The Child is the God of Capitalist Man

The Child is the God of Capitalist man.  What does this imply?

One consequence of ceasing to care for eternity is imprisonment in the present. This gives the busybody, the overworked go getter who can no longer enjoy their life and bustles frantically hither and yon,  a problem. They are of an instant vulnerable to a simple question, that being

"Why do you do it all?"

As they hurtle towards burnout these useful nodes in the corporate machine do not, of course, have the notion that they might want the whole beastly business over and done with. So they say, as Weber observed, not 'for the glory of God', which was the serf's answer, but "I am doing it for my kids".

Tricky situation for a six year old to find themselves in, sitting on the heavenly throne; is it any wonder that they get confused?

Of course it is hardly the case that we treat them as divinites all the time. There is nothing so disappointing as a failed God,and so the Child has scorn poured on it when it fails to act as the Almighty ought (and who decides how the Almighty ought to do anything? That's Capitalism, folks).

Thus just as the real God of the Feudal age was the Agricultural year, the Child is only a sacrificial Corn God of the Aztek year. The youth is worshipped and then consumed in fire and sacrifice. The whole cycle is played out on the symbolic plane within the ritual circle of celebrity. Pity the poor things and, for that matter, the adults who, their time of divinity long over, instead wander the plains of cultural desolation, worshipping what they used to be, unwilling to leave it behind.

When The Grade isn't worth it

The dubious present state of the labour market makes it apparent to those from low income backgrounds early on that their options even within an affluent society like Britain are extremely limited.

In such circumstances it seems to be the case that the right response is to compete harder for jobs. Within collective enterprises like classrooms or even macro environments like nations the idea that some are not "pulling their weight" is therefore a potentially frustrating turn of events.

I once set a class the task of giving group presentations. One group delivered theirs and, as sometimes happens, one student had evidently done the majority of the work. At the end we reflected on the presentation as a class and tried to work out what we thought had happened and why. The student who had done least I will call Tobi. Tobi had said nothing whatsoever during the presentation. During the reflective questions at the end he also said nothing. Others were more vocal, they spoke of the frustration of being in a group where one member is not pulling his or her weight., and the language was very reminiscent of anxiety around "benefit cheats".

"They just take everyone else's hard work"
"Lazy"
"If they can't be bothered..."

I didn't share my view but I was sympathetic. Perhaps because I was silent one girl, Senay, spoke up dissentingly. To my regret I can only paraphrase from memory her extraordinarily original point.

"Sometimes you are in a group and someone wants a level six (equivalent of an A grade in this class) and they want it sort of TOO much and they are rude to you and you just think 'get it in your own then I won't help' if it means that much to them"

This sophisticated introduction of a categorical imperative, a refusal to be treated as a means to an end, completely altered the room. Even those who had previously towed the line now revised their views in some cases, agreeing that being decent to one another actually came before success. Senay had successfully reasoned an alternative interpretation of Tobi's nonparticipation, one that convinced her whole class including me.

At this point and without introducing any big theories I would like to quote Paul Willis on counter-school culture amongst students. Willis was studying working class male students in the Midlands in the 1970s, but his sympathies are recognisable in Senay's point:

"It is through a good number (of the working classes) trying (to succeed in high stakes certificate testing) that the class structure is legitimised. The middle class enjoys its privilege not by virtue of inheritance or birth, but by virtue of an apparently proven greater competence and merit. The refusal to compete...is therefore in this sense a radical act: it refuses to collude with its own educational suppression."
- Willis "Learning to Labour" 1978 p.128

I do not mean to suggest that counter school culture or idleness is any kind of useable programme. Tobi does not have the answer. I do deliberately imply, however, that in the words of one contemporary writer "The only way to win is not to play".

Anna Karenina - an early critique of celebrity?

Anna and Vronsky's affair does not run contrary to social mores but rather, for Tolstoy, is produced by them.  The 'spirit of lies' (pt 2 CH 27) is Society itself. His profound distrust of Society  makes AK a prototypical critique of the media and of celebrity. It can be conceived of as part of McLuhan's project as much as a general ethical or theological work.

