OUR DOG ATE MY HOMEWORK

I have always been impressed by the inventiveness of the young when lying. Our 8 year old granddaughter demonstrated a surprising sophistication when slightly late in returning home. I suggested excuses: 

“we could say there was a sinkhole in the road which was vast and several cars had already fallen down it – the screams of the people down there were blood curdling”. She shook her head. “too much stuff grandpa let’s just say there was a big hole in the road that meant we had to take a long way back…” She has all the makings of a Tory politician, that girl.

I remember one chap who realised that dog had had its day and said “our parrot shredded my homework…” He was shredded himself for that.

But nowadays we are protecting our young from books that might cause them stress. A number of Universities have triggered “beware” notices on or banned several books and plays. Amongst others “A Midsummer night’s Dream” – for classism; Strindberg’s most famous play “Miss Julie” – contains discussions on suicide; works of Jane Austen, Chaucer, Charles Dickens and several others.

To return to our inventive young, we are handing them the ammunition to avoid work.

“I couldn’t read King Lear…ageist,  violent and sad” 

“I’m not doing any more maths as a professor in New York said ‘the equation 2+2=4 reeks of white supremacist patriarchy’.”

“I can’t do history as I’ve read the old historians we’re asked to read were narrow-minded white men who delighted to write about other white men”

“The Fairie Queen is potentially homophobic – I can’t read that.”

“Oliver Twist is about pederasty, criminality and violence towards women – why was it published?”

The continued decline this year in the number of young people taking English Literature ’A’ Level and the removal of it from some University syllabuses should allay concerns we have about the stress-inducing literature.

I read English at Oxford and if I’d had access to this branch of stress-sourcing I’d have slammed the ghastly Beowulf straight on to that list of “banned texts”. Why? Animal abuse, misogyny, classism and more. Indeed I’d have led a crusade against anything Anglo Saxon on the basis that this was a beastly, cruel period study of which should be avoided. Like Covid it should be locked down.

Yet those providing the reference points for such censorship of literature and other subjects like Latin (“Latin is a dead language – studying it equates to necrophilia”) come from a bunch of radical thinking post-graduate Tutors who have created the anti-establishment wokeism that can infuriate or divert.

For me increasingly it is diverting but it suggests the study of the humanities at University may be becoming increasingly controversial and expendable. The very idea of a University education being essential has been contradicted by the legacy of punitive debts such an education creates.

Yet, as you’ll previously have gathered, my view about today’s youth or indeed youth at any point of history is that they were/are in general optimistic, good humoured and enterprising.

Three tiny lavatorial examples of this:

Years ago before Oxford Colleges were unisex a woman’s college installed a urinal for visiting men. Above it a woman had written. 

“Who is Armitage and what is shanking?” 

In an American college someone had inscribed over a washbasin “Think.” Sometime later someone added an arrow from “think” to where soap was dispensed and it said “Thoap.” 

Finally In a pub urinal the immortal “The penis mightier than the sword”

So long as we encourage such laughter, irreverence and freedom of speech all will be OK.

EXCITE PEOPLE, DON'T JUST MAKE THEM DO EXAMS

I’ve been worrying about education, that we’ve become obsessed with grades rather than in helping inspire people, putting it simply, to find joy in life and their talent.

‘To educate’ comes from the Latin and means to draw out. Great education is about inspiring, nurturing the special talent people have, not ramming in facts.

Here’s what Mr Gradgrind said in Charles Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’:

“Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals like this.” 

Dickens was satirising a Victorian school of thought here. He, too, worried about education. He writes about the gloriously named Dotheboys Hall in ‘Nicholas Nickleby’. We’ve come a long way since then but there’s still an obsession about the loss of “learning time” amongst  5 year olds. In Finland they save “learning time” until children are 7 not 5 years old. 

Argo Gosh is a successful entrepreneur in Brighton whose achievements are immense. He told me his greatest period of learning ever was when he had a whole term off school so, from May to September he, his siblings and friends spent their time building an absolutely enormous tree house and being outside in the fresh air learning about life, teamwork and carpentry.

