Layer 472 . . . Alfie Bowe, Songs and Singers, AC Grayling, Rowan Williams, Blair, Bunnies, Private Equity and Phone Hacking

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Opera singer Alfie Bowe, brought up in Fleetwood, Lancashire, said this on Desert Island Discs -

"I never actually go to the opera. It's not my world. I don't feel comfortable in it. I love singing and performing, but sitting in the audience I'm bored stiff."

So there we have it. I love the honesty of this man.

And his choice of music! First disc - Bob Dylan: Knocking On Heaven's Door.

He's from a family of nine, whose father used to deliver groceries on his bike.

"I don't just like one genre of music. I like good music and good singers."

He also chose The Beatles' "A Day In The Life", Led Zeppelin's "Rain Song", and the Floyd's "Comfortably Numb". Brilliant. This is a guy who REALLY knows about good singers. "Robert Plant is the Rock God."

He also said, "It's an incredible thing - being present at the birth of your child, and the death of your father."

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SJ hits the nail right on the head in today's paper - as ever:

AC Grayling has caricatured British universities. No wonder they're fuming


The New College of Humanities founder has exposed higher education as a luxury consumable for the middle classes


By Simon Jenkins


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/09/ac-grayling-caricatured-british-university-fuming


This has been a purple week for red rage. The hirsute philosopher, AC Grayling, may call himself a "pinko" but his embryo London humanities university in Bedford Square has induced apoplexy in the old left . . . The Kropotkin of our age, Terry Eagleton, claims to be fit to vomit.


What Grayling has done is caricature the British university. He has cartooned it as no longer an academic community but a high-end luxury consumable for the middle classes, operating roughly half a year, with dons coming and going at will, handing down wisdom in between television and book tours. Just when state universities have been freed by the coalition to triple their income per student (initially at public expense) to £9,000, Grayling has mischievously doubled that to £18,000


Grayling thus reveals today's "anti-fees" demonstrators for what they are: middle-class militants protecting their parents' incomes from fees today and their own incomes from a graduate tax tomorrow. He wants to make the rich pips squeak.


The academic left needs the comfort blanket of state finance for a reason. It covers the unpleasant truth that universities are a benefit chiefly to the present and future middle classes. Universities in general redistribute money from average tax payers to rich ones and are anti-egalitarian. Their staff do not teach in sink schools or give literacy classes in prison or wrestle with Haringey social services.


I blame the Liberal Democrats. Their impact on every coalition policy has been dire, but nowhere more than in abolishing university fees while still pretending they exist. By converting the student cost of a university education into a postponed surtax, and loading the immediate cost on to the Treasury, the coalition relieves thousands of families who could well afford fees from doing so. Why should any parent meet their offspring's future tax liability at age 18?


Yet by implying that fees still exist, the Lib Dems must have deterred thousands of poorer students from applying to university. The policy is as cruel as it is mendacious. 


This is the desperate state of affairs that Grayling and co have ridiculed. Their college is exploiting the global intellectual melting pot that is London, to make a point and make a profit. In this they are no different from any publisher, broadcaster, magazine or private clinic.


They have lobbed a few well-aimed grenades at the preference of state universities for incomprehensible research at the expense of teaching, for science at the expense of humanities and for scholarly pursuit at the expense of career opportunities. The proposed emphasis on developing a student's critical, logical and life skills is admirable, as is the determination to draw on London's cultural vitality. That said, I would still be amazed if the venture succeeds.

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Archbishop of the opposition


While Labour's leader Ed Miliband is muted, it is right for Rowan Williams to speak out on social justice


by Giles Fraser


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/10/rowan-williams-leader-opposition


Should the church get stuck into the mucky world of politics? How ridiculous – of course it should. Dom Hélder Câmara, former Roman Catholic archbishop in Brazil, put it perfectly: "When I give to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist."


The coalition government is letting down the most vulnerable in our society.


Where is Ed Miliband? Has he gone to sleep on the job?


The archbishop's electoral deficit does not disqualify him from speaking out on issues of social justice where he has the overwhelming majority of the church behind him. The very fact that his opinions do not need to be muffled by the deadening constraints of the focus group helps to generate a public debate in areas where career politicians are often too bland and cautious. What the archbishop said is only controversial because the elected politicians are not saying it themselves. Even-handed in his criticism, the archbishop rightly bemoans the lack of a coherent vision for society emerging from the Labour party itself: "We are still waiting for a full and robust account of what the left would do differently and what a left-inspired version of localism might look like."


Like it or not, the voice of the theologian is back in the public square.

