Education? Its dun wunders 4 me

It will hopefully turn out to be the college course of his dreams but yesterday’s induction day sounded more like the stuff of nightmares, when Older Son relayed its content to me across the dinner table.

As if the morning wasn’t bad enough – the idea of just getting to know people naturally as term progressed replaced with one of those ghastly contrivances where the class forms a circle and everyone has to relate one fact about himself to the rest of the group – the afternoon contained a lecture of no less than two hours on those twin modern deities of Diversity and Equality, the counter-productiveness of which was encapsulated perfectly in Older Son’s reflection that he felt slightly more bigoted coming out of it than he had going in…

Sickly motivational and feel-good posters all around the college completed his initial assessment of the kind of people who run the place.

But then, in fairness, time must hang heavy on their hands when the impeccable calibre of British schools these days leaves them with so little to work on by the time their mid- and late-teen intake shows up for class.

Just scanning the timetable OS has been given for the rest of this week, for example, I note that one morning will include a welcome speech from the college ‘Principle’ [sic].

I think I’m starting to see what the goal is with education in this country. Utopia will be reached when everyone, regardless of colour, creed or sexual orientation, is just as thick as everyone else.

And we’re right on target.

The hollow ring of synthetic kindness

It’s not like the bullying that made him change schools in the first place, he assures me.

This is the dripping tap variety. It doesn’t frighten you; it simply wears you down. As being the butt of countless schoolyard ‘paedophile’ jokes will do.

So much for coaching courses broadening your horizons. He’d taught rugby to under-12s about 18 months ago. Enjoyed it, because he’s always related better to those younger or older than him, than he does to his own age group.

The kids enjoyed it too and when one of them fell and hurt himself and his coach took him to the school nurse for some treatment, it was the most natural thing in the world for the younger child to take the older one’s hand as they walked.

Alas, the older one’s peers saw it. And so it began.

“Paedophile.”

This much I already knew and I could just about imagine the dulling, wearying effect on the soul, of so baseless an insult somehow managing to run for 18 months and counting.

It’s what I didn’t know, however, that pains me the most.

“One of the teachers came up to me afterwards and said that perhaps I shouldn’t have held the kid’s hand,” he now tells me.

He was 15 at the time. Fifteen years old and your lesson for the day is How Not to Look Like a Paedophile.

A young child is upset, dazed and in need of comfort but you keep your distance. For appearances’ sake. The smart play.

I surely can’t be alone in seeing the irony of this. All the rules and protocols we’ve come up with – from health and safety to sexual propriety – supposedly designed to produce a kinder, fairer Society and what have they made us?

A people more detached, more reserved and more suspicious. An already selfish species now positively encouraged to cover its own back before covering for its neighbour.

I feel just about as desolate as he does.

Bedford book ban – facts and bluster don’t add up

Image via Wikipedia

Having raised an eyebrow at some of the content in books set for my own son’s English course, I’m not surprised to learn that some parents are kicking up a stink in New Hampshire, USA over the reading material being put before their kids.

“A second book has been pulled from the Bedford High School curriculum following complaints about its sexual content by the same parents who started the argument about “Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By In America,” which was removed from the high school’s personal finance course last month” – from The Nashua Telegraph, brought to my attention via Indyposted.com

Nor am I exactly stunned by some of the high-falutin’ outrage of those commenting on the report, with ‘Nazi’, ‘tyrant’, ‘Victorian’, ‘censorship’ et al given a predictable airing.

First, the substance of the complaint – extracts of Water for Elephants can be read here, here and here. My understanding is that it was offered as optional reading (parental consent required) for 13-year-olds.

Second, the protagonist. I might stand shoulder to shoulder with Dennis Taylor in his dismay at what he read but his way of making his case would not be mine. His is but one voice, one opinion and he seems to have lost sight of that fact in the midst of his indignation. I’d also like to know what he has in mind when he talks of people behind the decision to incorporate Water for Elephants, being fired or terminated from the School Board…

This apart, and for all that I accept the argument that it is ultimately for parents to teach their children how to process anything they might read, I too am unhappy with material of this type cropping up in schools.

