Layer 515 . . . Spiritual Thoughts, The Future of Conservatism, Dumbogeddon, Right-Wing Stupidity, Left-Wing Timidity, and Schoolification

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Recent thoughts of the Dalai Lama

When we are angry we are blind to reality. Anger may bring us a temporary burst of energy, but that energy is blind and it blocks the part of our brain that distinguishes right from wrong. To deal with our problems, we need to be practical and realistic. If we are to be realistic, we need to use our human intelligence properly, which means we need a calm mind.

The very purpose of spirituality is self-discipline. Rather than criticizing others, we should evaluate and criticize ourselves. Ask yourself, what am I doing about my anger, my attachment, my pride, my jealousy? These are the things we should check in our day to day lives.

It is important that when pursing our own self-interest we should be “wise selfish” and not “foolish selfish”. Being foolish selfish means pursuing our own interests in a narrow, shortsighted way. Being wise selfish means taking a broader view and recognizing that our own long-term individual interest lies in the welfare of everyone. Being wise selfish means being compassionate.

There is a saying in Tibetan that “at the door of the miserable rich man sleeps the contented beggar.” The point of this saying is not that poverty is a virtue, but that happiness does not come from wealth, but from setting limits to one’s desires, and living within those limits with satisfaction.

Generosity is the most natural outward expression of an inner attitude of compassion and loving-kindness. When one desires to alleviate the suffering of others and to promote their well-being, then generosity - in action, word, and thought - is this desire put into practice. It is important to recognize the "generosity" here refers not just to giving in a material sense, but to generosity of the heart.

The creation of a more peaceful and happier society has to begin from the level of the individual, and from there it can expand to one's family, to one's neighborhood, to one's community and so on.

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The Future of Conservatism was yesterday's subject on Start The Week (Radio 4).

Hmmmm.

Peter Hitchens has never been a writer I'd bother to read, but at least he represents 'traditional' or 'one nation' conservatism - the party of Harold MacMillan or even Edward Heath, the kind of 'caring' conservatism that existed before Thatcher came along with her neo-conservative revolution, and made the Tory brand nasty and toxic: a party for the City, pro-greed, pro-selfish individual advancement, pro-privatisation, no such thing as society, etc.

Hitchens pointed out that traditional Conservatism was supposed to be a party guided by Christian values. Today's conservatism is "completely uninterested in matters of morals and culture", and neither is it interested in "preserving the particularlity of Britain", hence it allowed industry to collapse, and allowed what's left of it to be sold off to the highest bidder - i.e. asset-stripper. He made it clear that in his view Thatcher and Reagan were walking disaster areas. Which is telling it like it is.

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George Monbiot also tells it like it is:

The right's stupidity spreads, enabled by a too-polite left

Conservativism may be the refuge of the dim. But the room for rightwing ideas is made by those too timid to properly object

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/06/right-stupidity-spreads-enabled-polite-left

Self-deprecating, too liberal for their own good, today's progressives stand back and watch, hands over their mouths, as the social vivisectionists of the right slice up a living society to see if its component parts can survive in isolation. Tied up in knots of reticence and self-doubt, they will not shout stop. Doing so requires an act of interruption, of presumption, for which they no longer possess a vocabulary.

Perhaps it is in the same spirit of liberal constipation that, with the exception of Charlie Brooker, we have been too polite to mention the Canadian study published last month in the journal Psychological Science, which revealed that people with conservative beliefs are likely to be of low intelligence. Paradoxically it was the Daily Mail that brought it to the attention of British readers last week. It feels crude, illiberal to point out that the other side is, on average, more stupid than our own. But this, the study suggests, is not unfounded generalisation but empirical fact.

It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others – particularly "different" others – requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking.

The new study looks embarrassingly robust. Importantly, it shows that prejudice tends not to arise directly from low intelligence but from the conservative ideologies to which people of low intelligence are drawn. Conservative ideology is the "critical pathway" from low intelligence to racism. Those with low cognitive abilities are attracted to "rightwing ideologies that promote coherence and order" and "emphasise the maintenance of the status quo".

This is not to suggest that all conservatives are stupid. There are some very clever people in government, advising politicians, running thinktanks and writing for newspapers, who have acquired power and influence by promoting rightwing ideologies.

But what we now see among their parties – however intelligent their guiding spirits may be – is the abandonment of any pretence of high-minded conservatism. On both sides of the Atlantic, conservative strategists have discovered that there is no pool so shallow that several million people won't drown in it. Whether they are promoting the idea that Barack Obama was not born in the US, that man-made climate change is an eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy, or that the deficit results from the greed of the poor, they now appeal to the basest, stupidest impulses, and find that it does them no harm in the polls.

Don't take my word for it. Listen to what two former Republican ideologues, David Frum and Mike Lofgren, have been saying. Frum warns that "conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics". The result is a "shift to ever more extreme, ever more fantasy-based ideology" which has "ominous real-world consequences for American society".

Lofgren complains that "the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital centre today". The Republican party, with its "prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science" is appealing to what he calls the "low-information voter", or the "misinformation voter". While most office holders probably don't believe the "reactionary and paranoid claptrap" they peddle, "they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base".

But when I survey this wreckage I wonder who the real idiots are. Confronted with mass discontent, the once-progressive major parties, as Thomas Frank laments in his latest book Pity the Billionaire, triangulate and accommodate, hesitate and prevaricate, muzzled by what he calls "terminal niceness". They fail to produce a coherent analysis of what has gone wrong and why, or to make an uncluttered case for social justice, redistribution and regulation. The conceptual stupidities of conservatism are matched by the strategic stupidities of liberalism.

Yes, conservatism thrives on low intelligence and poor information. But the liberals in politics on both sides of the Atlantic continue to back off, yielding to the supremacy of the stupid. It's turkeys all the way down.

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Dumbogeddon

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/05/daily-mail-calls-rightwingers-stupid

by Charlie Brooker

The Mail's report went on to detail the results of a study carried out by a group of Canadian academics, which appears to show some correlation between low childhood intelligence and rightwing politics. It also claimed that stupid people hold rightwing views in order to feel "safe". Other items they hold in order to feel safe include clubs, rocks and dustbin lids. But those are easy to let go of. Political beliefs get stuck to your hands. And the only way to remove them is to hold your brain under the hot tap and scrub vigorously for several decades.

As you might expect, many Mail Online readers didn't take kindly to a report that strived to paint them as simplistic, terrified dimwits. Many leapt from the tyres they were swinging in to furrow their brows and howl in anger. Others, tragically, began tapping rudimentary responses into the comments box. Which is where the tragi-fun really began.

"Sounds like a BBC study, type of thing they would waste the Licence fee on, load of Cods wallop," claimed Terry from Leicester, thereby managing to ignore the findings while simultaneously attacking public service broadcasting for something it hadn't done. For his next trick, Terry will learn to whistle and shit at the same time.

Not all the respondents were stupid. Some were merely deluded. Someone calling themselves "Hillside" from Sydney claimed: "I have an IQ over 200, have six degrees and diplomas and am 'right-wing', as are others I know at this higher level of intelligence." His IQ score is particularly impressive considering the maximum possible score on Mensa's preferred IQ test is 161.

On and on the comments went, turning a rather stark write-up of a daft-sounding study into a sublime piece of live online performance art. A chimps' tea party of the damned. The Mail has long been a master at trolling lefties; now it's mischievously turned on its own readers, and the results could only be funnier if the website came with free plastic lawn furniture for them to lob at the screen. You couldn't make it up.

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Education & Zeitgeist Corner


Sue Palmer (Toxic Childhood) spoke well on the Today programme this morning on "schoolification" - "The mechanical target-driven model of education."

For more thoughts on education versus schooling, click this blog:

And take a look at this editorial:

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Good article in Guardian Education today by Michael Rosen:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/feb/06/michael-rosen-gove-curriculum-schools

Dear Mr Gove: Michael Rosen's letter from a curious parent

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Layer 383 . . . Finding Your Passion, Ken Robinson, Education, Natural Talents, Happiness, Bildung, Denmark Again, and Human Dignity

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Ken Robinson was on Saturday Live on Radio 4 this morning, talking about his new book.

Thankfully he keeps insisting we think about our undiscovered natural talents, and the sheer waste of millions of people who dislike the work they do because they've never been able to figure out what they're really good at doing, what they really enjoy doing, and the special talent that's hidden within.

