.
Today sees the publication of Sir Jim Rose’s review of the Primary curriculum. Sir Middlof Laroute himself was on Radio 4 this morning talking about the need for children to be much better at communicating - speaking and listening - and he was taking care not to suggest that working class kids speak in ‘restricted codes’ - i.e. with ‘limited’ vocabulary, and using grammatical structures that are not the approved Standard English, such as local ‘dialects’.
We fought that battle back in the Sixties, and the good guys won. Yes folks - it is actually possible for working class kids, using whatever vocabulary they have at their disposal, to convey complex meanings using rich and descriptive language. It’s not just Standard English with Received Pronunciation that permits and facilitates good expression and communication.
Clearly, then, if some children find it difficult to express themselves clearly and fluently, it must be due to lack of opportunity to practice using language for self-expression. Which brings us back to one of my favourite subjects - kids sitting for the most part silently and having ‘education’ done to them.
Encouragement for discussion and dialogue within every learning context is essential, both for the formation of knowledge and understanding, and for developing confidence in speaking in various situations - pairs, small groups and in front of larger audiences.
Didactic teaching prevents these things happening. So why is there still so much didactic teaching, and why are young teachers only trained in ‘delivering’ (yuk!) the ‘curriculum’ using teacher- and curriculum-centred didactic methods?
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Please read the following extracts from Prof. Horio’s book, Educational Thought and Ideology, against the background of what’s happened to the British education system these past 20 - 30 years. Because what’s been happening in Japan is exactly what’s been happening in Britain and the USA, and elsewhere. Prof Horio just spells it out more clearly than most of us ever could.
Chapter 1. The Crisis in Japanese Education Today.
In recent years education has increasingly come to be thought of as one of our most basic human rights, indeed the right by virtue of which all other modern rights ultimately derive their substance and meaning.
Education plays a pivotal role in the process by means of which children mature as reasoning beings and develop into responsible members of society.
This enlightened approach . . . is clearly visible in Japan’s postwar Constitution as well as its Fundamental Law of Education, adopted in 1947.
Not withstanding the fact that our school system is legally rooted in these ideals, however, the reality of present-day Japanese education is such that these values have been subverted.
As freedom of our schools is continuously eroded by the ever-increasing interference of the State’s administrative machinery, as educational values fall under the domination of an ideology dominated by the one-dimensional glorification of academic competence, and as schools come to be seen merely as arenas for the most vicious forms of competition related to social selection and advancement, it is becoming ever more impossible to take seriously the idea that education is the sine quo non of human rights.
In present-day Japan the verb “to learn” is generally understood only in relation to the passive reproduction of knowledge or techniques already established by others.
While the educational process is generally thought of in Japan as something individuals must negotiate BY themselves, it is rarely thought of as something they must do FOR themselves, except in the limited sense of its relation to their personal social advancement and future economic well-being.
The importance of the idea of an ACTIVE pursuit of knowledge can only become personally meaningful after one recognises that forfeiting this right is tantamount to forfeiting the right to make the kinds of free choices which are required of all the citizens in a democratically organised country.
Unfortunately, however, in contemporary Japanese society education is organised so as to make sure that the overwhelming majority of students never grow up to become the kind of citizens who will demand much of anything, least of all their political and intellectual rights.
The notion that education is an irreplaceable human right is a recent arrival on the stage of man’s intellectual history. These rights have come to be viewed as an essential part of the modern child’s inherent right to grow up and develop into a fully formed human being.
It was this kind of thinking that lay at the root of the attempt to remake Japanese education in the years following the end of the Pacific War. But it has not been easy for us to implant these ideas within Japanese society. As many of the totalitarian aspects of prewar educational thought were revived and reworked within the context of the modern welfare state, the prospects for a genuine educational renaissance in Japan have been gradually eroded, and the proud hopes of those who wanted to transform Japan into a democratic society have been confounded again and again.
[cf Britain’s return to pre-World War 1 thinking about education.]
In order to understand the depth of the crisis enveloping schooling in Japan today, it is necessary for us to re-examine the democratisation of postwar education in the light of both
the spiritual revolutions which transformed modern Europe [pre-20thC], and
the educational system established in prewar Japan to produce subjects loyal to the Emperor-State.
The first part of this book analyses the Imperial educational system and the postwar reforms designed to liberate the Japanese spirit from its subjugation to the values of ultra-nationalism and militarism.
The Locus of Educational Authority.
The deep crises enveloping education in Japan today can be traced back to the deep antagonisms between those who insist that educational authority must reside in the hands of the State and those who want to affirm the autonomy of the People’s educational rights.