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This is also excellent -

The journey's over, Tony Blair


Tony Blair supports the Arab spring and wants to heal Africa. Laudable aims but breathtaking hypocrisy


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/10/journeys-over-tony-blair


by Ian Birrell


Switching on the Today programme yesterday, it was like an unwelcome blast from the past. There was Tony Blair, that familiar mixture of evangelical fervour and earnest sincerity, putting the world to rights with his views on the coalition, Europe and events in the Middle East.


Money, of course, lay behind his appearance on the show, since he was promoting the paperback edition of his biography. Just as money lay behind his decision to take free holidays at the expense of the Egyptian people while in power, ignoring complaints from families of those being tortured in the country's notorious jails.


As blood began to run in the streets during the tense standoff in Tahrir Square, Blair hailed Mubarak as "immensely courageous and a force for good".


But what breathtaking hypocrisy to place himself in the vanguard of the movement for change in the region, diminishing the Arab spring to a struggle between modernisers and reactionaries and saying the Gulf states must change or lose our support. This is the man, after all, who earned a seven-figure sum advising the Kuwaiti royal family, and rakes in a fortune giving speeches in the region.


Just recall, if you can bear to, how he cosied up to the Libyan leader he now wants to see overthrown . . .


Little wonder the dictator's son saw him as "a personal family friend".


Even worse was Blair's appeasement of the Saudi royal family in perhaps the most disgraceful episode of his time in office, when his pressure led to the halting of the landmark BAE bribery case. This was an incident that demeaned our country, usurping Britain's legal process to avoid upsetting a repressive and – to use his own words – reactionary regime.


The BAE move sent a signal round the world that Britain turned a blind eye to allegations of corruption, ensuring autocrats could feel safe laundering their stolen money here with the help of pin-striped pimps in our finance houses, law firms and estate agencies. Large-scale larceny by the likes of Mubarak, Gaddafi and the Assad family in Syria was one of the primary sparks for the explosion of protest – and all had substantial holdings in Britain.


Shameless corruption is one of the primary causes of poor governance across Africa. Now Blair proclaims it as part of his mission to heal the continent he once called "a scar on the conscience of the world". 


Now he has the effrontery to speak about the importance of freedom of expression in north Africa.


You can almost admire the brazen way Blair ploughs on, ignoring his past and brushing aside uncomfortable facts as he seeks to play a part in shaping the future. But then you remember how he backed an ethical foreign policy before ending up an apologist for torture.


As well as promoting his book, it is part of a desperate bid to promote himself as a future elected president of Europe. Someone should tell him the journey's over.

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This is the best article I've read so far on the debate about "childhood sexualisation" - because it focuses on children themselves, and their points of view, and it also highlights the whole agenda to suppress sexuality in general and sex/relationships education.

Playboy bunnies? We should be more upset by Poor Kids


The moral crusade against childhood sexualisation isn't top of most parents' agenda – or that of the children allegedly at risk


http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2011/jun/09/playboy-bunnies-poor-kids


by Libby Brooks


What goes through the mind of an 11-year-old girl as she picks a Playboy bunny-emblazoned pencil case from the shop display? . . .


I wouldn't want to speculate further because I'm an adult, and thus can't speak for children.


Still, since the publication of the Bailey review on Monday, grownups have been speaking a lot about children . . . 


It may be too late to backpedal to a point where we can usefully define what is actually meant by "sexualisation". And it is problematic to ask children about a term that is so freighted with adult anxieties. Very little work has been done that takes into account young people's views – and when they are included it's usually in a limited fashion, responding to an adult-set agenda.


But when researchers have looked beyond the generalised public account of innocence corrupted, young people present themselves as active, knowledgeable and nuanced consumers.


Anyone who watched Poor Kids, Jezza Neumann's powerful documentary about some of the 3.5 million British children living below the poverty line would have been prompted to ask whether sexualisation is indeed the most pressing harm facing our young people. Of course, a social concern is not rendered benign because it is the least of the evils on offer. But this is a preoccupation favoured by the white middle classes who have the means to buy their way out and, on occasion, the inclination to use it as a method of policing other people's parenting choices, and their taste.


There is deep disquiet among professionals that this crusade will end up cutting off young people from the sexual advice and support services they need. As much as we require more effective research into the links between, say, thongs and teenage pregnancy – with more input from young people themselves – we owe it to ourselves and our children to interrogate whose agenda this serves and what that agenda is. It's all too easy for legitimate, loving adult anxieties to be used as window-dressing for a far harsher and more insidious governmental moralism.