Thankfully he keeps on pointing out  that our education system is modelled on the industrial systems of the 19th Century, and is unfit for the 21st.

It's a system that's intended to produce conformity and uniformity. People can't find out what they're good at - only what they're not good at.

Sir Ken's new book is called "The Element - How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything."
http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/the-element

He went on to say that our education system is preoccupied only with certain types of ability.

"Every country in the world is trying to figure out where to go with education."

There was also discussion about "the happiness question", which is being widely considered here and elsewhere. Is happiness our ultimate goal? What are the conditions under which people are likely to feel most fulfilled? Methinks Oxzen has been here many times before.

A guy called Mathew Rickard   -  a Tibetan Buddhist - is apparently the happiest person in the world - as measured by brainwaves that can indicate levels of peace and contentment.

According to Ken Robinson we need an education system that recognises talents by customising the system for the real needs of learners.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Element-Finding-Passion-Changes-Everything/dp/1846141966

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The really infuriating thing is that Sir Ken and his committee of enquiry pretty much said all of this more than 10 years ago, in "All Our Futures - Creativity, Culture and Education", and was totally ignored by politicians and bureaucrats, who simply continue to ignore anything that goes against their dull and counterproductive obsession with academic attainment.

 http://www.cypni.org.uk/downloads/alloutfutures.pdf

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Happiness index to gauge Britain's national mood
Despite 'nervousness', David Cameron wants measure of wellbeing to steer government policy 

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/nov/14/happiness-index-britain-national-mood

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What philosophy tells us about the happiness index
 

Thinkers from Bentham to Heidegger saw measuring happiness as more than just a box-ticking exercise
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/15/happiness-index-philosophy

Aristotle recognised that, unlike some other branches of philosophical enquiry, ethics is not an exact science.

In the 18th century, Immanuel Kant made this point even more strongly: of course we all desire happiness, said Kant, but we do not know what it is or how it will be achieved. Anyone who has pursued something in the hope that it will make her or him happy – whether this be a career path, a relationship, or a holiday – only to find it disappointing, and even a source of stress and anxiety, will know what Kant was talking about.

However, the government's plan to measure happiness raises a further and perhaps more profound philosophical question: regardless of whether this is possible in practice, is it the best way of thinking, even in principle, about what it is to live a good human life?

The essence of technology, argued Heidegger, lies in the idea that life is something to be controlled and mastered . . . Heidegger linked the accelerating domination of technology in the 20th century with the idea that modern humanity faces a spiritual crisis. According to this view, utilitarian approaches to ethics in general, and attempts to measure and regulate happiness in particular, are symptoms of this crisis rather than solutions to it.
 

Perhaps the wisest people are those who . . . recognise that happiness cannot be engineered, for it comes and goes, more like a gift that is given than a commodity that is produced.

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Can a happiness index really measure our wellbeing? See how we compare to the rest of Europe

Can you really create a happiness index? As the government gets set to give it a go, see how the national wellbeing accounts score each country

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/15/happiness-index-wellbeing-nef

Denmark is top!

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Measuring happiness, the French way

French national statistics office produces guidelines on measuring well-being as precursor to national happiness index

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/17/france-happiness-index

Crucially, it was easier to measure unhappiness, so the French team focussed on assessing those who felt they were missing out.

"You can't measure happiness, it's impossible, people don't have the same preferences for what makes them happy," said Stéfan Lollivier, director of social studies at Insee. "But you can measure the fraction of people who are dissatisfied, who think they are unhappy, and the proportion of people who are missing out on happiness or feel excluded from it."
 

The figures showed single-parent families were the most likely to miss out on happiness. More than one French person in five had gone through a period of "poverty" in their lives - not just financial poverty but an overall lack of wellbeing.

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I've managed to find an almost-interesting article by Peter Mortimore. Dull writing style, but important subject matter.

The Nordic countries could teach us about teamwork in education

English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish policy researchers could learn a lot from each other if we followed the example of the Nordic countries

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/oct/05/education-policy-nordic-countries

The Unicef survey of children's national conditions, like the "happiness" scale drawn up by researchers at York University, firmly places the Nordics among the best and the UK among the worst. And an OECD analysis of "earnings mobility" and "income inequality" show that Nordic countries are high on the former and low on the latter – in direct contrast to UK figures.

Our politicians, of all parties, appear fascinated by Nordic education although, up to now, it has been Sweden's policy of school choice rather than the impressive success of Finnish comprehensives on which they have focused. If only they could free themselves from their ideologies and switch their interests, they would learn a great deal about how to improve the academic success of all pupils in all schools.
 

In comparison with the UK, the Nordic countries generally have more land, but far fewer people. They are a little richer, but more equal. They traditionally also spend more on education than the UK. In terms of values, they are committed to the idea of bildung – a difficult-to-translate German word often taken to mean the formation of a child within an education milieu that aspires to liberty and human dignity as well as academic prowess.

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What on earth is Gove up to now?

Teachers need emotional as well as academic intelligence, says Gove

• Minister insists recruits should be from 'top tier'
• Education white paper promises training change
 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/19/teachers-emotional-intelligence-michael-gove

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Gore Vidal tells this apparently true story about happiness:

Harold MacMillan was dining with the De Gaulles. He asked Madame what she was hoping for in her retirement years.

"A penis", she replied.

Seeing the perplexed look on Harold's face, Charles leans over and says, "What Madame means is, 'appiness."
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Layer 369 . . . The Browne Report, Higher Education, Human Intelligences, Radical Thought and Designing a Better System

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Yesterday was bright and warm, and a day for walking in woods and forests to enjoy the beginnings of the very best of autumn's colours and beauty; a day to enjoy the best of the fungi season, and its amazing variety of strange and wonderful creations. It was also a day for learning the arts and techniques of photography and the brilliant things that can be done with current digital technology if we take our cameras off 'automatic' and use their capabilities to the full.

Today is dull and overcast and very wet. It's a day for work, and a day for writing. I want to write about the Browne Report on higher education, and what it advocates by way of funding universities in the future. I was going to start by saying that this is a time for all people of intelligence to write letters to our representatives in Parliament to demand that they think about Browne and denounce his findings and recommendations. However, it's obvious that what we really need is for people who are actually more enlightened to stand up and be counted, since "intelligence" in the conventional usage isn't what's meant here. After all, Lord Browne is, by common agreement, an "intelligent" man.

The problem is that enlightened people in our society are in a very small minority, and a powerless one at that. Is there any point, therefore in protesting about anything the government wants to do? Well yes - if only to recognise that any journey starts with a single step, and if enlightened people don't make efforts to spread some enlightenment then there is literally no hope for our children and grandchildren - at least as far as this country is concerned. Not only is this not a country for old people, it's not a country of, or for, enlightened people. What we have here is an appalling shambles of a benighted society.

Take the Browne Report. An article in this week's LRB points out that "much of the initial response to the Browne Report seems to have missed the point". It certainly has. (This is an 'open' article, available to non-subscribers or purchasers of the LRB at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n21/stefan-collini/brownes-gamble )

Browne's basic idea is pretty simple. Let students be fee-paying 'consumers' of degree courses that will give them the meal tickets and fat salaries which will enable them to repay the costs of their courses in future years. Courses that are likely to be related to future employment and useful passports into highly paid occupations will multiply, and those that aren't will start to disappear. If anyone wants to indulge themselves in studying the arts or anything airy fairy then they'll be lucky to find the odd course still functioning, and if they do then they'll have to pay the full cost of it.

What Oxzen wants to propose is something different to both the status quo AND to Browne - something that's centred on a fundamental reappraisal of the very notion of higher education.

Please try to read the full LRB article, but here's a few quotes from it:

The discussion has focused narrowly on the potential financial implications for the individual student.

But the report proposes a far, far more fundamental change to the way universities are financed than is suggested by this concentration on income thresholds and repayment rates.

Essentially, Browne is contending that we should no longer think of higher education as the provision of a public good, articulated through educational judgment and largely financed by public funds (in recent years supplemented by a relatively small fee element). Instead, we should think of it as a lightly regulated market in which consumer demand, in the form of student choice, is sovereign in determining what is offered by service providers (i.e. universities).