There is still no basis upon which any form of compromise or even common understanding can be achieved regarding the proper locus of educational authority.
Since [Conservatives and the political Right] can no longer openly declare the State to be the one and only legitimate source of all educational rights and duties (for they could only do so by repudiating the principle of popular sovereignty at the heart of our postwar Constitution), they have chosen rather to reinterpret the essential meaning of this principle so as to eliminate the possibility of any substantive form of direct popular control.
The problem of educational authority is related to the issue of to whom educational rights and competencies properly belong - parents, teachers, or the State.
[We need to consider] the way the boundaries between the responsible parties should be drawn and defended.]
[Political and educational] rights must be guaranteed to all the people throughout the entire course of their lives, regardless of age, sex or occupation. The People’s rights to freely enquire and pursue truth must never again be allowed to fall under the bureaucratic domination of the State.
There is a great deal of discussion these days in Japan about the need to drastically reform our educational system from top to bottom, from the university right down to the nursery school. Any proposal for reform is ultimately doomed to failure unless it is based on respect for each and every citizen’s right to learn.
I want to argue that any educational transformation which is going to impart real substance to our constitutionally guaranteed right to learn must conceive this not merely as a PASSIVE right to receive an education but as an ACTIVE right to learn.
In other words, our current efforts to reform education in Japan must be tied to a view of “democratisation” which does not construe it as something the People passively receive from the State, but rather sees it as something they actively demand and achieve through their own unwavering efforts.
To complete the reorganisation of Japanese social life that began after the war when the people were finally recognised as masters of their government, their work, their ideas, and their own destinies, it is absolutely necessary to expand our thinking about educational rights and relate it to contemporary thinking about the broader problems of human rights in general.
The history of the conflict between the two radically opposed approaches I have described to the organisation of educational authority in modern Japanese society stretches back to the early Meiji-era struggles over the meaning of “civilisation and enlightenment”.
These arguments also overlie another agenda: one directed at making sure that the Japanese people never become the masters of their own educational system and the free-thinking beings this would inevitably lead to.
The argument that individualism violates the values of Japanese communalism and its inherent orientation towards group harmony is merely a ploy intended to retard the growth of political consciousness - the Japanese people’s understanding that in postwar Japan sovereignty resides with them and not the State.
---------------------------------------
Thinking about these issues in terms of what’s happened in Britain is really quite simple. We need to understand that:
1) The debate about competing and contradictory approaches to teaching and learning, and about ‘standards’, properly belongs with educational professionals, who can at least be assumed to know what they’re talking about.
2) It also belongs with parents, who can be assumed to know what’s best for their children, especially if they have opportunities to learn more about the key issues through dialogue with good schools and good teachers.
3) Thirdly, it belongs with the governing bodies of individual schools, including their parent representatives, who are charged with the responsibility of setting the educational aims and objectives of their schools.
4) Fourthly, we should involve in our policy-making, and listen to the opinions of, the learners themselves.
However, in Britain, as in Japan, these conditions do not apply. In these countries, as in the USA and elsewhere, the right to make decisions about educational philosophy and practice has been usurped by an all-powerful State, on the basis that ultimately the power to determine educational practices should reside in the so-called ‘elected representatives’ of our communities in central government.
Unfortunately for Britain its Members of Parliament are, for the most part, elitist morons who know jack shit about education (or indeed about the Middle East, economics, spiritual intelligence, emotional intelligence, psycholinguistics, brain science, etc.) apart from the fact that they did rather well out of going to elitist institutions like Oxford and Cambridge and therefore believe that their own educational history and ‘success’ should be a template for everyone.
Complete cretins like Blair and Blunkett took control of educational policy after New Labour came to power in 1997 and continued the work started by their Conservative predecessors, using right-wing elitist operatives and advisors, and fellow Oxbridge graduates, like Woodhead, Barber and Adonis, as henchmen to ensure their policies were driven through an all-powerful central bureaucracy.
How do we know these people are cretins? Take a look at Iraq. Blair was by no means the only one of his gang who thought that it was his duty to stand up and fight for what was Right alongside God and America, and therefore send in our boys to help kick the shit out of innocent people who consequently died in their thousands.
Take a look at the economy. Blair and Brown were by no means the only ones who went along uncritically with the Project for the New American Century (proprietors: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al) whose aim was to turn the whole world into a servile
cash cow for right-wing fat cats and ‘global’ corporations, as well as impose American right-wing ideology on the rest of the world.