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This is a brilliant column by Peter Wilby, on a subject a lot of people don't even know exists, let alone know anything about -

Rampant private equity will mean more Southern Crosses


Without tight regulation, this institutionalised corporate irresponsibility – capitalism at its most barbaric – will triumph


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/09/private-equity-southern-cross


Private equity takes over firms and often does bad things – otherwise known as "efficiencies" – such as sacking workers, cutting wages, selling off assets, walking away from pension liabilities and screwing suppliers. But exactly what private equity is, why it does bad things and why it is so important are not widely understood. Business journalists rarely explain it, presumably on the same principle that sports journalists don't explain leg-before-wicket or offside.


Private equity plays a central role in what modish academics call "late capitalism"


Politicians endlessly debate the merits of public ownership versus privatisation. When business people use those terms, however, they mean something different. To them public ownership means not a nationalised industry directly accountable to taxpayers but a public limited company (plc) in which shares are traded on the stock market under strict rules. Such firms are required, for instance, to announce biannual financial results, issue warnings if profits are about to plunge, abide by rules of corporate governance, and publish annually details such as employee numbers, wage costs and remuneration of senior executives. In short, they have to meet standards of accountability and transparency.


A private firm has no such obligations. It is largely beyond the reach of public regulation – or "red tape" – and it can keep many of its financial arrangements, and even the identity of its owners, out of the public eye. After the US introduced new rules for publicly owned companies in the wake of Enron and other scandals, many went private, so they could, as it were, do their dirty capitalist business in the dark . . . 


[Publicly owned companies have] been the dominant form of corporate capitalism for the past 150 years. If it is lost, capitalism in its rawest, most fundamentalist and arguably barbaric form will have triumphed. Public companies are under growing pressure to accept "corporate social responsibility". Private equity institutionalises corporate irresponsibility.


The left needs to focus far more on challenging the argument that regulation equals burdensome "red tape" and on pressing for effective control of private sector firms, particularly where public services are involved. In the future, as health and education as well as social care are increasingly traded as commodities, private equity will pose a much bigger threat to vital public services than the industrial action against which the Tories threaten to legislate.


Four years ago, when private equity was flourishing, there was an intense political debate about more regulation. The result was a voluntary code of conduct, mainly concerning greater transparency. Most private equity firms don't subscribe to it and, of those that do, about half don't observe it. EU regulations take effect in 2013 but, after intense lobbying, are so enfeebled that unions describe the glass as not so much half full as barely above empty. Don't hold your breath for more from a Tory-led government. But Labour and – dare we hope? – the Lib Dems should at least be pressing for tight restrictions on the role of private equity and high debt in companies that supply public services. Otherwise, there will be many more Southern Crosses, with children and hospital patients as well as old people thrown on the taxpayer's mercy.

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Editorials

Welfare reform: Canterbury tales


At the heart of the archbishop of Canterbury's comments is a shrewd and important observation


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/10/archbishop-of-canterbury-welfare-reform


At the heart of his comments is a shrewd and important observation. His central contention is that the sense of a society underpinned by mutual responsibility – the essence of Beveridge – has been in decline for decades (certainly since his predecessor Robert Runcie tackled Mrs Thatcher about it 30 years ago) and is now on the point of collapse.


This is why language matters. Mr Duncan Smith's welfare reform programme is far from perfect but, in an article commissioned by the archbishop, he describes it in the language of empowerment, of supporting marginalised communities. It is a different animal to reforms motivated by assigning merit and penalising those found undeserving, a view that seemed to underlie – say – the way George Osborne originally proposed a cap on housing benefit. At least in theory, the Duncan Smith approach is meant to work with the grain of community, and the Osborne version against it. It is the difference between a society of rights and responsibilities and an atomised world of individuals. A fundamental question – three cheers to Rowan Williams for raising it.

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Phone-hacking scandal: Time for a public inquiry


News Corp has conducted the most feeble non-inquiries of its own. It has denied the allegations, throwing mud at its accusers


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/10/phone-hacking-scandal-time-for-public-inquiry


The culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has a problem. His instincts – and possibly his advisers and lawyers – are in favour of remaking the British media landscape by allowing News Corp to have full control of BSkyB. But with every passing day the politics of the decision become harder as more and more evidence comes to light that questions whether News Corp is really a fit and proper business to be allowed to become easily the most dominant media company in Britain – owning nearly 40% of the national press as well as 100% of a TV company generating £6bn a year in revenues.

