackson ‘Incapable Of Performing Ever Again’.
http://uk.news.launch.yahoo.com/dyna/article.html?a=/31052008/364/promoter-jackson-incapable-las-vegas-show.html&e=l_news_dm
David Beckham To Captain England Again
http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/31052008/58/int-football-becks-given-armband-caribbean.html
I’m giving up on the Guardian. Yahoo News is fucking hilarious. You couldn’t make it up.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Do newspaper vendors still stand and bawl, selling their wares on London’s pavements? I remember well the street cries of yesteryear: “Eevnin’ Stannad! Stannad! Ge’ Yoowwa Stannad!” How they echo down the years. Surely those guys don’t still exist?
I bought a copy of the Evening Standard at lunchtime yesterday. It calls itself ‘London’s Quality Newspaper’ and it’s a pile of poo. Always has been. Best avoided whenever possible. In normal times you wouldn’t want to stink your house out with it, but these are not normal times.
There it was yesterday, piled up on the counter of the newsagent, with the single-word headline ‘ENOUGH‘. Accompanied by a large picture of a knife, smothered with blood.
“Eleven teenagers stabbed to death in London this year. Children killing children. Today the Standard sets out our charter to beat knife crime.”
Interesting? How were they going to handle this? Well - for a start they had knife crime and their ‘charter’ all across the first seven pages, interrupted only by adverts for the House of Fraser, The Phantom of the Opera, Heathrow Connect and Air Berlin. Not bad.
But what about the charter itself? The new five point charter. Unsurprisingly they want more searches, more prosecutions, tougher sentences and compulsory therapy. But what’s this, at number 2? Something about education and ‘cultural change’? Hmmm.
Here it is in full:
2. Train children in “peer-to-peer mentoring” and use citizenship and personal, social and health education to teach the simple message: respect cannot be won at the point of a knife.
Education will be important to ensure future generations grow up without any illusions about the devastation knives cause — and with the skills to avoid getting involved.
Schools should focus on compulsory personal, social and health — as well as citizenship — lessons on teaching children about the importance of treating each other with respect.
But the responsibility goes far wider than schools to embrace every section of society — from parents to the media responsible for creating films, music and computer games that can influence young people's behaviour. The Mayor's advisers, among others, believe that investment in youth clubs and mentoring schemes, particularly for those excluded from school, are vital to divert youngsters away from crime.
On another level, Sir Alan Steer, the leader of the government's behaviour task force, urges parents to take greater control over the music their children listen to. But this culture change will take many years to achieve.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23488573-details/The+Standard
Compulsory PSHE and citizenship - right on. Cultural change. Yes. Many years to change. Exactly.
And on page 4 there’s more good stuff. Mayor Boris Johnson is “understood to be concentrating on the root causes of youth violence in order to improve the situation long term . . . ” “The Mayor’s Office is committed to putting in place measures needed to restore young people's sense of hope and engagement.”
Ray Lewis, deputy mayor for young people, said there was "no magic solution" but he would look at what was driving teenagers to violence in the first place.” He also said, “It is also imperative that we look at why so many young men, and increasingly women, are growing up angry and disengaged from society."
Deputy Mayor for policing Kit Malthouse (how many Deputies has this guy got?), said, “The long-term solutions to youth crime are complex and will require a wholesale cultural shift.”
Suddenly I feel the earth moving. People talking about identifying root causes of disaffection and aggression. People talking about offering hope and engagement. Recognition that young people are growing up angry and disengaged from society. People talking about the necessity for a wholesale cultural shift. Amazing.
And credit where it’s due. This is a Tory paper, and these people are part of the Tory team now running London. Maybe there’s hope yet.
.