Take a look at the real state of boredom and unhappiness amongst children, and stress levels amongst teachers and school managers, whose lives are driven by tests, data, and fear of the mighty Ofsted.
From my vantage point I can see no possibility for change in the way we run education in our country unless people stand up and demand change, since it’s inconceivable that our political classes will suddenly acquire wisdom and insight, agree to adopt the reforms of the Alexander enquiry or the Rose review, and start to understand that the New Learning Revolution must take place throughout education in the UK, as elsewhere.
----------------------------------------------
I’m not holding my breath. Surely the way that once-mighty empires and countries decline and fall is through their own inertia and their own inability to recognise that the formulas and nostrums that were once successful cannot be applied forever. Downfall comes about because dominant ideologies and approaches to government that have become rigid simply do not permit flexible thinking any more, and therefore progress is impossible.
Sooner or later, though, the penny will drop and we’ll see clearly as a society what we did to ourselves when we were brainwashed into accepting the ideas that currently dominate our politics, our economics, our philosophy and our education.
It’s not too late to seek enlightenment on an individual basis, but it’s probably too soon to expect our society to find enlightenment for itself.
---------------------------------------------------
Final Thoughts on the Rose Report.
Sir Jim Rose is now saying, at least on the Today programme, and we’ll find out later today what’s actually in his report, that the curriculum we currently have in Primary schools is too burdensome and too prescriptive. He calls it “too fat”!
He’s saying that teachers and children require more flexibility - which is surely a code expression for the right to do things together that are more likely to inspire interest and enthusiasm for learning.
He’s saying that children need more opportunities to be creative. Well hoo bloody ray. But who are the bastards who’ve been depriving them of those opportunities and of the right to learn about creativity and the right to learn to be creative?
Sir James says we need to make sure that what’s taught is really worth while. So who hasn’t been paying attention to this little issue? Isn’t it kind of important? Who’s been saying we should teach things that just aren’t important? ‘Cos I want to write to them and tell them they’re a disgrace to the profession and they should piss off and do something different.
Sir Jammy says we need a much better deal for learners. They need to be able to follow their most appropriate individual paths through learning - to go on their own preferred learning journeys, as we might say. So why, after 11 years of New Labour and 20 years of the National Curriculum, haven’t kids been getting a good deal?
See all of the above.
And why has Sir Sunny Jim not been saying these things before now? Why has he been keeping schtum? Surely as a former head of Ofsted people would have taken notice of him if he’d already said these things, which are so bleeding obvious to anyone with half a brain and a bit of insight into kids' needs that it’s just not true?
Personally, I don’t find this kind of stuff amusing any more.
.
Showing posts with label Horio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Horio. Show all posts
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Layer 150 Educational Thought and Ideology, and Some Really Good Music.
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Sunday 26th April
I was listening to and laughing at one of Bill Hicks' wonderful rants the other day - the one about Christianity and the Gideons. “Who are the fucking Gideons? Has anyone ever met one? No! Has anyone ever seen one? No! I’m going to capture me a Gideon . . . The next time I’m in a hotel I’m going to phone the front desk and tell them there’s no Bible in the room. And then I’ll lie in wait for a Gideon to bring one up . . .”
If there’s anywhere in the world you’d think you might be safe from evangelical Christians it’s Japan. So imagine my surprise this morning as I was mooching about and thinking of packing, when there was a ring on the bell. I thought it must be my American neighbours, who are teachers at the university. So I quickly put on more clothes and opened the door.
Standing there were two small Japanese women, holding little bags, who looked up at me in surprise. I said hello. The smallest one started speaking in Japanese - “Yadder, yadder, yadder, Christians.”
Fuck! They’re everywhere. Sunday morning and I’m taking it easy, playing some rocking good music, and here’s people wanting to turn me into a Christian!
“No, no. Sumimasen. Thank you. I’m a Buddhist! Arigato. Bye!”
On reflection I was a little . . . dismissive. I should have invited them in to discuss enlightenment and satori, the non-existence of God, and meditation.
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Shortly after posting Layer 149 I read the following in Nunn’s book about education:
“A school fails to fulfil its purpose unless it is a place where the young are taught to accept and to maintain the best-tested traditions of thought and action handed down from the old time before them. Again it fails unless it serves as a ‘jumping-off place’ for a generation eager for new adventures in life.”
What concerns me is that in our society we’re very insular, and therefore, at best, we only discuss in our schools our own society’s ‘traditions of thought and action’. We need to think on a global scale, and open up to young people the best of what’s been thought and written about the life’s purposes and meanings throughout the world, throughout history.