What is of greatest significance here is not the detail of the financial arrangements but the character of the reasoning by which they are justified. Britain’s universities, it is proposed, should henceforth operate in accordance with the tenets of perfect competition theory.

The report proposes a huge, almost unimaginable, de facto cut in investment in higher education. It then says that it hopes to see this enormous shortfall made good by the fees students will be willing to pay to those institutions that convince them they are worth it (principally by enabling them to earn a higher salary). It is in reality a disguised voucher scheme. Students will be able to borrow the cost of the fees, on somewhat subsidised terms, and they are then expected to go and spend them on the ‘service provider’ of their choice. The report proposes that what universities teach will henceforth be determined by their anticipation of consumer demand.

This proposition is obviously false. Children may be best placed to judge what they want to get from the sweetshop, but they are not best placed to judge what they should get from their schooling. University students are, of course, no longer children, but nor are they simply rational consumers in a perfect market.

Individuals often need to be told by someone who knows that a particular line of study is worth pursuing whether at the time they want to or not.

The Browne Report, in keeping with the ethos of market populism, shies away from anything that might seem to involve a judgment that one activity is more worthwhile than another: all you can go by are consumer preferences, what people say they think they want. But at certain moments the report is forced to fall back on other criteria which then reveal the hollowness of the central premise.

The only social value the report seems able to think of is economic: [some] subjects contribute directly to the economy, it is alleged, and so we must have them.

Browne implies that other subjects, especially the arts and humanities, are just optional extras. If students are willing to cash in their voucher to study them – perhaps because, for some unexamined reason, they are thought to lead to higher-paid jobs – so be it; but if they’re not, then there’s no public interest in having them. Despite the occasional (very occasional) mention of, say, ‘culture’, the logic of the report’s proposals gives such values no independent standing. Overwhelmingly, the general statements announce, with startling confidence, the real point of higher education: ‘Higher education matters because it drives innovation and economic transformation. Higher education helps to produce economic growth, which in turn contributes to national prosperity.’

This report displays no real interest in universities as places of education; they are conceived of simply as engines of economic prosperity and as agencies for equipping future employees to earn higher salaries.

Only courses that lead to high-paid jobs will survive, so universities will make sure they provide the graduates that high-paying employers want.

It is no good deluding ourselves that simply leaving 18-year-old applicants to cash in their vouchers at a university of their choice will lead to a more intelligently conceived provision of diverse, high-quality institutions. It may just lead to a few private jets and a lot of Ryanairs.

[This is] a calculated attempt to reshape higher education in this country by subjecting it to ‘the discipline of the market’.

What is at stake is whether universities in the future are to be thought of as having a public cultural role partly sustained by public support, or whether we move further towards redefining them in terms of a purely economistic calculation of value and a wholly individualist conception of ‘consumer satisfaction’.

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Where to begin with all of this? Take this phrase - "universities will make sure they provide the graduates that high-paying employers want".

Stupid employers may think they want young people who's sole achievement has been to study a narrow range of subject matter for three or four years, and do well in timed examinations.

Smart employers have begun to recognise that these graduates are often people who are self-obsessed and have few contributions to make to their businesses - and hardly any of those will be down to the university course itself. (See previous references to Goleman, emotional intelligence, social intelligence, etc.)

The universities themselves, and the civil service, look for recruits who have first or second class degrees, and Masters degrees, and who can help perpetuate their systems - but smart employers know they need people who are creative, who have good people skills, who are empathetic, who are intuitive, and who can think outside the box.

Our university system is stupid, and based on the idea that for three years of their lives intelligent young people are willing to forget all other interests and developmental needs in order to obsessively study a very narrow range of subject knowledge.

Therefore if you're studying science or technology or history or mathematics you can completely forget about increasing your systematic understanding of human psychology, spiritual enlightenment, politics, art, literature, music, emotional intelligence, human groups or pedagogy. Is this really what we still want?

As for becoming fully three dimensional - higher education doesn't even set out to help people to become the sort of people that Abraham Maslow, for example, or the Buddha, talked about. (See Layer 20 - Fully Evolved Humans)

Other countries are beginning to understand that the revolution we need in every stage of education is for its content to be determined by the curiosity and drive of individual learners, and for learning to be a process that's creative, active, social and stimulating. Digital technology allows learners to progress at incredible rates, providing they're driven by a love of learning for its own sake, a passion for self-development, and a thirst for knowledge and skills.

The fact that our universities are becoming stuffed full of young people who are there for purely instrumental and material reasons, or because it's better than actually working for a living, or because they can't think of anything better to do, or because their parents and teachers thought they should be there, is pathetic.

However, this idea that the purpose of education is to make people fit for future employment and fit to be useful cogs in some sort of national drive towards wealth-creation is by no means confined to higher education. A few years ago I was in a meeting where experienced Primary teachers and Primary headteachers were asked to define the main aims of education. I was appalled to hear the two (male) headteachers in the room both saying that the main point of learning in primary schools was to prepare young people for a life of work.

After all these years of New Labour's trashing of a school system that used to focus on the needs of the learners themselves I guess we now have to be grateful when we sometimes hear some teachers merely saying they're preparing kids to do well in tests and exams, without also banging on about the needs of employers. What if employers just cared about having 'workers' who were trained to be silent automatons - would it still be OK to design education around these sorts of stated aims?

And does anyone really think that the ability to get high grades for essays and the ability to do well in timed tests are in themselves good indicators of someone's fitness for employment? What makes someone a good inventor? What makes someone a good leader? What makes someone a good team player? What makes someone a good problem solver? What makes someone resilient, determined, thoughtful, innovative, persistent, reliable, trustworthy, etc? The list is endless.

What we do know is that thousands of graduates are hopeless egocentrics who think they owe nothing to anyone and have no obligations to anyone, or anything. They often have fucked up materialistic value systems, no caring about the wider world, and no intention of paying taxes if they can possibly avoid it. In other words, moral and ethical vacuums.

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Another important point to make is that university academics are, for the most part, no damned good either in this struggle, since they too have vested interests and are incapable of radical thought.

Even the author of this piece in the LRB - Stefan Collini, professor of English at Cambridge - only seems to worry about "a public cultural role" for the universities, rather than a role that allows every student to fully develop all of their intelligences across a broad range of subjects and become fully evolved human beings, capable of creatively enriching their societies and communities in a number of ways.


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Here's another plug for The New Learning Revolution, by Dryden and Vos.

Plus -  Pedagogy of Freedom . . . Ethics, Democracy & Civic Courage by Paulo Freire
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Layer 229 . . . Domestic Violence, Government Nonsense, Born Free, Human Rights, Olympic Stories and Hackney Wick

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Domestic Violence and Education

Our bloody bogus government is at it again. This week's education initiative is to announce that every child in England and Wales is to be taught that domestic violence is not acceptable. What! This is a scheme that a psychopath would dream up . . . for dealing with other psychopaths. And even then it wouldn't work. It wouldn't make a jot of difference.

Even psychopaths KNOW that hurting other people isn't acceptable. Neither is manipulating, threatening or deceiving. However, it doesn't stop them hurting other people, because they have an inability and an unwillingness to empathise with others, and a total lack of concern about anyone except themselves. Besides, many of them actively enjoy hurting other people - especially people who annoy them, or refuse to bow down to their demands, or fight back.

We all KNOW that domestic violence isn't bloody acceptable. We all KNOW that bullying isn't acceptable. Neither is unkindness, or rudeness, or unfairness. KNOWING these things, however, isn't the issue.

The problem is that our school system doesn't even set out to seriously address social, emotional and spiritual intelligence. Teachers are not trained in how to help children develop these key intelligences, though many teachers do their best to persuade children to be kind and thoughtful and reasonable - for instance during token 'circle times' and assemblies slotted in between literacy hours, numeracy hours and PE.

The government's initiative won't do anything to help matters either, and may make things worse if more and more pupils become pissed off with having to sit and listen to platitudes and statements of the bleeding obvious and decide that giving someone a good slap would be an act of rebellion and therefore 'cool' - in the same way that they deliberately go out and use drugs after a tedious session of anti-drugs 'education'.

The government's announcement is pathetic and bogus and totally worthless. As if teachers don't already make clear to kids that ANY kind of violence is unacceptable in a civilised society. The point is, what kind of schooling is required in order that from the very beginning of their time in school children learn not only that violence is unacceptable but also have opportunities every day to develop the skills and attitudes required to become non-violent and emotionally, socially and spiritually intelligent?

