A Principled view

It has been a few weeks since my last proper blog, and after yet another stupidly busy week, your humble servant remains short of his ‘muse’. It is often this way, I find, one month has me almost frothing at the mouth ‘cos I have so much to say, and others (such as this May) it seems best to leave all the others to do the talking.

It is not that the stories have gone walk-about. In fact, what with Royal Weddings, Bin Laden’s execution and the recent AV referendum, the in-tray seems overflowing with useful material.  And yet the words don’t flow.

It’s not that I don’t know why the faucet has switched off; indeed I am so certain I know the answer, I am testing my hypothesis on the ‘morrow. The truth is that I missing contact with my pupils, what with the short 2, 3 and 4 day weeks we have had, and my own commitments to the Independent Schools’ Inspectorate taking me away last week for 3 days to work on one of their teams in a London school.

Of course at the school I have been inspecting, I had loads of contact with children, but professional integrity prevents me from writing about their school and their contribution to its success. What was particularly exciting was to speak to pupils I don’t know about their work and play, and because their responses were very different to those I usually hear, I can’t wait to get back to CC and test the zeitgeist.

So in 24 hours or so, the writer will return within and I’ll be able to post anew.  Suffice it to say this for the time being (and to wet your appetite): young people in their exam years really do recognise the pressures they are under and as readily acknowledge the pressures their parents face too. Many uncertainties are arising from different directions, be that the fragile UK economy, the exam system, university entrance and fee rises, a fragile planet and man’s footprint on it.

We’ll do well to remember that learners know well over half of what we ever hope to teach them anyway, and assisting them to find their voice and take control of their learning has never been more important. Good academic results are essential, but successful adults have so much more going for them than just some A grades, and they find time to do so much in spite of the rhetoric that we are all time poor.

Now, where’s that razor to sharpen my quill, I had it around me just a moment or so ago?

…goes the 1950’s cry to attract graduates into the teaching profession. In short, the subtext said, work hard in term-time, and 14 weeks of holiday leave arrives all too frequently to compensate the wage-slave.

Claires Court Schools has an official 3 week break this Easter, so that’s all right then, and the tradition over our 50 years of existence continues… except of course it doesn’t actually.  Yep that’s right, ‘skools out from Wednesday, though that means the staff now get to work on other things, like training, marking and some r&r too – just 12 days outside of Bank hols!

Anyone who ever attends a staff meeting in education anywhere (and lots of businesses never have such events) knows that if the meetings are long, AOB is even longer.  Teachers care (no, really) and extraordinary time is spent checking, counter checking and holding-to-account everything we do after the end of term, and under AOB, all sorts of questions emerge that will immediately, or in due course, make schools change for the better. You see, it gets hard-wired in this ‘marking’ thing, after all, our normal workforce are both amazing and alarming in equal measure (the children that is) and we need to clock them in and clock them out with a precision that most unionised workforces would have got rid of, you guessed it, 50 years ago.  And that hard-wired stuff also allows and encourages teachers to look North to ‘da management’ and cause some further important reflection by their bosses as well.

Just by the by, I love the way Google tells us stuff we never knew, so we can then relate as an urban truth and seem wise.  If you stick the two words, industrial and education into google,  you’ll find all sorts of entertainment, not least from YouTube’s great oeuvre – see this for starters http://bit.ly/8JdcYb .

You don’t have to be a Sir Ken Robinson to know that actually there are schools better than those that Pink Floyd lined up for their contribution to the scholastic debate (ok, I live in hope that a broader audience need a link to another brick – http://bit.ly/gcMBHI)

So at CCS, the students (16+) and pupils (Y11 and below) were disappeared yesterday and the teaching staff are reflecting today really quite thoroughly on what we do,  and studying tomorrow with 2 of the country’s leading educators (both for practice and philosophy), Margaret Goldthorpe (http://www.margaretgoldthorpe.co.uk) and Neil MacKay (http://www.actiondyslexia.co.uk). Maggie’s philosophical ideas are fab for running schools – ‘when due to meet with parents, ask for 6 good things the child has done that week’ – stunning advice really, ‘cos every teacher I have ever met will tell you about personal shortcomings (adult or child), and Neil’s are (perhaps) even more powerful because he demonstrates (with seriously good academic research) that both parents and teachers are usually wrong about what a child can achieve within normal class groupings.