It’s a sad fact that, for the most part, young people in the West know nothing, and therefore care nothing, about the best of the Eastern traditions and philosophies. It’s almost a crime to ignore those traditions and not to have them on our educational agendas.
We definitely need more books on Eastern thought and philosophy that will stimulate young people to think about life’s deeper meanings and purposes, and we definitely need more schools to open up these fields of learning.
-----------------------------------
At Yoko’s house in Ashiya the other night we decided to have some drinks in a local jazz or blues bar, and she looked up on the Internet where there might be some suitable places. There were pages of them! In Japan a typical bar consists of a smallish room with just a bar and a few tables. It’s not unusual to find several of these places all clustered together in a single building within a modern shopping precinct or street.
The one we chose was called The Bar, and a very pleasant place it turned out to be. Comfortable, well lit, and playing some excellent jazz. There were some tracks of sax and piano playing together that were really superb. The young barman was immaculate in white jacket and black bowtie, and did a five star performance whenever he needed to mix drinks with a cocktail shaker. Compliments of the house you get a bowl of mixed nuts and some little tasty thing like small pieces of toasted cheese on bread with your first order of drinks.
It was a perfect quiet place for an extended chat about educational philosophy! I commented that there seemed to be relatively few people there, considering it was such a pleasant place for a Saturday evening out with friends. Yoko suggested that business has fallen away dramatically since the economy has taken a dive. People are staying at home a lot more.
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On Friday evening in Osaka we walked around for a while in the mad melee that seems to happen at the end of every working week in that hard-working city. Hundreds of people thronging the alleys and streets around Umeda, the main station and business area. Eventually we found the bar that Yoko’s been to with colleagues in the past, and managed to get a table for two.
More good music and a lively atmosphere. At the back of the drinks menu there was a page letting you know what ‘free’ music was on offer over the house hi-fi. You just call over a waiter and tell him or her what you’d like to listen to. Very civilised.
Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, Miles Davis, Rolling Stones, Tracy Chapman, BB King, Otis Redding, Eric Clapton, Alicia Keys, Tom Waits, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Santana, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Smith, Led Zeppelin, etc.
They even had Gil Scott Melon and Devid Dowie. You name it - they gottit.
-----------------------------------------------
Yoko was listening to some music at my flat the other day and started tapping her feet to a certain track, and eventually asked me who the band was, so that she could make a note of it.
The track was “The Supernatural”, a Peter Green original, and the version was the one he did with The Splinter Group. Make a note of it. Make a note of every version of this brilliant piece of music.
----------------------------------------------
Back at Yoko’s, in Ashiya, after The Bar, and prior to returning to my flat, she pulled out a couple of books written in English for me to look at. The first was ‘Pedagogy in Progress’ - the letters to Guinea-Bissau written by Paolo Freire during his time working with the government of that country as an educational advisor and project leader, attempting to build an education system in the post-colonial era that was fit for purpose. It’s published by the Writers and Readers Cooperative and dedicated to Amilcar Cabral, “who learned from his people”.
The second book was by Professor Roy Lowe of London University - “The Death of Progressive Education”, which I’ll find a copy of when I get home.
And then she handed me a book that is the real motherlode! A book that I should have discovered at the beginning of my visits to Japan. Educational Thought and Ideology in Modern Japan. Subtitled ‘State Authority and Intellectual Freedom.’ It’s by Professor Teruhisa Horio, translated by Steven Platzer, and published by the University of Tokyo Press.
-------------------------------------------------------
Layer 150 is, I suppose, another milestone of sorts, and another jumping-off point, possibly. It seems appropriate, then, to quote extensively from the Horio book, in the hope that readers will find these passages useful in thinking about what’s happened to the British education system during the past 40 years, ever since Callaghan started ‘the great debate’, or the counter-revolution against progressivism and real education.
This should also be read against the background of another recent report that puts British children 24th out of 28 countries in terms of their individual happiness and wellbeing.
In future Layers I’ll get back to the New Learning Revolution and quote extensively from that in order to re-focus on ways in which more enlightened societies are promoting progressive ideas about learning and teaching, and ways in which young people and teachers in those countries are assuming more control over the ways in which they learn, communicate and pursue creative and imaginative learning.
-------------------------------------------------------
So - Horio-sensai says:
“Due to the fact that most of the existing knowledge about Japan and its educational system directly reflects the views officially put forward by the Japanese government, such knowledge has been altogether too one-sided or prejudiced.
Even though Japanese schools may very well appear to be outstanding when seen from the outside, from within, it is clear, I believe, that the vitality of both students and teachers is being smothered by a thoroughly oppressive set of conditions. This is testified to by the sharply rising number of incidents of bullying and the dramatically increasing number of children refusing to go to school at all.