News from Yahoo:
Astrologers Tell Nepal’s Deposed King To Stay In Palace.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080531/tod-uk-nepal-king-astrologers-a914664.html
Man Wins Compensation For Too Many Germans.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080531/tod-britain-germany-tourism-offbeat-6058bda.html
Michael Jackson ‘Incapable Of Performing Ever Again’.
http://uk.news.launch.yahoo.com/dyna/article.html?a=/31052008/364/promoter-jackson-incapable-las-vegas-show.html&e=l_news_dm
David Beckham To Captain England Again
http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/31052008/58/int-football-becks-given-armband-caribbean.html
I’m giving up on the Guardian. Yahoo News is fucking hilarious. You couldn’t make it up.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Do newspaper vendors still stand and bawl, selling their wares on London’s pavements? I remember well the street cries of yesteryear: “Eevnin’ Stannad! Stannad! Ge’ Yoowwa Stannad!” How they echo down the years. Surely those guys don’t still exist?
I bought a copy of the Evening Standard at lunchtime yesterday. It calls itself ‘London’s Quality Newspaper’ and it’s a pile of poo. Always has been. Best avoided whenever possible. In normal times you wouldn’t want to stink your house out with it, but these are not normal times.
There it was yesterday, piled up on the counter of the newsagent, with the single-word headline ‘ENOUGH‘. Accompanied by a large picture of a knife, smothered with blood.
“Eleven teenagers stabbed to death in London this year. Children killing children. Today the Standard sets out our charter to beat knife crime.”
Interesting? How were they going to handle this? Well - for a start they had knife crime and their ‘charter’ all across the first seven pages, interrupted only by adverts for the House of Fraser, The Phantom of the Opera, Heathrow Connect and Air Berlin. Not bad.
But what about the charter itself? The new five point charter. Unsurprisingly they want more searches, more prosecutions, tougher sentences and compulsory therapy. But what’s this, at number 2? Something about education and ‘cultural change’? Hmmm.
Here it is in full:
2. Train children in “peer-to-peer mentoring” and use citizenship and personal, social and health education to teach the simple message: respect cannot be won at the point of a knife.
Education will be important to ensure future generations grow up without any illusions about the devastation knives cause — and with the skills to avoid getting involved.
Schools should focus on compulsory personal, social and health — as well as citizenship — lessons on teaching children about the importance of treating each other with respect.
But the responsibility goes far wider than schools to embrace every section of society — from parents to the media responsible for creating films, music and computer games that can influence young people's behaviour. The Mayor's advisers, among others, believe that investment in youth clubs and mentoring schemes, particularly for those excluded from school, are vital to divert youngsters away from crime.
On another level, Sir Alan Steer, the leader of the government's behaviour task force, urges parents to take greater control over the music their children listen to. But this culture change will take many years to achieve.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23488573-details/The+Standard
Compulsory PSHE and citizenship - right on. Cultural change. Yes. Many years to change. Exactly.
And on page 4 there’s more good stuff. Mayor Boris Johnson is “understood to be concentrating on the root causes of youth violence in order to improve the situation long term . . . ” “The Mayor’s Office is committed to putting in place measures needed to restore young people's sense of hope and engagement.”
Ray Lewis, deputy mayor for young people, said there was "no magic solution" but he would look at what was driving teenagers to violence in the first place.” He also said, “It is also imperative that we look at why so many young men, and increasingly women, are growing up angry and disengaged from society."
Deputy Mayor for policing Kit Malthouse (how many Deputies has this guy got?), said, “The long-term solutions to youth crime are complex and will require a wholesale cultural shift.”
Suddenly I feel the earth moving. People talking about identifying root causes of disaffection and aggression. People talking about offering hope and engagement. Recognition that young people are growing up angry and disengaged from society. People talking about the necessity for a wholesale cultural shift. Amazing.
And credit where it’s due. This is a Tory paper, and these people are part of the Tory team now running London. Maybe there’s hope yet.
.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Layer 47 Blair, Brown, Blunkett, Blinkers, Bullshit and Blindfolds.
.
Back home from the peace and quiet of Somerset. The noise levels here at home today are quite intolerable. This has been happening for the past 3 weeks, thanks to the water mains being relaid up and down the street, but today it’s worse than ever. There’s nowhere in the house I can go to get away from the racket that’s being created by pneumatic drills, cement mixer lorries, men shouting, drilling, etc. It’s incredible.