So apart from the staff training then, the ‘skool’ is set for sleep … not so fast sonny!

Those who row are on training camp from Thursday to Sunday, those who sail are away this weekend at regatta, those who ‘gold’ explore are away from Monday to Friday and those that ski are away next weekend for a week. Holiday club will be welcoming some 100 children on a daily basis to have ‘some fun’ and actually anyone with some public examinations needs to get stuck into some serious revision ‘cos within the month they are starting that set of tests and trials. Such activity demands that school leaders, middle managers and plain teaching & coaching staff are on duty, and I am privileged to run an organisation within which people genuinely understand that they either know their place and settle back ‘for a break’ or step up ‘to the mark’.

What’s true of course is that our staff do stop working (in terms of ‘face-time’) with their pupils, and they (both of them, adults and children) deserve that break. Holidays aren’t just about parents picking up the load, but more importantly, giving children contact time with other adults, preferably family, be that grandparents, uncles and aunts or whoever. When I was born and bred, children were there to be seen but not heard, which is the antithesis of what they need (I hear you cry), but in one of those strange ways, is an exception that proves the rule. 50 years ago (ok, it is the schools’ golden jubilee, so I need to have some product placement in my blog) children had huge contact with their parents, who needed to invent a post watershed rule (no TV/DVD/PC/iPo/ad) that gave the grown-ups a break (from their children).

What is absolutely true in 2011 is that the majority of CCS parents don’t have the full-on contact with their children of yesteryear, and the silent majority (I read the PQs, so I know) really welcome their children back from school, to deprogram them from ‘instruction’ and recover the lovely ‘peeps’ that live together and actually have some fun.  Much of the time, I suspect it is the children deprogramming the parents from their corporate culture that actually happens, a sort of naïve groundswell from the 5^th column. It amazes me how many parents seem to run their children by clipboard, as if they are employees rather than kiddees!

But for an equal number, an asymmetric life that matches school is not possible, so the hols. need further respite care for the working parent, and that is what causes me to post this essay for the working parent.  Please, please find an opportunity to talk to your children; they have been in (my) school since the turn of the New Year and they have grown apace and are now even more interesting and entertaining than hitherto.  There is not a ‘tomorrow’ you are saving yourself for to ‘hear this good news’.  Hear it today, and avail yourself of this voucher which will change your life for the better.

Oh, by the way, I have ensured the voucher links to an explanation too – that’s the teacher in me!  I’ll just need to chase down those missing homeworks in the detention book then…

In Tuesday’s Guardian (29/3/2011), Niall Ferguson, the eminent Historian now at Harvard and often on our TV screens too, leads another attack on the teaching of History in our schools.  His article is entitled ‘History has never been so unpopular’ and introduces with the lead ‘According to Ofsted, history is successful in schools. Not so, says controversial historian Niall Ferguson: the inspectors are missing the ruination of the subject’. More here  – http://bit.ly/hYPU56

You’ll gather this got my blood boiling and led me to post the following

“In general, we have to accept the contention that History needs to be a required in depth subject to GCSE for children to understand its important place in their curriculum and education. When the last Labour government made taking a language optional past 14 (aka age 12/13 given the compression now allowed for the KS3 curriculum into just Years 7&8), Language take-up dropped like a stone, and even selective state grammar schools allowed pupils to drop a language with parental consent. The Linguist version of a Ferguson can always produce a list of vocab and people that in his view pupils should know (panache and Molière), and equally traduce the examples actually used (buying a S-Bahn ticket in Berlin), the core facts of learning are that pupils need long term sustained contact with the subject. 

