"These severely utilitarian and philistine times"

It's from the Department of the Bleeding Obvious but we'll overlook that on this occasion because the report from the Cambridge Primary Review is a beautiful thing, people:

"Children's lives are being impoverished by the government's insistence that schools focus on literacy and numeracy at the expense of creative teaching, the biggest review of the primary school curriculum in 40 years finds today.

Labour has failed to tackle decades of over-prescription in the curriculum and added to it with its own strategies in literacy and numeracy, which take up nearly half the school week, the Cambridge University review of the primary curriculum found.

Children are leaving school lacking knowledge about the arts and humanities having spent too many years "tied to a desk" learning times tables, the head of the review, Robin Alexander, said."

It's full of goodness criticising the modern tendency to have a goddamn test every other day, arguing the "the assessment tail wags the curriculum dog". And there's other gorgeous stuff about Whitehall attempting to micro-manage everything and about how it doesn't even fucking work because "despite this too many children still leave primary school having failed to master the 3Rs."

Simple case of a Weberian situation where a rational means - the aforementioned goddamn tests - becoming an end in themselves and therefore irrational. I've been making this point for forty-five years - a couple of years before I was born and quite a few before the National Curriculum was introduced.

Whom the gods wish to destroy, first they make accountable. And make no mistake, the Tories wanted to destroy teachers and state education. That Thatcher in trousers Blair who hated the public sector just as much as his heroine simply made matters worse. The Shadow Children's Secretary, Michael Gove, said, "I now realise that the arrogant Tory centralising policies that I supported have all but ruined education in this country". Journalists looked on in astonishment as he then took out a revolver and blew his own brains out.

Ok, he didn't really. What he actually said was... ach, who cares what he said? His conspicuous failure to blow his own brains out is the important point.

Anyway, since the vast majority of teachers have been arguing the same points made in the report for years to no avail, I've come to the conclusion that talking about it is completely fucking pointless. Instead, I'm increasingly coming round to brother Will's philosophy that what is really required at this time is the acquisition of weaponry in order to go on a killing spree. (His argument about tea, on the other hand, is frankly an outrage and possibly blasphemous.)

Failing that, there's the Holden Caulfield option of getting a job pumping petrol and pretending to be a deaf-mute so you don't have to engage in conversation with people who talk shit. Because I'm tired of listening to and reading people talking shit about education - journalists, bloggers, politicians, parents, and yea verily - even teachers themselves. 99.9% of you are so full of shit. Makes me so tired. Soul-tired.

Regardless of which side of the fence I'm on, the grass looks rather brown and withered to me

In Comment is Pants, Sarfraz Manzoor argues that people who extol the benefits of singledom protest too much, are self-deluding, and should avail themselves of the joys of coupledom:

"The most magical thing about relationships is realising how much joy one gets from not being selfish, of how much happiness can be gained by making someone else happy. It's the happiness of the first call in the morning and the last one at night; the warm comforting glow of knowing that there is someone for whom you are the most important person in the world. Meet the right person and you are with someone who makes you better, who lifts you out of your worst habits and helps you be the best you can be and being all those things for your partner. It is about cooking meals for the both of you rather than heating up another TV dinner alone. It is about realising and relishing the fact that there are things more precious and pleasurable than me, myself and I."

No kids yet then? Call me an old cynic but this sounds like it's either completely made up or it's quite a new relationship. Yet no mention of that essential part of the magic of togetherness - getting in touch with each other's inner sex demon. How boring is that?

There's not a lot of balance here, is there? I've been married and it definitely has its advantages but among the myriad downsides of this arrangement is that occasionally you have to spend time with other married people.

I'm not saying it's always the case but the business of sitting around with a bunch of neutered adults talking about shit that doesn't even matter can be an experience so excruciatingly dull it makes you want to rip out your own eyeballs. Especially if you're stuck in a room with some smug tosser like Sarfraz Manzoor.

School assemblies hoo-hah

I used to teach in a school that attempted to have a inclusive 'let's celebrate the gorgeous mosaic of our diversity' assembly once. Even by today's standards, it was an embarrassing and really very stupid event. I did wonder at the time: who couldn't be offended by this crap? I was offended because this sort of vacuous nonsense gives legitimacy to the notion that faith per se is a virtue - never mind what people actually believe or whether the beliefs being celebrated contradict each other. I wouldn't know but I'd imagine that anyone who took their particular religion even remotely seriously would have found it fairly offensive too - although if memory serves, it was near the end of term and most pupils had the good grace not to turn up in the first place.