Of course the minute I write all this down they’ve decided to down tools and have a tea break, and there’s blissful silence, at least for a few minutes. To be fair this particular team seem to spend as much time off the job as on it. Which at least partly explains why the works have gone on for so long.
Right now there’s not even the sound of children over in the school playground because it’s half term. Summer half term. There are no major roads where I live, so for the next few minutes I’ll be able to enjoy blissful, peaceful silence.
I’m desperate to have my quiet street back again permanently. Throughout the six months prior to these water mains works commencing I had to cope with noise coming from directly across the street, where the school was being rebuilt and enlarged. The sound of lorries and vans arriving from very early morning, from earth-moving machines, diggers, cement mixers, dumper trucks, drilling, hammering, sawing - all of it was sheer noise pollution. Enough to drive someone like me, who values and loves silence, totally crazy.
I suppose I should be less egocentric and give a thought to the poor sods who have to operate the angle grinders and pneumatic drills, and show some concern for their health - their lungs breathing in the dust, their ears being battered day after day by the grinding and drilling they’re doing.
Summer half term, and the weather continues dull, overcast, cold, windy and raining. At least down in Somerset, where the weather was even worse, it was peaceful and quiet!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The War on Teenage Terror.
There’s yet more chatter on the radio about knife crime, and what we can possibly do about it. People yakking and blathering on about the shocking frequency of knife attacks and murders, and the need for teenagers to have positive role models, and adults who are consistent in what they say and do. So might that be consistent in their stupidity and cluelessness, just like the pundits?
Police Commissioner Blair says we need to talk about it more. Someone else says that knee jerk reactions may get some kids off the streets and locked away, but won’t solve the problem. And, errr . . . . that’s about it. Clueless.
This level of national discourse is appalling and shameful. Because all that people in power really want to do is tinker with the issues, apply sticking plaster to these running sores, and keep things pretty much as they are. The idea of a revolution, at least in consciousness, is very far from their minds. That’s the last thing they want - to have to think very differently about how we operate as a society.
At the moment they are incapable of thinking about and talking about what’s happening in terms of our national low levels of social, emotional and spiritual intelligence. They don’t even understand the concept of emotional intelligence, or emotional literacy as some prefer to call it. There’s no way they are familiar with the work of Goleman, for instance, let alone have any capacity to think about what an attempt to tackle these intelligences might mean in terms of the school system and indeed our national ‘culture’.
And yet a radical shift in our thinking and our ways of doing things is the only appropriate remedy for the trends that we see accelerating. It’s only a serious attempt to address the long term issues from the very roots of the problems that can possibly make any difference. Containment and punishment is not a solution or a policy that has any hope of success. And is this shift happening? Or likely to happen? Ha!
----------------------------------------------------------------
The Standards and Testing Debate.
Estelle Morris, whom I wrote some very positive things about last week, had a column in the Education Guardian this week, which was pure bullshit. Idiotic, useless waffle of the very first order. I regret having to say such things, because it provides yet more ammunition for the political opposition, but then I AM opposed to everything this wretched government has done and is doing to the education system.
Morris’s column was headed ‘Genuine Engagement on this Testing Issue’, and it was anything but that. A good friend had cautioned me last week about being so fulsome in my praise of Morris, when after all she had consistently supported the government’s SATs agenda, and still does. Well here she is, writing and saying the most absurd nonsense.
She begins her piece by saying, “It is very difficult to have a sensible debate about testing”, and then goes on to prove her point by making idiotic assertions that have absolutely no validity. Here’s what she says:
“There was a time when the dividing lines in the testing debate were quite simply whether we should test children or not. That battle has been fought and won. Tests are an integral part of school life.”
Well, Baroness, you ought to know that the rest of the world doesn’t see it this way. Scotland, for example, has never seen it this way. Wales has just abandoned testing. Are these people all stupid? Or do they perhaps have some legitimate claim to having a correct point of view? And if so, then in what sense has the battle been fought and won?
