Blog
There is a certain kind of person who might be termed ‘high conflict’. I’m not going to say the real name of their condition, their disorder, out loud but, if you know, you know. Because of something that happened to them as a child, they are unable to cope with feelings of shame, they project their own behaviour problems onto others and are capable of substantial cruelty. Once you become fully aware of this condition, once you have properly researched it, you notice how preval...
In ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ one of the characters tells the story of the little onion. In it, a nasty old woman with no redeeming characteristics at all dies and is descending into hell. She has a guardian angel, and the angel searches its memory for something, anything, that might save this meanest of all humans from the flames. In desperation, she finds something. At one point in life, the mean old woman had given a beggar a very small onion. The angel reaches down and holds the on...
“Teachers, too, have their language policed and managed through the use of ‘question flow charts’: tightly structured classroom scripts and procedures for how to respond to ‘errors’ and ‘misconceptions’ which are designed to enforce standardised pedagogies.”[1] Ian Cushing
I’ve recently been mentoring a young teacher not called Peregrine Carmichael (he chose this name himself). Peregrine is in his second year of teaching, is a wonderf...
I’ve been advising Garreth and the head guys at the FA for a number of years now. I wasn’t allowed to talk about it and have always been completely respectful of this.
But that time has passed. The time I was brought in to talk to senior members of the set up before the U21 Euros has passed. The time I was brought in to talk to all the age-area coaches has passed. The time I deliberately set up the groupings so that Garreth and I would have time to briefly chat about metacognition...
Let us say that the thing that appears to differentiate Michaela from some of the previous iterations of charter schools in the glossy videos and puff pieces on social media and countless articles in the press is that the children appear to be happy, and the collective expressions of human misery do not appear to be coming out from the school’s alumni (though it may be that, since non-compliance will result in punishment, the compliance shown by these children is neutral, that they have be...
“No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distanced from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models among the oppressors.” Paulo Freire[1]
And here we are. It was inevitable that we would have to land here at some point. I had no wish to. I take no joy in this at all. I have absolutely nothing personal whatsoever against the teachers at this school, wish them and their students well and congratulate them on their wonderful a...
Draconianism hiding behind a mask of rhetorical logic is found in its fullest form in Jonathan Porter’s ‘No Excuses Discipline Changes Lives’. Porter is undoubtedly a very clever man: he has an MA in theology from Cambridge and is, at the time of writing, deputy head (academic) at Radley College, the fees for which are a couple of grand south of fifty thousand quid a year. His essay in the follow-up book, ‘The Power of Culture’, is evidence of a serious in...
Robert Lifton, in his book, ‘Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry’, lists the characteristics of a cult. There are eight:
Milieu control
Mystical manipulation
The demand for purity
The cult of confession
The ‘sacred science’
Loading the language
Doctrine over person
The dispensing of existence
1. Milieu Control
A cult leader, or guru, seeks to have complete control of th...
In the late 1990s/early 2000s the language of zero tolerance started to appear in British education. We were told to have “zero tolerance for low-level behaviour”. I wrote a satire of the concept in the educational free-sheet, SecEd, debating whether the low level was, as it appeared to be, a spatial concept, and that teachers were to be intolerant of any movement a child made below the desk. It also looked at tolerance itself, to see whether it might have been somewhat unfairly...
“Men and women rarely admit their fear of freedom openly, however, tending rather to camouflage it – sometimes unconsciously – by presenting themselves as defenders of freedom.”[1] Paulo Freire
“Provocateurs, oppressors, all those who in some way injure others are guilty, not only of the evil they commit, but also of the perversion into which they lead the spirit of the offended.”[2] Primo Levi
Ted Wragg used to say that every school thinks it ...
Ultimately, Uncommon Schools, an American charter school network for whom Doug Lemov was a director, which was always one of the main exponents of the zero-tolerance way of managing behaviour was forced into something of a climb-down, the size of which you might not anticipate from President, Julia Jackson’s, acknowledgement in an open letter that there might be something of an issue in the network.