I believe it’s yet another aspect of a Society that is fixated upon the groin. Sex is a wonderful thing and as much fair game for discussion as any other facet of life but are we so incapable of finding fulfilment elsewhere that we have to keep coming back to it in debate, like fat kids to a sweetshop? The sexualised bombardment we endure from the media seems to have spawned a belief that we can’t engage properly with life, through art or education, unless there is a sexual element to be addressed in there somewhere. I’m afraid I don’t buy it.

Film directors can protest until they are blue in the face but I maintain that you can count on one hand the films that would lose anything whatsoever were their sex scenes hinted at instead of graphically played out. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate the latter option being taken occasionally but its absence wouldn’t diminish the film as art. I’m also a little older than 13.

Similarly, there’s an idea out there, it would appear, that unless children are regularly addressing sexuality while at school, their education is incomplete and they will trip out through the school gates at 16, a bunch of naive, vulnerable Pollyannas.

Unfortunately, the full-on, candid approach favoured by some educationalists  is resulting in something as bad, if not worse; a generation of youngsters who reach puberty under the impression that sex is just another commodity, like cigarettes or a loaf of bread.

That they should be left in no doubt as to what it involves and its consequences is not in dispute but I question whether sex education goes much beyond that nowadays, or is it deemed unwarranted interference to teach young people about the emotional context in which sex most comfortably sits?

The fact is, sex needs a little mystique. Not ignorance, I grant you, but a little reverence, magic, call it what you will. It’s a big deal, not least because of the huge physical and psychological backlash that can result when it’s indulged in callously or irresponsibly. You’re most definitely not just buying cigarettes here and merely showing a 12-year-old how condoms function doesn’t come close to ticking the ‘sex education’ box.

When you present books like Water for Elephants to young- or mid-teens and passages involving strippers, erections and tongues sliding around nipples are read out in class, you take another step towards commodifying sex. Once again, it is reduced to the everyday, the humdrum. No big deal; we even talk about in English. I would question whether sex-as-routine is a great mindset for any young person to carry into adult life.

Point is, I don’t think schools lose any credibility if they rise above this and refuse of their own accord to put literature on their programme that incorporates sexual content. In fact, if they did this already, I doubt we’d have heard a whisper of complaint from any quarter, because anyone objecting to a school’s insistence on being an oasis amid 21st century culture knows he or she would get some very odd looks indeed.

And if Water for Elephants and its like are such vital reading for this age group, I’m sure the authors, as creative artists, would consider themselves duty-bound to write an edited version for the younger audience.

Of course teenagers will read the racy stuff out of school hours. I can still remember reading Sven Hassel‘s WWII novels in my teens and being shocked to learn that it wasn’t my generation that invented the f-word. But it’s for parents to monitor that and act as they see fit. And it’s for teachers to know how to guide – not terminate, guide – the ensuing discussion when such extra-curricular reading material is mentioned in class.

We lose nothing if the bar gets raised whenever our children go to school, by a syllabus that keeps minds above the waist and sex confined to biology lessons, where it’s presented as more than just an exercise in mechanics. For just a few hours each day, kids would get to study art, literature, history, philosophy and science and have their minds opened to the possibility that satisfied living revolves around so much more than just the genitals.

If that sounds ‘repressive’, some Nashua Telegraph commenters may be pleasantly surprised by its long-term consequences.

Liberty / apathy border goes up in smoke

“…and then he apparently rubbed his tobacco in the other student’s hair.”

Right at the end of a lengthy chat about my son’s progress at school and what needs putting right, his teacher mentions a skirmish that he’s supposed to have got into while on the school bus.

Even more than the fact that he hasn’t been smoking for the best part of a year, I’m struck by how the reference to “his tobacco”, is made purely in passing. Time was when it would have been item 1 on the rap sheet.

But now? A 16-year-old is supposed to have smokes on him and his school act like it’s a bunch of pencils.

I can imagine all sorts of reasons I could be offered for this.

Young adults needing their space.

Personal liberty.

And, of course, the overbearing imperative to avoid judgementalism.

No doubt I should rejoice that he and his generation are so free. So why is it I have this nagging sense of young people not being looked out for quite as much as they once were?