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Phone hacking: End this toxic culture now


The police, the government – and spineless MPs who've settled with News International – have failed in their democratic duty

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/09/phone-hacking-end-toxic-culture-now

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Layer 436 . . . Jon Snow, Schools, Education, Universities, Classics, News, Journalism, al-Jazeera, Egypt, Revolution and Fully Evolved Humans

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"My problem with my school was this: I wasn't interested in the things that people wanted to teach me."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y203s

Poor Jon Snow. A good man who had the misfortune to be brought up as an over-privileged child in a mega-bourgeois family; son of a father who considered him a failure because he couldn't or wouldn't learn Latin and Greek.

I nearly wrote 'geek' just then. Jon's certainly not that. He's not peculiar, or dislikable, or overly intellectual. Not a geek in any way. He's a hands-on journalist, reporter and writer. Right now he's out in Cairo - getting his hands dirty and putting his personal wellbeing on the line.

The man has soul. He would like to play the piano really well; he reads uplifting, inspiring and informative books; he rides a bike every day; he paints watercolours. He was thrown out of university for being a radical ringleader and organiser of a week-long sit-in. His home's in Dorset. He has an affinity with Africa and music by bands such as Orchestre Baobab. He enjoys classical music for all the right reasons. He's not pompous, or a fake, or insecure, or a poser. He's a fully evolved human being.

Whilst at school he decided to start a student newspaper. After university he worked in a day centre for homeless young people. He became a journo because he had a burning curiosity and was always asking questions. And because he wanted to get back to Uganda, where he'd done a year on VSO.

Snow declined an OBE because he believes working journalists should not take honours from those that they report on.

In 1976, Snow rejected an approach by the British intelligence services to spy on his colleagues. At first he was asked to supply information about the Communist Party, but he was then asked to spy on certain "left-wing people" working in television. In return he would have received secret monthly tax-free payments into his bank account, matching his then salary.

He refuses to wear any symbol which may represent his views on air; in the run up to Remembrance Day he condemned what he called 'Poppy Fascism' because "in the end there really must be more important things in life than whether a news presenter wears symbols on his lapels".

- Wikipedia

I've always hated the way everyone in politics and the media goes around wearing poppies when you know these same people supported the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Bloody hypocrites. Snow's the only media figure who obviously feels the same way. I probably have more reasons than most for supporting Poppy Day, but I refuse to wear one because it's just 'the done thing', and it's done by conformist, image-conscious 'patriots'.

I once phoned Jon Snow at Channel 4 News to offer him some information and clarification on the subject of education. Amazingly he took my call personally, and spoke with me in a respectful, genuine and unhurried manner. The man has quality.

So here's a guy who's been the main man at Channel 4 News since 1989, but suffered from the bad opinion of his teachers and of his own father because he wasn't sufficiently 'academic'. Here's someone who's of outstanding character and intelligence, who never completed a university degree. Here's a bloke who enjoys his chosen profession and has resisted opportunities to climb the greasy corporate pole because he's not interested in wealth or status or honours.

He's not ideallistic, or left-wing or pursuing any personal agenda - he's more Lennonist than Lenninist - he's a believer in truth and peace and love.

Mr Snow's a living example of someone who's done well in life, in the sense of being both personally and professionally successful, without having enjoyed school and without being academically a high achiever. I reckon he has too much sense to get into big debates about schools that are bent on teaching a set academic curriculum, instead of encouraging pupils to pursue their own learning agendas and passions. Those debates go nowhere because the Establishment has closed views on the subject of traditional educational hierarchies.

You can imagine the hours, days and weeks he wasted on trying unsuccessfully to memorise Latin and Greek when he could have been passionately engaged in pursuing his real interests. He was the victim of a pushy father and a public school system that's geared to producing Latin and Greek scholars because that's what's required to get you a place at the Oxbridge college of your choice.

Here's a headline from the front page of today's Guardian:

Universities admit 'soft' A-levels damage chance of top places

Students who 'avoid challenge' of traditional subjects miss out on places at Oxbridge or 'redbrick' institutions

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/feb/04/university-places-traditional-subjects-a-levels

Top universities will today issue guidance which acknowledges officially for the first time that they favour students who study traditional subjects at A-level.

The guide compiled by the Russell Group, a lobbying group for Oxford, Cambridge and 18 other leading universities, confirms rumours that have circulated for years that they favour those subjects over newer ones such as business studies or photography.

It also reveals an overwhelming preference for science and maths subjects – even for seemingly unrelated degrees.

The new handbook, seen by the Guardian, is a sign that universities are having to cave in to ministers and teachers' calls for far more information on how admissions tutors decide who they award places to and why.