And as the level of pressure within the school system is constantly turned up, our children are being systematically denied the opportunity to develop their individuality. Thus it is no wonder that most of our youth find it impossible to sustain warm feelings about their schools even when they do manage to make good friends there, or when they study with teachers whose stimulation encourages them to want to learn.
Likewise, under the existing textbook screening system, the State’s arbitrary control over the creation and dissemination of knowledge is continually tightening, and more and more uniformity is being imposed on textbook contents and forms of description [i.e. curricula].
Teachers as well are being brought under an ever more pernicious system of management; in addition to their being exposed to new and more extreme forms of pressure, they are losing the freedom both to teach and to undertake educationally related research.
We are seeing the emergence of a vicious circle. Thus, from my perspective, our educational system, far from presenting itself as an object deserving emulation, stands in need of the most drastic types of reform.
The modern Japanese educational system was from its formation tightly circumscribed within the framework laid down by a generation of statesmen who viewed it as an effective tool to be used to realise their own political and economic agendas. This historical tradition has been carried down to the present day; in fact, the state’s manipulation of our schools is even stronger today than it was in the prewar era.
As a consequence of this, those who control education in Japan have paid scant attention to the idea that education should be organised from the perspective of human development, and they have shown little respect for the notion that the pursuit of education should be connected to the pursuit of mankind’s intellectual and spiritual freedom.
However, even within the framework of this history there has been an undercurrent of [progressive] educational thought aimed at the concrete realisation of these humanly liberating ideas. These currents were finally allowed to rise to the surface after the war, when Japanese education was drastically reformed.
Looking at developments over . . . the postwar period, we can clearly observe a struggle between those who sought to establish the foundations for a new tradition of educational practice and those who have attempted to preserve the framework within which education was considered in the past, namely as an instrument of State policy.
.
While tracing the course of that history, this book attempts to criticise the ways education has been controlled and transformed into an instrument of State policy, and seeks to clarify the nature of the principles which are required to break the stranglehold of this way of thinking.
In other words, its overriding objective is to think about Japanese education in a way which will help transform it into something designed to genuinely liberate and nurture the capacities of Japanese citizens as free human beings. In this regard, while it is a book about education in Japan, at the same time its fundamental values are those of mankind in general.
It attempts to bring an international consciousness to bear upon the problems plaguing education in Japan so as to enable those scholars and general readers outside Japan who are interested in understanding our system of schooling to see the nature and depth of the problems we are currently facing.”
--------------------------------------------
Anyone interested in looking at the nature and depth of the problems that Britain’s schools are facing?
And incidentally, Horio’s book was first published in 1988 - the year the national curriculum was introduced in Britain, and the starting point for a command-and-control system and an inspection system that has become more draconian with each passing year.
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Yoko reckons Horio is now living in retirement from his professorship in Tokyo, and reckons she can put me in touch with him. Apparently he speaks very good English.
--------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s session at the university was positively my last. Returning to the group I did the lecture with last Saturday, on the aims of education, and on the new learning revolution and the 3DI framework, I showed them two slideshows of children at my old school learning within the school and also learning offsite. I wanted them to see some very positive images of children from 3 to 11 engaging in a wide variety of stimulating, creative and enjoyable learning experiences.
Again I stressed the two forms of ‘integrated curriculum’ - integration by ‘subject’, and integration by intelligences. Overall it’s ‘integration by learning experience’.
Again I stressed the fact that if children voluntarily extend their school day to engage with self-directed learning and to be creative with and without wireless laptops before the age of eleven, which many of ours certainly did - why should they be happy if they’re denied those opportunities after that age?
It’s natural for children and young people to want to pursue learning that’s either chosen by them or negotiated with the teacher, and is therefore personally meaningful for them. Children want more freedom, autonomy, personalised learning, creativity and independence. How else are they to learn how to be free, autonomous, independent and creative lifelong learners?
It’s equally natural for them to feel resentful and rebellious when denied such opportunities and forced to spend their days enduring didactic and dull drilling and cramming.
At this point hundreds of teachers would perhaps stand up and protest that their lessons are not like that. To which I say - good! I’m pleased to hear it. I’m just talking about those that are. And there are plenty of them.
Many more teachers would then leap up, perhaps, and say “But the world’s not like that! These kids need to pass exams with high grades in order to ‘get on’ in life and move out of their miserable estates and impoverished lifestyles.”