And why doesn’t it feel remotely like progress?

Teachers who’d be one of the gang – they still don’t get it

He’s in Sixth Form now and starting to see those who teach him for what they are.

The jokers who try to be so cute, they just become irritating.

The subtle bullies who harbour grudges just as fervently as any 14-year-old, apparently trained in every facet of child protection save for the blatantly obvious: that bad youngsters who’ve changed deserve some carrot to go with the stick.

Then there are the would-be cool cats, who think their disorganisation points to the child within instead of just an utter lack of professionalism.

This comes completely unprompted from his lips: “It’s the teachers who expect discipline but are fair with it: they’re the ones who get the best out of me.”

We might have to talk about ‘Year 12′  rather than ‘Sixth Form’ these days but it’s good to know that the important details remain timeless and imperishable.

Beware, as always, of the school teacher who would be ‘your mate’.

Examinations or just cursory glances?

Chris Moyles sounds like he’s just beheld a human rights abuse when a listener texts in, announcing that he’s about to sit a three-hour exam.

“Three hours??!!!” Moyles asks incredulously. “In an exam for three hours?!”

Well, yes, why not? There was a time when three hours was standard and I can recall plenty of my own exams where I’d have welcomed a fourth, just to get everything written down.

Thirty years on, my son has a GCSE this morning. Forty-five minutes .

I feel like a grizzled old combat veteran. Which is ridiculous.

Goodbye, sir

“RIP Mr *******. We all loved you. x”

We’d forgotten all about our son’s teacher on long-term sick leave, until my wife stumbled across this testimony to him on the lad’s Facebook page this morning.

Say this for social media: in the midst of all its evils, it affords young people the chance to voice sentiments that, 30 years ago, might have remained locked away behind glum faces. Sentiments that override teenage ‘cool’ and the detachment that goes with it and offer a welcome reminder that there are still teachers out there who manage to touch hearts as well as hit targets.

I’m sat here mourning a man I hardly knew, purely because of the impact he had on my son.

And waking up to the sobering realisation that our ultimate worth may not be intrinsic but measured instead by the effect we have on those around us.

John Donne was right. We are none of us islands.

In a perfect world, your son’s teachers would all be ugly

Then you could listen to his English teacher talking about her “naughty boys’ list” on Parents’ Evening, without being ever so slightly turned on.

Then you wouldn’t make the mistake of confiding as much to your son and discovering that, while the day may come when you and he can empathise over such things, that day remains some way off.

……………………………….

Yesterday’s light relief: walking into a Lincolnshire bookshop and discovering Ian Rush’s autobiography in the ‘Literature’ section.

Christianity? “Cross” doesn’t begin to cover it…

Image via Wikipedia

Usually, I get mad at certain things in the newspapers and then move on. Julia Llewellyn’s piece on people who play at being Christian just to get their child into a decent faith school, however, takes me beyond anger and into a lingering despondency.

This is how it must feel to be the village harlot. Rogered on one side by those who despise our ‘imaginary friend’ and now banged well and truly up the rear by people with no more shame than character, who think His house amounts to a convenience store.

Churches and schools worth a damn, who weren’t prepared to take patronage at face value, might do something about this. A shared register of born-anew Christians, perhaps, that identifies those whose church attendance dwindles to zippo the moment Junior gets the green light on his first uniform.

Worst offenders get their names and faces plastered on the Web at iusedtopraymykidsturnoutbetterthanIdid.com.

If you’re uncomfortable with this idea, well, plenty of other ways to spend your Sunday morning. Browsing Richard Dawkins‘ substantial website, maybe, where people at least have the courtesy to insult us from the outside.

And before you say it, even in these amoral times “I only did it for my kids” is no defence. Not content with being a liar, you’re now trying to hide behind a four-year-old. Sort yourself out.

Christmas play

Image via Wikipedia

At school for younger son’s Christmas offering. A tableau of four performances by four different classes.

At the end of the first, one father gathers his coat and bag together and bustles out of the hall, sending a clear message as he does so.

Seen my kid. The hell with anyone else’s.

“That is so rude,” whispers K alongside me.

Indeed. And were the rest of us half as brazen, we’d be just a step behind him.