Don't bother asking Ed Balls that question. He wouldn't have a clue. And in any case he's far too busy pursuing the only educational agenda that New Labour has ever really had: attainment, attainment, attainment.

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We Are All Born Free

Julian Rhind-Tutt and an all-star cast narrate an animated film about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/video/2008/oct/31/amnesty-human-rights-film

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Olympic Stories – Hackney Wick

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/davehillblog/video/2009/nov/19/2012-olympics-hackney-wick

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Layer 219 Bonuses, Private Enterprise, Wall Street, 1989, Alternative Economics and Tough Love

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Listening to Question Time and the question of squillions of pounds being handed over to MoD civil servants by way of 'bonuses'. Can this really be true? How? It makes you wonder whether the poor bloody troops are getting bonuses. I think not. For the number of kills? Shots fired? Overtime? Night shifts? Danger money?

Can this government get any worse? When did civil servants become part of the bonus culture? It's outrageous.
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Why is Will Self trying to look like a psychotic Freddie Mercury lookalike?
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Seamas Milne had a very good 'big picture' column in the Guardian:

The real lesson of 1989 is that nothing is ever settled

The fall of the wall brought freedoms, but also war and crisis. Now that is creating the basis for a new alternative

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/11/lessons-of-1989-new-alternative

From the point of view of western self-esteem, 1989 is a year to die for: a tale of the triumph of individual freedom and the defeat of an ideological competitor, all captured live on television in the ritual destruction of a reviled enemy symbol in the heart of Europe. So the blanket coverage of the anniversary of the fall of the wall, and the parade of platitude-mouthing politicians in Berlin to mark the implosion of European communism it symbolised, was only to be expected.

What has been more striking, though, has been the lack of ideological confidence and enthusiasm that would have been expected only a few years ago. In the rest of what was eastern Europe, there have been barely any high-profile celebrations of the wider collapse of the old regimes. Given the eruption of wars, global insecurity and now economic crisis that have marked the 20 years since the end of the cold war, the larger narrative of peace, capitalist prosperity and the end of history peddled in the wake of 1989 just seems ridiculous.

But the question in 1989 wasn't whether the old system had to change; it was how it would change. The political force that had turned the Soviet Union into a superpower, industrialised half of Europe and sent the first human being into space had exhausted itself. There were, however, alternative routes out of its crisis. What the protesters in first Gdansk and then Leipzig were mostly demanding was not capitalism, of course, but a different kind of socialism. Even given a restoration of capitalism, there were softer landings that could have been negotiated by Mikhail Gorbachev and guaranteed by the United States and its allies.

Instead, 1989 unleashed across the region and then the former Soviet Union free-market shock therapy, mass robbery as privatisation, vast increases in inequality, and poverty and joblessness for tens of millions. Reunification in Germany in fact meant annexation, the takeover and closure of most of its industry, a political purge of more than a million teachers and other white-collar workers, a loss of women's rights, closure of free nurseries and mass unemployment – still double western Germany's rate after 20 years.

And east Germany has done far better than the rest. Elsewhere in eastern Europe, the crisis created under western tutelage and nomenklatura capitalism was comparable to the Great Depression in the US, and national income took more than a decade to recover. In Russia itself, post-communist catastroika produced the greatest economic collapse in peacetime in modern history. Mortality rates rose steeply across the region in the 1990s – in Russia, the market experiment produced more orphans in the 1990s than the country's 20m wartime deaths, while Gorbachev's democratisation went into reverse.

Now, after a decade of profoundly unequal economic recovery, eastern Europe has once again been plunged into deep crisis by the west's own meltdown, with ethnic violence spreading and public sector workers facing wage cuts of up to 40%.

The German Democratic Republic was home to the Stasi, shortages and the wall, but it was also a country of full employment, social equality, cheap housing, transport and culture, one of the best childcare systems in the world, and greater freedom in the workplace than most employees enjoy in today's Germany.

Along with the humiliation of the takeover, that's why Der Spiegel this year found that 57% of eastern Germans believed the GDR had "more good sides than bad sides", and even younger people rejected the idea that the state had been a dictatorship. Just as only one in five Hungarians believes that the country has changed for the better since 1989, only 11% of Bulgarians think ordinary people have benefited from the changes and most Russians and Ukrainians regret the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

By destroying its main ideological competitor, 1989 opened the door to a deregulated model of capitalism that has wreaked social and economic havoc across the world for two decades. That, in turn, led to the economic crisis of 2009, which has so palpably discredited the neoliberal model. It also created the conditions for the wave of progressive change in Latin America that has challenged the post-89 social order and raised the possibility of a new form of socialism for the 21st century.

Only 11% of those questioned in a BBC poll across 27 countries this week said they think free-market capitalism is working well, nearly a quarter believe it is fatally flawed and most want more public ownership and intervention in the economy.

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Almost missed this excellent letter from Helena Kennedy in the Observer:

The big issue: EU presidency. Tony Blair is the last leader Europe needs

The presidency of Europe will be highly symbolic and Tony Blair is a wholly inappropriate person to hold the role ("Is Tony Blair the right man to be president of Europe?", Observer Debate, Comment). He misled our country – to secure support for a decision he had already made to join George Bush in the Iraq war. In doing so, he showed total disrespect for international law, the United Nations and the views of his European partners; he destabilised the world and was naively cavalier as to the cost in human lives.

Domestically, he was disrespectful of the rule of law and civil liberties, hollowed out the Labour party and deepened the divide between rich and poor. He cravenly bowed to the demands of Rupert Murdoch, the neoconservatives in America, the extreme pro-Israeli lobby and his friends in the City. He showed poor judgment in his choice of associates. His freeloading was shameful. Indeed, his lifestyle epitomises the worst values of a materialistic age. He does not have the qualities of a leader, but would be an excellent television presenter.

Helena Kennedy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2009/nov/01/the-big-issue-tony-blair

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Will Hutton

These money-grubbing companies make the public sector look good

The simple equation that the private sector is good and the public sector bad has blighted our lives for decades

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/01/will-hutton-nimrod-afghanistan-raf

This is, I know, a question that defines me as a maverick; everyone knows that the public sector is a slough of inefficiency while the private sector is the home of innovation, enterprise and customer service. All I can say is: not in my recent experience.

Yet public service reformers remain animated by a desire to follow private sector examples. One fashionable wheeze is that local authority services are to be organised like low-cost airlines.

The best in the private sector can, of course, be exemplary – but to be great there has to be a culture that says the firm is more than merely an engine to deliver goods and services as cheaply as possible. Sure, cost effectiveness counts. But great firms – just like great parts of the public sector – are animated by a sense of purpose.

What has been wrong with too much of the public sector is not the fact of being owned by the state, or bureaucracy. It is a loss of a sense of purpose. Too many dumb, clunky targets; too much preoccupation with narrow cost saving and too little concern with greater purpose – from which poor leadership and management derive, and of which the MoD is an exemplar. To look to the private sector for quick-fix solutions, just because it is private, is to draw the wrong conclusion.

What the best in the private sector shows is the result of rigorous implementation of purpose. If Virgin.net felt passionately that it wanted to be a great server provider, I doubt it would collapse so much. Equally, what went wrong in the City was a complete loss of purpose, so the only point of banking became to make bonuses. If Charles Haddon-Cave wrote a report on either, I'm sure he would find the same lackadaisical approach he found in the Nimrod saga – if only with much less deadly results. The private sector never offered the magic bullet that New Labour or Thatcherites imagined. Efficiency and innovation are tough to deliver – and too much of Britain has failed in that mission.

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Making Wall Street pay

Wall Street's irresponsible bankers caused this economic crisis. It's only fair that they pay to clean up their mess

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/nov/09/us-wall-street-financial-transactions-tax

While we may need additional revenue at some point, it makes far more sense to impose a financial transactions tax, which would primarily hit the Wall Street banks that gave us this disaster, than to tax the consumption of ordinary working families. We can raise large amounts of money by taxing the speculation of the Wall Street high-flyers while barely affecting the sort of financial dealings that most of us do in our daily lives.

