The Secrets Of Wildlife

David Attenborough, the nation’s expert on wildlife, appeared on BBC4 last night in a programme about Grammar Schools only to remind me of other kinds of wild life he may prefer to forget. There was an eerie moment at the beginning when an old photograph was shown of a sports pavilion in front of which was a rugger team.

David was one of them and as the photograph is clearly one of the school team then David must have been good enough to be selected. As some of the Wyggeston School team in Leicester went on to play in the 1st XV’s of a number of decent local sides as well as The Tigers, then an invitation team, and for the county then David would need to be able to play at that level.

David’s father, Frederick, was then Principal of the Leicester University College, a respected academic establishment with high standards, on the same site as the school. It is likely that Frederick would have been hard pushed, despite his position, to pay for a public school education for his three sons and two adopted daughters.

Because Frederick had begun his career as an Elementary School Teacher and had made a good career by long personal study and application. Before then his family were of ordinary Midlands working stock. By one of those strange twists he was in teaching in Liverpool in 1911 just round the corner from Alois Hitler, the elder brother of Adolf. I wonder if Frederick was ever waited on by him in the café?

The University College was founded in 1921 by local patronage and the school was one of the many decayed old grammar schools that were revived at the end of the 19th Century. By the 1930’s new buildings had given it facilities well beyond those of many secondary schools notably the creation of a strong science department. The City had grown rapidly and needed a secondary educated class.

Many of the boys were from the City’s professional, commercial, office and business families but there was a decent intake from the Elementary Schools in the mix. Most would go on to that kind of work at 16 via part time study and only a minority would have entered the Sixth Form to go to University.

It would give David a breadth of experience, contact, variety and interest lost to those who went off to boarding schools. It was a much more adult environment and the world of work and its realities were all about him. Also, as well as working hard, they liked to play hard and Leicester was a rugger town for all classes.

And David was a rugger man as a teenager. The school was adjacent to Victoria Park, then home to several local rugby clubs with the Old Wyggestonians somewhere else. They intermingled a great deal. Some of those in the school at David’s time who stayed in Leicester later went on a memorable rugby tour of Lancashire.

A few years later, one of David’s immediate contemporaries at school, Michael Green, who was a few months younger, wrote “The Art Of Coarse Rugby” as well as a series of articles about these very teams. Looking at it now, even accepting that it told less than half the tale and all of them had been in the armed services, there was some roistering behaviour that makes the Bullingdon look like a lot of maiden aunts.

But then you had to be there, but why did David give up the game for other wildlife?

Higher And Lower Education

There is a report today that five schools, four of which are fee paying dominate the numbers of youngsters entering the elite universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The fifth is a state school in Cambridge with a somewhat academic parent base.

Does nobody consider that the problem of social mobility in this respect can be at the other end in the graduate recruitment policies and practices of certain leading companies and institutions?

News International, for example, is a major recruiter from those universities as are all our major political parties.

Flogging Dead Horses

Perhaps, I am not best placed to say much about teacher’s strikes or what happens in schools. It is now twenty five years since I was in one for matters to do with education and only twice since and then over twenty years ago as part of music audiences which had nothing to do with the schools.

There are rumours that changes have taken place. But in my time there were also changes. There was the notion that Elementary Education was no longer enough. It was argued that many, the radicals asserted all, of youngsters should have some form of basic secondary education, lasting even as long as the age of 15.

It was a few years after my time that this came about and there are some ancients who once felt it would not do much good who now claim to be vindicated. Also, there is in my memory the indirect experience of people whose education began in the 1860’s and 1870’s. In the extended family some began teaching in the 1880’s.

In all that time we have a plethora of reports, commission, campaigns and all the rest that have produced the situation we have now. I do not use the words “service” or “system” or “sector” because it is not clear at all what it is for. Also, this emanated from government, interested bodies and vested interests, notably the trade unions representing the teachers.

What rarely appears in the discussions, or in the economic equations, is what we are dealing with. No, I am not going down the pupil as “client” or “customer” road, I am talking about what goes on in the heads of young people as they are going through the education years. In my experience this has changed and neither government nor teachers take on board the implications.

