Rant for the day

I just heard an educational 'expert' on 5 Live claiming that most parents would prefer their children to go to a school that was safe and well-ordered, rather than one that had high academic standards. 

Since when were these mutually exclusive? It's like saying that most people would prefer a hospital that was comfortable rather than one that cured you, or a restaurant that was clean to one that served nice food. 

For a school, being safe and well-ordered shouldn't be an option: it should go without saying. It's not the job of a school to provide a safe environment for children, any more than providing clean tables is the primary function of a restaurant. The job of a school is to educate all children to the highest possible standards. 

I wouldn't get so worked up by the opinion of a lone expert if it wasn't typical of a worrying trend. I wrote in this post about the tendency of some government advisors to set up a false dichotomy between an emphasis on 'wellbeing' and a focus on attainment (and to prefer the former). And as I wrote here, I predict that the result will be state education becoming reduced to therapy and 'skills' for the working class, while private schools carry on providing middle class kids with the knowledge they need to reproduce their social advantages.

And just in case it's not clear: this is not a reactionary call for a return to 'traditional' education, but a lament for the loss of a radical socialist vision of education as personal and social transformation, and of high aspirations for all.

Rant over.

Harry Potter as a 'Ziono-Hollywoodist' plot

Seems like the Islamists are as perturbed by the boy wizard as their fellow-fundamentalists on the Christian right. But these Iranian conspiracy theorists can't even get their facts straight. Rowling's books don't advocate the pure blood of a master race - that's precisely what Potter and his friends are fighting against, and the books offer a biting satire on racism and fascism, including the politico-religious kind represented by the current Iranian regime. 

Liberal paper gives pride of place to illiberal voices (again)

Sorry, everything's about the dear old Guardian (the paper we hate to love) today. The government's change of direction on cuddling up to 'moderate' Islamists, led by Hazel Blears, has attracted plaudits from anti-totalitarian democrats and progressives. 

So how did our leading liberal broadsheet choose to cover the news? With a double-page spread (you only get the lead story online) topped with this headline: 'Standoff with Muslim body overshadows new anti-terror launch', followed by 'analysis' by (who else?) Madeleine Bunting headed 'The government may be the only loser in this dispute', a photo captioned 'Hazel Blears's stance over the MCB is seen by some as grandstanding...' (by whom exactly?), and a selection of 'community voices' which includes those well-known voices of reason and moderation Salma Yaqoob of Respect and Ibrahim Hewitt of Hamas-linked charity Interpal. 

In other words, the Guardian thinks the story isn't the government's long overdue move to severe links with dodgy religious spokesmen, but the 'reaction' to it - and then, only the reaction of the excluded extremists and their apologists.

Fair and balanced?

Guilt by association

Am I being over-sensitive, or does anyone else find Steve Bell's cartoon, in today's Guardian, offensive?


It's the subliminal associations of this image that make me uncomfortable. When I first saw the picture, which sets an innocent domestic scene against the backdrop of a wall surmounted by barbed wire, it made me think immediately of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, John Boyne's novel about a young boy who is unaware of his father's work as the commandant of a Nazi concentration camp. The depiction of the two children, with their blond hair, Aryan looks and Thirties-style clothing, only reinforced this parallel, making me think the resonance was deliberate.

So rather than being a legitimate critique of Israel's military tactics in Gaza, I think Bell's cartoon allies itself with the distasteful - and yes, antisemitic - comparisons made by some critics between the actions of the Jewish state and the Nazi Holocaust. Or is it just me...

(Update: As Kellie points out in the comments below, and as I should have known, the cartoon explicitly references a WWI propaganda image, so maybe it was 'just me'...But deliberate or not, those other resonances were certainly there for me, and may have been for others, at however subliminal a level...)

Here's a short video by way of a response:

New Labour losing its way on education (again)

Today's front page Guardian headline - 'Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary shake-up' - is the kind of thing we've come to expect from the Daily Mail, rather than the 'serious' broadsheet press. As is the story below it, based as it is on leaked government 'plans' for the school curriculum. 