I don’t reject OfSted’s findings; indeed married to a History teacher in an Independent school, I ride shotgun on lots of useful History and Language trips on their arc of travel across time and place, and I see vast numbers of state-side contemporaries similarly engaged. There have never been a raft of well qualified male and female graduates entering the profession in these two disciplines, and one of the main reasons for both subjects’ failings is that the professional and monetary reward for good graduates is so much higher in other professions.  Teaching History and Languages to children, particularly adolescents, is really hard, they do have to learn facts and memorise rules and structures.  What kills the subjects is the act of sticking them in a league table to measure performance, this against other subjects which are optional and are set to attract children who are talented and interested in the vocational outcomes, such as Art, Drama and Sport.

I am sure that if we had provided a surfeit of great Historians and Linguists to the profession over generations, we would not see both subjects in such short supply at GCSE and A level.  But please do remember that education is always battered by the storms of a countries economic woes – the clarion call is out there too for great innovation in technology, for schools to unleash their pupils creativity in arts and sports – our national cricket side could do so much better if only the sport were played more frequently in schools.  So government has pulled schools hither and thither in an effort to ensure this mechanised form of education provides feedstock for the nation’s needs.  Oh and of course just now, despite their best intentions, there aren’t actually many jobs for the talented successful outcomes of our system to apply for, let alone engage with, leading to another repeating cycle of concern about a ‘lost generation’.

The great education systems of Europe, led by Finland, allow horses for courses, withdrawal into academic and vocation strands by choice (not selection) and have more effective joined-up educational provision for those with special needs. It’s curious that in the madness that is led by Michael Gove, we might see some fundamental simplifications happening to bring History back to the fore in the state sector. As far as Niall Ferguson’s commentary goes – keep it up too; but bear in mind that his work is characterised by ‘panache’ – with or without the accent – ‘style over substance’ and ‘ ‘frothy weak ale’!

P.S. Does any now where the reference below originally comes from?

It’s like Irwin’s dream; teaching kids to fool the examiner into thinking they know what they’re talking about

“Every intelligent person in the world knew that disaster was impending but knew no way to avoid it.” H.G.Wells

An early photograph from Tyne Cot, 1924

Over the past 10 years, I have traveled with our History department on their Year 10 field trip to Ypres. I can’t really explain quite how valuable the trip is for those concerned, offering as it does a unique mix of activity for the pupils studying the First World War.

The remarkable museum “In Flanders Fields” is situated in the Cloth Hall at the centre of Ypres, which looks in better shape now than it did after the artillery had finished with it in 1914. And as you walk into the museum, H.G.Wells stark commentary reminds us that now as then, war is a bloody business that no-one can control. An hour or so spent in the museum allows the visitor to explore the life and times of one character during and after the war period, mine was an Albert Wheeler, who fought and survived the war, and whose wish to be laid to rest after his death (1982) with his comrades in Flanders was permitted through the scattering of his ashes amongst his comrades, south east of Ypres in the village of Zillebeke.

I make no bones about the success of the trip; you only have to see the purposeful nature of the cemetery survey to see how moved the pupils are.  “Choose two epitaphs you find moving” is the task, and within minutes you can see the boys and girls are drawn into the individual stories of grief and pride that such words elicit. At Tyne Cot, the row on row of white headstones, most inscribed simply “A soldier of the Great War” and then much lower down under a simply cross “Known unto God” can’t help but move the visitor. Near the central memorial cross, built over a concrete Pill Box, there are several individual graves of both British and German soldiers, buried it seems where they fell, helping the visitor remember that both sides lost their finest men in the conflict.

“Tyne Cot Cemetery is the resting place of 11,954 soldiers of the Commonwealth Forces. This is the largest number of burials contained in any Commonwealth cemetery of either the First or Second World War. It is the largest Commonwealth military cemetery in the world. The dates of death of the soldiers buried at Tyne Cot cemetery cover a period of four years, from October 1914 to September 1918 inclusive.” In addition, on the walls at the rear of the cemetery, some 33,783 names of the UK forces lost after 15 August 1917 are listed, together with 1,176 New Zealanders lost in battles fought nearby throughout the war.