Here’s the good, decent and caring Baroness, still a parliamentarian, still a Labour party member, seeing the world entirely in terms of the narrow debate within England. And yet she must surely realise there are still thousands of intelligent voices in this country, an increasing number in fact, who completely disagree with SATs and summative testing as means of describing and assessing children’s progress and achievement.
What she really means, of course, is that the debate within PARLIAMENT has been fought and won, and that’s all that really matters. She’s into realpolitic. She sees the world in terms of pure political power, and sure enough our politicians are overwhelmingly in favour of SATs and therefore there’s no point in debating testing any longer. There’s nothing like enough opposition to testing within the main political parties and within parliament, so we might just as well forget it and move on.
This is how politicians operate. New Labour has never been about principle and taking a stand, or showing leadership towards some legitimate ideological goals. It's only ever been about narrow political calculation and appeasing the floating voters. The realities of power, yes indeed!
They had a landslide in 1997, and also in the following election, and a massive mandate for radical change towards the type of society we ought to be, and they didn’t know what to do with it. There are no philosophers within New Labour, only ambitious technocrats and power brokers. People who consider themselves effective and efficient managers.
But I digress. Back to Estelle, bless her.
“Teachers use the (test) data to raise the standards further.”
And then she selectively quotes from the estimable Mick Brookes, gen sec of NAHT, to back up her assertions, which is a typically New Labourish thing to do, and leaves a very nasty taste.
“Data”, Estelle? What fucking data? Data that tells us how well children cope with tests, which effectively tells us nothing about anything important. What teachers actually make good use of is not tests but formative assessment (continuous assessment) which steers their teaching from day to day according to how well children are learning from day to day, week to week. Responding to end of Key Stage data helps no child whatsoever! This is nonsense!
Perhaps Estelle should pay more attention to the likes of Melanie Phillips, after all. Tests are there to measure the performance of schools - and that’s it, as dear Mel P will gladly tell you. But they don’t even do that effectively. And what if they did? What if they really did tell us how well schools are processing children through tests? Is that what we really want to know - what we really care about?
All good teachers and all good schools have systems for tracking children’s progress that rely not a jot on summative testing. They assess them in relation to clear targets for learning, in terms of outcomes in learning skills, concepts and knowledge. This is how progress is really assessed - continuously. If you really want to assess and rank how well schools are doing, then you ought to start by finding out whether or not they have good systems for formative assessment and tracking progress against agreed learning targets and outcomes.
We even know which skills, concepts and knowledge they ought to develop in emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence, and we know when children lack them, and no tests can give us this crucial information. Or any crucial information about children’s creativity, imagination and enthusiasm for learning. But then this government, and seemingly Baroness Morris, care not a jot for these things, and they don’t think parents do either.
But they’ll carry on wringing their hands about the crazy, angry kids on the streets and their culture of knives, gangs and guns. And they’ll carry on wondering what to do about these fallen children of the underclasses. And occasionally they may give a thought as to why our children in general are the most miserable in Europe, if not the world.
But will they ever do anything about it? Will they fuck.
Towards the end of her article Estelle tells us that it’s basically the decision of head teachers if their schools choose to restrict and narrow the curriculum and concentrate on teaching to the tests. She comes to the astonishing conclusion that if parents don’t want their children’s experience of school to be limited, restricted and impoverished, then they should speak up and say so.
And this is the most outrageous thing for her to have said. Having spent years battering it into the heads of parents (and teachers) that good test results are all that matters, and it’s through SATs tests that schools will be judged, for Morris to now turn round and say that maybe education should be about something wider and more important and maybe parents should speak up about this, and if they did then “I’m sure the schools - and the government - would respond” - this is pure evil. This is abdication of responsibility and refusal to take a moral as well as a principled stand on crucial issues.