To which I reply in two ways. Firstly, who’s to say that cramming and didacticism are the most effective ways towards high achievement? The evidence is nowhere plain to see. The evidence in fact shows that children do best when they participate actively in a broad, balanced and creative curriculum that is personalised according to their various needs and abilities. They do best when they enjoy school and what it offers in terms of lively teachers and an interesting curriculum, in which key learning targets are clearly defined and which they are motivated to achieve.
Secondly, I say to those reactionary teachers, and I mean this in the nicest possible way - just fuck off, you idiots! We’re talking here about moving away from “how the world is” towards “how the world is sure to be in the 21st century” - a world that’s already changing, a world in which even profit-conscious employers are enlightened enough to recognise that the most valuable employees are the ones with high levels of motivation towards being life-long learners, the ones who have all of their intelligences well-developed, the ones who know how to be creative, and imaginative, and problem-solvers.
They also want to employ those who have high levels of competence in teamworking, communicating and researching. They need people who know how to work independently, and who enjoy taking on new skills in line with changes in technology and in line with new forms of knowledge and understanding.
This isn’t rocket-science, for goodness sake.
I guess the best way to judge whether your session has been effective is when students come up to you afterwards and tell you that if they had children they would like them to go to a school like that.
Sadly, what’s on offer in so many places are just miserable results factories, whose existence and methods are down to the prevailing retrogressive educational thinking and ideology.
.
Sunday 26th April
I was listening to and laughing at one of Bill Hicks' wonderful rants the other day - the one about Christianity and the Gideons. “Who are the fucking Gideons? Has anyone ever met one? No! Has anyone ever seen one? No! I’m going to capture me a Gideon . . . The next time I’m in a hotel I’m going to phone the front desk and tell them there’s no Bible in the room. And then I’ll lie in wait for a Gideon to bring one up . . .”
If there’s anywhere in the world you’d think you might be safe from evangelical Christians it’s Japan. So imagine my surprise this morning as I was mooching about and thinking of packing, when there was a ring on the bell. I thought it must be my American neighbours, who are teachers at the university. So I quickly put on more clothes and opened the door.
Standing there were two small Japanese women, holding little bags, who looked up at me in surprise. I said hello. The smallest one started speaking in Japanese - “Yadder, yadder, yadder, Christians.”
Fuck! They’re everywhere. Sunday morning and I’m taking it easy, playing some rocking good music, and here’s people wanting to turn me into a Christian!
“No, no. Sumimasen. Thank you. I’m a Buddhist! Arigato. Bye!”
On reflection I was a little . . . dismissive. I should have invited them in to discuss enlightenment and satori, the non-existence of God, and meditation.
--------------------------------------------------------
Shortly after posting Layer 149 I read the following in Nunn’s book about education:
“A school fails to fulfil its purpose unless it is a place where the young are taught to accept and to maintain the best-tested traditions of thought and action handed down from the old time before them. Again it fails unless it serves as a ‘jumping-off place’ for a generation eager for new adventures in life.”
What concerns me is that in our society we’re very insular, and therefore, at best, we only discuss in our schools our own society’s ‘traditions of thought and action’. We need to think on a global scale, and open up to young people the best of what’s been thought and written about the life’s purposes and meanings throughout the world, throughout history.
It’s a sad fact that, for the most part, young people in the West know nothing, and therefore care nothing, about the best of the Eastern traditions and philosophies. It’s almost a crime to ignore those traditions and not to have them on our educational agendas.
We definitely need more books on Eastern thought and philosophy that will stimulate young people to think about life’s deeper meanings and purposes, and we definitely need more schools to open up these fields of learning.
-----------------------------------
At Yoko’s house in Ashiya the other night we decided to have some drinks in a local jazz or blues bar, and she looked up on the Internet where there might be some suitable places. There were pages of them! In Japan a typical bar consists of a smallish room with just a bar and a few tables. It’s not unusual to find several of these places all clustered together in a single building within a modern shopping precinct or street.
The one we chose was called The Bar, and a very pleasant place it turned out to be. Comfortable, well lit, and playing some excellent jazz. There were some tracks of sax and piano playing together that were really superb. The young barman was immaculate in white jacket and black bowtie, and did a five star performance whenever he needed to mix drinks with a cocktail shaker. Compliments of the house you get a bowl of mixed nuts and some little tasty thing like small pieces of toasted cheese on bread with your first order of drinks.
It was a perfect quiet place for an extended chat about educational philosophy! I commented that there seemed to be relatively few people there, considering it was such a pleasant place for a Saturday evening out with friends. Yoko suggested that business has fallen away dramatically since the economy has taken a dive. People are staying at home a lot more.
