Michael Gove's proposals to abolish GCSEs in favour of a return to something like the old O Levels has caused quite a storm. I don't work in the English system so cannot claim anything resembling expertise and perhaps shouldn't comment at all. But a number of observations and questions immediately present themselves so I'll put them here and if anyone can shed any light on them, I'd welcome any comments. They are, in no particular order, as follows:
In Scotland, there is only one exam board. My understanding is that in England there are several and that Gove thinks the competition between them has led to a race to the bottom standards-wise. I can see why this might happen so why can't Conservatives realise the very same principle might operate with other areas in which there is competition - specifically within education?
I have no opinion on whether GCSEs are easier than they used to be but even if one assumes they are, why is the solution to get rid of them, rather than simply making the existing ones more difficult?
GCSEs: why on earth do English pupils do so many of them?
Gove is surely right to suggest that we, or rather you, already have a two-tier education system? As an outside observer, one is struck by how Balkanised your education system is. Part of this has to do with the notion that competition is per se a Good Thing? Brings us back to the point about exam boards, doesn't it?
Teaching to the test has correctly been identified as one of the problems of the 'British schools system' (sic). There's a balanced piece from a leftwing writer here which touches on this point. But I don't see what the point of complaining about this is. As long as schools are ranked by exam results and the career prospects of both teachers and student are affected by them, it will continue. There are only two possible remedies: make the tests better or reduce the quantity of them. What I don't understand is why the latter option doesn't appeal more in a system where young people are obliged to stay in education until they're 18? In this framework, why have exams for all pupils at 16 at all?
From what I've read so far, not one commentator identifies central control as the problem. The twitter feed for #Gove is largely vitriolic: he's pompous, he's living in the fifties, he's wrong in various ways they say - all without identifying rule from Whitehall as a structure that is bound to get it wrong a fair bit of the time. Central government has an opinion on teaching methods (phonics = good), uniforms (good), the way furniture is arranged in teachers' rooms (rows are good, groups bad), streaming and setting (both good, especially the former) and so on. One can't help being concerned that those opposed to Goveism are missing the point here. What you need is not an alternative education secretary who 'gets it right' but the realisation that this level of central government interference is simply absurd.
Scotland vs England. A number of people - including some of my colleagues - think that our education systems are moving in opposite directions. I'm not so sure. North of the border, the new National 5 exams look like O Grades to me, while the non-externally assessed National 4 resembles the old 'non-certificate' classes we had in Scotland under the old regime. It's an element of the CfE that has slipped under the radar.
Gove was privately-educated in Scotland, which I knew - and is younger than me, which I did not. He gives the impression of being nostalgic for an age in English education that he has no personal experience of. How significant this is I couldn't say but what people south of the border should understand is that to be a Conservative here is not so far away from being the political equivalent of a Jehovah's Witness. His Sitz im Leben made him an ideologue.
Whether right or left, in all the commentary there's very little reflection on what education is for - but what just about everyone seems to agree on is that it isn't about the pure pursuit of knowledge, something that Paul Anderson regrets. Criticism of Goveism has focused on the effect his proposed reforms will have on social mobility. Fine if you think the primary function of education is to be the engine of meritocracy but I would finish with the observation that some of us take the view that even if it was possible, it doesn't follow that it is desirable.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Friday, June 08, 2012
Educational blasphemy
I couldn't say for sure because it's been over a decade since I went for one but I'd imagine that if I managed to work into an interview that I placed a high value on uniform, homework and attendance I'd get the ticky-boxy, noddy-head in affirmation sort of response one was once accustomed to seeing at these sort of events.
Yet if I had to pick the three areas that constitute the greatest waste of human energy in schools today, it would be these - in that order.
Yet if I had to pick the three areas that constitute the greatest waste of human energy in schools today, it would be these - in that order.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Charles and the future of the monarchy
Nick Cohen argues that when Queen Elizabeth dies, Charles III will be a strong argument for republicanism. On Charles' unsuitability for the job it's difficult to disagree. Nick cites his enthusiasm for quack medicine and his interventions into public health debates and his political meddling generally.