Jackson, post the killing of George Floyd, wrote of the intentions in setting up t...
Perhaps in partial acknowledgement of the controversy surrounding SLANT, perhaps in conceding that some minor errors had been committed in order to hide the systemic issues with the pedagogic regime he’d helped found, Lemov coined a new acronym – STAR: sit up, track the teacher, appreciate your classmates’ ideas, rephrase the words of the person who spoke so they know you were listening.
So, the command to nod at all times initially seems to have disappeared, and the idea of...
Perhaps in partial acknowledgement of the controversy surrounding SLANT, perhaps in conceding that some minor errors had been committed in order to hide the systemic issues with the pedagogic regime he’d helped found, Lemov coined a new acronym – STAR: sit up, track the teacher, appreciate your classmates’ ideas, rephrase the words of the person who spoke so they know you were listening.
So, the command to nod at all times initially seems to have disappeared, and the idea of...
SLANT is an instruction given to students either at the beginning of lessons or during transitions. It is an acronym for the following set of instructions: sit up, listen, ask and answer, nod, track the teacher. It was originated in the charter chain KIPP (Knowledge is Power[1]) Schools.
Let us first speak of the rationale behind it. It reduces five instructions to just the one and is therefore ‘efficient’. It has maximum efficiency. Maximum efficiency is displayed when...
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?’ You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Jesus Christ[1]
“You’re a troll.”
“No, you’re a ...
There is a pattern in the book where, when the writer is properly aware of what he is communicating to his audience, he’s capable of some relatively high-order thinking. This chapter starts inordinately well but, towards the end, unconsciously reveals things about the approach which shows that the human aspect of teaching humans has not been properly considered. This is why people have questioned his level of teaching experience. There are things he doesn’t get that it’s genuin...
There is little to disagree with in this section, though I note that the mildly horrendous ‘Do now’ imperative hailed, yet again, from the ever-expanding list of imperatives in ‘Teach Like a Champion’. (The other imperatives in this section are ‘name the steps’ and ‘control the game’ (!) – the techniques are fine; the language is unconscious of its own implications.) Lemov bases his lessons around an ‘I do/we do/you do’[1] st...
The planning section of the book is competent if a little mechanical, though there is little in it that might lead to controversy. There is an unintended reveal in it when covering learning objectives in that I’ve always felt that they perform more of a management function than anything else: we are advised to have them on public display in the same place every lesson (no bad piece of advice) so that visitors to the classroom, “peers and administrators”, can see what you’...
If you are not entirely aware of the history of zero tolerance, like many elements of policy over the last decade-and-a-bit, it was imported from the USA. In New Jersey in 1973, the Safe and Clean Neighbourhoods Act led to an article on the Atlantic Monthly entitled ‘Broken Windows: The Police and Neighbourhood Safety’ in which the authors studied the increase of police officers being put on the beat in tough areas of Newark and, despite the fact that there was no statistic...
Warm/Strict
The mask that zero tolerance wears to convince itself it is its own antithesis is the label ‘warm/strict’ (which is a ‘technique’ in ‘Teach Like a Champion’) or its more brutish correlative ‘tough love’. Now, I’m all for warmth and alive to the importance of strictness,[1] but this semi-oxymoron goes under the misapprehension that it is worthy of respect when it is arguably the delusion the dominator has that allows them t...
Traditionalists have a number of interests that border on being obsessions, not the least of these is with silence. But it isn’t the traditionalist educators themselves who wish to be silent. Oh no. They are rather keen on their own voices (as perhaps is everyone). It is the children in their schools who must become practised in the art of saying nothing. It is arguably an unhealthy obsession.
The insistence on tables in rows (even in the early years, which shows a damaging lack of know...
Traditionalists have a number of interests that border on being obsessions, not the least of these is with silence. But it isn’t the traditionalist educators themselves who wish to be silent. Oh no. They are rather keen on their own voices (as perhaps is everyone). It is the children in their schools who must become practised in the art of saying nothing. It is arguably an unhealthy obsession.