Imagine a world with no radio, TV, film and where coloured visual imagery was limited to a small number of options. Imagine growing up in a crowded house with several siblings and maybe three generations with perhaps other family or lodgers as well.

Imagine that for almost all of your class work would begin at 11 or 12 and that might be for sixty or so hours a week. That work normally would be very physical and that capability was critical. Very often you would be just one of a team and as a child you would have spent so much time on the streets such a group would be the norm.

If you were a little more prosperous with higher status then some form of shop or clerical job might be had, the group would be that of the church you attended, on the whole stricter conditions might be applied, but otherwise unless you have access to the most expensive books it would be much the same.
From this we can move on down the generations in stages as the world has changed. Print material became much more available with more in colour. Then came film and then recorded music. With this came the tidal wave of American influence on popular culture. By the 1930’s it became clear that Britain may have had the biggest empire but America was winning the war of the film and music media.

So what was in the heads of the pupils by the 1940’s was radically different from that of the 1880’s. Since then the pace has quickened. Firstly there has been TV and bigger film and magazine output with a strengthened media and marketing force targeting the teenager and then moving on to the younger child and then the youngest.

In the most recent decades we have had the early computer years running parallel with the media and marketing forces of the time. Now the coming of the internet and the whole raft of satellite and other communications systems has transformed the young into almost a different animal.

In short what the pupil groups are that now face the teacher are almost another form of life from what the teacher was at their age. They must certainly be very different from my own youngsters of the sixties and seventies. Quite how they compare with my mine and those I knew from long before is astonishing.

The expectations of the length of education, the nature of the work they might aspire to, how that work is governed and what they might encounter and what future there may or may not be has gone beyond any sensible comprehension.

What might or might not be considered “punishment” has changed a great deal since my Headteacher pursued difficult parents down the street waving the policeman’s truncheon used in lieu of inadequate canes.

In the item “Punk Banking” a few days ago, I pointed out that the punk years were those of many of our political and financial superiors and I think it shows. This applies also in the education world.

That they have to manage youngsters whose world and home experience is so radically different from theirs is possibly something they cannot cope with.

Welcome to the 21st Century.

Training Students For The Future

PRESS RELEASE

UNIVERSITY OF HITHER GREEN

As part of its ongoing reformulation of structures and engineering of social capability and responsiveness to a fast changing challenge in the learning environment the Faculty of Humanity and Science has created a new degree course. This has been achieved by the internal readjustment of revenue and capital flows.

Those students presently enrolled in the Physics, Chemistry, Modern Languages, European History, Classics and Philosophy courses will be reallocated with credits for modules that either have been completed or would have been if the student in question can be deemed to be present.

The new course is as follows:

COURSE 73C

B. Sc. In “Railway Observation And Analysis”

First Year Course

Spatial Analysis in Linear Perception
Configuration of Platforms for Flow Mathematics
History of Railway Provision
Development Economics of Rail Systems
Structures of Form and Avoidance of Legal Constraints

Second Year Course

The Elements of Movement and Distance
Recording Techniques and Numerical Awareness
Directional Learning and Acquisition
Applied Complex Movement
Basic Sound Communication Elements

Third Year Course

Practical Climatic Change, Chaos and Collapse Dynamics
Photographic and Related Technical Basics
Advanced Communication Failure Techniques
Public Relations and Animal Herding Studies
Software Systems and Breakdown Theory

Fourth Year Course

This will be based on the presentation of a Dissertation extending Third Year course work with special reference to Climate Change, Chaos, Communication Limitations and Human Deresourcing. This will be based on Field Work to be undertaken at Clapham Junction, West Hampstead, Willesden and Old Oak Common.

The successful completion of the course will entitle the graduate to access on designated rail stations and termini for the purpose of enumeration of rail stock.

All Shuffle There; All Cough In Ink

Education has not been the same since the decline and fall of the Ink Monitors. At one time in an Elementary School (11-14 then leave school) each class might have one. Mostly “he’s”, they would be a trusted pupil and if they proved reliable, polite and diligent they might earn a reference to be a shop assistant or even a clerk.

They learned to check the inkpot at each desk, judge the quantity necessary and pour in the right amount of ink from a jar. To do this they would have to be entrusted with access to the classroom cupboard and would both obtain and return the jar properly and without supervision.