The King’s Speech has recently won Oscars and Baftas and much acclaim for the courage shown by King George V1 as he struggled to master a devastating stammer. His father, George V had to show extraordinary courage throughout his reign, not just because of the devastating effect the Great War had upon so many towns and villages in his kingdom.  After the War, King George toured the various cemeteries in Flanders and wrote this on 11 May 1922 on visiting Tyne Cot “We can truly say that the whole circuit of the Earth is girdled with the graves of our dead. In the course of my pilgrimage, I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon Earth through the years to come, than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.”

Langemark German Military cemetery is much newer than Tyne Cot, very much a moving project throughout the last century to bring together disparate groups of German graves into one major memorial. Whilst it began as a cemetery during 1915, it grew after both wars and the oaks planted in 1930 now provide a lofty cover to what is a remarkably different memorial to the fallen, far less majestic and yet full of the same pathos; at both sites, one can’t help but mourn.

Sanctuary Wood ought to be as gloomy, being former British trenches overrun on a number of occasions by the German army, and a place under which no doubt many human remains still could be found. Somehow though it’s not, despite the carcasses of shattered trees that still adorn the landscape, the sheer exuberance of young visitors running through the trenches, jumping the gaps and running underground in the linking tunnels helps bring light and life to what must have been a god-forsaken place. Between Langemark and Sanctuary wood we pass Hellfire Corner, arguably the most dangerous place on the front, where troops pass through at the run, horses at the gallop and lorries as flat out as mud and technology would allow.

At 8pm, we stand under the Menin Gate, the major memorial for those lost without grave before 15 August 1917 in the UK forces. There’s always a huge crowd, and some planned short ceremony from school, forces unit or other brigade laying wreaths in between the Bugle blasts of the Belgian Fire brigade who host the daily event. This year for some reason, the lights were out, making it an even more poignant memory of the ultimate sacrifice made by those we stand to remember. There’s not really a lot to see or hear, crowds being what they are, but when the bugles blow and the crowd hushes, it’s clear we have all that same thought, a sense of loss but firm resolve that we will abide by Laurence Binyon’s direction in his poem For the Fallen.

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them”

…are they all about?

I joined the RSA some 20 years ago, when it became clear to me I needed some cross-‘business meets theory’ support above and beyond that which my professional sector of education was giving me. I needed the support of a couple of existing Fellows then to support my application, and apart from agreeing to subscribe some £250 a year, I was made a Fellow and I have stayed connected ever since.  The Chief Exec. of the RSA, Matthew Taylor writes this in the Times Educational Supplement recently “It is important to develop skills that cross subjects and specialisms, skills that will be useful for all and in all walks of life” , and that’s certainly what my Fellowship has helped me gather, through its quarterly magazine, its events and projects.

The RSA objectives include enabling the Fellowship to be a powerful force for social good and civic innovation, and that’s certainly part of my raison d’etre for engaging so widely and across the piece in education.  I rather like Mr Taylor’s 21^st animation that describes our current strapline of 21^st Century enlightenment in some excellent thought-provoking and challenging ways – you can watch his talk here http://bit.ly/d1RFvF, brilliantly illustrated by the people from Cognitive media. I have already written about the humbling nature of Headship; what seemed so obvious in the first few years of running a school may remain just as clear, but the sheer scale of the complexity of human development means that the mission becomes really rather complex. To be able to step outside of my goldfish bowl, study, work and engage with others of greater experience, intellect and vision has been incredibly helpful.

So when RSA added a Twitter steam, I decided to tune into that, as I had previously to their LinkedIn network, providing all sorts of thoughts and links to research. A recent question posted on the RSA comment area asked Fellows to distinguish between Learning, Knowledge and Wisdom, and it set me to reply as follows:

“Jamie’s Dream school TV on Wednesday nights has become part of my required viewing. Alvin Hall, the American financial trainer, hit close last week when he was prepared to accept that Jamie’s students were clever, but not that they were intelligent.