By not studying at least two of the following subjects – maths, English, geography, history, any of the three pure sciences or a classical or modern foreign language – "many degrees at competitive universities will not be open to you," the guide, produced in collaboration with the Institute of Career Guidance, states.

It asks students to question why they are not taking traditional subjects: "Are you trying to avoid a challenge?" It states that while there is no "set definition" of a "hard" or "soft" subject, so-called "hard" subjects are like the ones the top universities prefer and are more theoretical. It gives media studies, art and design, photography and business studies as examples of "soft" subjects and states that they are "vocational or have a practical bias".

"If you plan to take more than one perceived 'soft' subject, some caution may be needed," the guidebook warns.

Just over 7.2% of pupils in England attend private schools but make up over a quarter of the intake at the 25 most selective universities, and 46.6% at Oxford. It's thought this may in part be because state school students do not receive proper guidance about what it takes to get into an elite university when they are making their A-level choices.

So here's the Conservative approach to equal opportunities - you let kids know before they embark on A Levels that pursuing their actual interests will probably disqualify them from getting a place at one of the 'top' universities. Job done.

[Last June] David Willetts, the universities minister, told vice-chancellors he had been "pushing for greater transparency from universities for some time". The advice teenagers received on university courses was "of absolute importance … so that [they] don't miss out on a particular course or a place at a particular university through not receiving the right guidance at the right time," he said. Willetts said the handbook was a "welcome step towards levelling the playing field for prospective students".

Thank goodness the government has given our children a more level playing field at last. Truly wonderful news - that kids will now know in advance why they won't get places at the elite universities.

Science and maths A-levels are recommended for degrees in archaeology, anthropology and geography among others, and law degrees do not require law A-level. History may be useful instead, the guidebook states. For history degrees, some universities do not require history, but believe English is useful.

So don't study law at A Level if you want to do a law degree. Don't study history if you want to do a history degree. Study English, Latin and Greek instead.

You couldn't make it up.


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Here's the latest from Snowblog:

http://blogs.channel4.com/snowblog/

Snow brings you insights, revelations and perspectives. Join Jon for a ringside seat to follow the news.

Egypt - Reaping What The West Has Sewn
February 3, 2011 10:47 am 18 Comments

Pray, what was OUR role?

So we have witnessed the Egyptian army with American-supplied hardware and training so far failing to act decisively to protect peaceful protesters. What an end to this soiled ‘Western’ support for Mubarak.

The scales are falling from many eyes one week into this insurrection. Here for assorted mainly non-Egyptian reasons is the sorry tale of a client state. A state where a corrupt autocrat became preferred to the vision he conjured of the extreme alternative that awaited any decision to allow the Egyptian people to decide.

How convenient too, that this favoured autocrat not only sanctioned torture in his own land but was willing to undertake it for Britain and the United States when invited to do so. Some here have told me that domestic torture surged courtesy of the blessing bestowed upon it by Coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We reap what we sow.

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The Day of Departure

Sorry Gil - the revolution WILL be televised - thanks to al-Jazeera, 24 hour news and citizen journalists using wi-fi and the Internet. Amazing scenes on the streets of Egypt, and elsewhere. The atmosphere is festive and celebratory. Will Mubarak depart today? The new leadership have been forced to say the people have a right to remain in Tahrir Square, Liberation Square. The army appear to be there in order to show solidarity, and to be on standby to prevent anyone smashing the place up. But this is a non-violent movement. The new Prime Minister has apologised for the behaviour of the pro-Mubarak thugs.

 http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

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

http://www.gilscottheron.com/lyrevol.html

 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x28ijn_the-revolution-will-not-be-televise_music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS3QOtbW4m0

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/feb/04/egypt-protests-day-departure-live

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/04/day-of-departure-hosni-mubarak

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Layer 405 . . . Ivory Towers, Universities, Tuition Fees, Eagleton's Eye, Enlightenment, Academia and the Status Quo

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Professor Terry Eagleton wrote an interesting piece in the Guardian yesterday, which attracted some excellent comments, as well as the usual less enlightened stuff. Lots of trolls, neanderthals and loonies too, needless to say.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/17/death-universities-malaise-tuition-fees

The death of universities

Academia has become a servant of the status quo. Its malaise runs so much deeper than tuition fees

The gist of his piece is that we need the humanities to be taught in universities because the study of the humanities can make us better people who can help create a better world.