This experience forms part of the reason why I'm inclined to be suspicious of this story about a headteacher in Sheffield who supposedly resigned because she encountered such resistance to her attempt to abolish separate religious assemblies in favour of multi-faith assemblies.

Perhaps the small number of parents who complained and allegedly accused her of being racist were indeed being entirely unreasonable. I don't know - and neither do you. I do know, however, that you wouldn't have to be devoutly religious to object to your child being subjected to this shit. I know I wouldn't be too happy about it. The fact that it's the law to have assemblies of this nature doesn't wash - anyone who knows anything about schools understands that this practice is honoured more in the breech than in the observance.

Unlike some people, I'd be disinclined to rush to judgment. We're told only a small number of parents complained, that the headteacher was supported by a majority of the staff and the parents - yet not only does she resign but the chair of governors does too? "She has been hounded out. Very few people objected to this change.", according to the Mail. Hounded out by 'very few people'? I doubt we're getting the full story here - but frankly it isn't interesting enough to find out the rest. The internal politics of a school distract from the wider point, which is that this wouldn't happen in the first place if the sensible thing was done and collective worship in schools was scrapped altogether.

"A mother with three children at the school said that Mrs Robinson was "a marvellous head and loved by the children". "What she was doing was quite right. The children sit together in class so why shouldn't they share a school assembly?" she said.

Because in class, there's no reason not to sit together. Two plus two equals four regardless of race or creed. But with religious assemblies, this is not so. There is good reason why children of other faiths or no faith might not want to sing 'Onward Christian Soldiers'. I was made to sing this when I was at primary school. Can't say I appreciated it - and I certainly don't want my son to be made to sing it. If the headteacher of this school was making all the pupils sing 'Onward Christian Soldiers', or whatever the modern day equivalent is, what she was doing was not 'quite right'.

Another year older...

It was actually last week but didn't celebrate until the weekend.



I found it quite difficult to keep the joy and excitement under control.

This old age thing has very little going for it, in my view.

Still, I got some cool pressies - most of them bottle-shaped, which was good. They included this one...



Not sure if the picture captures it that well - it's a bottle of Absolut vodka in a red sequined gimp mask that has been specifically designed to house bottles of Absolut vodka.

You could argue that a society that has the time and resources to produce red sequined gimp masks specifically designed for bottles of Absolut vodka is a little decadent.

It should go without saying that I couldn't possibly agree with this.

Misfortunes of the present age #1

That everyone has an opinion on everything. Tiring, don't you find?

I suspect this is what was behind this rant I found via Norm:

"I don’t believe I have the right to an opinion about something I know nothing about—constitutional law, for example, or sailing — a notion that puts me sadly out of step with a growing majority of my countrymen, many of whom may be unable to tell you anything at all about Islam, say, or socialism, or climate change, except that they hate it, are against it, don’t believe in it."

Norm's comments are to the point. It got my attention because pupils go on about their right to their opinion quite often. I won't tell you what I usually say to them because you'll worry your children are being subjected to slow-death by sarcasm - with some justification.

It's the old failure to distinguish between rights and duties, innit? People wouldn't get themselves into such a mess if they got this but it isn't very well understood, in my experience. People do indeed have a right to their opinion - it's the idea that this creates some corresponding obligation on my part, as if everyone's opinion was equally valid and equally worthy of respect. Clearly they're not.

Some of today's youth get really quite offended if you say this - so you have to explain it to them. Very slowly. You're entitled to your opinion that the world is flat but I'm afraid it's round. The evidence is copious as it is overwhelming. Plus I've seen it on the telly and I'm afraid the whole faked moon-landings isn't an opinion I'm going to waste precious minutes of my life listening to.

Frankly some adults aren't much better. We see this in the whole 'respecting other people's beliefs' thing. I believe this, therefore I'm entitled to your respect. Afraid not. You can believe, for example, that every word of the Bible is true if you wish but the law of non-contradiction, which is essential for coherent thought, makes it really rather difficult to respect this view, especially when it becomes obvious that the holder of this opinion hasn't read the damn thing all the way through.