Teaching British Values

We need to wait to see how this pans out but it is important to pre-emptively note that any attempt at teaching British values to our schoolchildren must be inclusive. That is to say it must include all British state schools regardless of what British nation they happen to be educated in.

There is absolutely no equality based ethical argument that would exclude Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland from these plans.

Indeed, to do it any other way would be prejudicial. An England and Wales only scheme or an England only scheme cannot and should not be tolerated.

Well, who's stupid now?

What western English speaking country has the following percentage breakdown of opinion on the way that the origin and development of life should be taught in school?

• 44% said creationism should be included
• 41% intelligent design
• 69% wanted evolution as part of the science curriculum

Click here to find out.

What can it all mean?

From the Times:

One of the most striking findings of The Times Higher Education Supplement’s survey of the world’s best universities is the position on it of the jewel of German learning. Heidelberg University, the oldest and most eminent in the country of Luther and Einstein, is ranked 47th. France fares little better. Its top-ranked university is the Ecole Polytechnique, at 27th. No southern European country has a single university in the Top 150; China and Malaysia each have two, and India and Taiwan one.

Britain emerges as the only European country able to claim a leadership role in academic research, with two universities in the Top Ten and 29 in the Top 200. Australia is the powerhouse of higher education in the Asia-Pacific region, with six universities in the Top 200, and the US sweeps all before it: the world’s four “best” universities are American, as are seven of the Top Ten and 20 of the Top 50.

I thought that the Americans were supposed to be dumb and the Europeans the intellectual ones. The findings of this survey seem to be Anglospheric in their proportions.

Why do you think that is?

Damn those dominating middle class girls!:

Schools are doing a thriving trade in violin, flute, guitar and recorder lessons, but they are too often dominated by middle-class girls, according to an Ofsted report published today.

While extra-curricular music lessons are good, and there are plenty of opportunities to learn how to play an instrument, pupils from lower income families are less likely to take them...

Not surprising really. I've never really considered that knowing how to play a musical instrument is a likely path to riches. Just goes to show that ordinary folk are far more likely to know what their priorities should be than a chicken shed full of Guardianistas.

Black on black education, or whatever

Apparently white teachers are not capable of teaching black or Asian children effectively. Or black and Asian children are not capable of understanding white teachers. Or something.

A third of London teachers and school governors need to be black or Asian in order to help improve the achievement of black children, a report has said.
…
It says black teachers should be fast-tracked and offered "golden hellos".

It’s exactly this kind of “positive racism” that really gets my goat. I mean, what is it about the colour white that makes teachers clad in it unable to effectively teach black kids? Oh look, here comes the mayor of London:

Mr Livingstone said: "To fully meet the needs of London's diverse communities the teaching profession and school governing bodies must reflect the communities they serve.

"This means that at least a third of London teachers and school governors should be of African, Caribbean or Asian heritage."

Utter rubbish, and oh so typical of Mr. Livingstone. His multicultural dream isn’t actually very much like what it says on the tin, you know, multicultural. Sounds a bit like black or Asian teachers for black or Asian schools, white teachers for white (serving the communities of white areas of Britain and all that of course).

Diane Abbott MP (isn’t she the one that attacked private education and then sent her son to a privately run school?) had this to say:

"Black teachers can sometimes relate better to black children and be less inclined to view them as stereotypes.

"But the focus should now be on the recruitment of more black teachers in the mainstream and the support of black people already in the profession."

Yeah, you tell them Diane. I’ll be sure to inform the three white teachers that live in my road. Oh, there’s a white dinner lady that lives next door too; I should probably tell her. You know, just in case she relates badly to the kids she looks after during the lunch break.

Why does this report make me mad? What single piece of scientific evidence can these people provide to show that black teachers are better at teaching black kids than white teachers are? Is it also true that white teachers are better at teaching white children? Would the same people agree with any head of any predominantly white school if that head introduced a policy to ensure that predominantly more white teachers were employed overall?

More to the point, isn't it ridiculous that London, with such a high proportion of black tax payers, has a white mayor? Shouldn't we ensure that more black mayoral candidates are chosen to run for the position by their respective parties? Shouldn't we encourage independent black candidates?

Is it just me, my Italian mother and my Cypriot father who find this aspect of multicultural Britain sickening?

It's funny, that in Britain today multiculturalism means the state supporting predominantly black teachers teaching predominantly black children in predominantly black schools.

History lessons on steam

That incident with the steam at that Japanese nuclear plant puts me in mind of a history lesson I once had. My teacher, whose name I forget and whose reasons for recounting the story also slip my mind, got chatting to the class about his time aboard a naval vessel. ”Steam”, he said, ”is a very nasty thing indeed” and he then went on to recount to us an episode from one of his voyages when he was involved in tracking down a high pressure steam leak. The technique employed for doing this involved, basically, a bunch of crew members wandering about with large pieces of cardboard in hand, extended out in front of them as they walked passed various pipes etc.