But think about it. You can set up ivory towers and call them universities, and you can fill them with people who think about and talk about human values, but that doesn't mean those people will actually become fully evolved humans with a lifelong mission to pursue enlightenment and a build a better world for all of us.

Better for us to have universities than not to have them, but all the coalition is doing is extending New Labour's ideology of seeing universities as places where people fundamentally pursue selfish ends in terms of gaining academic awards that are meal tickets and passports to highly paid careers in the professions and the civil service. According to this utilitarian vision those who gain the passports ought to be prepared to pay the full cost of their gain - and there appears to be a kind of 'fairness' in that idea, especially if you also offer free university courses to those who come from the least well-off backgrounds.

If we really wish to build better and more egalitarian societies, and produce more enlightened individuals, we'd do well to rethink entirely how to go about it. Universities should still play a role, but the rethinking ought to start with questioning the whole purpose and aims of education, and how those aims are best achieved from the youngest ages and throughout life.

As things stand, if anyone really cares to open their mind and pursue their own learning agendas with a view to becoming a more enlightened individual they'd be better off visiting a good library, getting themselves access to the Internet, and linking up with others who have similar ideas. There's probably more chance of finding such like-minded souls outside of universities than inside them.

Well said ArthurHughClough, mwhouse, anax, remusp, sweetdelight, Mortlach, NapoleonKaramazov, HappyHistorian, and others.

We should get together one of these days. Maybe start our own party. Maybe the Guardian could arrange a seminar with Prof Eagleton. I'd chip in for refreshments.

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-20-fully-evolved-humans.html

Nice coincidence that this piece appeared the day after a blog about how young people might go about educating themselves, about ultimate values and purposes, and about Taoist philosophy - Layer 404.

Looking back, there's been a lot of blogs recently about education, enlightenment and related issues . . .


As I said to a friend recently, it's not that the politicians are thinking about education, as such. All they think about is what so-called education and academia can to for 'Britain's competitiveness'. Morons. As if Britain isn't better served by people who are enlightened, spiritually intelligent and creative, as well as having a great breadth of knowledge and critical thinking skills. Do our schools, colleges and universities cater for any of that? Really?

And as my friend said to me, they don't really think about education. They reckon that education is about preparing for adult life. Learning is about accessing careers. Thinking is not on the agenda. Enlightenment? They've even misinterpreted that into industrialisation and capitalism.
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Layer 401 . . . Religion, Awe and Wonder, Spiritual Intelligence, Academia, the Nature of Study, Universities, Elite Education and Enlightenment

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The cringe at the heart of Christmas

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/dec/11/christmas-cringe-god-theology

This is a strange article, and one that's difficult to respond to.

The birth of a baby - any baby - is awesome. The gift of life is awesome. The universe itself is awesome. You don't have to be a Christian to appreciate these things, and you don't have to believe in a God who's 'out there'. The Nativity is a metaphor for the miraculous birth of each and every one of us. Nobody, and no particular sect or religion, has a monopoly on spiritual intelligence. Those who think they 'understand' the divine and the nature of the creative force in the universe definitely do not understand it.

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Higher Education?

It's surely a good thing that a debate's taking place about our university system.

One part of the debate concerns the funding of the system, and where the funding comes from. Another concerns whether students should 'pay as you go', to what extent they should be subsidised,  and how soon they should pay for their tuition after landing a decent job.

Leaving aside the funding issue, there's now a debate about how many universities there should be, plus how many tutors, whether lectures could be accessed via the Internet, whether certain courses should be offered and publicly funded, and how many students and graduates might be an 'optimum' number.

Yet another area of debate concerns who sets the curriculum, how learning is assessed, and the very nature of study itself. Could I, for example, as an autodidact, set about learning everything there is to know about a particular topic or subject, using libraries and the Internet, and then go along to a testing centre or examination hall and ask to be assessed on my knowledge - in order to earn myself some credits towards an academic award?

I've already learnt how to write essays and write answers to timed examination questions - so why would I want to pay for a university course in order to further my knowledge , especially if the majority of the academic tutors were dullards and bores? Personally I'd much prefer to get my lectures online from professors who are known for the brilliance of their perception and their lecturing, and not run of the mill plodders who really haven't a clue how to teach. I want access to original thinkers and inspirational speakers like Ken Robinson.

The things I retain from my undergraduate days are the things I found out for myself, from the books I found and bought myself on the topics I was really interested in - which were not necessarily those I was meant to be studying. And yet there's no way I'll get any 'credit' for those hours of reading and note-making.