Furthermore it is important to collect examples of where Vronsky and Anna are read as being straightforwardly in love, straightforwardly "star crossed lovers".

They are false because the Society that produces them is false, not because they must necessarily deceive Karenin, Anna's husband. The real target of Tolstoy's critique is Society which, like Heidegger's "Das Man" merely hands on received opinions and petty falsehoods.

It is not therefore a simple and straightforward injustice which distinguishes Oblonsky's affair from his sister, Anna's: he is morally less in love with the truth than she is (hence her "straight backed" appearance in Society prior to her fall). The corrosion of her behaviour is a byproduct of her immersion in a society built on lies. Her personal anguish is the unique subject of the novel and not her love for Vronsky. Paradoxically, then, it is Levin who is her nearest analogue in the novel rather than her opposite. His withdrawal to the country, a self imposed exile of which we are constantly reminded, has presumably saved him from the same fate as Anna: succumbing to Society; madness at his inability to reconcile with it and, eventually, death.

Be Like Huck

It'll happen when it happens.

One of my students, a fantastic writer, could not put a word down on paper.

He obviously had a head full of ideas that was driving him, if not insane, then at least to the point of a mild hysteria. And yet every time he would sit down to write he would freeze up. He couldn't get them out of his hand and down on the page.

It took a long time for me to work out that the key was just to give him the option of writing and walk away. He's fifteen years old, he will do it if he wants to. Although he is writing his coursework and I know that time is running out, I also know that yelling at him about deadlines won't help. Instead, I have found that I just need to suggest that some work might happen in the time available, and prepare the resources and a bit of encouragement.

"You can write, you just don't think you can write."

That sort of thing.

Today he wrote four pages in an hour and a half and said, "You know, the reason I can do this is because there's no pressure."

I agreed that there was, in fact, no pressure.

And then he carried on writing, before checking it carefully and handing it in.

There is, in fact, no pressure. What is the worst that can happen? Somebody in authority might not be happy with you? Boo Hoo. As Huck Finn said, "Sometimes I'd play hooky, and when I came back to school somebody would have a good holler at me, and I'd always feel much better."  Twain's Huck is capable, fearless and, most importantly of all, feels all the pressures of the adult world to be mildly amusing distractions from real life. Which is what they are.

We should aspire, teachers and students, to be like Huck. There is no pressure. If you want to write it, write it. If the class wants to be quiet, let them be. If they won't let you start the lesson, what will do more harm: screaming at them? Terrifying them? Piling on the pressure in all its "you will never amount to anything" intellectual shabbiness? Or waiting an extra five minutes? Sometimes in teaching, wrote Rousseau, you have to be ready to waste time to save time.

There's no pressure. Sometimes, we forget that.

Apropos of the New Doctor Who: What are Cities FOR?

In the opening scene of the new Doctor Who there is an extended scene where the Doctor flies over central London hanging from the TARDIS which is, in turn, hanging from a helicopter.

Shots take in the financial district, the London Eye and Tower Bridge.

This is how your reality is constructured

This establishing set of images prefaces everything that is to come. For these purposes, London is reliable and regularly yoked.

I actually work right on the South Bank, and so I can attest that film crews are nearly as common as pigeons round there. Everybody wants a shot of the City somewhere in their picture. What is more striking is how these film crews are treated; that is, they are treated with the kind of automatic deference with which we usually treat police forensic teams or paramedics. Areas are cordoned off. People hurry by or try and gawp surreptitiously. The whole atmosphere is of an emergency. Partly this is due to the fact that they need to caputre light but wait a minute: need? Whose need? Who decided it was a need?

In order to understand why this is, I think we need to ask a more fundamental question first.

What, when one comes right to it, is the city actually for today?

We use, as a species, vast amounts of power to heat and light large urban spaces which, as with central London, are all but empty at night. When they are not empty, the growth of the Internet makes it increasingly doubtful that their purpose is justified at all.