”Impossible to see, these leaks, and terribly dangerous. Could cut a man in half, hence the cardboard. When it starts to slice, you’ve found the leak” he said, or words to that effect.

I don’t know how much truth there was in what he told us but the cutting in half and the slicing sure held the attention of the class. It was a fascinating lesson in something, though I am not sure what.

Ahh, Mr. Milton, the name just came to me. I thought him a fine teacher until we had a falling out just before exam time. Another story that one, but suffice it to say it was the first time I realised that teachers were capable of a serious lack of judgement.

Fred Flintstone invented the Bessemer converter...

...and Roger Rabbit defeated the French at the battle of the Somme.

You know, there is definitely something wrong when statements like the two above do not seem particularly out of the ordinary when compared to the results of a poll on history run recently by the Beeb.

Almost half of 16- to 34-year-olds questioned in a BBC poll did not know that Francis Drake led the English fleet against Spain. One in five 16 to 24-year-olds thought it was Columbus, while one in 20 said it was Gandalf, the wizard from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

Crazy no? Some of the respondents had no idea that the Romans ever set foot in Britain and others thought that the Battle of Britain was fought against France in the Hundred Years War. Phew, there were a lot of planes involved in that one I can tell you.

Peter Furtado, the editor of History Today magazine thinks he knows what’s going on:

Since the collapse of the grand Whig narrative that Churchill was talking about in A History of the English-Speaking Peoples and which went out of favour with the rise of multi-cultural Britain, it's been very difficult for anybody to construct a large story of Britain.

It’s an interesting take on the matter though I am not sure how much it actually contributes to the current mess.

Of course, the solution is to get The Simpsons to do a few episodes a year on the History of Britain. After all, they did a grand job of keeping us informed when the Cylons last attacked the Earth.

Ignoring history

Clearly, when teaching history, some aspects of the past must be discarded. There would simply not be enough time in the day to go through the whole shooting match. The difficult thing is trying to decide which bits should be ignored or very lightly touched upon and which bits should be studied in greater detail.

On the subject of the British Empire (and like it or loathe it there is no denying its importance in world and, of course, British history) it seems that the Government's education watchdog thinks more time should be spent learning about it.

Shocked at the mere thought of it Gethin Lewis, secretary of teacher's union NUT Cymru said:

The British Empire is one of those things that's not seen as a priority, quite rightly in my view, and not all children need to study it.

I disagree with the fellow. Any attempt to study the history of the world that does not give the British Empire its due care and attention is a lesson in a false history.

Mr. Lewis, without a hint of a personal bias or an agenda adds:

It's not important to us in any patriotic sense to learn about 'the Empire on which the sun never sets'.

Because patriotism is not affected in any way whatsoever by the learning of history? Because history should be avoided if it might have a measurable affect on the way children might feel about their country? Because there are no lessons to be learnt from the history of the British Empire? What does he mean?

I'm pleased that in Wales we're looking at Wales in a global and European setting and not looking back to when Britain was seen to be so powerful and everyone learned English so that everyone in the British Empire spoke the same language.

Looking at Wales in a global and European setting eh? Fine. But how can that be done without giving the British Empire a fair old going over? After all, the 'sun never set' on the bloody thing. It must have been quite, you know, big and, you know, it must have affected places like, oh I don't know, Wales, Europe and, you know, the world.

"Personally I think it's a nonsense that we still talk about honours such as the Order of the British Empire."

Like I said, not even a hint of a personal agenda.

No, you can't learn all history. But some of it is so important that to not give it some considerable attention is a disgrace and, for an educator, a professional failure.

There are lessons to be learnt. Facts to be digested. Delights to be enjoyed. Safety tips to be picked up.

For instance does history not teach us that in Chester after midnight, one may shoot at the Welsh, with arrows?

The BBC reports.

My house

I was in House Harrisons. We ruled all at rugby and computers, though we never managed to combine the two disciplines effectively. I had to wear a school uniform, though it never seemed a trial, and had to face a morning assembly every day of the week.

We also had one of the most well structured and disciplined school prefect systems in England. I was proud to be a member of the best group since the days of the great Harrower.

Now, it seems, others are finding delight in some of these old fashioned ideas.

You boy! Yes you! Are you speaking English!!?

Via Tim Blair we have this bit of news.

A BOY of three had a full-time nursery place taken away partly because he speaks English and has a garden, says his mum.

This cannot be true, can it?

In defence of the school the head mistress said:

"...they are not the sole criteria."

That, however, does not change the fact that speaking the lingo and having a garden are counted as negatives for a placement. Man, having stuff is really beginning to suck these days. It's....it's....such a disadvantage.