Consider learning to drive. Long before any student actually learns to drive a car, most reckon they’ll be really good – ‘clever’ at the driving thing.  Stick them behind the wheel and pretty soon they’ll be humbled that they don’t actually know how to drive

We learn how to drive a car, a complex series of mechanical activities that bit by bit we make subconscious so that we can then pass a driving test, and then actually get into the whole process of transporting ourselves from A to B, and worry a lot more about other more important things. Learning is all about cognition, the result of perception, learning and reasoning, by which we acquire new skills or knowledge. Knowledge is an outcome of learning, it can be measured by tests; we learn the Highway Code as part of the driving test, we don’t actually have to understand what lies behind the code, and regular rehearsal will help us tick the right boxes.  Superficial knowledge acquired this way becomes deeper as we become more experienced drivers, as we make more mistakes and learn from them, as we experience new conditions and control our responses as a result. Wisdom of the driver accumulates from many such sustained experiences, where knowledge meets common sense.

People who are clever learn quickly, they seem to be able to manage with fewer instructions and fewer rehearsals, they’ll not often be in the resit class either. But that does not make them intelligent, the process by which we learn from experience and from which wisdom develops.  Where and why learners fail is when their willingness to work is less than their attention span; the learner has not been willing to suborn their own desires to the needs of the teacher or the group. Of course the teacher must learn their craft skills, pace and vary the learning activities to just stretch the pupil enough so new experiences are gained, but not so rapidly to disenfranchise and disconnect. Watching Alvin worry all night about how he could present difficult challenges to his charges in just hard enough ways was great; seeing him connect across the pond to another teacher who give insight and craft skill for the task ahead is precisely what we do. I have done that for this writing, connecting not just to colleagues but to Google, Princeton and Wikipedia to check that what might seem clever has some signs of intelligence, and that as a piece might impart some wisdom. But hey, what do I know?”

The nice thing of course is that others following the stream join in, add their thoughts, polish mine, even of course disagree. Essentially I have found virtual RSA a 21^st century coffee shop of the enlightenment, from which over 300 years ago, modern behemoths such as Lloyds of London commenced their commerce. I don’t know many Fellows, but what I do share with them is a powerful urge to do good, be influential and shape society. As the American anthropologist Margaret Mead argued

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”.

This phrase first entered regular usage when George W Bush exercised it regularly during his Presidency. I heard it again on Thursday evening this week, from Donald Clark, e-learning entrepreneur and one of 6 contributors to the Learning without frontiers seminar focussing leading educationalists on “What should be taught in our schools”.  The informal evening of discussion and debate also featured Katharine Birbalsingh (teacher and author), Toby Young (journalist and author), Dr Ralph Townsend (Headmaster Winchester College), Dawn Hallybone (senior teacher), and Tristram Shepard (online educational publisher.  You can hear the transcript to the whole event here, (http://bit.ly/gXNRQS) and each of the speakers did really well, though not necessarily answering the question posed!  I was fortunate enough to be asked to make a contribution, and you can hear that at 69min28secs into the track.

Evenings such as these arise when government calls for national review of provision, and that’s precisely what is going on now, not just because the current national curriculum is to be overhauled, but also because separate review has been called on the ‘new’ idea from Mr Gove, namely the EBacc. All over the nation, teachers of creative and technological subjects are collaborating to make impassioned plea to ensure these subjects are retained post review.  There is no doubt that the drive back to the academic by Mr Gove is set to remove some spurious 4 GCSE equivalent portfolios from the GCSE curriculum, and to focus all schools on the general principles that children aged 16 should have a core of academic knowledge underpinning their qualifications. What seems silly is the idea that creative subjects have no value; the one thing the English curriculum has done over the last 40 years is to encourage sufficient breadth so our base of creative and designers has been broad enough, indeed providing today for large numbers of highly paid and rewarded jobs and ensuring that UKPLC is at the forefront of innovation in the world. 