The insistence on tables in rows (even in the early years, which shows a damaging lack of know...
Traditionalists specialise in a specific version of culture that represents a specific view of the world and of Britain in particular. At Michaela Community School, the students are taught to recite the poem ‘Invictus’, from which the line “bloody, but unbowed”[1] comes, when they arrive in Year 7.
The final stanza reads:
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the cap...
The notion of objective quality is a difficult one. The ‘test of time’ argument mounted by traditionalists – or, as one might more accurately term them, restorationists – has a certain logic and a substantial armoury to back it up. If you have Shakespeare, Dickens and Yeats on your side, you aren’t exactly fielding a second eleven. But objective quality is another straw man argument. Progressives have never argued that Shakespeare is bunk, as that would be merely an...
The word tradition comes from the Latin for ‘to transmit’: it is to hand over something historical, a whole culture perhaps, so that a new generation may keep safe those customs and ensure they are maintained through the generations. Conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, who is an awesomely clever writer, has something both simple and profound to say about this. He identifies that this transmission isn’t for the benefit of the people being transmitted to b...
One of the things any totalitarian movement does, by definition, is outline a complete solution: one that is simple and satisfying. You no longer have to think because everything has been solved for you. As Havel suggests, “all one has to do is accept it, and suddenly everything becomes clear once more, life takes on new meaning, and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety and loneliness vanish”.[1] There is an element in the scope of Teach Like a Champion which s...
The book and the techniques contained within it are full of imperatives such as, “Standardize the Format”,[1] to which one might be tempted to respond, “No, you standardise the format. I’m not in the mood today.”[2] And, as Ian Cushing has pointed out in his paper, ‘Language, Discipline and Teaching Like a Champion’, in which he seeks to “explore how the disciplining of language correlates with the disciplining of the body&...
The book and the techniques contained within it are full of imperatives such as, “Standardize the Format”,[1] to which one might be tempted to respond, “No, you standardise the format. I’m not in the mood today.”[2] And, as Ian Cushing has pointed out in his paper, ‘Language, Discipline and Teaching Like a Champion’, in which he seeks to “explore how the disciplining of language correlates with the disciplining of the body&...
The book and the techniques contained within it are full of imperatives such as, “Standardize the Format”,[1] to which one might be tempted to respond, “No, you standardise the format. I’m not in the mood today.”[2] And, as Ian Cushing has pointed out in his paper, ‘Language, Discipline and Teaching Like a Champion’, in which he seeks to “explore how the disciplining of language correlates with the disciplining of the body&...
Unlike many 'experts' in how to be a schoolteacher, I am a schoolteacher (mainly) who actually teaches actual children in actual schools. I don’t just visit those schools. I stand in front of children and do the thing they call teaching. I’ve just finished a stint at a loved school in a community I hold in the highest regard that I’ve been lucky enough to have served at for three of the last four years. This is my twenty-eighth year in a classroom. I am fifty-nine next ...
Wales and I were, at best, ambivalent about each other for 58 years. It’s not the case any more. The week started with meeting a hero: one Arthur Furness. He’s set up a programme for ‘offenders’ at South Gloucester and Stroud College situated in one of the bleaker areas of Bristol, the intention of which is to gear the attendees up with the skills and qualifications to be personal trainers. I met two of the guys on the programme and, for them, it has been life changingly ...
Past the caravan and past the broken cars and past the work area for semi itinerant families, there is a patch of scrubby land that has been accidentally given over to nature. You’d pass it by without noticing it, and most days most people do: they give not a thought to the grass to the side of them, to the scratchy trees diagonally above them; they give not a thought to the tiny wild flowers that bashfully peek their heads a smidgeon above the grass, or to the fact that, if you choose to ...
I am contemplating a move to a different place. As part of the ridiculous idea of starting a new life two years short of my sixtieth birthday, I’ve been looking at possible employers. Is there a school on the Kent coast that might consider shoehorning a cantankerous, creaking presence made up chiefly of swears and in possession of a hairline that, in silhouette, resembles that of a disappointed cockatoo into an English Dept. workroom? Furthermore, does a school exist in that region I&rsquo...
