Category: Uncategorized

Looking in the Distance

…by Richard Holloway could well be a book I recommend in the Spirituality module next year for people whose own searching is part of their reason for joining the class. This is the link to the book on Amazon and this links to my last thoughts about people’s disclosure in the class.
This poem by Tessimond that Holloway quotes rather sets the tone, at least for the first part, so I’ll reproduce it here:
Portrait of a romantic

He is in love with the land that is always over
The next hill and the next, with the bird that is never
Caught, with the room beyond the looking-glass.

He likes the half-hid, the half-heard, the half-lit,
The man in the fog, the road without an ending,
Stray pieces of torn words to piece together.

He is well aware that man is always lonely,
Listening for an echo of his cry, crying for the moon,
Making the moon his mirror, weeping in the night.

He often dives in the deep-sea undertow
Of the dark and dreaming mind. He turns at corners,
Twists on his heel to trap his following shadow.

He is haunted by the face behind the face.
 He searches for last frontiers and lost doors.
He tries to climb the wall around the world.

220905 fog 1

 

For more “instant Holloway,” look here from Canongate films 

All over bar the shouting? Assessment, exams and sunny days

My daughter Rosa is all but through the last school assessments she will ever have to do, the last of our children to have to do this.  A levels done, one last BTEC assessment point to go. Whatever she chooses next, exams in sixth form will not return. There will, I guess, be no more attentive sixth-form teachers to coax her from a panic, but equally no school worrying about grades and profiles either. For a brief time (maybe), she has no academic ties. She has “made it.”   She is sitting in the garden in the sunshine this evening. I am glad, proud to look out at her, and it prompts this reflection.

Today, by a sort of coincidentia oppositorum I sat in three meetings today considering at University level the marks for semester 2. So many stories passed by, some as numbers only to most of us, a brief window into someone’s difficulties and then on. I raise a couple of questions, and we move on; the meeting is attentive but businesslike.  Brookes will have processed about 3000 graduates today, maybe 10,000 undergraduate marks in all, according to John Raftery, the pro-VC.  No mean feat.  And in some other rooms in a few week’s time, Rosa will appear – a name no-one knows, or maybe “just” a number? – and be processed and then disappear. The computers will reassert themselves, the stuff will go to schools, et voila c’est fini pour la petite Antigone. She becomes a “past pupil.”

It never is impersonal, not really; tutors know the names they are dealing with, understand the cases, in some cases have handed tissues to distraught students, or answered worried emails, or made a judiciously timed cuppa for someone. Tonight, though, I feel the weight of it.  I just wouldn’t want anyone – least of all the students who will get their results and be happy or sad or relieved or irritated on Monday, or the students at the end of sixth-form crowding round school doors and opening envelopes in mid-August who may see new possibilities arising and sometimes big plans slip out the picture – to think that these complex and somewhat paper-heavy processes are undertaken by heartless bureaucrats. We do know. We are acutely aware of what our decisions will do, or might do. A mark here, a grade there. We know what they mean.

I look at Rosa in the garden and wonder, just sometimes, how we dare.

Early Years Teacher Standards

A slightly worrying post from Julian Grenier (how does he find the time?) about the difference between consultation and decision with regards to Early Years Teachers’ standards. His argument appears in his blog, linked here. The Best Practice Network site has the consultation/not-a-consultation standards on this page.

This is not to say that the Best Practice Network standards are wrong. I rather like the idea of teachers having

secure knowledge of early childhood development and how that leads to successful learning and development at school

Who wouldn’t?

Similarly, I really enjoy seeing teaching students when they

plan balanced and flexible activities and educational programmes that take into account the stage of development, circumstances and interests of children

But Julian is quite right: Does this mean that the Standards are now in place regardless of the analysis of the consultation?

 

Another short posting

This time, to post a link to Michael Rosen’s analysis of Michael Gove’s article in today’s Times.

“Some people… find it so difficult or painful to admit that they’re wrong that it is much more comfortable for them to keep repeating that everyone else is wrong instead.”

Criticism has continued in TES, too, or at least been documented there.

The Secretary of State was in no mood to back down, however,  after the battling at the NAHT conference  (here is his speech and here and here is some reporting of the occasion) – but I am reminded of the way that John Patten’s rhetoric also faltered, with parents  headteachers and teachers all described as historical bygones – Neanderthals, Dinosaurs – and how David Blunkett likewise overused the idea of educationalists as “cynical” when they (we) opposed what he suggested. This, on Patten, from the Indie in the depths of the nineties, makes for interesting comparisons, for example.

Are we (as we like to see ourselves) principled, educated, analytical – or maybe being SoS for Education is like being a cat-herder?

 

 

Truss continued

The best-argued riposte to Liz Truss so far has come, I think, from Julian Grenier in a post on Inside the Secret Garden. I even get a mention! – but that’s not why it’s impressive.  Well thought-out and impassioned stuff, Julian.

Of course, the situation is changing daily, with most media attention going to Nick Clegg’s newly-voiced opposition to and the PM’s possibly wavering support for Liz Truss’ model around ratios.  They are, of course  being watched carefully on all sides at a politically difficult time for both leaders. Just for info, here is their joint thinking from March.

Caught in the middle of more marking than I care to think of, I would merely point out that ratios only make up part of this tussle (can we call it a Trussle?).  She is also talking about the ways in which the graduate workforce can be afforded, and has either (depending on your interpretation) tried to sell this by talking about an adult-dominated pedagogy, or she has sought to introduce a sort of Key Stage 2 pedagogy to get away from the ‘chaos’ of free-flow play.  Ratios are an important part of this; how we afford well-paid graduates (they need to be well paid to pay off their University fees, of course) is another; whether play is at the heart of children’s learning strikes me as the most important point –  and one I really don’t want us to forget.

Grumbling

HE colleagues know that, as in any institution, politics (and specifically the politics of grumbling and Schadenfreude) are the bread-and-butter of daily contact.  St Benedict is acutely aware of this and warns in his Rule that acts of obedience should be carried out

non trepide, non tarde, non tepide, aut cum murmurio

The English translation doesn’t have the same ring to it:

without hesitation, delay, lukewarmness, grumbling

But you get the idea. Benedict is not a fan.

However, there does come a point, for example when ITE engages with policy, where grumbling can become protest, and there are probably occasions where this is right and proper.

Two examples are linked below, for anyone to contemplate: one, a satire on Michael Gove’s  latest dig at history teaching, the other links to the the continuing campaign against Liz Truss’ vision for Early Years, which I have written about twice  already.

Here is the Mr Men satire from Paul Bernal’s blog. Enjoy if you like, critique, consider. It is worth reading the Gove speech in full, of course – and again, “enjoy, critique, consider” (in whatever measure you can) are the watchwords.

And here and here are voices about Graduates and ratios in the EY workforce, and a report from the Telegraph on Liz Truss’ latest defence of her proposals.

While the Mr Gove satire raises a smile, and the to-ing and fro-ing around More Great Childcare is interesting (if not illuminating ), I thought I’d finish with a link to Julian Grenier’s piece on his Inside the Secret Garden blog. With these names in the frame, the battle is more serious.