Since the financial sector is the source of the country's current economic and budget problems it also makes sense to have this sector bear the brunt of any new taxes that may be needed. The economic collapse caused by Wall Street's irrational exuberance has led to a huge increase in the country debt burden. It seems only fair that Wall Street bear the brunt of the clean-up costs. A financial transactions tax is the way to make sure that this happens.

In short, we have to tell the deficit hawk crew, many of whom earned their fortune on Wall Street, to slow down. The country does face serious budget problems, even if they may not be as bad as this crew claims. However, if we need taxes to address a budget shortfall, then Wall Street is the place to start. After we have put in place a tax on Wall Street speculation, if we still need additional money, we can talk about a tax that will primarily affect the middle class.

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Paul Moore, the bank whistleblower whose revelations forced the resignation of a senior Government adviser, has called for Prime Minister Gordon Brown to go for his part in creating the financial crisis.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/4629670/Gordon-Brown-must-go-says-HBOS-whistleblower-Paul-Moore.html

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The iconoclastic wisdom of David Nutt

This is not the first time Professor Nutt has challenged dearly held beliefs – as many sufferers of depression will gladly testify

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/03/david-nutt-depression-drugs

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How tough love breeds smart children

Report says that parents who use mixture of discipline and warmth are most likely to produce well-rounded individuals

by Anushka Asthana

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/nov/08/tough-love-smart-children

Children brought up by parents practising "tough love" are more likely to become rounded personalities with well-developed characters than those who face either authoritarian or laissez-faire approaches, research reveals today.

The study, by the thinktank Demos, tracked the lives of 9,000 families and found that 13% used a "tough love" approach, combining warmth and discipline. It did not matter whether the parents were rich or poor – those that adopted the approach brought up children who were more likely to be empathetic, more able to control their emotions and bounce back from disappointment, and more capable of concentrating and completing tasks.

The research found that it was the style of parenting, rather than income or social background, that developed the strength of character.

It claimed that such "character capabilities" had become increasingly important in life. Skills such as empathy, self-regulation and application were 33 times more important in determining income for those who turned 30 in 2000 than for those 12 years older, it said.

Richard Reeves, director of Demos, argued that "tough love" was successful because it built up a child's self-esteem but also taught them to be restrained and respectful.

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Layer 218 . . . Remembrance, Spiritual Intelligence, Education, Finland, Ofsted, Haringey and Role Models.

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It's 11.00am on the 11th November and all over the country there's a 2 minute silence. Harry Patch, the last surviving soldier who fought in the trenches is now dead. But still we remember.

Is there really a place in a cathedral service for God Save The Queen? Have all our monarchs really been gracious and noble? And will they be in the future? I wonder who decides these things.

Archbishop Rowan Williams looks splendid in his robes as he preaches about poverty and injustice, political stability and international cooperation. He's talking about the recreation of shattered idealism. He's talking about facing life with vision and courage. He's talking about powerful moral clarities. He's talking about value and meaning. He's talking about selfishness and superficiality. He's talking about honesty and dishonesty. He's talking about trust and hope and love. And then he talks about bringing the reality of God closer.

No wonder we fail to develop proper measures of spiritual intelligence in ourselves and others when the issue is continually muddied and confused by talk about God - as if we can't have spiritual intelligence without this primitive urge to invoke a God.

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Here's a report on how a proper system of education works:

It's by Warwick Mansell.

Finnish schools succeed because teaching is valued

Innovation in Education conference In Finland, just one in 10 applicants wins a place to train as a teacher, and all take master's degrees

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/nov/09/finland-values-teaching

Truly comprehensive schools that do not set or stream pupils and see teachers as valued experts form the basis of the world's most highly-regarded education system, a Guardian conference was told today.

Finland, whose pupils have been the top performers in international tests run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, puts equity in the way it treats children as among its top priorities.

It also benefits from the popularity of teaching in this country of only 5.3 million people. Just one in 10 applicants for teacher training is successful, and all teachers take masters' degrees.

Timo Lankinen, director-general of the Finnish national board of education, told the first Innovation in Education conference in London that much of the country's success stemmed from its decision in the 1970s to introduce a comprehensive secondary structure.

He said: "This has been our biggest innovation, and it is one of the reasons for our success."

The key to promoting innovation in education was trust in teachers, said Lankinen, pointing out that Finland has no inspection system, national tests or league tables.

He added: "We see that this creates a virtuous circle around teaching. It means that teachers are very active in the development of education. Nationally and locally, we want to support them at every stage."

The 200 conference attendees were asked to vote electronically on what they thought were the biggest obstacles to innovation in education.

They listed "fear" at the top, followed by "government policy", "Ofsted" and "lack of money", although two thirds were optimistic overall about the potential for creative thinking.

Lord Puttnam, the film-maker, Labour peer and former chairman of England's General Teaching Council, told the conference that ministers' fear of tabloid headlines should also be on the list.

He said: "Another obstacle occurred to me: government fear of the Daily Mail, which is real. I have seen several potentially very innovative and very interesting things sadly thrown into reverse because of fear of an unwanted and unwarranted headline."

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Ofsted in Need of Special Measures?

Meanwhile, our appalling Ofsted regime, and its discredited HMCI Christine Gilbert, stagger on into further disrepute:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/nov/10/ofsted-apology-shoesmith-case

Ofsted apologises for initial failure to find report drafts in Shoesmith case

Regulator ordered to explain delay by judge in case over sacking of children's services head following Baby P death

The children's services watchdog was forced to apologise today for making a "serious and deeply regrettable" mistake in failing to disclose potential evidence in Sharon Shoesmith's high court case over her sacking in the wake of the death of Baby P.

A judge described the late emergence of the documents from Ofsted as "very unsatisfactory" and ordered the regulator to give him "chapter and verse" on why it had said no draft versions of a scathing report into children's services at Haringey council, in north London, could be found, only for them to turn up last week.

The evidence includes 70 pages of handwritten notes by one of the inspectors. They were already with the regulator but were only discovered by an in-house lawyer working on a freedom of information request after the hearing in October had ended, the court was told.

In her judicial review , Shoesmith said the way the Joint Area Review was carried out breached the rules of natural justice. She alleged that Ofsted failed to allow her to comment on the report before publication, and that the way the body handled it reflected pressure from the children's secretary, Ed Balls.

At a specially convened hearing today Mr Justice Foskett gave Ofsted two weeks to ensure there was no other material that should have been presented to the court. He had planned to rule this week on Shoesmith's attempt to have her sacking from her £130,000-a-year post last December declared unlawful, but said the documents meant the judgment would be delayed until nearer to Christmas, or possibly later.

"It's not fair on any of the parties ... and frankly it's not fair on me either," he said of the possibility that not all the information was available.

Ofsted said : "We very much regret that this has happened. We have apologised unreservedly to the court and other parties. Unfortunately mistakes sometimes happen and whilst this is a serious one and deeply regrettable, we have nothing to hide." Foskett ordered Ofsted to pay the legal costs of today's hearing and said the taxpayer-funded regulator must also meet the cost of Shoesmith's lawyers going through the newly disclosed evidence.

He demanded "a full explanation" about the way requests from Shoesmith's lawyers for information about the existence of the draft reports were dealt with. First they were "batted away", then the reports were said not to exist, "and now they do", Foskett said.

The court heard that Shoesmith's legal team had twice requested drafts of the Jar and been told they were not relevant. They asked a final time on the last day of the court hearing last month, after the Guardian reported a whistleblower's claim that a separate report had been secretly downgraded, but were told Ofsted had been "unable to locate any further drafts".

The emergence of the documents was a "source of very considerable concern", he told the court, and Ofsted's submissions showed "very serious failings" over its duty of candour and response to requests for information.

So is there any chance that Ofsted might now be put into Special Measures and its Chief Inspector forced to resign? Taking into account the way it was hoodwinked by Haringey Children's Services into giving them a favourable report, when all along Haringey's social services and child protection system were a shambles?

Don't hold your breath. Don't forget HMCI Gilbert's married into the New Labour mafia.

Though I don't blame Shoesmith for suing for damages, since she was clearly someone on a steep learning curve who was doing her best in a tough job. Not unless she was party to Haringey's hoodwinking of Ofsted, that is.
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The Value of Role Models

On a more positive note, I've been thinking about the importance of having sporting heros who are positive role models that exemplify physical, spiritual, emotional and social intelligence. I've written previously about my admiration for Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, and also about Stuart Broad.