It should indeed be of serious concern to advocates of monarchy in Britain that the heir to the throne does not appear to know what his job is going to be, despite this being a role he has supposedly been preparing for all of his life. Examples of this are legion but one that stood out to me was hearing him tell one of the Dimbleby brothers that his divorce and remarriage wasn't anyone's business but his own. But he will become titular head of the Church of England so I'm afraid that while many would agree matters like this should be a private matter, they just aren't.
However, those who favour the republican form of government - and I include myself in a half-hearted way - would perhaps do better to recognise the problems that it has had historically and the potential difficulties Britain would have making the transition from constitutional monarchy to this system of government.
We would do better to acknowledge that the record of republics just simply isn't that good. You only have to factor in China and the USSR to see this and there's also the important historical example specific to England that Nick himself cites:
Perhaps Nick is right to think that Charles will be sufficiently disastrous as a monarch to puncture this previously steady support but another thing I was wondering is - and I'm opening this as a sort of notes and queries exercise - how many countries have made the transition from monarchies to republics without a regime-change? By this we mean governmental collapse after defeat in war, revolution, coup d'etat or independence from an empire or merely a larger political unit. There may be one or two countries that have simply decided to ditch a monarchy but there's not many examples that immediately spring to mind - and it clearly isn't the usual historical path from monarchy to republic.
A number of political scientists - including Juan Linz linked above - have argued that imitation of the American example has been a curse in areas of the world like Latin America because whereas the first priority of the framers of the American constitution was how to limit government, in these places the problem has often been a history of having no properly functioning government to limit in the first place. I suspect many British republicans are also dependent on the American example. It's difficult to know which others, even in the European context, they would be using. Germany and France as they are now perhaps - but we wouldn't have wanted the path to modernity these two took, surely?
It should indeed be of serious concern to advocates of monarchy in Britain that the heir to the throne does not appear to know what his job is going to be, despite this being a role he has supposedly been preparing for all of his life. Examples of this are legion but one that stood out to me was hearing him tell one of the Dimbleby brothers that his divorce and remarriage wasn't anyone's business but his own. But he will become titular head of the Church of England so I'm afraid that while many would agree matters like this should be a private matter, they just aren't.
However, those who favour the republican form of government - and I include myself in a half-hearted way - would perhaps do better to recognise the problems that it has had historically and the potential difficulties Britain would have making the transition from constitutional monarchy to this system of government.
We would do better to acknowledge that the record of republics just simply isn't that good. You only have to factor in China and the USSR to see this and there's also the important historical example specific to England that Nick himself cites:
"As so often, hyperbole will hide fear. In this case, the all-too rational fear of monarchists that Charles III will be the best advert the republican cause has had since Charles I."But it is the very case of Charles I that creates problems for British republicans because the previous experiment with it didn't go very well and arguably it is this, along with republicanism's association in people's minds with Irish terrorism, that has made a majority of the British electorate adverse to the British republic.
Perhaps Nick is right to think that Charles will be sufficiently disastrous as a monarch to puncture this previously steady support but another thing I was wondering is - and I'm opening this as a sort of notes and queries exercise - how many countries have made the transition from monarchies to republics without a regime-change? By this we mean governmental collapse after defeat in war, revolution, coup d'etat or independence from an empire or merely a larger political unit. There may be one or two countries that have simply decided to ditch a monarchy but there's not many examples that immediately spring to mind - and it clearly isn't the usual historical path from monarchy to republic.
A number of political scientists - including Juan Linz linked above - have argued that imitation of the American example has been a curse in areas of the world like Latin America because whereas the first priority of the framers of the American constitution was how to limit government, in these places the problem has often been a history of having no properly functioning government to limit in the first place. I suspect many British republicans are also dependent on the American example. It's difficult to know which others, even in the European context, they would be using. Germany and France as they are now perhaps - but we wouldn't have wanted the path to modernity these two took, surely?
Saturday, May 19, 2012
On Roundheads and Cavaliers
This post from Martin on the above subject is that most fabulous of combinations; quite lovely and makes you think - which is why if it were a woman, I'd overcome my natural shyness, dash out and buy her a bunch of flowers and importune her with my affections.
Cavaliers or Roundheads: who are you for? Martin's answer is one I've come across frequently. "I know I'm supposed to say, Roundhead - but..." His answer is a subtle, interesting and personal version of a more common response that so many people, including myself, tend to give to this question - and one that arrives at what I think are valid historical conclusions.