----------------------------------------------
On Friday evening in Osaka we walked around for a while in the mad melee that seems to happen at the end of every working week in that hard-working city. Hundreds of people thronging the alleys and streets around Umeda, the main station and business area. Eventually we found the bar that Yoko’s been to with colleagues in the past, and managed to get a table for two.
More good music and a lively atmosphere. At the back of the drinks menu there was a page letting you know what ‘free’ music was on offer over the house hi-fi. You just call over a waiter and tell him or her what you’d like to listen to. Very civilised.
Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, Miles Davis, Rolling Stones, Tracy Chapman, BB King, Otis Redding, Eric Clapton, Alicia Keys, Tom Waits, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Santana, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Smith, Led Zeppelin, etc.
They even had Gil Scott Melon and Devid Dowie. You name it - they gottit.
-----------------------------------------------
Yoko was listening to some music at my flat the other day and started tapping her feet to a certain track, and eventually asked me who the band was, so that she could make a note of it.
The track was “The Supernatural”, a Peter Green original, and the version was the one he did with The Splinter Group. Make a note of it. Make a note of every version of this brilliant piece of music.
----------------------------------------------
Back at Yoko’s, in Ashiya, after The Bar, and prior to returning to my flat, she pulled out a couple of books written in English for me to look at. The first was ‘Pedagogy in Progress’ - the letters to Guinea-Bissau written by Paolo Freire during his time working with the government of that country as an educational advisor and project leader, attempting to build an education system in the post-colonial era that was fit for purpose. It’s published by the Writers and Readers Cooperative and dedicated to Amilcar Cabral, “who learned from his people”.
The second book was by Professor Roy Lowe of London University - “The Death of Progressive Education”, which I’ll find a copy of when I get home.
And then she handed me a book that is the real motherlode! A book that I should have discovered at the beginning of my visits to Japan. Educational Thought and Ideology in Modern Japan. Subtitled ‘State Authority and Intellectual Freedom.’ It’s by Professor Teruhisa Horio, translated by Steven Platzer, and published by the University of Tokyo Press.
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Layer 150 is, I suppose, another milestone of sorts, and another jumping-off point, possibly. It seems appropriate, then, to quote extensively from the Horio book, in the hope that readers will find these passages useful in thinking about what’s happened to the British education system during the past 40 years, ever since Callaghan started ‘the great debate’, or the counter-revolution against progressivism and real education.
This should also be read against the background of another recent report that puts British children 24th out of 28 countries in terms of their individual happiness and wellbeing.
In future Layers I’ll get back to the New Learning Revolution and quote extensively from that in order to re-focus on ways in which more enlightened societies are promoting progressive ideas about learning and teaching, and ways in which young people and teachers in those countries are assuming more control over the ways in which they learn, communicate and pursue creative and imaginative learning.
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So - Horio-sensai says:
“Due to the fact that most of the existing knowledge about Japan and its educational system directly reflects the views officially put forward by the Japanese government, such knowledge has been altogether too one-sided or prejudiced.
Even though Japanese schools may very well appear to be outstanding when seen from the outside, from within, it is clear, I believe, that the vitality of both students and teachers is being smothered by a thoroughly oppressive set of conditions. This is testified to by the sharply rising number of incidents of bullying and the dramatically increasing number of children refusing to go to school at all.
And as the level of pressure within the school system is constantly turned up, our children are being systematically denied the opportunity to develop their individuality. Thus it is no wonder that most of our youth find it impossible to sustain warm feelings about their schools even when they do manage to make good friends there, or when they study with teachers whose stimulation encourages them to want to learn.
Likewise, under the existing textbook screening system, the State’s arbitrary control over the creation and dissemination of knowledge is continually tightening, and more and more uniformity is being imposed on textbook contents and forms of description [i.e. curricula].
Teachers as well are being brought under an ever more pernicious system of management; in addition to their being exposed to new and more extreme forms of pressure, they are losing the freedom both to teach and to undertake educationally related research.
We are seeing the emergence of a vicious circle. Thus, from my perspective, our educational system, far from presenting itself as an object deserving emulation, stands in need of the most drastic types of reform.
The modern Japanese educational system was from its formation tightly circumscribed within the framework laid down by a generation of statesmen who viewed it as an effective tool to be used to realise their own political and economic agendas. This historical tradition has been carried down to the present day; in fact, the state’s manipulation of our schools is even stronger today than it was in the prewar era.