This was integral to a whole culture of steel pen nibs and scarce paper when writing was a form of calligraphy and care needed in the shaping of each letter, the accuracy of each word and the whole structure of a sentence and paragraph. It is a world long since lost.

But think of what might have happened in our modern age had ink still been in use. It is certain that persons of 15-17 or any younger age could never be allowed to undertake such onerous duties. Nor could teachers or cleaning staff, it would be outside their conditions of service. There would have to be Writing Materials Replenishment Assistants with negotiated salaries and comparable conditions of service.

This would take management and to avoid the post code lottery of differences a staff at local authority level to co-ordinate, manage and supply the needed staff and materials. Clearly high level consultancy would need to be brought in to satisfy the auditors and others that it was all to be done as it should be.

But could local authorities actually be entirely trusted with matters of this kind? It would cry out for central direction and thinking. Possibly, it would begin as part of one government department or another.

Then in recent years an Ink Procurement and Inspection Agency would have been established with fully staffed at salary levels to compete with senior management in the financial sector to ensure that all the angles were covered, the targets set and statistics and supervision ensured.

There would be research budgets. A new department would be funded at the University of East Dunwich or somewhere to ensure only inks of the highest quality, specifications and safety standards were in use and to develop new inks.

The standardisation of ink procurement would mean major contracts with all that this entailed. No doubt agreements would be reached in some foreign place for out sourcing all the production for transport by container ships. This would help the UK carbon footprint and rid the nation of all the nasty inky manufacturing pollutants.

By some miracle of accounting and with all the consultancy, financing and layers of management and control the filling of inkpots would become critical to keeping up the GDP and stimulation of the velocity of circulation of public sector funding.

The big question is given the need to increase the consumption of ink during a time of economic difficulty whether the use of ink pellets (wodges of paper dripping with ink used as a missile fired by the skilled use of rubber bands) by alienated victims of oppression in the classroom should be subject to reduced or no regulation.

I keep rubber bands in my desk and can still hit a moving target at fifteen paces. Will my time come again to cop the teacher or the Ink Monitor one behind the ear?

Taking A Beating In School

In the media row over which schools were which and whose new building had been taken off the list for renewal there was one key element which was little mentioned in the media parades of proud parents, all those weeping children and anxious teachers.

It was that when Mr. Gove looked at the financial figures he had thrown a bigger wobbly than when the average family looks at the credit card bill after Christmas. By any standard the financial figures were horrific. What I cannot begin to understand is how any functional government machinery could come up with plans to build on the basis of deals like that.

The only explanation is that the culture of bonuses, favours, and financial kickbacks was such that these people were all literally pillaging and plundering the Education budget for decades to come. Mr. Gove was going to be damned if he did and damned if he did not question what exactly these plans consisted of, how they were to be paid for and on what basis.

Looking back over the nature of school education building in its various phases from the early 19th Century through the 20th until the last couple of decades what I do see is the sharp contrast between how it was managed in the past and what has been happening recently.

There were never the anything like the numbers of consultants, legal people and all the financial elements that have been brought in so recently. In a typical County or County Borough of the 20th Century, or its successors in the 1970’s through to the 1980’s at management level there would be a handful of people in the commissioning Department handling new building as part of a wider package of duties.

Then there would be a couple of architects either from within or contracted according to strict rules and a couple of people each from Legal and The Treasurers. That would be it. Before 1974 in some of the small Local Education Authorities the building programmes would be managed by literally a handful of people. Yet they managed to put up decent buildings for the period.

Moreover their salaries and expenses, part of the routine annual budget and determined by fixed national scales, would be paid out of revenue. Additionally, whilst building and fixtures would be a capital item with expenditure and municipal borrowing firmly controlled, kitting out and putting in all the consumables again would be out of revenue. None of this would be allowed against added debt and again within clear limits.

If so much management of building programmes could be done by so few and a lot of it quite well and with massively lower comparative on-costs, what on earth has been going on in the last decade? Why at management level should it take twenty times as many people on typically five or more times each the real salaries of those of the past and with added bonuses and incentives to build worse buildings?