In the Guardian this week there's another major article on Broad, who could become not only a brilliant all-rounder but also be a beacon of intelligence and decency for any young person who comes across him.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/nov/10/stuart-broad-england-south-africa

In the same centre page spread in the sports section there's a feature article on the new WBA heavyweight champion, the amazing David Haye. I heard him speaking on the radio a couple of days ago, after his remarkable victory at the weekend, and it was obvious that he's someone who resembles his own hero, the incredible Muhammed Ali, in more ways than one.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/nov/10/david-haye-america-unification

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/nov/08/david-haye-nikolai-valuev1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_haye
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHNmeusCbhg&feature=related
Never mind the actual sporting prowess - the importance of these people as role models is seen by how well they match up with Maslow's list of the characteristics of fully evolved human beings - see Layer 20 - http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-20-fully-evolved-humans.html
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Layer 211 . . . Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Britain, Rome, Copeland, Private Passions and Music.

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The clocks have gone back. Hooray – an extra hour before midday!
Boooooo! – dark before evening!
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     Posthumus:    Kneel not to me:
The power that I have on you is to spare you;
The malice towards you to forgive you: live,
And deal with others better.
    Cymbeline:         Nobly doom'd!
We'll learn our freeness of a son-in-law;
Pardon's the word to all.

Cymbeline Act V Sc. V

"And deal with others better." A worthy goal for all of us. Social and emotional intelligence.

Shakespeare speaks of people having sufficient enlightenment and emotional & spiritual intelligence to practice restraint - to resist the temptation to seek revenge, and to show the capacity to forgive. His previously reviled son-in-law Posthumus demonstrates  his ability to behave intelligently and nobly, and the fierce king immediately responds to such generosity of spirit by exercising restraint and by giving a pardon to the wrongdoer.

The two sons of the king, missing for many years and believed dead, are reunited with their father.

      Soothsayer: [reads] '. . . when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty.'

     Cymbeline:     Laud we the gods;
And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
From our blest altars. Publish we this peace
To all our subjects. Set we forward: let
A Roman and a British ensign wave
Friendly together: so through Lud's-town march:
And in the temple of great Jupiter
Our peace we'll ratify; seal it with feasts.
Set on there! Never was a war did cease,
Ere bloody hands were wash'd, with such a peace.

It was especially interesting to see this play (at the Arts Theatre, Great Newport Street) at the end of a week in which an unabashed racist and xenophobe performed his bullshit on the BBC's Question Time.

What kind of lunatics spend their lives banging on about Churchill, the wartime spirit, fighting foreigners, racial purity, etc?

Shakespeare understood very clearly the need for peace and prosperity, and knew that peace IS the greatest prosperity. Not money. Not possessions. He also understood the need for the flags of different nations to “wave friendly together”, and understood the ways in which Roman (and European) culture had enriched Britain and made it a better place.

Cymbeline and his people almost died in a battle brought about by his wife's greed and her demand for the king to cease paying to Rome the annual sum that had been agreed in order to cement Britain's political autonomy and independence from Rome. It was only after the battle was over, his sons reunited with him, and his wife deceased, that he understood how his capitulation to her demands had almost cost him his life and his kingdom, and the lives of many others as well.

The twist in the tale is that having defeated the Roman force, Cymbeline nevertheless saw the error of his ways, regretted his dishonourable behavior, and determined to resume the payments to, and the friendship with, Rome – a forerunner of the Treaty of Rome, dare I say. Stick that big fat piece of spiritual intelligence in your pipe and smoke it, Mr Griffin.

It was sad that the theatre was only half full for such a superb production with amazing acting, wonderful lighting, great costumes and some excellent music from semi-hidden musicians playing a full drum kit and guitars.

http://www.artstheatrewestend.com/index.php/

http://www.shakespeare-literature.com/Cymbeline/0.html

http://www.artstheatrewestend.com/whats_on/#cymbeline
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Stewart Copeland – Private Passions – Radio 3

Michael Berkeley meets rock great Stewart Copeland, drummer with The Police, and a composer of operas and soundtracks as well as songs. He recently provided music and narration for a spectacular production of Ben Hur at London's O2 arena. His musical tastes, all of which have influenced his own style, range from Wagner, Ravel and John Adams to Booker T, Paul Simon and reggae from Desmond Dekker.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nhm34

According to Copeland, music should be about feeling – not intellectual tricks. I reckon you can say the same about any art – painting, poetry, theatre, whatever. This is why the challenging language of Shakespeare is no block to enjoying it - on the stage, at least.

Sitting alone and reading it is a different matter – a bit akin to sitting and reading the notes on a musical score. The words are mere vehicles for an experience that's meant to occupy all the senses – it's about movement, spectacle, sound, light, darkness, voices, music, costumes and the suspension of everyday reality in order to become immersed in something that speaks to and appeals directly to the soul, the spirit and the emotions.

I was never a huge fan of The Police, and certainly not crazy about the artist formerly known as Sting, but I like Stewart Copeland because he speaks well, he's knowledgeable about music, and he's down to earth, honest, original, thoughtful and often amusing.

He says the best music (“It's all about spirit”) is about a very simple beauty – which for me sums up the Blues. He reckons his discovery of Booker T and Green Onions back in the Sixties was transformational for him – then just a kid living in Beirut, listening to a weekly music programme on “The Voice of America”.

For me Green Onions sets out what 12 bar blues really IS. It's so easy to hear it in such pared-down music : 4 bars of the tonic. 2 bars of the 4th. 2 more bars of the tonic. One bar of the 5th, one more of the 4th . One more of the tonic and and one more 5th. Why is that so great? I've no idea.

Copeland's very keen on the concept of negative space, and says that leaving gaps in the music is a very potent force. Rock and roll is mainly about 'backbeat' – putting the emphasis on the 4th beat in the 4/4 bar. The reggae 'revolution' – and Copeland loves reggae - puts the emphasis on the 3rd beat and thereby creates space in the music. Dah, dah, DAH, dah, and not dah, dah, dah, DAH. Chuck Berry sang (in 'Rock n Roll Music') “It's got a backbeat, you can't lose it!” But backbeat isn't the be-all and end-all.

Copeland pointed out that in the 60's we didn't recognise the real greatness of the music that came at us then – we just thought it was fantastic!

He reckons musicians tend to have terrible taste in music – because they listen to the wrong things in their quest for novelty and utilitarian value. Also – they go for things that are difficult and clever and intellectually stimulating – whereas they ought to stay with 'the visceral'.

“Let's kick jazzers”, he says, “That's always good for a laugh!” He reckons he can wind up any gathering of music lovers by being critical of most jazz. I can see his point – most forms of music are full of dross, but for some reason most music lovers are reluctant to acknowledge some of the crap that comes out of the jazz scene is just that, or to admit that there's ANY crap within the jazz genre.

What's music FOR?  Copeland reckons it's flourished as an art form because it's a form of human 'plumage' for all those that play musicand sing songs - it's part of the human mating dance. He goes on to comment on the 'strange' behavior that music induces in those that listen to it - girls waving their pudenda, guys thrusting their groins – all part of the sexual display.

He reckons jazzers don't get any sex, though, and that boy bands and girl bands are far more successful sexually in spite of their musically crap offerings – presumably because they build dance and spectacle and  movement into their acts, whereas a lot of jazz can be pretty 'cerebral' and visually dull. The trouble with Copeland is that he takes his colourful controversialism too far, and he forsakes balance for brilliant polemics, as is obvious to anyone who's listened to the very best of jazz, which certainly has rhythm, swing, drive, energy, emotion, soul and spirit powering it.

Copeland also mentions young adolescents who use heavy metal sounds as 'borrowed chest hair'.  Wagner does similar things, he says

He discussed the power of punk, which was happening here just as The Police were getting their act together. Also at that time 'dub reggae' became very popular – he thinks because it was similarly militant, hostile, aggressive music – songs and sounds about anger and despair and injustice. Copeland attributes to Bob Marley, and to reggae in general, his friend Sting's sudden emergence into being a best-selling composer and songwriter. When Sting discovered Marley, everything changed, apparently. Though he credits Andy Sumner with being the member of the band that enabled them to take off musically – because of the sophistication and style of his guitar playing.

