A Principled view

 http://goo.gl/ObzP0 takes you to the text plus pictures!

If you are old enough, you’ll remember the great Frankie Howerd. “Infamy, Infamy, they’ve all got it in for me”.  Here’s Frankie speaking  at the Oxford Union in 1990 – it all kicks off from 50 seconds in.

The man is seriously random in his act, moving all over the place  in no specific direction, but clearly hilarious enough for the students of the day. His most famous television act was as a slave named Lurcio in Up Pompeii, and he was for ever reprising it seems funny things that happened to him on the way to the Forum (circus).

So that’s how I feel just presently; on a journey (mainly digital for the benefits of the ISANet of course), and much of the very careful preparations for our digital life at school do seem to be coming home to roost at long last.

Example 1 – Digital assets

CC GCSE Historians travel to the Ypres Salient to explore the battlefields and graveyards, visit the amazing In Flanders Fields (IFF) museum and engage in some study activities.

On entry to the museum each visitor receive a “Poppy Bracelet”. The bracelet contains a microchip which activates the chosen language for the visitor. It also activates the personal story of four individuals as the visitor makes his or her way around the exhibitions. As you leave the exhibition, you can use the wristband to sign out, and email to you those stories as pdfs to your chosen email address.

Well it will not surprise you dear reader to know that 2 years ago we simply could not have handled this, nor dealt with the additional learning experiences such opportunities bring. Now, all googled-up and ‘Hub’ilicious to boot, we can manage such ideas and then some.  Take a look at the Ypres Salient website emerging from this trip, used to join up these and other writings under way. http://goo.gl/wey3b

More and more of our trips are including parents in the travel and outcomes without them actually coming with us.  The Easter ski trip collected over 100 hits in the week away and some very funny banter too between home and the Alps. Here’s that website – http://goo.gl/hucmZ

The use of the message board is how we captured the banter!

Example 2 – Data Archives

Many years ago, I tried to interest Ben Goldacre (he of Bad Science) in the scandal that was the cancellation of nationwide BCG jabs.  The trouble at the time was that it was deemed that only the visitor populations from South East Asia and the traveller community were at risk from Tuberculosis, and the hard one rights for CC private school pupils to get their BCG jab at 14 was taken away from us.  We made a real song and dance about it at the time (to no avail). OK, it’s not an outbreak of Consumption that we are currently facing, but measles, and why? The herd immunity has been impaired by low levels of vaccination uptake and a Measles epidemic is with us.  And guess what – apparently, private schools are to blame – read that here: http://goo.gl/cpwlD

What annoys me and everyone else is that this accusation is simply ill judged and in my school’s case wrong.  And thank the lord, I have all the emails stored away to prove it.  Now we have Google-land, the school has some 15 terrabytes of storage – but not that long ago, the paper files would have just disappeared into an archive space too difficult to search.  Google found the stuff almost straight away!

Example 3 – Encouraging bilingualism is a good thing – http://goo.gl/eXCRE

Far from Texting being a bad thing, it is causing the development of greater linguistic skills in the young than we have seen before.  In a short talk of 13 minutes at TED this February, Columbia University Linguistics expert, Professor John McWhorter exploded the myth that texting is dumbing us down. In short, if we are true teachers of the young, we should work with it. Fingered speech is different to speech and writing, and as such is developing our general literacies not harming them.  By the way, Prof JM takes us back to Roman times round about 11m12’ when the teachers of the day then bemoaned that their students were becoming illiterate.  As it turns out, they were developing French!

Example 4 – Learning is not about the Technology

In the 5 years the ISANet has been pounding the streets, and colonising your inbox, I have tried to evangelise the joys of easy-to-use technology.  As I have previously written, the Chief Inspector of the Independent Schools Inspectorate, Christine Ryan, saw our stuff at the start of the year and declared “What’s not to like?”  That’s remained very much the picture emerging from our Monday afternoon short visits I host.  2 years down the line of using Google Apps for Education, we can show our visitors that the technology has all but disappeared,  Children as young as 8 are blogging across the globe, and collaborative works of a Heinz variety are happening every day. Here’s an inspiring digital journal article on just this matter – http://goo.gl/fMDeu

As the picture in Example 4 highlights, the small slates are coming, be they iPads or Androids. I start our official trial of Ainol Novo7s in June, partnered we hope by some Nexus 7s to contrast and compare. Now John Lewis stores are stocking Android devcies, giving them a 2 year warranty as well, prices are coming down to perhaps ⅓ of iPad levels.  The question I ask is – do such devices actually have a place in schools that use netbooks, PCs and Chromebooks. At an entry price of £75 I think they do, but schools need to know how to manage them and as yet there is little documentary evidence to go on.