My greatest period of learning was at University not in libraries nor at lectures but talking about all sorts of things to clever, open minded and entertaining friends who made me think. What I acquired was an appetite for life, an appetite that I’ve never lost.

Recently I said that being proved wrong is exciting; discovering my preconceptions or prejudices are simply misplaced; that’s called discovery.

The essence of education is discovery. It’s about opening a book and finding a new world. It’s about going to a theatre (well it used to be) and losing yourself in a story like ‘Hamlet’ you’ve seen and heard countless times before.

What teachers can’t teach - but they can inspire it in you (if you are lucky enough to find a good one) is to be an enthusiastic and energetic champion of an idea, painting, piece of music or piece of science. Brian Cox makes science hum with excitement in a way an average physics teacher won’t do.

They say ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’; well, I’m a rather old dog and I’m daily learning new stuff often from the infectious optimism of young people.

John Sculley, ex Apple said over 30 years ago “In today’s world we need impresarios and wizards.” In today’s Covid world, John, even more so.

We need to design a new future and we can’t do that by applying old tricks. We should be reconsidering our whole education system and rather than ramming maths into reluctant heads find what latent sparks of talent exist there and encourage them to burst into flames.

Einstein was, apparently, not especially talented at school. A more plausible explanation is that his teachers failed to spot that latent genius.

We are on the verge of a potentially exciting period of innovation and an energy boost – this typically happens after a catastrophe.

We need to ignite passion, discovery, excitement and stop being didactic.

On Saturday I heard a young, successful MD of a successful business (Paul Barratt) talk with passion about what he learnt from business books. Not facts. Not formulae. Not tool kits. No. Ideas. Visions. Dreams. Magic.

That’s just what we need. In schools. At Universities. In business. Everywhere. ‘A’ levels are not the answer to a better, happier world. 

But excitement is.

THIS BROKEN AND UNHAPPY WORLD

Was I dreaming or did I hear these words in a recent sermon at church? Depressingly the church tends to focus on bad news rather than on the exciting and triumphant.

The media has had an increasingly doom-ridden attitude towards our educational system. People tell me we are short-changing our children and that we are to blame.

Baloney.

This week we went to see a new school. It’s new,  in a building which opened for business this September.  No. Change that to “opened for the joy of learning”. We were blown away by the stimulating atmosphere.

I thought back to my school which I actually enjoyed. Dame Alice Owens. Founded in 1613 , in the Angel, Islington. Now relocated to Hertfordshire country side as a “partially selective” comprehensive it’s the second most successful comprehensive in GCSEs in the UK. My memory is of a slightly Victorian place where anger and scholarship were in control. It was not a place of much laughter.

In this school there’s a lot of laughter and smiling. I remembered my schooldays (“if I see a boy smiling I shall stamp on him.”)  Classroom after classroom here were crammed with infographics and stimuli. It even made me want to go back to  school and learn again. This place just made learning seem fun.

In a history classroom there was a slogan on the wall allegedly from Marilyn Monroe

“Well behaved women rarely make history”.

So here was a sense of humour and even a sense of mischief. Yet the discipline in the place is surprisingly tough. The sense of right and wrong and detention is very clear.

The acid test was that I wanted to be here learning especially things I had in my youth avoided,  like geography , physics and music.

I was struck by these infographics I kept on seeing and the stress on timelines, context and facts. Me, I love facts which are the GPS of learning, helping you get to the right place to appreciate the good things like Mozart’s genius.

As a recent author of a book on start-ups I was also surprised and pleased to find  brilliant wall charts on “What is an Entrepreneur?” in one of the corridors, So not just academic but with one foot firmly in the real world.

In the end there was a relaxed atmosphere pervasive with the thrill of learning that none of the naysayers about the teaching profession would normally  have conceded possible.