I agree totally with Copeland's choice of Paul Simon's 'Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes' as an outstanding piece of music. He said, “This track's so beautiful, so poignant,  it hurts me to listen to it.” Definitely.
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Layer 204 More Education, Tesco, Academic Rigour, Community Service and Spiritual Intelligence.

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There were some interesting letters in Guardian Education this week:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/oct/13/education-letters-school-discipline

troops out

Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary, told the Conservatives' conference that pupils should wear ties and ex-soldiers should be employed to enforce discipline in schools. This prompted some colourful comments on our website.

Cellardoor

I wore a tie and blazer to school and still acted like a petty thug. Not once did I think that I should behave differently because of the way I dressed.

And as for getting the army to teach people how to behave – this guy obviously hasn't been out around Plymouth or Chelmsford on a Saturday night.

lonepilgrim

As reported in the Guardian recently, "the number of former servicemen in prison or on probation or parole is now more than double the total British deployment in Afghanistan", yet apparently this is the calibre of person we need enforcing discipline in schools.

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Last week headteachers suggested Labour initiatives to bin and those to save.

ratherbered

I can tell you straight away what education policies the Tories will cut: Building Schools for the Future; the Primary Capital Programme. The last time the Conservative party was in office it deliberately abandoned maintenance, refurbishment and renewal of the school estate, which left many school buildings structurally unsound and leaking. The reason why so much money has been poured into education under Labour is simply because of the disgraceful lack of investment in schools by the Tories during the 18 years they were in power.

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Big Tory business

Polly Curtis interviewed the architect of the Swedish schools' voucher system (favoured by the Conservative party), Anders Hultin, who said those running schools should be allowed to make a profit.

Please do not print any more stories about how the Tories' plans for education are insufficiently connected to the requirements of big business (The prophet's motives, 6 October). You are putting satirists out of work.

Keith Flett

…..............................................

And talking about the requirements of big business, this story appeared in the Guardian -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2009/oct/14/schools-like-tesco

Should schools be more like Tesco?

Teachers are drowning in paperwork – and their pupils are suffering, says the boss of the supermarket giant

Education standards in Britain are "woefully low", leaving employers to pick up the pieces.

That was the stark message from Sir Terry Leahy, chief executive of Tesco, the country's largest employer.

Speaking at a conference yesterday, Leahy said companies like his needed well-educated applicants, but was not getting them.

He blamed excessive bureaucracy: teachers spend too much time on paperwork and not enough in the classroom, he said.

"One thing that government could do is to simplify the structure of our education system. From my perspective there are too many agencies and bodies, often issuing reams of instructions to teachers, who then get distracted from the task at hand: teaching children," he said.

Leahy reckons the education system should learn lessons from how Tesco is run. "We try to keep paperwork to a minimum, instructions simple, structures flat, and – above all – we trust the people on the ground. I am not saying that retail is like education, merely that my experience tells me that when it comes to the number of people you have in the back office, less is more."

Leahy is not the only business leader who thinks he could do education better. Dragon Peter Jones has set up his own academy for young entrepreneurs and is changing the way business skills are taught, keeping the focus as practical as possible.

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More information needed on what Sir Terry means by “well educated”, obviously. But he's not wrong to point out the stupidity of too much bureaucracy distracting schools from what they're actually trying to do for kids, and the importance of “trusting people on the ground”.

We also need to know more about what's meant by “changing the way business skills are taught”, but you can't argue with the need to make more of young people's learning “as practical as possible” - ie relevant, meaningful, interesting, engaging, purposeful . . . and away from endless and meaningless preparation for academic exams and tests.

A comment on this on  CiF -

TheGreatRonRafferty

"On Monday, the 5th inst., a lecture was delivered by the Rev. J. Whitely, principal of St. Augustine School, Hull, in the National Schoolroom, .... The rev. gentleman went on to show the danger in the present educational policy of our country of cramming rather than opening the intellect of our youth, and concluded with a warm appeal to the young men and women present to become thinkers, and thus general benefactors of their village and nation. The audience was large, and listened throughout with rapt attention, broken only by frequent bursts of applause, which demonstrations were loud and long."

That is a quote from the Hull Packet (a newspaper) published on 16th January 1881 !!!!!!

It was part of a nationwide debate on the national curriculum, cramming for exams and tests, and rigid inspection regime that was blighting mid-Victorian Britain. By 1885, the argument was won, and schools gradually became freer to teach properly, using knowledge gained about the psychological and physical development and needs of children.

Until the Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown governments decided that they knew better, and that a system that failed the country in mid-Victorian times was just what was needed for 21st century Britain.

Now we have many of the central characters - those cheering on the politicians to set back the country more than one hundred years, claiming that it was a "mistake", and perhaps, like the Victorians, we should abandon this huge error in school planning.

British education was good in ensuring that 30% to 55% of all the world's inventions and discoveries were made by its pupils. Now the policy is not one that would yield this, but be factory fodder to compete with Third World countries for the benefit of public-school toffs. It's called globalisation.

Whilst I agree wholeheartedly with much of what Sir Leahy says regarding paperwork, and leaving it to folk on the ground, I wonder if he, or any other director of a major company REALLY wants workers who think creatively?

There was a golden age of British invention during and after the Second World War (first for defence, then for a whole raft of peacetime ventures), accomplished by ordinary/extraordinary people from ordinary walks of life. Sadly, we now have a country where the public-school educated have taken over the reins of power again. And we can all see what a mess they are making of it!

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/oct/13/secondary-schools-fiona-millar

Fiona Millar - A Few Simple Questions

Based on my own experience, I am now principally interested in hearing answers from the politicians to a few simple questions.

How are they going to protect our budgets and investment in our buildings while cutting public spending? How are they going to ensure every school has an excellent head and good teachers who stay and are supported and equipped to sustain school improvement? How are they going to fund the work, especially investment, in the early years and support for parents that counters the disadvantage outside schools that contributes so much to the underachievement within them?
How are they going to balance choice, not just with fair admissions, but with a fair framework for exclusions, special needs and sharing out pupils with behavioural problems?

How are they going to keep schools accountable while getting rid of the perverse incentives to manipulate the intake and the curriculum that are intrinsic in the current league tables?

Most parents want the following: a good local school, well resourced, with a pleasant environment; strong leadership; good teachers; consistent and effective behaviour management; a balanced intake; and a broad curriculum. It is such a simple message that I don't understand why someone doesn't just get up and say it – then concentrate on the detail that will bring it about.
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"A Chicago School is Hoping to Turn Out lots of 'Little Obamas'."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/oct/13/obama-black-students-chicago

It's 8.30 in the morning and 450 young men in jackets, ties and short back and sides line up looking for all the world like young Barack Obamas. They begin to recite their daily creed. "We are the young men of Urban Prep. We are college bound. We are exceptional – not because we say it, but because we work hard at it. We believe in ourselves. We believe in each other. We believe in Urban Prep."

For 16-year-old Israel Durley, even making it to school each morning is a challenge. "As of last night, we had four more murders around the school area," he says. "When you have the majority of people around you who don't care about their lives and their futures, then it's kind of hard to surpass them because they're always pulling you down."

At Israel's previous high school, his most optimistic goal was to get a job at McDonald's. Now that's all changed. So what's so different about the school, and could we in the UK learn anything from its methods?

Urban Prep emphasises academic rigour, extracurricular involvement and community service. It has a longer school day than most US schools, and tests students every six weeks. The curriculum is designed to be culturally relevant to young urban males. In literature week, teachers pitched their book choices to the students, reading excerpts from young urban writers such as Junot Diaz, whose work reflects the students' own lives.

Each year, students design and implement their own community service projects. "We want to prepare our boys to be the leaders in the communities, to take over the world tomorrow," says the school's vice-president, Evan Lewis. "They need to learn compassion and humanity, and this helps them to do so."

As a charter school, Urban Prep enjoys similar flexibility to Britain's academies. But, unlike in the UK, it makes full use of this autonomy to address the complex needs of its students, from the curriculum and timetable to staff recruitment.

At the end of the school day, as Israel Durley swaps his jacket and tie for a hoodie and slips back out into the mean streets of Englewood, he's optimistic about his college prospects.
"There's no doubt in my mind, that I'm going, that I'm going to pursue a professional career and that I'm going to succeed in life."

