News erupted yesterday across all national media outlets that a teacher at a school in Fergysville, Devon, instructed his year 9 students at the local Academy school to design satirical posters of Tom Bennett, the DfE discipline and behaviour expert, as well as make videos about the guru’s ideas on how school pupils should be educated. We tracked the teacher at the centre of this controversy to his home also in Fergysville where he agreed to give us an exclusive interview today.

Teacher Michael Glenn told us,

‘Yes, it was the last week before the Easter break and rather than show my classes the film of The Ten Commandments like I have done for the past 30 years around this time, I decided to encourage them to pursue some other activities. I’d always shown the DeMille film really as a kind of personal whim because it is very much about sacrifice and judgement and that seemed to reflect a teacher’s job. However, we had been undertaking research on historical world Tsars, past and present, exploring how this kind of dictatorial leadership compares with our rightly coveted Democracy, and in the students’ group-work research they came up with the name Tom Bennett as a current one here in Great Britain. I pointed out they actually found a political Czar – spelt with a c and z – but let this misnomer go as a positive response to independent learning  and allowed them to run with their self-discovery, suggesting in the circumstances they bring out the comedy of the error. They all then chose the tasks they wanted to use to represent their thoughts and feelings and  most decided to make group posters about Tom Bennett’s role as an un-elected DfE advisor.

To be honest, I’d also set a similar task for my GCSE Media Studies group, but I don’t think I should say much more about that as it is one of the last surviving teaching groups at this level having been almost completely banned nationally. Successive governments haven’t liked how this subject teaches critical thinking because it encourages students to think critically about all kinds of things, like governments.’

When asked how these Easter lessons became national news, Michael Glenn further informed us,

‘A parent had complained to the school about posters and films being made in lessons [they’d read in The Daily Mail or The Telegraph, apparently, these weren’t educational] and then rang the DfE to complain as well. The school got a phone call from someone at the DfE called Mr Drafter who told the Head about what I was doing and explained it had to be stopped immediately. As an Academy school my Head was a little surprised because he told this spokesperson that he thought we had autonomy to teach what we wanted to teach, but Mr Drafter informed him, as the Head later informed me, that wasn’t always the case and this was one of those many cases. Something like that. Anyway, I was instructed to stop and had to spend the rest of the week before Easter break teaching my students how to use exclamation marks! I guess someone then reported the story of this to the media. Probably one of my media studies students, the little ironic so and sos!’

Having contacted the DfE to seek confirmation of Michael Glenn’s story, all we could discover in addition before going to press was from a recorded message on the compulsory academisation of all schools and how this was being legislated to deliver national autonomy to educators.

[Read background story here]

Originally posted January, 2013:

Foreplay

I haven’t read 50 Shades of Grey – no I haven’t – and I don’t have to as it has been quoted or broadcast enough in the media for me to have picked up a strong dose of its content, but I bet it isn’t as sexy as the following:

And now that I have aroused your interest with this piece of poetic foreplay, my serious point on the sensuality of writing is how Ian Seed’s opening vignette in his excellent Threadbare Fables appeals not  because of its sexual suggestiveness but because of the humour that takes us further into its possibilities.

The prose-poem fables in this immediately accessible and engaging pamphlet remind me of Matthew Sweeney’s absurd and surreal poetic storytelling. What I like about Seed’s is how his too deal in mystery and unknowing, and though suggesting so much they never define or finalise. They are a wonderfully ‘easy’ read, and by this I mean you can cover them all quickly – if you wish: you might want to speculate and ponder after each individual tale – but they then stick with you, like images swiftly seen but leaving a strong impression, and you instinctively imagine afterwards and for some time resolutions or even reasons for what preceded their events.

There are a few recurring themes/ideas – a dying/dead father; taking an unexpected route – but overall there is a breadth of genuinely imaginative yet brisk storytelling.

New NB These prose poems can be found and are available in Ian Seed’s collection The Identity Papers here.

NB Initially published by likethispress, this chapbook is now out of print, but if you go here there is the possibility that a copy can still be purchased [read down a bit] but I do not know; and also since the initial posting, there was a recent article in The Guardian here about how charity shops can no longer accept/accommodate donated copies of 50 Shades... having been inundated!

Anyone can play!

What you need, and what to do:

• the will not to be amazed
• a computer
• this quote: An education department spokesperson said: “Pupils are already benefitting hugely from the academies programme and thanks to our reforms more of them than ever before are going to good or outstanding schools.
• put quote in search engine
• see if you find any more than ones below
• do yourself for all future DfE Drafters comments on why national academisation is a brilliant idea without any real evidence to that effect

Following on from my previous post, I have found the DfE Drafters quote [above] in the following:

• Evening Standard
• The Independent
• Leicester Mercury
• Times Educational Supplement
• Cambridge News
• Kingston Guardian
• The Guardian

NB A search engine will correct the DfE spelling of benefitting to benefiting. Like it!