Quite frankly, many more students ought to ask themselves why on earth they go to university, apart from the fact that their teachers and parents urged them to, in order to prepare themselves for highly-paid careers - hopefully. Obviously the lifestyle's a big attraction for many - but a lot less so if they're having to do crappy jobs in order to pay their way. The increased levels of debt they'll now have hanging over them will be a further deterrent, especially for those from non-affluent backgrounds, and those who have no clear idea what they really want to do with their lives and no great confidence that they'll succeed in entering a particular career when they're in competiton with those with better connections, sharper elbows, and higher levels of personal confidence, plus the 'right' accent.

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Back in the early days of the Internet, before most people had even heard of it, let alone owned a personal computer, I had a friend who was fascinated by the Second World War. In particular he wanted to know about certain bomber squadrons of the American air force, and about tank battles. The Russian T34 tank was a thing of enormous and intense interest. He already knew a great deal, and he'd even paid a professional researcher to gather information for him.

Imagine his expression when I explained to him about the Internet and showed him how to use a PC to do an online search for information on his subjects. He literally couldn't believe the pages of information that were freely accessible.The first thing he wanted to do was get a loan for a computer and start scouring the 'net for every morsel of information he could find. This is someone who's never been on any kind of college course, and probably never will. His writing skills are near zero, and he has zero tolerance for being bored.

Another interesting thing about my friend is that he can repair virtually anything, can figure out solutions to virtually any practical problem, and can tackle virtually any physical and practical task. He'll never get 'credits' for any of those things either, even though they make him a far more useful citizen than the vast majority of the 'highly educated'.

Where am I going with this blog? I've no idea. Like Socrates I'm only interested in exploring subjects I find fascinating, and through acquiring and exchanging ideas raise my levels of awareness in order to become more enlightened. The journey itself is worthwhile, and if I do get anywhere near my goal I'll expect no credit or reward.

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To be continued later with some stuff from the papers. Y'all come back now.
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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 336 . . . The Politics of Education, Graduates, Sweat, Debt, and Disillusionment

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Oh well, it's back to keeping up with politics, beginning with the politics of education.

Peter Preston, loud-mouthed supporter of SATs and league tables, and scourge of trendy lefty teachers, as he imagines them, is suddenly concerned about children and students actually enjoying life. Why? Well wouldn't you know it - he's been awarded an honorary degree (why?) and he wants us to know about it. Being at a graduation ceremony has caused him to focus on real students and their experiences of the education system.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/25/university-not-just-exam-slog

University: learning to enjoy life

Witnessing the hope of a graduation day, I remember that education is about more than sweat and debt

He remembers!!! At last!!

Actually this piece is only concerned with university students, and I suppose it's too much to expect him to think laterally to what also goes on in schools, and whether pupils enjoy their lives within them. To do that he'd need to actually go into a school, having been awarded an honorary GCSE or maybe an honorary Level 4 in English.

So what does he have to say about learning and enjoying life?

University isn't a mere staging post to a well-paid job . . . Nor is it just an investment in Britain's future, so we can compete with Beijing by 2020. It isn't wholly a practical slog, either, a skill box of computer or engineering skills. University is an experience, often a life-changing one. You leave school a spotty child, and three years later, you're sort of grown up. You have friends you'll probably never lose. You've looked after yourself. You've sweated through exams. If you're lucky, you've learned how to think – the best boon of the lot.

Yes Pete, old duck, IF YOU'RE LUCKY. Because even at undergraduate level there's still no priority given to learning how to think. What we have is still a grim determination to force young people to swallow a curriculum, memorise its content, and regurgitate it in exams.

In fact, this happens even at postgraduate level! A friend's very bright son decided to bale out of his Masters course as soon as he realised that there was still no scope for self-directed learning and research, and it was still a bloody boring exam treadmill.

Pete goes on:

When did we begin to forget such things?

When did YOU forget, you old bastard? Some of us have been saying this stuff forever. Beginning with primary schooling.

He goes on to blame education ministers for making "degree courses seem like tests for national survival."

This is the man who talks about Primary tests and league tables as though they're essentials to national survival!

And there's more. He concludes:

Is school, and then college or university, there as an obstacle race, a slog of tests and hurdles? Is it just a rehearsal for 50 years of frustration, sweat, debt, disillusion and staffroom tears?

The danger is making education seem unutterably grim. The hope – see that beaming [graduation] queue of something achieved – is that happiness has a part to play. For learning in this crunched, short life means learning to enjoy yourself, too.

Thanks to people like Peter Preston, Melanie Philips, Chris Woodhead and their politician friends, schools and universities HAVE become unutterably grim results factories where pupil and student wellbeing, as well as their social, emotional and spiritual intelligences, have been increasingly neglected and marginalised - in the rush to "drive up standards".