The real story (if there is one) is about proposals to allow teachers greater flexibility in deciding, within a broad framework, what they're going to teach - which should mark a refreshing change from two decades of ministerial prescription. 

The stuff about Twitter is a bit of a worry, though, and (if true) is further evidence of the tendency of the Brown administration to latch on to the latest trend (appointing celebrity chefs and TV psychologists as advisers is another example) in a vain attempt to court fading popularity. The Guardian claims the plans would ensure that children 'leave primary school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of communication'. But children don't need to be 'taught' these things: increasingly they know more about them than their teachers. And Wikipedia? If our children's schools are anything to go by, teachers already encourage an over-reliance on dubious internet sources for homework, rarely trusting their pupils to take home an actual book (now I'm beginning to sound like the Mail...)

I'm not too worked up about plans to let teachers choose which periods of history they focus on, which could mean (as the Guardian puts it, in shock-horror terms) that schools wouldn't be 'required' to teach the Victorians or the Second World War. But our offspring are fed up to the teeth with these topics, having returned them repeatedly throughout their primary and early secondary years. ('We haven't got to interview Grandma about her war work again, have we?')

I'm more concerned about the planned focus on 'health and well-being', which will apparently include lessons on diet and teaching children 'how to negotiate in their relationships'. More evidence of governmental paternalism and the therapeutic turn in education....

As John Bangs, head of education at the NUT, has said, this rag-bag of proposals looks like an uneasy mixture of responding to passing trends on the one hand and giving into political pressure on the other. Not much sign of a coherent plan to prepare children for informed, democratic citizenship in changing times....

 

Blog birthday

This blog is two years old today. It's been quite a year: at some points I wondered if I would ever again post about anything other than US presidential politics. Looking back, I notice that my themes and concerns haven't changed much during the year, only come into sharper focus: the need to defend liberty, secularism, reason and progress against totalitarianism, theocracy, irrationalism and reaction seems as urgent as ever.

It's been a year in which I've discovered some great new blogs and greatly expanded my network of virtual comrades and friends. So, to all of you who have remained loyal through a year of Obama-mania, ranting about religion, and lambasting of Brownian New Labour - thanks for your patience. And special thanks to those who have taken the trouble to comment on what I've written, and linked to my stuff on their own blogs.

The Taliban's war on schoolchildren

You often read about the number of civilian deaths caused by NATO forces in Afghanistan. It seems the US special forces 'have a reputation for raiding Afghan houses in the middle of the night, on the basis of intelligence that can be accurate or inaccurate, causing a disproportionate number of civilian casualties,' though many more innocent deaths are the result of air strikes. 

But I don't think anyone has ever accused the international task force of deliberately targeting non-combatants. Their Taliban opponents are very different, however, according to this account of an attack on a primary school in Asadabad. Seven children were killed and thirty-four wounded. Kristen Rouse, who served with the US Army National Guard in Afghanistan, says that it never occurred to her that the Taliban would target schoolchildren:

But we soon learned that the Taliban routinely burned school buildings, assassinated teachers, and even singled out the children themselves for maiming, dismemberment and attack. As the Taliban see it, boys should not be educated beyond rote learning of narrow theology, and girls must not be educated at all. The Asadabad atack - although one of the most severe to date - was hardly unique.

Now the news that the Pakistani government have conceded control of the Swat Valley to the Taliban, who proceeded to shut down nearly 200 schools, is giving Rouse sleepless nights. She's unhappy that American officials appear not have objected to the deal, and she reports that many of her fellow-veterans are also 'outraged' at the thought of the US negotiating with the Taliban:

as if they were just another Afghan political party and not a criminal gang that inflicts and enforces the most extreme ignorance, poverty and violence upon innocent people - upon schoolchildren.

(Via Norm).