Exam boards, as is reasonable, reward the use of subject terminology in both Language and Literature GCSEs. And specialist terminology in the study of English is a tempting and seductive world, a conceptual landscape in which you might lose yourself and never want to return to the crushing prosaicness (itself a subtle, filigree piece of terminology) of timetables, tube trains and toil.
The issue, however, is that it takes a life of study to uncover some of this. As a result, many less experie...
When you grow up poor(ish) you don't necessarily know that you’re poor. There are indications, though. Your classmates are the sons of accountants and mid-managers: the hems of their trousers are never as far from their ankles as yours are, their Dads don't have haunted expressions when you’ve outgrown your shoes and none of them have to force down weekly vile dinners of gag-making, putrid and really deeply unsavoury overcooked liver. But, then again, none of their Dads ever ...
Aside from my father, Cathal Coughlan has had a more profound influence on me than any other man, and I think it right that, in light of this, I record how sad it is that he has passed and to pay tribute to his achievement in the hope that someone who has not encountered him gets to enjoy his work. I first encountered him on Snub TV (how spoilt were my generation?) tied up with rope in a church (how on earth did he get permission?) intoning the song ‘Only Losers Take the Bus’. Microd...
Compare the treatment of power in ‘Ozymandias’ and ‘Tissue’
The one-word titles differ in terms of the level of ambiguity involved, and the ambiguity in the latter (it means paper, skin and, at a push, networks) leads one to consider the relative complexities of the poems. Both examine versions of totalitarian power but, whereas ‘Ozymandias’ notes its limits, ‘Tissue’, despite the obfuscated positivity of its ending, examines a version of totali...
There are references in my relatively recent book, ‘The Fascist Painting – What is Cultural Capital?’ to the work of linguist, William Labov. Labov’s work, of which I’ll admit to having read only one paper, ‘The Logic of Non-Standard English’, is fascinating. His detailed study of the African American slang of parts of New York in the late 1960s revealed to him that the grammar of such speech was every bit as logical as that of what we call Standard Engl...
The Catholic Church, which, way back in the seventies, seemed very keen on the Irish side of my family’s fealty, implanted a number of things into my long-term memory. Many of us will be able to recall and recite ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ but, I believe, it is only Catholics who have ‘Hail Mary’ off to pat. Like all prayers and hymns and most elements of glorifying some historical tradition of the oppression of one set of people by another, it is a funny old be...
Disclaimer – I’m not a grammarian. If I’ve got stuff wrong here, and it is more than likely, it is because I am entirely self-taught. Grammar wasn’t taught at all at my school. I’ve had to bolt on bits of knowledge as I’ve gone along and the some total of this can be higgledy-piggledy. I’m happy for people to let me know where the errors are, but crowing over them might be taken to be a bit yucky.
Encountering the phrase ‘performative ignorance&...
It’s a bit surprising that this book has had so little fuss or attention. Perhaps it is because it is fiction rather than a look into how you might use the revolutionary dual coding, erm, to show pictures while you are talking at kids; perhaps because the author, while a blogger, is not a member of any identifiable crew, nor of any kind of scene that celebrates itself; perhaps because the author is old school, is committed to the community he or she works in and exists to serve rather than...
I don't really know what a disclaimer is. I think you are meant to put this bland signifier of broadsheety zeitgeist first and then make some admission you know the person whose work you are writing about. Disclaimer. I do not know Cash Carraway. Disclaimer. I grew up on the same streets as her and am inclined to liking anyone from those streets who attempts to steal a voice for themselves (since no one gifts influence to the denizens of Maple Road and its immediate environs). Disclaimer. I ...