Learning to enjoy yourself? How can you enjoy yourself when you're racking up debt doing stuff day in and day out that's basically cramming for exams, with little or no opportunities for self-directed creative experience?

What a fucking idiot.

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There's more evidence of the university system being useless and actually harmful to young people's life chances reported in the education section of the Guardian this week.

Should universities teach students how to find a job?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jul/27/graduate-job-crisis

Sarfraz Manzoor has been following the fortunes of six young people who graduated last year. How well do they feel that university prepared them for today's economic realities?

The class of 2009 left university knowing they were facing the toughest battle for jobs in a generation.

That was, at least, the dire prediction, but what was the reality? I have spent the last year documenting the post-graduation lives of six students who are among the class of 2009. The six studied at the University of Leeds and Leeds Metropolitan University, and agreed to keep audio diaries throughout their year in which they recorded their hopes for the coming year as well as their reaction to the reality.

By the end of the year, the six students were scattered around the world and were far more cynical about the value of a university education than they had been on graduating.

For a start off it's interesting that none of the six was interested in using knowledge gained from their degrees - they all wanted to pursue careers in areas like sales, journalism and the media - careers that had nothing to do with the subjects they'd been studying. Given the likelihood that they'd originally chosen those subjects for their interest and enjoyment, what does that say about the universities making them somehow utterly tedious and uninspiring?

Page and Ali both left the country to seek work in Cyprus and Saudi Arabia, while Del Core found the soul-crushing business of being rejected hard to take. "I've looked for jobs in newspapers, at the job centre, on the internet, and by word of mouth," she says. "I've had several interviews, some of which I got to the second stage, but I never got past that. It has been quite disheartening – some positions I applied for were more the dream job than a means to an end, and I was very upset when I didn't get those. I was in tears."

Having spent time with the graduates, I was struck by how much they seemed to have believed, at least at the start, that they were entitled to a well-paid and fulfilling job simply because they had been to university. "When you look at the people who are going to university," explains Professor Kate Purcell, of Warwick University's Institute for Employment Research, "they have been encouraged to think that education has given them employability skills, so as well as learning about history or English or business studies they are also learning problem solving, developing communication skills, so they are pretty confident about themselves."

This confidence is not necessarily well founded.

A lot of people go to university for the sake of it because they think it is the right thing to do. So that makes lots of graduates. Universities are still selling the idea to people that if they go to university they are guaranteed a great job at the end of it, and that is just not the case any more.

The increasing number of graduates entering the job market has meant that employers are often insisting that prospective employees pass psychometric tests as a way of selecting candidates, and it has also led to claims that too many young people are being herded into university.

"When I think about a university course, I think of something that teaches people a skill so that they are qualified to do a certain job," says Gerrard. "But, in reality, after my degree I don't feel qualified for anything – degrees don't indicate someone's common sense or people skills, and I don't think you can get through many interviews without a little of both."

Just a little? It's pathetic really - these young graduates aren't even properly aware of what they're lacking. Common sense? What's that? People skills? Such as?

What's more, it's not their fault. They've been told since Primary school that high attainment is all that matters - and too late they find it isn't. What's more, they don't really know what does matter. And they're not the only ones. Politicians and university bosses don't know either. Their assumption is always that a first class honours or a 2.1 degree will get you anywhere in life. Beyond that, they haven't a clue. Well - that's what got them a meal ticket to their high status, was it not?

And it's no wonder that employers put more trust in 'psychometric tests' than university attainment in subjects whose facts and figures they won't be using anyway. The poor bloody students think that having a degree tells people they're "bright". Actually it doesn't. It's just as likely to say they're a dull swat, a boring little library-goer, a self-regarding 'academically able' nonentity with little experience of life, proper work, or real people. Possibly a dull conformist who's unable to think for themselves, unable to think creatively and imaginatively, unable to work well in a team, or communicate effectively, or write well, or show any empathy, intuition or instinctual intelligence. Common sense indeed.

The New Learning Revolution is about developing all of these intelligences and skills. How come the people who run education in this country don't realise that yet? How many more generations of our young people will go through our education system deprived of the sorts of learning that are taken for granted in countries much smarter than ours?

What's more, they're deprived of their human right to enjoy learning for its own sake, and to be free of undue pressure and stress within the education system.

This country used to be known for its creative and innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Not only have other countries overtaken us, we've actually been going backwards for the past 20 odd years.
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