My advice to Nicki, the boys mum, is to sell the house, buy a caravan and throw loads of stuff out of the window. Then visit this school head and tell her that you've got some left over tarmac and can do a quality job on her drive for a few bob, cash in hand.

That should sort it.

Shame brought to Crumpsall Lane Primary school in north Manchester

When I was a very young child I spent a great deal of time in Italy visiting family. So much so that, on occasion, I was out of school for weeks at a time. That was then, this is now:

An eight year old girl was expelled after her parents took her out of school for a holiday.

Victoria Corry was absent for 11 teaching days - one more than is allowed under government guidelines.

So the school threw her out.

Crumpsall Lane Primary school eventually re-admitted the girl after a number of days of negotiation with her parents who, presumably, were a little pissed that their daughter was being punished for no good reason whatsoever.

I wonder how many actual hours (or minutes) of education time the poor girl missed out on during her time away.

Why talk that way?

There’s trouble at a Swindon Comprehensive school. It looks like a bunch of kids walked out in support of a teacher who was threatened with disciplinary action for telling pupils that they were being denied a proper education.

All remarkable stuff and I am sure that many commentators better placed than I will be making their opinions known quite soon.

I, however, wish to bring up the following point of order. Hilary Pitts, the head of education at the local council thinks that the whole thing is unfortunate. She says:

"Clearly the students feel very strongly about this teacher's resignation, but students must now re-engage with their learning environment."

Now, I’m not up on council speak and the new language of the pseudo carebear but doesn’t she actually mean go back to school.

I bet re-engage with their learning environment comes from a list of approved phrases or some kind of council manual. Perhaps it is simply a problem resulting from the translation of an EU educational directive penned in French or what-have-you.

Regardless of its provenance its usage makes me wonder who actually falls for this kind of phraseology? What does Hilary think she is achieving by using it? I find it a complete turn off and think that it undermines the speaker’s authority. It smacks of someone who is trying to impress or somehow prove their intellectual credentials unnecessarily.

I don't get it.

Thatcher, queen of the unruly

What a load of old tosh:

The legacy of Thatcherism has led to a rise in aggression and bullying in schools, a teachers' leader said yesterday.

Pat Lerew, president of the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers, said that, nearly 20 years after Margaret Thatcher declared that there was no such thing as society, parents who grew up in the 1980s had produced a generation of youngsters brought up to be selfish and to think the only thing that mattered was money.

Thatcher’s children know that the foundations of a successful future are education, hard work, freedom of choice and responsibility. These ideas are totally incompatible with a culture of physical or verbal aggression and bullying in schools.

Work hard. Take good subjects. Pass those exams. That was the message we got from Thatcher. Those that didn’t were simply not listening.

Schools have always had to deal with issues like bullying. Historically these were dealt with using a culture of strong discipline where kids knew that disruptive behaviour would be dealt with effectively at school and then at home.

Pat Lerew has misunderstood the causes of the problems we face today.

It’s not Thatcher’s principles that are to blame; instead it is the principles of those that have led us to a position of, as Kim du Toit might put it, the pussyfication of grown ups.

That old saying that if you give them an inch and they will take a mile is a good one. We have given ourselves over, inch by inch, to the rules of political correctness and the gradual disempowerment of teachers and the miles have been taken.

Lerew’s analysis has missed the mark. Failed the grade. 4/10, must try harder.

Here is something else that Thatcher had to say about society:

We want a society where people are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. This is what we mean by a moral society; not a society where the state is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the state.

Oh the horror of it all.

Out of touch

Besides discussions on why our local state school is seriously underfunded I have also been hearing troubling things about the tests on 7 and 11 year olds. Now the NUT is to ballot its members on a boycott of those tests.

When the boycott goes ahead, no child's education will be disrupted. Instead teachers will be able to use their professional judgement to their pupils' benefit and in support of their primary purpose of educating children

That's the general message I have been hearing from my wife and parents of children at our local school. It's the teachers that know how our kids are doing and the tests (with all the structure required that leads up to those tests) are having a negative and constraining affect.

The governments response:

A boycott of tests would be a gross betrayal of children. It would say that we don't care how children are doing or how we can better help them in school.

That's contrary to the word on the street, or the cul-de-sac if you like.

An oasis in the middle classes

I think that I live in a cul-de-sac that's somewhat of an oasis in a very middle class town. You see, even though everyone in the cul-de-sac thinks they're middle class, according to Ted Wragg in the Guardian we must be mistaken:

Sending a child to the local state school is seen by many middle-class parents as a betrayal of your caste. When my eldest daughter entered the local comprehensive school my wife was berated by a neighbour. Sacrificing your children for the sake of your principles was the crime.

You see, silly us, we all send our children to local state schools; how un-middle class of us. Come to think of it most of the middle class friends that I have send their kids to state school.

Holy crap, we're working class.

Via Peter Briffa.