If you’d like to be involved in any way in our Android trial, then please do get in touch with me, usual place – http://isanet.ning.com or email jtw@clairescourt.net

Frankie Howerd may have died 21 years ago, but he still occupies part of our national pysche it seems:  here’s the Telegraph remembering “Up Pompeii: oh for the days when bankers were slaves”.

Titter ye not!

Regular readers of my blog know that I find myself as often as not wondering  from where does Mr Gove gets his policies and his evidence?  I am indebted to the same readers for keeping me up-to-date, though it must be said that the Guardian newspaper is doing a pretty good job anyway. jtw@clairescourt.net finds me everytime.

Anyway, a new website has been set up by the opposition to specifically check MG’s claims and statements, in order to assist in the process of keeping schools and educators sane.

Here’s the website (http://www.goveversusreality.com), and the front cover says: “Gove Versus Reality looks at the policies pursued by Michael Gove for his radical and draconian transformation of the English education system challenging his assumptions and the evidence he advances to support his approach. Please tell friends and colleagues about this site.”

Whatever you think of the man, it is quite amazing the way now his speeches are being checked word for word.  Here’s the Guardian earlier this week: “http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/apr/19/michael-gove-education-policy-bad-buffet?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

And here’s the Guardian yesterday: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/apr/22/michael-gove-school-holidays-error

Whenever Mr Gove’s views are challenged, it is his department that then picks up the tab to make reply and support their boss.  The mood of course in the DfE is not wholly supportive, as MG has made it quite clear he is downsizing the department by 50% in terms of offices and spend, and 25% in terms of people.  Today, staff at the Department for Education (DfE) in England announced that they are to stage fresh strike action in a dispute over jobs and office closures – here’s the BBC on that: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22283311

And why I hear you thinking does an Independent School proprietor bother himself about these state school matters? The answer lies in the passion you will see about education throughout our school, be that for Nursery, main school, Sixth Form, academic or pastoral, technical or extra-curricular.  We care for the whole child, and understand that every learner is different.  We care massively that children are treated as individuals, and that all are included in the planning and execution of their provision. Never before in my career of almost 40 years in education have I witnessed a Secretary of State be so unwilling to use rigorous data and scientific method prior to making choices for our country’s children.

Yesterday evening, Richard Bolton (who leads British Youth Rowing) visited our school to talk the parents and rowers about their planning and preparation for the coming season. Talking about commercial food supplements (which are both expensive and very well marketed) Richard had this to say: “The claims they make (that they are better than food) are either ‘lies’ or ‘cheats’.  If they are lies, why would anyone buy the product?  If they are ‘cheats’, then the athletes will fail doping tests and they’ll never row for Britain.  There really is nothing better than real food for growing great rowers!”

And I’d echo that for education too.  There is nothing better than real, hands-on education for developing the whole child. Not every child can be as talented as the best, but with great planning and preparation, coaching and family support, every element of who they can be will be developed.  Education should reach every part of a child, academic, spiritual, emotional, athletic, aesthetic, artistic as well as include practice for their craft skills too; not only should we afford that, how dare we not? What the press links above highlight is that the public and profession cannot trust this MP’s rhetoric. And that makes me very angry, because this country is built upon the democratic belief that our politicians will serve the electorate that placed them in Parliament. And we are ill served when politicians lie, as if we have not had enough of their deceit already.

With the news from the states being so rotten at present, I fear clicking on the BBC news button in case of jinxing something worse to happen.  Sadly, beyond the news button on the BBC webpage is the Education button, and I have feared that now for months.  Today’s breaking news from UK education’s nemesis, Michael Gove, is that he fears that the current school day is too short, and in justifying his reasoning, he points at the far east and observes their school day is way longer.  Here’s the Guardian’s expose on MG’s claim. As ever, he is being really selective about his data; he’s very keen on PISA scores (which is why we might have an inkling as to which countries lead the way academically), and has often pointed out how well Finland does, for children of all abilities. Sadly he conveniently forgets that our arctic friends choose to have a school working week in the main is made up of 25 x 45 minutes lessons, with the school day finishing nice and early (circa 2 pm) to allow children time for other stuff.  Both Hong Kong and Singapore are rowing back massively from their formulaic rote learning approach,  looking to implement a more creative and collaborative western (nay, UK style) curriculum.  Culturally school days vary wildly across the world; Germany does pretty well on a shorter school day. France has lengthened its school day, but is banning homework. I bet you that if you took all the variations that happen in the world and then did some maths on them, you’d find that overall the average stays pretty constant over the past 30 years.