I imagine there are many schools in the UK like this, designed to create delight and astonishment in the power of bringing out the best in young people. Our world is not broken and unhappy – there are many places doing inspiring work and it’s our job as apostles of optimism to find them and celebrate them.

Anyone coming here is lucky. Excited teachers, good food, excellent facilities but most importantly we think their pupils’ potential will be realised in such an environment.  And that’s what matters.

“Start-ups Pivots and Pop Ups” by Richard Hall and Rachel Bell published on October 3rd by Kogan Page. The antidote to doubt and gloom.

HOW DID YOU DO IN YOUR EXAMS?

Anyone who knows me thinks I’m an optimist maybe, sometimes, too much of one. A colleague in advertising suggested I’d enthuse over old turnips to win the account for Old Turnip Growers. So when I say that because Brighton’s population has a greater % of people with degrees than anywhere else in the UK, you need a 2.1 to get a job at Pizza Express, everyone would assume I was being flippant.

Which I was. But now I’m not so sure.

All I hear anyone talk about now is education. I see people doing jobs they hate, working themselves to death and suffering rotten lifestyles to fund their children’s education or lying sleepless in bed in case the dice falls the wrong way when they allocate primary school places. Fortunately it fell the right way for my grandson. Great excitement and relief; even pride. Grandson aged 4, asked if he had anything to say, replied (and I love the brightness of this):

“Yes. Can you stop going on about it. It’s only a school.”

It’s only a school. Right on son and it can help but not substitute for your innate smartness and appetite for life.

This week I heard of a brilliant young talent in childcare who wouldn’t (couldn’t) do his exams so now he’s out of childcare and into…whatever (or nothing). Imagine if they discover Wayne Rooney had insufficient GCSEs and was being fired by Man United. Or if you were told the meal you’d just enjoyed in a restaurant had been cooked by a degree-free chef. Imagine the rising sense of nausea. Not even an HND?

Exams trap people rather than liberate their talent. I want to know what people show a liking and talent for. And that talent being encouraged and becoming great and amazing.

Degrees are not qualifications. They comprise a pretty easy exam at the end of a pretty enjoyable three years talking, listening, drinking and learning. Which is good in its own right..

But education is not about ramming stuff into kids, it is…Balliol. Oxford? Literally, from educere (latin) – to lead out, draw forth.

So more of this drawing out, please. And the next time I hear someone given a job based on the exams they’ve passed rather than their energy, enthusiasm and appetite for life remind me to be optimistic if I can.

Turnips indeed!

JOHN HUMPHREYS - YOU'RE FIRED

This is about laying the ghost of John Humphreys, icon of negativism and whingeing, a born-again Victor Meldrew, the dreary voice of constant dissatisfaction. Occasionally though, just occasionally, a letter of complaint cheers one up. Here’s an extract of one written to NTL – it went on in similar vein for pages:-

“British Telecom – w*****s though they are - shine like brilliant beacons of success, in the filthy puss-filled mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy.”

It’s been the endless quest of the miserable, negative and of course the media to prove how limitlessly inadequate we in the UK are. Take the weather for example? Useless, hopeless, shameful compared with the continent. Hmmm!!

Here’s a letter from a Dutch lady in Tuesday’s Times describing her recent drive to Britain:

“The roads were appalling in Holland, pretty bad in Belgium- particularly the enormous potholes on the motorway – and not much better in France….. (arriving in Britain) I was pleasantly surprised to have a smooth journey on three motorways without a lane closure in sight. On the other hand my eldest son is stuck in a motel in Germany as conditions are impossible on the autobahn, and my husband spent four hours travelling 20 miles as the Dutch trains went, once again, into meltdown.”

A very Happy Christmas to everyone who thinks on balance everything in Britain is in pretty good nick from the NHS to the gritting system to the academic achievements of our young people to attitudes to work, life, family and friends. And a particularly stupendous New Year to all those actually looking forward to 2011.

To the rest of you and to you John Humphreys, especially, bah humbug and though it grieves me to say it….good luck in that puss filled mire.