This is someone who knows or at least suspects that children’s rights and well-being are being violated every day in most schools in this country, and that teachers and head teachers, in tough areas particularly (though not exclusively), are being driven to despair and beyond by government policy and the Ofsted regime, and she has the nerve to tentatively suggest that the decision to do something about it might rest with parents - that if they feel strongly enough about it then they have the power to change it!
She’s sure the government would respond? Yes - if there were to be a mass protest by parents on behalf of their poor bloody kids. But don’t expect the government to change anything for the better on behalf of the kids and their hard-working teachers just because it’s the RIGHT thing to do! Clearly that could never happen! Even if they understood what’s right for children and what ought to be happening in schools. Which they clearly do not.
It’s also ridiculous to imagine that this government will disown the policies it’s been pursuing for so many years, or expect them to recant all the reactionary nonsense it’s been purveying. That would be one massive U-turn too many. Which is why the way forward is in fact for this government to be given the bullet. In the hope that a Parliament with no overall majority might actually make a fresh start on looking at key issues anew, and having to argue and debate properly the issues that really matter.
I truly look forward to the day, which I’m convinced will arrive, when we emerge from our delusion and our collective madness and say what the fuck have we been doing to our kids all these years? And who’s to blame, apart from ourselves?
Who led us into this nonsense? Why were those children treated so badly? Why did they miss out on so much? Why were their childhoods so boring and impoverished? Why were they crammed and homeworked to within an inch of their lives? Why did they not come to love learning for its own sake? Why was their creativity and imagination so under-nourished? Why was their mental and emotional health so damaged? Why didn’t they learn to manage their emotions, and develop a sense of awe and wonder, and learn to value life itself? Why were their spirits so downcast and defeated before they even got going?
Step forward all those who really had a chance to change things from 1997 onwards. Step forward Blair, Brown, Blunkett, Miliband, Balls, and the rest of you. Yes, even you wee Jim Knight, and you Estelle. You were our ‘leaders’. On with the blindfolds.
.
Back home from the peace and quiet of Somerset. The noise levels here at home today are quite intolerable. This has been happening for the past 3 weeks, thanks to the water mains being relaid up and down the street, but today it’s worse than ever. There’s nowhere in the house I can go to get away from the racket that’s being created by pneumatic drills, cement mixer lorries, men shouting, drilling, etc. It’s incredible.
Of course the minute I write all this down they’ve decided to down tools and have a tea break, and there’s blissful silence, at least for a few minutes. To be fair this particular team seem to spend as much time off the job as on it. Which at least partly explains why the works have gone on for so long.
Right now there’s not even the sound of children over in the school playground because it’s half term. Summer half term. There are no major roads where I live, so for the next few minutes I’ll be able to enjoy blissful, peaceful silence.
I’m desperate to have my quiet street back again permanently. Throughout the six months prior to these water mains works commencing I had to cope with noise coming from directly across the street, where the school was being rebuilt and enlarged. The sound of lorries and vans arriving from very early morning, from earth-moving machines, diggers, cement mixers, dumper trucks, drilling, hammering, sawing - all of it was sheer noise pollution. Enough to drive someone like me, who values and loves silence, totally crazy.
I suppose I should be less egocentric and give a thought to the poor sods who have to operate the angle grinders and pneumatic drills, and show some concern for their health - their lungs breathing in the dust, their ears being battered day after day by the grinding and drilling they’re doing.
Summer half term, and the weather continues dull, overcast, cold, windy and raining. At least down in Somerset, where the weather was even worse, it was peaceful and quiet!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The War on Teenage Terror.
There’s yet more chatter on the radio about knife crime, and what we can possibly do about it. People yakking and blathering on about the shocking frequency of knife attacks and murders, and the need for teenagers to have positive role models, and adults who are consistent in what they say and do. So might that be consistent in their stupidity and cluelessness, just like the pundits?
Police Commissioner Blair says we need to talk about it more. Someone else says that knee jerk reactions may get some kids off the streets and locked away, but won’t solve the problem. And, errr . . . . that’s about it. Clueless.