What Mr Gove ought to seek is the implementation  of a broad creative and craft-skills curriculum, in which the academic sit alongside those other skills and talents a child should develop and explore in their youth. Extension time after school almost always covers these diverse needs best, but in not enforcing it for everyone, those with other places to explore and interests to develop should be allowed to.

A large number of the children at Claires Court do have a long day, arriving circa 8 am and leaving well after 5 pm. Some have even longer hours, but it is interesting to note that diversity of time in school is what works best for us. My own children lived around the corner from school, so opted to come home to develop other interests if they did not need to stay at school for sports or clubs or events. That’s not to say they did not have to settle down to homework after supper, but hey – that’s what worked for us.

There is so much about MG’s pronouncements that have a sound-bite that seems plausible, but actually are simply both impractical and unnecessary. We do not need to develop a different way of educating people in a different type of school year. Whilst we don’t have a farming calendar any more, we do need to allow children to develop in a system that is not modelled on a 9-to-5 factory gate type processing plant. Sir Ken Robinson has written and spoken about this barren set of ideas more than sufficiently; in seeking to create children who can excel, we must shape their learning so they can find their element.  For some that will be dancing, for others academe, for yet more, tinkering with programming and engineering ideas. 

One of the great modern scientific thinkers of our generation is Ben Goldacre, and you can read his paper here on how such educational developments should be run. As well as gathering a full set of data from the current population of UK schools on both educational performance and day length, we should actually make use of some serious trials to explore actually whether changes proposed actually work in practice before insisting on wholesale change across the country. Having run my school since 1981, and fine tuned the school day based on the evidence of results obtained, our developments are very much focused on keeping children sufficiently challenged and yet fresh enough for new challenges.

When Charlie Brown’s friend Lucy, the psychologist has her booth open for a quick consultation, Charlie pops in for a chat.  By and large the medical profession tend to give evidence based solutions for the cure of patients, and equally make use of data outcomes to decide whether hospitals are safe for patients. Why on earth we don’t see some proper long term work done in this area, only heaven knows.  Politicians and government apparatchiks in education still have the power to use personal anecdote and bad science far too often!  Hence the ‘good grief’

…is it always gets worse – Bruce Cockburn (1981)

I won’t be the only one who is unfamiliar with the musical ouevres of the Canadian singer song-writer, Bruce Cockburn, but I like this quote lots*. 

Today (at the time of writing) is Monday 15 April, and for a whole variety of reasons at the start of our new school Summer term, I sense a feeling that ‘Business as usual’ is a most uncomfortable statement to make. 

The appalling bombing in Boston has reminded us that the ferocity of people’s actions knows no bounds; to target recreational spectators at such a large fund raising event is as despicable as any incident I can recall. It brings so starkly back to mind the London bombings almost 8 years ago, and the horror of these events reminds us just how vulnerable we all are.

Tomorrow I travel to London, to speak at a national computing event for junior schools at the BMA in Tavistock Square, the location of the double decker bus explosion in that series of bombings. I am aware of the big funeral event on at the same time, that being the funeral of Baroness Thatcher, the first female UK prime minister, and perhaps best known across the world since Churchill.  My fingers are of course crossed for us all, as such events so obviously provide an opportunity for target.

There has been considerable debate as to whether Thatcher’s legacy is a ‘good thing’ or not; it is interesting to note that that wider audience in the world seem to hold her memory in greater respect than those closer to hand, domicile under her governments.  Our A level History course now teaches this period of British political life, interesting now just how quickly current affairs becomes academic study of original sources! 

So my challenge to my students and of course you dear reader is to consider just how much of Thatcherite economics gave rise to the lyrics that open this blog. Cockburn’s Canadian roots have him looking more at the governments of Ronald Reagan and Pierre Trudeau; the economic woes of little Britain of 30 years ago were pretty similar across the pond too. I wonder though whether the lyrics of the song don’t actually still apply to this day, 31 years on.  That’s the thing about truths – they last the test of time! Normality as they say returned for us all to enjoy.

*Here’s the whole song from where it comes:

“Strikes across the frontier and strikes for higher wage
Planet lurches to the right as ideologies engage
Suddenly it’s repression, moratorium on rights
What did they think the politics of panic would invite?
Person in the street shrugs — “Security comes first”
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse

Callous men in business costume speak computerese
Play pinball with the Third World trying to keep it on its knees
Their single crop starvation plans put sugar in your tea
And the local Third World’s kept on reservations you don’t see
“It’ll all go back to normal if we put our nation first”
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse

Fashionable fascism dominates the scene
When ends don’t meet it’s easier to justify the means
Tenants get the dregs and landlords get the cream
As the grinding devolution of the democratic dream
Brings us men in gas masks dancing while the shells burst
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.”