By the time the main contributions had come to a close, there was broad scale agreement on one thing, that of pupils behaviour, and that’s where teacher and author Kate Birbalsingh really caught the mood, words to the effect  “I don’t really mind what the government wants to include in the curriculum, what I want is for classroom behaviour to be good enough for the children within to learn something, anything”. Kate is attributed as ‘damming the state sector’ but nothing could be further from the truth. Out loud and in print (To Miss with Love, Penguin), she makes it clear that children deserve to be taught well and rigorously, and that if our education is to improve, we must demand above all that classes are orderly places. What is taught in them must also be of value, and that’s where a separation begins between those that believe Shakespeare and a Language have a part to play, and those that believe their charges should be permitted to concentrate more obviously on the subjects they want to do, and that they should be allowed to drop the bard and verb tests. 

In all schools, both state and independent, we have seen a dramatic rise in unacceptable behaviour amongst the early teenage years over the last 10 years or so. Part of the problem seems to lie in the developing ‘virtual network’ to which our children belong, where posting pictures and videos of the lewd and unacceptable normalises such activity and makes it difficult it seems for adults to express disapproval before it’s too late. Many children have become consummate consumers of such rubbish, and through bravado encourage others in like manner. Whereas before, careful parenting kept their charges away from such poor influence, now it resides within their homes, indeed often in the child’s own bedroom, and its effect is corrosive on minds and bodies. In schools such as ours, we’ll cope, because we have such great support from home, where once alerted the problem can be contained.  But it’s the not knowing to start with that clearly upsets the family applecart, that an innocent child’s head is so quickly turned by such trash. 

Claires Court does not select academically in the way that its rivals in the area do, but we have strong selection on grounds of behaviour. What we’ll not brook is bad behaviour and we won’t accept it as normal, and that is sometimes a really hard ask with families where boundaries have already relaxed. What George Bush was referring when he referenced ‘ soft bigotry of low expectations’ was an explanation of why the down-and-out could never achieve, justifying inaction from educators in schools. What the 21^st century parent and teacher must guard against is permitting low expectations to creep in with regards to the conduct of children. As adults, we know when we must scrub up and equally when we can let our hair down; children simply don’t know the difference, hence the need to teach them the range of good manners required in society, from dress to politeness, from hairstyle to language, from writing to organisation, they are all of a piece. So any curriculum we choose to bring in for the future must have at its heart subjects that require disciplined learning. And both teachers and parents will need to accept that means some hard graft in school and at home, for which there is no excuse allowed; but given a balanced approach, there will be still sufficient play for Jack or Jill to enjoy life to the full!

Our final day of the Y11 History trip to Berlin in the February half-term 2011 saw us journeying 30km to the west to visit the Olympic stadium, designed by Werner March for the Summer games of 1936, in which Jesse Owens starred.  Completely refurbished for the FIFA World cup in 2006, it is makes for a great visit, tying in elements of the glory of the Third Reich with the modern era.  The greater area around the stadium is known as the Reichssportfeld and it includes an extraordinary, huge seated open arena for Polo and other major field sports.  The stunning stonework and statues from the 30s remain, and the main stadium has grown modern seating and a roof!

Current occupants of the stadium are Hertha BSC, recently relegated from the Bundesliga. The stadium is also still used for major athletics events, including the 2009 World championships, during which Usain  Bolt further lowered his own 100 m and 200 m world records to 9.58 s and 19.19 s respectively. So when we were able to visit the changing rooms, the VIP areas and stand on the balcony where trophies and medals are issued, we were of course able to feel ‘champions’ for the day.  At the heart of the stadium now is a remarkable chapel, in the shape of the stadium proper, and open for all faiths, photograph taken during our visit.

Throughout our visit to Berlin, we were reliant on our own shoe leather and the Berlin metro system, the U- and S- Bahns. What marks out the U-Bahn in my mind from the rest of Europe is that it travels across much of Berlin on a raised track above the street so you get to sight-see as well as move from A to B.  The reason for the sky-drive harks back to the nineteenth century, when the city fathers were vying with London to build the world’s best sewers, and they did not want that project jeopardised by the trains! The S-Bahn routes are rather more like our suburban tracks out to the dormitories, but they do cross the city centre and those central stations are all great works of their Bismarckian forbears and worth a look for that reason alone.  Outside, amazing numbers of bicycles give testament to the citizens willingness to forebear the car, and to be honest, for the pedestrian this is a capital city that is relatively easy to walk through, and seems to have rather less traffic than your average UK town.