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Of course this school still seems to fixated on getting kids to pursue “professional careers”, and there's a way to go to establish the case for vocational education, careers as independent business people, artists, tradespeople, etc, and the possibility of leading a good, worthwhile and productive life as a working class person, but at least the school is focused on social, emotional and spiritual intelligence, and not just "IQ" and exam-passing.
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Layer 201 Part 1 . . . Nailing Cameron's Lies, the Cause of the Crash, Education, Tutors, Inequality, and The Role of Government

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Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 1

Just when I think I'm getting too jaded to read serious newspapers I find this week's Observer is full of very good stuff, and thank goodness that we still have writers and thinkers of the calibre of Will Hutton and co.

Andrew Rawnsley's column focused on the clear blue water that's reappearing between Labour and the Tories, since last week's Tory conference so clearly moved their party back to the Thatcherite right, having flirted briefly with the middle ground in the past couple of years.

Labour loves the state; the Tories loathe it. So far, so simple.

Last autumn, the world's banks came within days of a cascading collapse so apocalyptic that money would literally have disappeared overnight. The banks had not become so reckless because of too much regulation, but because of too little state intervention. And when the banks went bust, and the markets could not save themselves from meltdown, only government was big enough to step in and avert catastrophe. History will likely credit the crucial decisions to rescue the banks as the greatest positive of Gordon Brown's premiership.

The Tory leader betrayed extraordinary blind spots. Incredibly, he managed to talk about the financial crisis without once mentioning the market failures that would have had even more catastrophic consequences without government intervention. His account was riddled with confusion and contradiction which suggests his theory of the state is at best half-formed.

Cameron made the audacious claim that the Tories would do a better job than Labour of helping the poor. In neither case did he explain how reducing inequality and protecting vulnerable families are going to be possible without forms of government intervention.

The state is going to be slimmer, but it will remain large. A crude clash between Big Government and Small State misses the more sophisticated and important challenge. That is how to make government smarter. Labour is likely to have time in opposition to rue that it did not do more with power to modernise public services. The Tories will probably find themselves in office when they try to work out how to fashion an intelligent state. They will not find the answer in the sound and fury of empty conference slogans.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/11/andrew-rawnsley-conservative-conference-election

This final point is really key. Governments and civil service bureaucracies are fucking dumb. They're full of intellectually able individuals who are retarded by their lack of emotional intelligence and social intelligence, lack of a decent values system, lack of an intelligent ideology, and most of all lack of spiritual intelligence.

They're full of careerists, hyper-competitive power-crazed hustlers, complacent elitists and people who know fuck-all about the realities of life in the communities they're meant to be serving but which they imagine they're leading, and directing.

 These people were summed up brilliantly in the wonderful writing of The Thick of It. According to Wikipedia a new series is to be broadcast on BBC Two, in late October, 2009.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_thick_of_it

The Observer's editorial says this:

Mr Cameron should have been intellectually prepared for the extraordinary events of the last two years. The credit crunch had many causes, but chief among them was market failure. The aggregate power of individual greed was not adequately balanced by government regulation or social restraint.

But in his keynote address, the Tory leader offered a different explanation. The causes of Britain's economic problems, he said, are "Gordon Brown, who designed the system of financial regulation" and "government, [which] got too big, did too much and undermined responsibility". So the problem was too little political interference in a market-driven society, and also too much.

There was not a single social, economic or cultural problem in Britain that did not, according to Mr Cameron, have its roots in "Big Government". And every solution, it seems, should begin with a cull of those fabled profligate bureaucrats.

That is a big intellectual retreat from the position he held not so long ago.

No one expects a Conservative leader to reject the market and nor should they. Britain is hardly lusting after central planning and price controls. But for Mr Cameron, in a speech designed to flesh out a mature political philosophy, not to mention market forces was an extraordinary omission.

More peculiar still, Mr Cameron has witnessed a global crisis produced by inherent flaws in a system governed by laissez-faire economics and yet somehow he has emerged with an anti-government creed that sounds closer to the conservatism of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s than to his own conservatism of three years ago.

Perhaps Mr Cameron has simply missed the point of the credit crunch. Or perhaps he is calculating that brash anti-government rhetoric is a way to turn public disenchantment with politics in general into Tory votes.

Whichever it is, if his speech reflects the final destination of Mr Cameron's intellectual journey in opposition, the whole exercise, in retrospect, looks immensely naive or hugely cynical or both.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/11/david-cameron-conservative-party-editorial

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Early starts for the children desperate to pass their 11-plus

Private tutors are now dedicating themselves to ensuring that children win a grammar school place. The result is a widening class divide and some children studying for up to six hours a day

This is a comprehensive 2-page article by Anushka Asthana

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/oct/11/grammar-schools-tuition-private-tutor

All over the country, parents are pouring thousands of pounds into private tutoring in a desperate attempt to help their children secure a place at one of the 164 grammar schools in England and 69 in Northern Ireland.

Fiona Millar, chair of Comprehensive Futures that campaigns against selective education, said she was "amazed" by the stories she heard about the way parents behaved. "It has got out of control," she said. "What sort of kids have to be up at five in the morning to be tutored? It is tragic. I think there are issues about pupils' well-being. I have heard of tutors for children who are pre-primary. It has become a sort of panic among parents."

Millar said parents were driven by the fact they faced an "awful alternative". In areas where grammar schools took the brightest pupils, other schools suffered from deflated results. The obvious solution, according to Millar, was to ban the 11-plus. "You can't make the argument that grammar schools are ladders up for the working classes if who gets into them is determined by the amount of tuition their parents can afford," she said.

Others argued that children felt under pressure because they knew their parents had spent so much money on tutors. One primary school teacher from Kent, which has an 11-plus system and multiple grammar schools, said the stress on children was so high that in the weeks leading up to the exam and immediately afterwards, some suffered sleep problems, became weepy and aggressive, or fell ill. There was also bullying and name calling, as children felt the strain of the "dog-eat-dog attitude".

An editorial on education says this -

A free society allows parents to employ tutors for their children. Usually, that is a rational, targeted response to local weaknesses in school departments. But as a whole it contributes to a picture of Britain's education system where an under-acknowledged engine is at work: selection by wealth. That could be payment of fees to a private school or tutors. It could be paying a premium on a house in the catchment area of a desirable school. Either way, rich children get a better education than poor ones.

In recent years, policy-makers have addressed this issue by looking at school structures, their status and funding, but with only modest effect. Perhaps, then, it is time to consider the bigger picture: that the uneven distribution of educational chances is a symptom and a cause of wealth disparities. Address directly the plain fact of vast income inequality, and educational equity may follow.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/11/inequality-source-of-schools-gap

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Will Hutton, as ever, is excellent:

Sorry, David, if you roll back the state, you invite disaster

David Cameron is wrong to declare we need a more hands-off approach. That's what got us into this recession in the first place

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/11/will-hutton-david-cameron-conference

It wasn't the government that got us into this mess – if what you mean by mess is an ugly recession, an unbalanced economy, profound uncertainty over recovery, grossly indebted consumers, disadvantaged communities hit hard again and a budget deficit of £175bn. What got us into this mess above all was the 30-year rise of Big Finance before which governments unfurled the white flag. Bankers used their power to bend the rules at home and abroad, to lend ever more riskily and supported by less capital, until, finally, a vastly overextended banking system backed by very little capital collapsed. The result is today's economic calamity.

There were many culprits in this story, but the damage stemmed from an obsession to keep government small and markets big. Thus, mergers that created banks that were too big to fail went ahead and their daffy mathematical models went unchallenged. We need to reform our financial system from top to bottom, but neither shadow chancellor George Osborne nor shadow business secretary Ken Clarke began to address this question. Their twin attack was on the state – Osborne's because it was borrowing too much, Clarke's because it was regulating too much.

The public now knows that markets fail. Without the injections of capital, liquidity and guarantees for both sides of the banks' balance sheets worth some £1.3 trillion, Britain would now be in the middle of a depression more shocking than the 1930s. To argue that government is the problem just a year after an event like that is intellectually bewildering. The charge against Brown is not that he did too much, but that he did too little. What was he doing allowing bankers to write the Financial Services Authority's constitution so that it did not "discourage the launch of new financial products" and avoided "erecting regulatory barriers" and "damaging the UK's competitiveness"?

The truth is that, as finance has proved, markets need governments.

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