I have recently come across the writings of another headteacher, John Tomsett, in which he refers to some difficult classes he is currently teaching, illustrates his actions with some graphic detail, and suggests that by taking on the children at their own games, be that ‘yellow car’ or ‘door knobs’, credibility and respect are won. You can read that here. One of those commenting suggests that the methods described would not get past inspection, even posting the thought that OfSTED might need to be informed straight away.

Here some straightforward rules I use in action:

• Treat all as you would be treated
• It is all in the preparation – compelling learning experiences need to be worked at.
• Trust all you work with, but always check to praise. Don’t assume trust can’t be discussed.
• People lie; children less so than adults, and children aren’t very good at it either.
• People aren’t usually ill – if they are, show them concern and get them back on the work saddle quickly
• Work hard and be direct; the harder you work, the more work gets done, the better your skills are established and the luckier you become. Amazingly results improve too.
• Work/Life balance is a luxury teachers can’t afford. We’ve signed up for an asymmetric life, so both adults and children need to get used to it.
• Feed your enthusiasms (and theirs) – A smile uses far fewer muscles than a frown.
• Go watch the children work for others; whether it be in the Library, in the yard, in the arts or sports, taking an interest in others ensures they become interested in you. Really.
• Where possible, stand in the playground or on the touchline with parents, and talk with them; I can’t imagine a more artificial set of circumstances than a parent evening, except perhaps over the visitors counter in ‘Porridge’ prison. Relationships need to be worked at too.
• Remember stuff; having a memory means you won’t let others make the same mistake twice. Except politicians, who are beyond any control we have except the ballot box.
• Homework is a good thing, often set very badly. The older children are, the more you need to ensure their ‘practice’ happens under your nose.
• Give great feedback more than marks.  You’d never give adults marks; and if you do, they rapidly become dependent upon them. Only say things are outstanding or exceptional when they are.
• If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

By the time you read this far, I might have fiddled with the ideas a little. That’s a good thing, by the way, reviewing and correcting work. I know that following the above, I will get all my pupils into the right frame of mind to give of their best.  I certainly won’t have worried them about failure, because of course adolescents are by and large not motivated by the Private Frazers of this world, who let us know in no uncertain terms that ‘We’re all doomed‘. What is even worse, is that people who are that negative have scant regard for those in positions of authority over them, which is why of course you never want to give the poor bloody infantry anything other than a cheery smile and the certainty that you’ll be up there with them when the chips are down. And for those teachers that go the extra 1000 miles, their’s is the best job in the world, because they discover lands and ways of learning us mere mortals will never encounter.

I am not the only educator to be drawn in principle to the Massive Open On-line Course structure that the American Ivy Leaf and now UK Universities are making available to students across the world. In many ways it seems a no-brainer to develop on-line lecturing; rather than insist that students ‘read for a degree’ as they used to do. Looking at the concept of ‘Reading for a Degree’, whilst including a greater number of students who should study to degree level, it was spotted their relative literacy levels were challenged by such an instructional method (reading that is), so they were then ‘lectured at’ as University education changed to cope with the increase in less skilled undergaduates, in ‘classes’ since the 1970s.  Now that technology can make it so, those Universities with the bravado (and the lecturers to match) are now choosing to put their first year courses on line so that students can study from afar, be educated by (gathered as a brand ‘capture’) and become an alumni of the said University.  As the media would call it “Sexing up a correspondence course for the purposes of student enrollment”.

Not so fast Pal.  Since the opening of the Open University in the UK in 1971, we have had a MOC here in the UK.  In the first year, the OU recruited some 25,000 undergrads, probably the biggest first year cohort of its generation.  And because of its remit to reach out and connect with those more difficult to engage, the OU has pioneered all sorts of access  programs from that very start, You can read more here – http://goo.gl/eSdey.  Suffice it to say, their innovations including ‘going to the cloud’ have continued apace, so OU are on iTunesU, in Second Life with their own island, and in Grand Theft Auto 7 as a dysfunctional learning space for a Clockwise Orange Droogs ‘horror-show’ (I made the last bit up).

The thing we know about learners is that actually they ‘don’t know’.  Which is why they have a need ‘to learn’. And as the ease has grow about what facts need to be known, so the emerging difficulty is all about the skills that need to be acquired to support that body of evidence. To exemplify, 100 years ago we did not even know that antibiotics existed in a formal sense. They came in to general use after the Second World War. Almost 60 years on, today scientists are challenged to develop new forms of such medication in order to save us (and the medication) from the consequences of our actions – we need to do even better in the labs than before.