This level of national discourse is appalling and shameful. Because all that people in power really want to do is tinker with the issues, apply sticking plaster to these running sores, and keep things pretty much as they are. The idea of a revolution, at least in consciousness, is very far from their minds. That’s the last thing they want - to have to think very differently about how we operate as a society.
At the moment they are incapable of thinking about and talking about what’s happening in terms of our national low levels of social, emotional and spiritual intelligence. They don’t even understand the concept of emotional intelligence, or emotional literacy as some prefer to call it. There’s no way they are familiar with the work of Goleman, for instance, let alone have any capacity to think about what an attempt to tackle these intelligences might mean in terms of the school system and indeed our national ‘culture’.
And yet a radical shift in our thinking and our ways of doing things is the only appropriate remedy for the trends that we see accelerating. It’s only a serious attempt to address the long term issues from the very roots of the problems that can possibly make any difference. Containment and punishment is not a solution or a policy that has any hope of success. And is this shift happening? Or likely to happen? Ha!
----------------------------------------------------------------
The Standards and Testing Debate.
Estelle Morris, whom I wrote some very positive things about last week, had a column in the Education Guardian this week, which was pure bullshit. Idiotic, useless waffle of the very first order. I regret having to say such things, because it provides yet more ammunition for the political opposition, but then I AM opposed to everything this wretched government has done and is doing to the education system.
Morris’s column was headed ‘Genuine Engagement on this Testing Issue’, and it was anything but that. A good friend had cautioned me last week about being so fulsome in my praise of Morris, when after all she had consistently supported the government’s SATs agenda, and still does. Well here she is, writing and saying the most absurd nonsense.
She begins her piece by saying, “It is very difficult to have a sensible debate about testing”, and then goes on to prove her point by making idiotic assertions that have absolutely no validity. Here’s what she says:
“There was a time when the dividing lines in the testing debate were quite simply whether we should test children or not. That battle has been fought and won. Tests are an integral part of school life.”
Well, Baroness, you ought to know that the rest of the world doesn’t see it this way. Scotland, for example, has never seen it this way. Wales has just abandoned testing. Are these people all stupid? Or do they perhaps have some legitimate claim to having a correct point of view? And if so, then in what sense has the battle been fought and won?
Here’s the good, decent and caring Baroness, still a parliamentarian, still a Labour party member, seeing the world entirely in terms of the narrow debate within England. And yet she must surely realise there are still thousands of intelligent voices in this country, an increasing number in fact, who completely disagree with SATs and summative testing as means of describing and assessing children’s progress and achievement.
What she really means, of course, is that the debate within PARLIAMENT has been fought and won, and that’s all that really matters. She’s into realpolitic. She sees the world in terms of pure political power, and sure enough our politicians are overwhelmingly in favour of SATs and therefore there’s no point in debating testing any longer. There’s nothing like enough opposition to testing within the main political parties and within parliament, so we might just as well forget it and move on.
This is how politicians operate. New Labour has never been about principle and taking a stand, or showing leadership towards some legitimate ideological goals. It's only ever been about narrow political calculation and appeasing the floating voters. The realities of power, yes indeed!
They had a landslide in 1997, and also in the following election, and a massive mandate for radical change towards the type of society we ought to be, and they didn’t know what to do with it. There are no philosophers within New Labour, only ambitious technocrats and power brokers. People who consider themselves effective and efficient managers.
But I digress. Back to Estelle, bless her.
“Teachers use the (test) data to raise the standards further.”
And then she selectively quotes from the estimable Mick Brookes, gen sec of NAHT, to back up her assertions, which is a typically New Labourish thing to do, and leaves a very nasty taste.
“Data”, Estelle? What fucking data? Data that tells us how well children cope with tests, which effectively tells us nothing about anything important. What teachers actually make good use of is not tests but formative assessment (continuous assessment) which steers their teaching from day to day according to how well children are learning from day to day, week to week. Responding to end of Key Stage data helps no child whatsoever! This is nonsense!