As a consequence of this, those who control education in Japan have paid scant attention to the idea that education should be organised from the perspective of human development, and they have shown little respect for the notion that the pursuit of education should be connected to the pursuit of mankind’s intellectual and spiritual freedom.
However, even within the framework of this history there has been an undercurrent of [progressive] educational thought aimed at the concrete realisation of these humanly liberating ideas. These currents were finally allowed to rise to the surface after the war, when Japanese education was drastically reformed.
Looking at developments over . . . the postwar period, we can clearly observe a struggle between those who sought to establish the foundations for a new tradition of educational practice and those who have attempted to preserve the framework within which education was considered in the past, namely as an instrument of State policy.
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While tracing the course of that history, this book attempts to criticise the ways education has been controlled and transformed into an instrument of State policy, and seeks to clarify the nature of the principles which are required to break the stranglehold of this way of thinking.
In other words, its overriding objective is to think about Japanese education in a way which will help transform it into something designed to genuinely liberate and nurture the capacities of Japanese citizens as free human beings. In this regard, while it is a book about education in Japan, at the same time its fundamental values are those of mankind in general.
It attempts to bring an international consciousness to bear upon the problems plaguing education in Japan so as to enable those scholars and general readers outside Japan who are interested in understanding our system of schooling to see the nature and depth of the problems we are currently facing.”
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Anyone interested in looking at the nature and depth of the problems that Britain’s schools are facing?
And incidentally, Horio’s book was first published in 1988 - the year the national curriculum was introduced in Britain, and the starting point for a command-and-control system and an inspection system that has become more draconian with each passing year.
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Yoko reckons Horio is now living in retirement from his professorship in Tokyo, and reckons she can put me in touch with him. Apparently he speaks very good English.
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Yesterday’s session at the university was positively my last. Returning to the group I did the lecture with last Saturday, on the aims of education, and on the new learning revolution and the 3DI framework, I showed them two slideshows of children at my old school learning within the school and also learning offsite. I wanted them to see some very positive images of children from 3 to 11 engaging in a wide variety of stimulating, creative and enjoyable learning experiences.
Again I stressed the two forms of ‘integrated curriculum’ - integration by ‘subject’, and integration by intelligences. Overall it’s ‘integration by learning experience’.
Again I stressed the fact that if children voluntarily extend their school day to engage with self-directed learning and to be creative with and without wireless laptops before the age of eleven, which many of ours certainly did - why should they be happy if they’re denied those opportunities after that age?
It’s natural for children and young people to want to pursue learning that’s either chosen by them or negotiated with the teacher, and is therefore personally meaningful for them. Children want more freedom, autonomy, personalised learning, creativity and independence. How else are they to learn how to be free, autonomous, independent and creative lifelong learners?
It’s equally natural for them to feel resentful and rebellious when denied such opportunities and forced to spend their days enduring didactic and dull drilling and cramming.
At this point hundreds of teachers would perhaps stand up and protest that their lessons are not like that. To which I say - good! I’m pleased to hear it. I’m just talking about those that are. And there are plenty of them.
Many more teachers would then leap up, perhaps, and say “But the world’s not like that! These kids need to pass exams with high grades in order to ‘get on’ in life and move out of their miserable estates and impoverished lifestyles.”
To which I reply in two ways. Firstly, who’s to say that cramming and didacticism are the most effective ways towards high achievement? The evidence is nowhere plain to see. The evidence in fact shows that children do best when they participate actively in a broad, balanced and creative curriculum that is personalised according to their various needs and abilities. They do best when they enjoy school and what it offers in terms of lively teachers and an interesting curriculum, in which key learning targets are clearly defined and which they are motivated to achieve.
Secondly, I say to those reactionary teachers, and I mean this in the nicest possible way - just fuck off, you idiots! We’re talking here about moving away from “how the world is” towards “how the world is sure to be in the 21st century” - a world that’s already changing, a world in which even profit-conscious employers are enlightened enough to recognise that the most valuable employees are the ones with high levels of motivation towards being life-long learners, the ones who have all of their intelligences well-developed, the ones who know how to be creative, and imaginative, and problem-solvers.
They also want to employ those who have high levels of competence in teamworking, communicating and researching. They need people who know how to work independently, and who enjoy taking on new skills in line with changes in technology and in line with new forms of knowledge and understanding.
This isn’t rocket-science, for goodness sake.
I guess the best way to judge whether your session has been effective is when students come up to you afterwards and tell you that if they had children they would like them to go to a school like that.
Sadly, what’s on offer in so many places are just miserable results factories, whose existence and methods are down to the prevailing retrogressive educational thinking and ideology.
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