I caught up with episode 2 Obamacare from the excellent BBC2 programme Inside Obama’s White House last night, and of the many details revealed about the process of achieving that healthcare goal was how the Republican party acquired and ran its opposition with the counter tagline/soundbite government takeover – born out of political consultant Frank Luntz’s meeting with a group of swing voters. It was a soundbite Republicans used incessantly to attack Obamacare proposals – and it had a significant negative effect – especially when picked up by the notorious Tea Party.

I was struck immediately with recalling how the Tory party has consistently relied on similar soundbite repetitions throughout its most recent campaign to become the government and in all subsequent comments on any initiatives and policy proposals – all of which are underpinned by the long term economic plan mantra, with other looped additions.

This is hardly new, nor exclusive to the Tories, but they have been masters at the use of this rhetorical device, most recently when Cameron managed to make a whole second paragraph of such in his response to Ian Duncan’s Smith’s resignation letter.

I mention now because the same ruse is being used by the drafters at the DfE in responding to any criticisms of the government’s current plans to implement the compulsory academisation of all state schools. The Guardian today reports how even Tory councillors are opposed to these plans, and in response – as I posted here yesterday – the drafter’s dodge has been much in evidence, as quoted in the article:

An education department spokesperson said: “Pupils are already benefitting hugely from the academies programme and thanks to our reforms more of them than ever before are going to good or outstanding schools.

“The changes we are making will put control back in the hands of teachers and school leaders – those who know their pupils best – making sure every single child has the opportunity to fulfil their potential.”

Interesting article here in today’s TES about teachers voicing their opposition to national academisation of all state schools, with the additional news that shadow education secretary Lucy Powell will be addressing this issue: I look forward to a cogent and convincing challenge from Labour. I can’t say I do so with confidence, but it is necessary and I will be hopeful of an articulation that can build on the clear public and professional desire for a challenge.

Of more concern in this article is the response to the ‘protests’ against the White Paper announcement on academisation from the DfE. It is a TES quote, but there is no reason to doubt, and the other factor that one cannot doubt is how the unattributed spokesperson has to be a DfE ‘drafter’, someone who, in my experience, knows and understands absolutely nothing about education, but is employed to express and defend government policy against anyone who questions or challenges this. It is a simple but repugnant form of regurgitation for two reasons: it is a meaningless expectorant, and it is insulting to those who do question and challenge from a base of actual experience and understanding.

I have written about these drafters and their responses to me here and here.

With full acknowledgement and thanks to Gary Kaye and the band [and songwriter of original melody, TV Smith]:

I’m sitting in the teaching hub, trying to plan my week
But the spreadsheet needs some data and the raise on line looks bleak
I’m looking at my colleagues and much to my surprise
They all require improvement and then I realise
I’m looking through Nicky Morgan’s eyes

I’m standing in the playground with a massive bunch of keys
I’m giving them to businessmen who run academies
I don’t believe that teachers should be properly qualified
Experience counts for nothing and then I realise
I’m looking through Nicky Morgan’s eyes

The teachers are all cowering and fearing for their jobs
And Ofsted are marauding like a bunch of mindless yobs
I look into a mirror, I scream and I despise
I hate what I am seeing and then I realise
I’m looking through Nicky Morgan’s eyes

Surely The Guardian isn’t running scared? Warwick Mansell’s article in today’s edition about axing parent governors [well, you have to search…] is important reading, but as of a few minutes ago there are only three ‘comment’ responses to this: one in praise of Mansell – deserved – and the other one of the same sort of time ruing the lack of comments. There are two ‘replies’ – both by me: I am omahastan when visiting.

I thought perhaps the tragic news of the Brussels’ bombings was responsible for ‘relegating’ his article, but pride of place is given to a Hot cross buns taste test feature so I don’t think that is the reason….

It is ironic. As I mention in one of my replies, we are having a ripe focus on Education at the moment because of the recent budget announcements on national academisation and subsequent debates regarding and as tangents to this, so Mansell’s article on that other bombshell that parents are to be removed from being school governors deserves prominence. I fear this education focus will wither quickly, like so many other fleeting moments of angst before. That was my other point, sadly seeming true. Since my replies this morning, there has been one further comment.

For anyone interested, here are Warwick Mansell’s recent articles. They all deserve reading, and his work supported. Someone has to expose, for example, how much leaders of academy chains can earn. Greedy guts.

No one can decide
but that’s what you do
when the wind howled
and a tree’s leaves danced

making these collide
while other gamblers
rolling the dice nearby
go for the cliff jump.

Originally posted August, 2011:

After Frost
-by Robert Creeley

He comes here
by whatever way he can,
not too late,
not too soon.

He sits, waiting.
He doesn’t know
why he should
have such a patience.

He sits at a table
on a chair.
He is comfortable
sitting there.

No one else
in this room,
no others, no expectations,
no sounds.

Had he walked
another way,
would he be here,
like they say.

This poem can be found in the ‘Black Mountain Poets’ section from the excellent and massive Poetry Foundation site. I like this because I enjoy Frost and enjoyed teaching him to my students – not an experience universally shared, sadly – and because I enjoyed teasing them with alternative and/or lack of meanings for The Road Not Taken, which probably explains why my enthusiasm for Frost wasn’t universally shared, or not. Of course, Creeley was one of the greats too, indulging in light witticism here.