At its core there is the pertinent observation that there is a tendency to view past conflicts and disputes through a modern prism that makes taking sides more congenial:
And by extension, this raises a couple of interesting and difficult historical questions, particularly for people of a leftwing disposition. One is that however difficult it may be to accept, it is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that at various points in history, monarchy has been - particularly in relation to the power of the clerisy - a force for tolerance, liberty and the insistence that there should be a distinction between what is considered a sin and a crime.
Martin mentions Mary Stuart in this context but I am more interested in the reign of her son James VI with regards to this question. That James was a convinced Protestant is testimony to how little input his mother had in his upbringing. This is understandable given the amount of her life that she spent in prison.
Cavaliers or Roundheads: who are you for? Martin's answer is one I've come across frequently. "I know I'm supposed to say, Roundhead - but..." His answer is a subtle, interesting and personal version of a more common response that so many people, including myself, tend to give to this question - and one that arrives at what I think are valid historical conclusions.
At its core there is the pertinent observation that there is a tendency to view past conflicts and disputes through a modern prism that makes taking sides more congenial:
"In recent years, there has been a tendency to confer retrospective secular sainthood on groups like the Levellers and to throw an ahistorical social-democratic patina over the Roundheads generally."Absolutely right. We tend to think that the modern questions of monarchy versus republicanism are prefigured in this age, forgetting that the Respublica advocated by Puritans was the very antithesis of the tolerant secularism imagined by the modern reader.
And by extension, this raises a couple of interesting and difficult historical questions, particularly for people of a leftwing disposition. One is that however difficult it may be to accept, it is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that at various points in history, monarchy has been - particularly in relation to the power of the clerisy - a force for tolerance, liberty and the insistence that there should be a distinction between what is considered a sin and a crime.
Martin mentions Mary Stuart in this context but I am more interested in the reign of her son James VI with regards to this question. That James was a convinced Protestant is testimony to how little input his mother had in his upbringing. This is understandable given the amount of her life that she spent in prison.
James was, by modern standards, intolerably intolerant. The spike in the witch-hunting hysteria in late 16th century Scotland, for example, was due in no small part to the fact that he took a personal interest in the subject to the extent of personally participating in a witchcraft trial.
Yet it is testimony to the spirit of that age that he was in relation to the Kirk a force for relative religious toleration. There were a number of struggles between Church and State in this period and at base many of the grievances held by the Presbyterian faction had to do with the King's reluctance to take stronger action against those Catholics left in the Kingdom of Scotland.
One interesting footnote in this period of Scottish history is that while it is entirely cogent for Scottish Nationalists to argue for independence with the continuation of the British monarch as Scotland's Head of State, one could argue that it was the Union of the Crowns in 1603, rather than the Act of Union in 1707, that left Scotland in a position where the hard-faced Calvinists of the Church of Scotland were free to exercise an influence over the social and cultural life of this country so profound and lasting that its effects are still felt to this very day. I think it was Callum Brown who said that, "One could be forgiven for thinking that the purpose of the Reformation in Scotland was to eliminate purgatory by getting it over while people were still alive."
Or more briefly, prior to the eighteenth century a republican was not the secular creature we imagine today but rather someone more likely to advocate something we would now describe as 'theocracy'.
The other interesting question is, what attitude do we take to events that we can see as prefiguring historical developments that we would identify with now but if we'd have to endure them at the time would have found intolerable? I can't even begin to answer this question on the grounds that it's just too damn hard. There is also the fact that those who attempt this, whether it be Niall Ferguson on the right or Eric Hobsbawm on the left, tend to suffer the fate of being put noisily beyond the pale by posturing hacks and bloggers of various kinds. I dare say this is justified but it would be nice if their critics would come up with alternative answers of their own.
Yet it is testimony to the spirit of that age that he was in relation to the Kirk a force for relative religious toleration. There were a number of struggles between Church and State in this period and at base many of the grievances held by the Presbyterian faction had to do with the King's reluctance to take stronger action against those Catholics left in the Kingdom of Scotland.