A lot of people have asked me (no one has asked me: I’m lying to make myself appear significant and relevant (I’m certainly not one of these)) why do you use so many brackets? Actually, they haven’t. What no one has really ever asked me, aside from, “Which side had the best uniforms in the American Civil War?” “Do you believe in sex after marriage?” and “Who is your favourite Grimsby Town manager of all time?” is, “Why have you got a pi...
I’ve come to the end of a year’s stay in a Secondary Modern and wanted to linger a while on how wrong I still get things even after two-and-a-half decades of parading knowledge (or its lack) in classrooms multiple. I was introduced to year 11 at the beginning of this academic year through a series of ‘masterclasses’ on Macbeth. I’m uncomfortable with this nomenclature as, while it is probably (technically) true, it comes with the sense of an ego out of control, but ...
For a good few years I’ve been asking my students the question, ‘How do you kill God?’ It’s part of the study of Macbeth and precedes the students putting crimes of deicide, regicide, genocide, parricide, matricide, infanticide etc. into an order of horridness. They have to construct that order both for our time and for Shakespeare’s thereby understanding that our moral landscapes are rather different to those of Shakespeare’s audiences. Additionally, it leads...
This England is a prison -- a walking shadow; it is a unit for the correction of the errancies of the juvenile, a young offenders’ prison. Our young people are viewed by policy makers as briefly animated pieces of meat herded into the present and future abattoir of lives of indentured slavery.
They enter an education system that seeks chiefly to diminish cost and, secondarily, to identify elites who might prosper and graduate to being the next generation of protectors of the right to ru...
I’ve just returned from the second meeting of the Forest Hill Parents’ Action Group. Again, a packed meeting: there were more parents than chairs and several had to be imported for the session. It turns out that the “Reorganisation of the school administration and non classroom support staff” that parents have been told about though a letter from the head teacher, and of which they have been further informed, “our extensive and meticulous planning has focused on min...
I’ve just returned from an open meeting at which a packed audience of parents applauded their children’s teachers for voting in favour of strike action. Forest Hill School for Boys, a community school in south London which serves a mixed demographic, has uncovered an eight hundred thousand pound deficit. Lewisham Council will not reveal how that deficit was allowed to accrue, and when it is suggested that the council themselves must accept liability as they had a duty to audit the sc...
Impending old age presents a number of problems: not the least of which is reconciling one’s self to oncoming oblivion. Pondering elimination is a bore. More interesting is the puzzle of a way forward. Given the inevitability of the hopefully ‘eventual’ outcome, how does one motivate one’s self? What versions of life are there to be enjoyed given that you will never again bare toned shoulders in shirtless dungarees in a bar delighting the womenfolk of Stoke Newington? Wha...
“Multi culturalism is genocide.” So reads the sign stuck on a lamp-post as you exit Dover Priory Station in the direction of the docks stomping in a pair of battered Doctor Martens like a Liverpool docker on his way to work. “Well, that’s not strictly semantically accurate” I think to myself: “maybe in the regions, but certainly not in London. And isn’t an aspiration towards mono-culturalism reputed to lead somewhere bad? I’m sure I had a lesson ab...
It costs £100 for a family of four to be allowed through the turnstiles of Chessington World of Adventures: this sum, which is no small beer if you’re within coughing distance of the minimum wage, entitles you to a day spent in interminable queues as you listen for the four thousandth time to the tannoy announcing in a cod Chinese accent that, “Wise dragon, he/she say (sic) keep your arms inside the gondola at all times.” You get to go on a sum total of about four rides w...
It has been a difficult few months: my Norwegian friend, Werner, who, to me, was sunshine itself, and who was described by his uncle in the following accurate terms, “He was an easy boy to love” will not be playing music with us any more. A band that has played together for twenty years becomes a family (though fewer cross words are said), (of course) and his death hit the remaining four-of-us like an avalanche. He was profoundly loved, was the most talented person I have ever been i...
I’ve been meaning to read Martin Robinson’s Trivium book for two years now, but there’s always been work to be done, dishes to be washed, parenting to be useless at. I’ve been meaning to read it, but the email that gets it washed and brought to me was only sent last week, and the book only arrived a few days ago (it is exquisite: I’ve been told this by people I respect, but it is better even than their positive reviews).