The more practical an academic discipline becomes, the greater the human contact time required. Look at Medics today, and they’ll work their socks off for 20+ hours a week in their first three years at Uni (it get’s worse after that), whilst the most cerebral reading History are able to graduate after 3 hours a week for 3 years and a Library access card (Urban myth, University of Bristol).  As ‘any fule kno’ (as stated by Nigel Molesworth, http://goo.gl/Tgae0), times are hard, and parents and their student ‘kin’ seek VFM from undergrad life at Uni, so our Centres of Learning are now booking more contact time for their students.  Now that could be a mixed blessing, but in the main, I think Unis are gaming the system less and appreciating even more the need to give their population of learners enough time to collaborate, engage, discuss and acquire the more complex skills needed to make progress in their discipline/vocation in the 20Teens.

At every given development of technology, some have imagined that they have invented a ‘Silver’ bullet that makes learning easier. There is no way that Magic circle Unis have found the Silver bullet with MOOCs. Some of the best scientific books for students I have read have come from the OU; that did not tempt me to study with the OU, because I went to Uni for so much more than the lecture hall or the Library (though I did earn to love them). Extensive lab and field work time off campus was needed to study my Biology component, whilst seminar time with Professors to explore the workings of the mind in Psychology were equally valuable. I cut my political teeth as an elected University counselor (Liberal), wrote the for the Uni paper and edited the University Rag Magazine (in 1974) among many other more dubious accomplishments at University.

So as with the BBC, ITV and Channel 4/5 and now 1000 channels of world EDU available from a myriad of independent broadcasters, please bring on the MOOCs and the concept of self-organised learning. They say ‘University is wasted on the Young’; the reality is that it is the ‘Young that need education organised for them’, and for me post school-age, no-body does that better than the UK Universities (to be honest, Leicester above all). The Oldies of course can organise it much better, hence the U3A – read more about that here – http://www.u3a.org.uk/. And if you want to learn more about MOOCs, click here.

What I know I acquired at Leicester in the 1970s is the most amazing education; 3 years spent in a deep and diverse environment in which my peers dug deep into my own pysche and helped me find my talents – here’s Sir Ken – http://goo.gl/hOzZ6 – who summarises in ways only he can – danced to by Brady Sanders.

A NotebookLLM conversation on this article can be found here: https://schl.cc:443/gp

Throughout the ages, philosophers have highlighted that man imprisons himself within his own petty conventions and behaviours. Plato’s original Allegory of the Cave has us picture slaves tethered to a wall and, in watching events pass by through the shadows cast on the cave walls, theorise a way of life that bore no resemblance to that which was visible to those outside the cave. Neither the cave dweller nor the watcher from outside would be able to see each other’s point of view; the shadows, dancing in both natural and artificial light, creating that whole world vision to those inside which was simply invisible and incomprehensible to those not benefiting from that perspective.

Rosa Luxemburg comes from that Marxist tradition that held such strong sway in central Europe during the latter part of the 19th and start of the 20th century, giving rise to the various revolutions of the time.  Battle-hardened through umpteen struggles in Germany, wherein she tried (amongst other things) to highlight the oncoming world conflict. Her major contributions were as a political activist , feminist  and writer, and in advancing an internationalist view of nationhood, promoted the birth of democratic ideals in Germany. She was murdered shortly after the end of the first world war, and for many years neglected as an inconvenient truth, the Nazis’ first assassination. Shortly after her death, the poet Berthold Brecht wrote

“Red Rosa now has vanished too. (…),

She told the poor what life is about, 

And so the rich have rubbed her out.

May she rest in peace.”

I have always liked Luxemburg’s other famous quotation too; “Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently.” Put together, they provide a framework for human development that sits comfortably with me, as I work within the framework of British Education in which so many ‘beacons of light’ are set to ensnare the unwary traveler. If educationalists, politicians, economists were right, then we’d have a perfect world by now. The conventions that make a just and fair society seem to run at variance to that which rule a free market and successful economy, and almost always at such a tangent that collision causes mayhem on the frequent occasions when they collide.

In short, it is Humanity’s struggle that ensures progress, that constant testing of the light, shadow, natural and artificial that reveals what we can learn about all the dimensions of our surroundings. For those content with the status quo, they simply won’t feel the fetters that prevent them from flight.  George Bernard Shaw, a contemporary of Luxembourg, had this to say “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
This set of thoughts links directly to “The vanity (or narcisism) of small differences”