And all of it on borrowed money at almost penal terms. There are other awkward questions. Looking at some of the buildings that are to be replaced, they are not that old. What has been going on in relation to the maintenance and repair budgets? If a lot of these buildings have been allowed to run down so much that urgent replacement is now necessary, who is responsible?

Another is the distribution of these projects and who benefits. Are by any chance a disproportionate number of them in former Labour held or marginal seats? In other words did the Labour government in its last months having run down schools repairs and maintenance suddenly come up with a wheeze to throw money at some localities and ask all its many best friends in financial services to help come up with the money off balance sheet?

For Mr. Gove there is one lesson and a hard one. It is that none of his Department, the Agencies with which it is connected and others can be remotely trusted either to give him reliable information or to do the job that needs to be done. Somehow he will have to check, check and double check everything they handle and bring to his attention. He, and his colleagues are going to put some heavy stick about.

Because almost wherever you go and whichever department of state in Whitehall you can think of, the same problems arise, the same situations will be found and what was once the Civil Service is now a motley crew of incompetents and shape shifters on the make personally and to hell with the notion of serving the ordinary public.

In the recent media excitement about school buildings the story has been about denying a number of people what they had been led to expect. A lot of us are going to get this soon in many ways and probably worse.

What we have to face is whether the new administration are up to it or whether they will just stumble along trying to make the best of a very bad job.

Education, Or Something

My alma mater is not one of your ivy clad listed buildings laden with ancient symbols and festooned with reminders of past elites. It is now a collection of the grimmer examples of building of the last 120 years or so, and whilst architects may have been involved in some cases, my bet is that they took the money and ran. In my time there were only two, but the establishment has spread like a nasty rash over several blocks over the many decades since.

There are a small number of portraits of those who presided over it in the past. All were and are good and worthy gentlemen, and those who look up at them have no idea of who they were and why their pictures are hanging in this most forlorn part of the oldest building. It could be the Easter Island of central London.

But one thing is certain, the place lays claim to be a major player in The Knowledge Economy, and as the economy as a whole is shrinking, and the fiscal consequence of the crunch take effect, they are very worried. It is not just that so many graduates this year will not be getting the jobs they hoped for when they started, and for many there will never be that many jobs available ever again in the relevant sectors, it is more difficult than that.

Like many other UK colleges, it has come to rely on a great many foreign students taking up places, and paying maximum fees. Clearly, given the situation it may well be that the numbers may drop sharply. There are adjustments, downwards, taking place in many higher educational establishments. In the meantime, it appears that 50,000 UK school leavers who would have gone into a job or something are looking at other options, including any old university place that might be had. But because of the way the budgets are looking, they are not available.

So the cry is on, that for the sake of The Knowledge Economy, which they claim will be critical to the economy of the future, the universities should be bailed out to take on all these students to fill up all those vacant places in media studies, creative accounting, various sorts of sundry business things, and a whole new raft of social and public sector spin offs that arose in the last couple of decades.

To pay for all these marginal entrants to universities is a hugely expensive gamble, if it is the state and the taxpayer who will pick up the bill. One way or another it is a very bad form of unemployment relief. Either paying for them, or requiring them to fork out for three to four years of study in subjects with no guarantees at the end, and may be in activities that have been post dated by the time they qualify, is not exactly “investment” in either the Knowledge Economy or any other.

The salient problem is that the universities and their idea of Knowledge (trust me I’m a philosopher) lies signally in the past. My alma mater, while apparently trying to keep up with all of this and that, does seem to be rooted mentally in a kind of late 1990’s, turn of the millennium mind set as to how things could and should work. But things are changing fast in so many unexpected ways.

There are some bits of stuff that still remain from my early education of sixty years ago. Latin grammar is much the same, but English seems not what it was, if you know what I mean. A great deal else has changed radically, and not just once, I have had to readjust patterns of thought and basic assumptions too often to be sanguine about knowing what I think I know. What I am sure about is that the pace of change is increasing. It is going to be a rough ride in the next decade or two and I will have to make many more changes in mindset and world view.

It is likely that very many higher educational establishments could face problems of contraction that will be difficult to manage. For my own alma mater, it is all too likely that it will be the oldest buildings that will be the first to go, and nobody at all will miss them.