Before, the justification for building, say, a skyscraper was that one needed:

• A large area where clerks and typists could operate a bureaucracy.
• A mail room
• An area where filing could be stored; some sort of archive

All three of these purposes are now completely defunct. What is not dealt with by the Cloud is handled by computers as small as our hands or smaller. And yet, the seeming necessity for a large central space remains, a collective focus for the collective will of all the employees who are trying to encourage profit.

I have an idea of how we can answer my question. To my knowledge nobody else has answered it in this way.

The city is necessary for what it signifies: indeed, it is itself the ARCH signifier in the sense that it provides the grammar whereby other signals make sense. In order to establish meaning, humans seem to need an architecture which makes a permanent impression.

The maintenance of these areas, then, is completely cut off from its original purpose. Where there were good practical reasons to build with turrets, or to build over fifty floors, throughout human history, those reasons are now totally subordinate, if not outright extinct in relation to this new purpose: the fabrication of Image.

Cities structure and give coherence to the sorts of things which people do when gathered in large groups.

So why the deference to the activity of film crews? Why are the streets of, say, Brooklyn so awash with film crews that it is becoming a source of complaint for residents.

Psychic defence unit in the field

I believe that human beings, if deprived of psychic reassurance, begin to fall apart. Our lives need meaningful events in order to not seem futile. Clearly not everybody can physically fit into even the largest open spaces, so actions taken within those spaces need to be photographed and broadcast as a matter of public safety.

People are reliant on the City not now for its original purpose but for the impression that we require that life there is in progress, moving forwards and not endlessly recurring.

"But I need to go to the city to meet clients."

Yes you do, because if your clients met you anywhere else you would not seem real to them. They would regard you as an audience member, and so would you. The symbolic reality is so much more important to you than you think you already know. All your pragmatic reasons for working in the City are flimsy justifications for the real deal: because the Big City is where it's at. Everywhere else isn't. Well, almost everywhere.

Like they say in "Breathless":

"If you don't like the sea... or the mountains... or the big city... then get stuffed"

Step 1: Accept that Paris is what is performing here, THROUGH the Actors.

Don't Think of Me as a Teacher Part 1

Today's is a Guest Blog written by veteran educator Herbert Dunwitty, a progressive classroom teacher with over 15 year's experience in the classroom or (as he calls them) "Share-spaces".  Due to his teenage daughter being unavailable to show him how his laptop works, Herbert, who exists only in the minds of "realistic" MPs, Academy Chain board members and Peter Hitchens, has not previously published any of his wisdom online. Informutation is proud to be carrying this first in what will be a continuing series, provided his Union doesn't tell him we're all "Goveites".

Don't Think of Me as a Teacher, Think of Me as a teacher (with a lower case t): Reflections on Considerations of Approaches to """Education""". 

After a busy day lowering Standards I often find myself sitting back with a cup of Fair Trade tea and a digestive and thinking to myself, "Herbert, did you do everything you could for the precious young minds in your care today?"

The answer, of course, is yes.

And yet there are days when I ask myself what more than 100% would look like? Numbers have never really been my strong suit but I suppose it might look a bit like a picture of a butterfly. And butterflies are what I was busily shouting at my class to think about whilst they threw flick knives at each other yesterday.

Who are you to say this isn't learning?

Suddenly I felt a hand tugging at my arm,

"Sir, what's the exam going to be about in June?"

Of course I stopped everyone right there and drew their attention to the tragedy that was 

unfolding before us: a child wanted to pass an exam.

In the fifteen minutes or so it took for the class to be quiet, I had plenty of time to reflect on the miserable situation of this poor child who had been brainwashed to think that he future happiness depended on her passing an exam. I cast my mind back to my time at Oxford in the late 70s, when I was seeing this simply smashing girl with a Siouxsie Sioux haircut. Where would I have been if I had thought exams were important? I mean obviously I did think so otherwise I never would have got there in the first place but the point is I was wrong. 