I have yet to visit the east end of London, to see our new Olympic Park at Newham, and I have no doubt I will be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the achievement. Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the modern games wrote that ‘‘the most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part”, whilst charging the competitors through the Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius.” What I feel I gained from our trip to Berlin this half-term was a participation in fellowship, a better understanding of the frailty of man, greater empathy with our fellow Europeans, and a sense of real solidarity that we do indeed need to be swifter, higher and stronger in all that we do.

OK – post return, here is my animoto mash-up of the trip – enjoy.

http://animoto.com/play/Pat6VJ7hXd0Z2wZwMphk0A

begins one of those great quotations any could use to inspire a trip to Berlin. These days, defined by the 21st century, the visitor to Germany’s capital can only marvel at the extraordinary vitality of one of Europe’s greatest cities.  The investment in major public buildings, the universal coverage of its mass transport system (Train, U-&S-Bahn, tram and bus) , the quality of its walkways and bike lanes and above all the omnipresence of fast food of every description (still have to check out Currywurst) could convince any that bad times have never been part of the equation.

That Berlin has a dark side is put well beyond question by the authorities who have established many major memorials to the ill-treatment of its citizens.  One of my favorites is the Stasi museum, in which James Bond-like gadgets developed behind the Iron curtain by Erich Honecker and his cronies are shown as part of the installations in their party headquarters.  A very much more recent edition is the Holocaust memorial just south of the Brendenburg gate, a vast field of stone bocks beneath which are halls where individual and family stories of loss during the Nazi extermination  programme of the Jews are told from across Europe.

35 km north of Berlin is the town of Oranienburg where the first internment camp was established for Hitler’s opponents and for those elements of society deemed unsuitable such as communists,homosexuals and gypsies. Heinrich Himmler ordered the building of a model camp in the nearby village of Sachsenhausen, one that was then exported throughout the axis territories, including the industrial manufacturing factories for weapons and armaments. Indeed one of the Heinkel bombers was assembled in the units outside the camp from 1942 onwards.  You can get a sense of the awfulness of the camp from this Youtube video – 

More than 200 000 were imprisoned here by the Nazis of which some 50 000 were brutally murdered – as opposed to Auschwitz which served the policy of racial genocide, Sachsenhausen victims were a mix of political opponents and then only later groups defined as racially or biologically inferior – increasingly from the newly occupied territories of Nazi dominated Europe. In 1938, in order to show the world that these new camps were not commiting atrocities, journalists and the Red Cross were invited to view the facilities.  Despite careful screening and choreographed tours, what the camp commander could not hide was the sheer terror the inmates showed for their tormentors, treated as they had been with such ferocious inhumanity.  The medical blocks still stand today and detail case after case of the most extraordinary butchery caused by doctors on their patients.

A journalist working for BBC Australia in 1938 reported back that whilst he had been a pacifist prior to his visit, he could now see complete justification for opposing the Nazi regime with military force, because the hell for their opponents had been revealed at Sachsenhausen.  And this is very much the message that prevails across the various impressive exhibits and displays at the camp, preserved as a national memorial by the East German government in 1956, and much improved as a visitor destination over the past 10 years.  In the kitchen block in the centre, there is now a 30 minute video showing some rare archive footage of prisoners at the camp, and a research centre too where the archives can be checked from a bank of desktop stations.

So we are reminded by the quote attributed to Edmund Burke, the great Irish political philosopher writing in 1770, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”.  Our group of Y11 pupils found this visit to Sachsenhausen the most moving of the trip, with the reinforcement of the personal family tragedies documented so well in  the museums we visited elsewhere.  We can always question whether the modern conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq of the last decade are justified, and we have current inquiries reviewing those decisions to report this year. I feel sure however our pupils returned to England with a great sense of pride that their country did indeed stand up and say something back in 1939.