One interesting footnote in this period of Scottish history is that while it is entirely cogent for Scottish Nationalists to argue for independence with the continuation of the British monarch as Scotland's Head of State, one could argue that it was the Union of the Crowns in 1603, rather than the Act of Union in 1707, that left Scotland in a position where the hard-faced Calvinists of the Church of Scotland were free to exercise an influence over the social and cultural life of this country so profound and lasting that its effects are still felt to this very day. I think it was Callum Brown who said that, "One could be forgiven for thinking that the purpose of the Reformation in Scotland was to eliminate purgatory by getting it over while people were still alive."
Or more briefly, prior to the eighteenth century a republican was not the secular creature we imagine today but rather someone more likely to advocate something we would now describe as 'theocracy'.
The other interesting question is, what attitude do we take to events that we can see as prefiguring historical developments that we would identify with now but if we'd have to endure them at the time would have found intolerable? I can't even begin to answer this question on the grounds that it's just too damn hard. There is also the fact that those who attempt this, whether it be Niall Ferguson on the right or Eric Hobsbawm on the left, tend to suffer the fate of being put noisily beyond the pale by posturing hacks and bloggers of various kinds. I dare say this is justified but it would be nice if their critics would come up with alternative answers of their own.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Things you just can't economise on
What with the economy being as it is, probably most of us try and save dosh by avoiding common consumer pitfall like using price as an indicator of quality or being a slave to brands, especially with stuff you buy all the time. So, for example, I reckon Sainsbury's own brand vodka is not as good as Russian Standard or Absolut but is both cheaper and vastly superior to that best-selling brand of paint-stripper known as Smirnoff. And I take the view that Calvin Klein underwear is both literally and metaphorically pants. You might not agree with these examples but you know the sort of thing I mean.
But I was wondering if there's anything people have found that it is impossible to economise on? I don't mean things that you can find cheaper or discounted if you root around enough - this could apply to any product. And I don't just mean things that may be a false economy in the long run but function properly. Cheaper washing up liquid might not last as long as Fairy but it cleans your dishes perfectly well. Rather, was thinking of things that just don't do the goddamn job? I reckon you get what you pay for with the following:
Razors. Cheap razors give you a shave that's a little too close, don'tcha find? You want to avoid turning up with bits of bogroll stuck to your face? You need to pay for it. Speaking of which...
Bogroll. Half the price but you need to use four times as much with nasty cheap abrasive bogroll. It's just not worth the suffering.
Guitar strings. More expensive ones last longer but sound better than cheapo ones even when they're freshly on. Knew this guy who had fabulous guitars. He had fabulous guitars because he had plenty of money - but said he would never pay more than a fiver for strings? Lost his damn mind if you ask me. I'm a strong believer in the power of strings. Want your guitar to sound good? Put some decent goddamn strings on it then.
Ciggies. Mayfair? Blech! You might as well give up. Although I guess we all should...
Jewellery. My girlfriend's suggestion. I wouldn't know but won't be challenging her view by trying to smuggle some Gerald Ratner shit past her.
Anyone disagree or have suggestions of their own? Would welcome contributions if this stupid comments system allows.
But I was wondering if there's anything people have found that it is impossible to economise on? I don't mean things that you can find cheaper or discounted if you root around enough - this could apply to any product. And I don't just mean things that may be a false economy in the long run but function properly. Cheaper washing up liquid might not last as long as Fairy but it cleans your dishes perfectly well. Rather, was thinking of things that just don't do the goddamn job? I reckon you get what you pay for with the following:
Razors. Cheap razors give you a shave that's a little too close, don'tcha find? You want to avoid turning up with bits of bogroll stuck to your face? You need to pay for it. Speaking of which...
Bogroll. Half the price but you need to use four times as much with nasty cheap abrasive bogroll. It's just not worth the suffering.
Guitar strings. More expensive ones last longer but sound better than cheapo ones even when they're freshly on. Knew this guy who had fabulous guitars. He had fabulous guitars because he had plenty of money - but said he would never pay more than a fiver for strings? Lost his damn mind if you ask me. I'm a strong believer in the power of strings. Want your guitar to sound good? Put some decent goddamn strings on it then.
Ciggies. Mayfair? Blech! You might as well give up. Although I guess we all should...
Jewellery. My girlfriend's suggestion. I wouldn't know but won't be challenging her view by trying to smuggle some Gerald Ratner shit past her.
Anyone disagree or have suggestions of their own? Would welcome contributions if this stupid comments system allows.
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