And being able to admit that is what makes me right, right now.

Anyway, by this point 50% or so of them were quiet. I thought "close enough" and launched into an extensive diatribe against worldly success. I do believe that little Joolz was crying behind her blackberry, although that might have been because Shenay had just BBM'd her a particularly elaborate character assassination Brandon had just posted on Tumblr.

"Children!" I announced over the din, "Put down your phones and stop reenacting the struggle for civil rights by cussing each other and eating behind your hands, one of our colleagues wants to know some FACTS."

Some of the more conscious ones gawped in disbelief.

"Now who can remember rule one which we all agreed to?"

A hand shot up.

"Please sir, is it "If a man in a suit comes in just tell them you're a level five aiming at a level six and keep copying off the board?"

"Oh no, that's not it, that's rule ten, rule one? begins with "If..."

"If we all know nothing then nobody feels left out!" the ones who weren't dodging chairs or applying makeup chorused.

"Exactly!" I said, "Now go and stand in the Empathy Corner and forget things until you spontaneously realise how disadvantaged you made people in our environment feel!"

Duly chagrined, the wrongdoer withdrew to contemplate the error of their ways, and I had time for a quick fag out the window before the next swoop by SLT on a Learning Walk. They have them every fifteen minutes now.

That's what 110% looks like.

Next week: How these, plus a whole lot of heart, can absolutely wreak havoc with schoolwide behaviour policies in a double period last thing on a Friday.

Assessing Assessments

As I contemplate my title I am very conscious of the concerns of language reformers of the 18th century.  These esteemed gentlement believed that England's reputation abroad was endangered by the preponderence of "S"es in our language. Certainly they rarely ponder so prevariously as in the upper reaches of your screen now, gentle reader. TThe fear was that our merchants in their dealings abroad would find themselves mistrusted because it sounded so much as if our language was spoken by men with a "mouthful of snakes".

And it is here, with this vivid image, that I wish to draw your attention to a word, that sine qua non of contemporary education; the Assessment, or Exam in old money.

This resembles, I claim, a snake in the sense that any test really says two things whilst delivering one result. It speaks with profoundly forked tongue, and on its prongs is every teacher and student, wrigglingly impaled.

I wish to submit just one question, from the NGRT or "New Group reading Test", a test designed to nominate someone's reading age.

The question is this.  Insert the correct word:

1.  The removal van came for the ______________.

[  ] shopping
[  ] friend
[  ] house
[  ] furniture
[  ] children

Now, clearly the answer "furniture" is the intended one. However, as any moderately intelligent person will be able to point out, the tale of a Man with a Van helping out his wife with the shopping, or abducting unsuspecting children could also be correct, grammatically. 

What you are being asked to do here is to give the expected answer, in exchange for grades.  Another example in the same text asks you to say what Granny keeps on her sofa.  The noun "cushions" is obviously fine, but there are no marks for "plant pots". Now, I have known various people keep things far stranger than plan pots on their furniture from time to time. I simply cannot see why this is "Correct", other than being a test for a certain view of the world which, whilst well and good, is simply not a test of one's ability to read.

What is going on here is a case of Confirmation Bias. We are sure of what the correct answer must be, and so we teach children to be equally sure in the process of teaching them to pass such tests. However, Confirmation Bias is a disaster for learning: it teaches us not to test our propositions, in this case under threat of being found to be educationally subnormal.

The child who does test their suppositions about the world in this way can find themselves labelled and sorted out of the lottery of life with brutally efficiency in the name of "merit" and "natural aptitude".  How I would recover from a judgement that my reading age was subnormal at 12 I do not know. Possibly I never would. And as a reward for testing the limits of my world I would be left to consider my future as a "subnormal" in a world that rewards "merit".

And if that "merit" is the ability to jump through hoops, then reward it it does. However, we cannot very well say that we are encouraging innovation, engineering and critical thinking whilst embedding the training of confirmation bias into our very system of conditioning.

Did I say conditioning? Slip of the tongue.

Hiss.