I’ve regretted my failure ...
I taught a lesson this week to a nice group of thirty kids in year 10. It would not be too rude, I hope, to describe them as slightly lower attaining, but for a first meeting with a one-off teacher they were as kind as one might hope, and in the plenary they said that if there were a next time with the same teacher then the thing that would improve the lesson is that they would be more respectful. I liked them.
It was technically a very strong lesson without being in danger of being...
It seems a glib truism to state that everything is political, but clearly (to even the vaguest of thinkers) it is. Your choice of partner is a political decision; your choice of friend too; (equally, and perhaps more obviously, your choice of enemy is political); probably, your decision as to whether you opt for butter or margarine is in some way a political one: I tend towards thinking that butter is probably a ruling class scam, but also towards thinking that margarine is much the same. But I ...
Sometimes the distinction between being a player in your own life and a knight or bishop in a script written by someone else can be difficult to discern. I’ll illustrate my own experiences of this a little later. This caveat aside, I have nothing whatsoever against the oft publicized work of the teachers at Michaela Community School, King Solomon Academy, et all. From what I can discern, this is a group of very bright young teachers who are questioning orthodoxies, trying to imagine better ways ...
I was recently sounded out about speaking at an event devoted to ‘character education’. The organizers were charm personified, but when it was pointed out that I was decidedly not in favour of such a concept being treated seriously in our education system and I would argue against it, they thanked me for my honesty and discontinued their interest. The following is in no way a slur to those organisers, but it has caused me to articulate the reasons behind such vehemence.
I feel much the same a...
These might be of use for students studying the higher paper. They're model answers to the November 2014 paper that I've written. (Perhaps worthy of holding up to students as a model of average writing).
Question 3 - Extract from Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island
Explain the writer’s thoughts and feelings:
Model Answer
In this extract we learn more about Bryson’s feelings than his thoughts. He sets the emotional landscape with reference to the weather, which he describes as ‘...
I've found myself having to do an analysis of what has come up in the AQA language paper in terms of inserts and questions for an Academy in East London. Here are the results from the Catford judge.
Analysis of Past Papers – June 2012 – November 2014
What has been covered in both the Higher and Foundation Tier over the last few years?
Higher Tier Inserts
Source 1 - Magazine article, on-line article (Big Issue), on-line article (The Times), On-line article (Guardian), on-line articl...
Professor David Nutt is as expert as it is possible to be on the various toxicities of recreational drugs; his job (or profession) is rather oddly titled: he is a neuropsychopharmacologist (he uses drugs to help people who have problems with their brain), a Cambridge graduate in medicine and, for a relatively brief period, was Chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) before being sacked by the Home Secretary for a representation of scientific truth.
His story, though sad...
‘Accidental economist’, Yannis Varoufakis, studied at Essex University; his father had previously been arrested, his uncle imprisoned and the family felt it was probably not safe for him to continue his studies in Greece. Essex University was, most recently, ranked the 35th best university in the UK in both the Complete University Guide and the Times/Sunday Times guide, 47th best in the Guardian rankings. These are relatively humble beginnings in academic terms and, even then, Varouf...
Being ‘Controversial’
Did you hear the one about the novelist, the economist and the toxicologist?
I’ll begin …
Irvine Welsh is the writer of ten novels: at his most deliberately hallucinogenic he can be reminiscent of a narcotised Kafka; at his most accomplished he can draw together a finely plotted page turner that causes the reader to question their own impulses, morality and sanity. He is capable of inducing visceral repulsion in a reader followed, soon afte...
The first line of Viv Albertine’s autobiography, ‘Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys’ is “Anyone who writes an autobiography is either a twat or broke. I’m a bit of both.”
Read into the above what you will.
I’ll start sharing resources, edu thoughts etc. when I am competent. But as a trial (which reading it may well be) I share with you a yet to be published article I have written for the QPR fanzine, ‘A Kick up ...
