The Sunday Post – Biblical Floods, 'Dumbing Down', A Country Jaunt

Reading the Weather

It always amuses me when people claim they can interpret themorality of the weather, but I know it should not amuse me because it is not funny. There is a type of person who thinks they be able to commune with the Almighty in a way the rest of us cannot, reading the signs around us for clues about His will and finding out that – what luck! – the Almighty agreed with them all along! But this is no mere ‘evidence bias’ to which we are accustomed in politics or the media. The UKIP councilor who blamed gays for the fact that we have Winter this year evidently believes he be privy to some knowledge or wisdom that is denied to the rest of us, and which enables him to read clouds. That is rather tragic.

Reading the Media

Not long ago, someone said to me that they thought the reason the media has a problem with teachers is that teachers teach pupils to distrust the media. I dismissed the idea at the time but now I begin to wonder.

All week I have been sifting through material taken from newspapers’ online editions and demonstrating to pupils how vacuous, tendentious and artless is the bulk of media copy. Vacuity and tendentiousness are already well covered in the GCSE so there is little additional work for me to do on that front. However, the question of art matters to me very deeply. A large proportion of media copy is written in appalling style and frequently resorts to cliché and hyperbole, possibly because facts require drama before they can be sold, possibly because hacks need to fill the column inches if they want to get paid. However, besides the morbid pleasure I gain from deconstructing journalese for my pupils, it rouses a genuine anger in me: how often do unlettered hacks attack teachers for ‘dumbing down’?

I tend to be suspicious of the more apocalyptic warnings that literacy is terminally ill. However, it is always appropriate to be vigilant about standards so I take the issue seriously. Rarely (for obvious reasons) does the media turn its focus back upon itself and ask the question: what kind of writing do we think is most readily available and easily accessible to young people these days? It is common enough to complain because children are reading Twilight and not David Copperfield (which is ipso facto the fault of teachers), and it is certainly true that unchallenging literature will do less for a child’s literacy than literature that is challenging. However, do we really believe they read more Twilight than the free content on the web? Novels cost time and money. Comment is Free, Right Minds and Indy Voices cost no money, little time and even less effort to consume (or, to use journalese a moment, it’s ‘dumb’). The greatest exposure to letters that my pupils get is to the same media that has the face to preach to the rest of us about standards.

A Country Jaunt

The weather was good today so I took Fleance* for a spin in the country. I went to see the Cerne Abbas Giant:

There he is, in all his glory:

Nearby was a delightful village called Minterne Magna.

Andrew Marr recently wrote in the Spectator that London was being ‘hollowed out’ by exponential price and rent rises and the accumulation of property by foreign speculators. Sebastian Faulks made a similar point in the same magazine, describing the desecration of Notting Hill, with new developments vanquishing the old neighbourhood, paid for with new money. I cannot help but think that if London price out its own, including its nurses, merchants, artists, and young people, there’s an entire England that awaits them, which they could even afford.

*Fleance is the name I give my car.

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Feelings on a Sunday

It appears my new profession is not teaching, as I had thought, but rather I am going into mechanics, for just like my car I am to be subjected to an MOT.

I cannot tell if this be good or bad policy. A friend of mine who has been teaching a while reckons it might work but until I get some years' experience I shan't be in a position to judge. Any pronouncements I make would be made in audacity, not knowledge.

It worries me that the debate(s) which determine policy – in Parliament and in the media – are conducted in worser ignorance and blacker darkness, yet the advocates have no doubts. Nurses, teachers, doctors (who also now have MOTs), servicemen and women – mark how people may become a battleground. And in this particular field, Hunt is a combatant as much as Gove, and though he be new to the fight, yet he will cause as much collateral ere long. 

Perhaps this is part of the price we pay for democracy?

*

We make them play a charade, then we moan they play charades with us. Rather like the bizarre mating rituals in nature, where birds flick their tails in their mates' faces, one wonders why they can't just get down to it. Politicians have to make claims about themselves which we in turn are supposed not to believe. Primarily, they have to disclaim self-interest. They must constantly assure us that it is for our benefit they seek power for themselves. Naturally we scoff, but would you honestly cast your ballot for the candidate who says 'vote for me, for I seek power, status and influence'?

In other fields, few of us would pretend we had not thought of ourselves in what we do, although some individuals may find it helpful for their self-image if they affect piety and martyrdom. I freely admit one of my motives for going into teaching is to secure my future, pace Tristram Hunt (and others generally) who insist we must all be propelled by passion. (I wonder if The X-Factor have got to Hunt, too?) In making such an admission, those of my motives which are selfless are made more plausible. I may not be accused for admitting I am ambitious for those whom I serve as well as for myself, but woe to him who makes such a confession to a voter (and it is still normally a 'him' in politics).

We are of course very lucky that out of a vast field of competitors and wannabes, the decision on who gets the power is ours. And it is one of the perks of being governed by a professionalised political class that we may grumble about them even as we put them there. But a friend of mine once used an IT term to explain to me how, from such a vast pool as the American electorate, they may dredge up men of such low calibre to choose for the White House: garbage in, garbage out. For is it not true that this charade we make make them play, this dance we make them do, is no more than to demand of them that they lie to us? Is not the man who says 'vote for me that I may become powerful' more honest than he who says 'I am only thinking of you when I ask for your vote'? Yet we will always choose the he that is dishonest, only to wonder why we have such a Parliament of fouls. 

*

I have touched on passion. I doubt I shall ever write a cover letter again that makes no mention of how passionate I am about the matter in hand. It's another charade, of course, another mating ritual. The question which always comes up in a job interview is 'why do you want this job?' and the real answer is normally 'because I have bills to pay.' I suppose an election is basically just a big job interview, for briefly we all of us have to perpetrate the same kind of lie: no one admits they want to work for pay. The correct answer is that you are passionate about pouring pints.

If Hunt include passion in his MOT, then I am in trouble. I am too old fashioned to speak hysteria. I might have to take lessons from the drama teacher in how to choke on my tears of passion during my assessment. Perhaps such a performance would satisfy the next Labour government that I am fit to teach?

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