Perhaps Estelle should pay more attention to the likes of Melanie Phillips, after all. Tests are there to measure the performance of schools - and that’s it, as dear Mel P will gladly tell you. But they don’t even do that effectively. And what if they did? What if they really did tell us how well schools are processing children through tests? Is that what we really want to know - what we really care about?
All good teachers and all good schools have systems for tracking children’s progress that rely not a jot on summative testing. They assess them in relation to clear targets for learning, in terms of outcomes in learning skills, concepts and knowledge. This is how progress is really assessed - continuously. If you really want to assess and rank how well schools are doing, then you ought to start by finding out whether or not they have good systems for formative assessment and tracking progress against agreed learning targets and outcomes.
We even know which skills, concepts and knowledge they ought to develop in emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence, and we know when children lack them, and no tests can give us this crucial information. Or any crucial information about children’s creativity, imagination and enthusiasm for learning. But then this government, and seemingly Baroness Morris, care not a jot for these things, and they don’t think parents do either.
But they’ll carry on wringing their hands about the crazy, angry kids on the streets and their culture of knives, gangs and guns. And they’ll carry on wondering what to do about these fallen children of the underclasses. And occasionally they may give a thought as to why our children in general are the most miserable in Europe, if not the world.
But will they ever do anything about it? Will they fuck.
Towards the end of her article Estelle tells us that it’s basically the decision of head teachers if their schools choose to restrict and narrow the curriculum and concentrate on teaching to the tests. She comes to the astonishing conclusion that if parents don’t want their children’s experience of school to be limited, restricted and impoverished, then they should speak up and say so.
And this is the most outrageous thing for her to have said. Having spent years battering it into the heads of parents (and teachers) that good test results are all that matters, and it’s through SATs tests that schools will be judged, for Morris to now turn round and say that maybe education should be about something wider and more important and maybe parents should speak up about this, and if they did then “I’m sure the schools - and the government - would respond” - this is pure evil. This is abdication of responsibility and refusal to take a moral as well as a principled stand on crucial issues.
This is someone who knows or at least suspects that children’s rights and well-being are being violated every day in most schools in this country, and that teachers and head teachers, in tough areas particularly (though not exclusively), are being driven to despair and beyond by government policy and the Ofsted regime, and she has the nerve to tentatively suggest that the decision to do something about it might rest with parents - that if they feel strongly enough about it then they have the power to change it!
She’s sure the government would respond? Yes - if there were to be a mass protest by parents on behalf of their poor bloody kids. But don’t expect the government to change anything for the better on behalf of the kids and their hard-working teachers just because it’s the RIGHT thing to do! Clearly that could never happen! Even if they understood what’s right for children and what ought to be happening in schools. Which they clearly do not.
It’s also ridiculous to imagine that this government will disown the policies it’s been pursuing for so many years, or expect them to recant all the reactionary nonsense it’s been purveying. That would be one massive U-turn too many. Which is why the way forward is in fact for this government to be given the bullet. In the hope that a Parliament with no overall majority might actually make a fresh start on looking at key issues anew, and having to argue and debate properly the issues that really matter.
I truly look forward to the day, which I’m convinced will arrive, when we emerge from our delusion and our collective madness and say what the fuck have we been doing to our kids all these years? And who’s to blame, apart from ourselves?
Who led us into this nonsense? Why were those children treated so badly? Why did they miss out on so much? Why were their childhoods so boring and impoverished? Why were they crammed and homeworked to within an inch of their lives? Why did they not come to love learning for its own sake? Why was their creativity and imagination so under-nourished? Why was their mental and emotional health so damaged? Why didn’t they learn to manage their emotions, and develop a sense of awe and wonder, and learn to value life itself? Why were their spirits so downcast and defeated before they even got going?
Step forward all those who really had a chance to change things from 1997 onwards. Step forward Blair, Brown, Blunkett, Miliband, Balls, and the rest of you. Yes, even you wee Jim Knight, and you Estelle. You were our ‘leaders’. On with the blindfolds.
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)