Month: June 2019

  • Today, are we all Young Werthers?

    Before the rise of modern information technology, the shaping of a person would have likely happened through the local community – parents, elders, priest, officials – and I wonder if the culture was relatively static. Of course, there would have been fashions in culture but I get the impression these gradually spread and were longer-lasting. Picture it this way: La Roman de la Rose, most likely based on earlier oral stories is written by Guillaume de Lorris in the early 1200s. It spreads through France and abroad over the next 100 years. It’s translated into other languages, notably by Chaucer in around 1360, possibly Dante and van Aken as well. It’s popularity is maintained throughout Europe for at least another 100 years. So, too, spreads and transforms the conception of courtly love. There’s no doubt that La Roman de la Rose influenced how men and women behaved in love. I also wonder whether this even spread the idea of romantic love itself as an aspect of a person’s individuality?

    Progress in transport and – above all – the printing press enabled culture to be spread faster and, perhaps, the shaping of people’s beliefs and their self-identity. Remember, the printing press – much like the internet today – was seen as allowing people access to potentially dangerous ideas. The faster the transmission of ideas (printed) the easier it is to share ideas, stories, music that create a cultural sensibility that affects how people think and behave.

    I’m writing this sitting in a Starbucks listening to the music they play that sets the mood. Some teenage girls have been sitting near me looking at their phones and chattering about Love Island (which “boy” they like most) and this is what’s making me reflect on the effect of that certain combination of mood-music, social media and the presentation of romantic love for these teenagers. Where conceptions of courtly love took hundreds of years to spread through European society, the romance presented by Love Island seems relatively new and has got its claws itself into British youth culture rapidly.

    I’m not saying that this sort of “influencing” or “shaping” of the way in which people behave is anything new. It’s how total it is.

    In 1774, Goethe famously published The Sorrows of Young Werther, a fictional account of a sensitive young man who – unable to have the woman he loves and is rejected by German aristocratic society – shoots himself. It was an immediate sensation and led to the “Wether Effect” throughout Europe: men dressing like Werther, products sold as tie-ins to the Werther craze and even an epidemic of suicides in the fashion of Wether with a copy of the book beside the bodies (it’s claimed nowadays that the suicides were an early example of a media moral panic).

    Even the “Werther Effect” – and its melancholic sensibility – took several years to spread through and influence European young men. And I’m sure that the numbers of men involved were relatively small. It’s the way that men’s (romantic) identities were influences that interests me.

    Also, I think the post-World War Two sub-cultural groups (mods, rockers, glams, teddies, punks) are somehow linked to this developing cultural influencing of an individual’s identity. The groups that I came into contact when I was a youth (goths, New Romantics, indie kids) didn’t seem to get replaced as the internet came on the scene. Cinema, TV, radio, magazines, comic books and records no doubt created people through the hegemony of mainstream culture – but there was an identifiable presence of “outsiders” who thought and behaved beyond the mainstream. They were genuinely different. From the 1990s onwards – and it seems to me to be the technology of the internet assisted this – these types of “outsider” groups disappeared somehow or seemed assimilated directly into mainstream culture. Look at how quickly – within two or three years – hipster culture became a defining cultural phenomena in the mainstream. It’s as if everything is mainstream now.

    It could be that I’m getting old. Looking at the Top 40 UK Singles Chart, which is where you’d find something that would register as sub-cultural, its completely full of pop (singers like Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Drake, Lewis Capaldi as well as dance music and rnb). There doesn’t seem to be anything different from 10 or 20 years ago and certainly nothing that would make your dad shout at the tv: “What is this rubbish? It’s not music!” Lots of people have commented on the strangeness of hearing a pop song for the first time and having that impression that you’ve heard it before.

    It’s almost like there’s a consensus in culture that’s existed for the last 20-30 years of which Love Island is the latest manifestation. I wonder whether (to get political) whether it accompanies the Age of Neoliberalism in which we seem to be living. It influences totally.

    I’m rambling now. So I’ll stop.

  • English in Education, Summer 2019

    It’s a Literacy-focused issue.

    John Hodgson’s editorial explores briefly the definitions of literacy and suggests two paradigms exist: one as the functional, autonomous ability of a child to read; the other:

    …involves reading the world and reading the word… and connects personal response and social awareness.

    Hodgson cites the work of the New London Group and the concept of “multiliteracies” in the 1990s – and this becomes the touchstone for the various discussions on literacy presented in the issue.

    I found the following articles incredibly interesting:

    Literacy Constants in a Context of Contemporary Change by Margaret Mackey – using Professor Keith Oatley’s work on cognitive psychology and Reading and Writing, Mackey argues that a discussion about the nature of current literacy is founded on its psychological functions. She discusses initial literacy acquisition (as a physical activity) and agrees that, quite early on, reading is an encounter with another mind which causes us to think beyond ourselves. After that, Mackey explores children’s reading, recreational reading, literary reading (associated with the “function of thinking”), deep reading (I understand as engagement with a text that sparks thinking or response), critical reading and conversational reading (essentially social media). I was interested in a reference to Miall and Kuiken’s definition of literariness as “defamilirisation” of style or narrative that cause a reinterpretation of a conventional feeling or concept. Mackey suggests that reading behaviours overlap. Finally, she advocates for a broader understanding of what modern (multimodal, I guess) literacy and that “Pursuing what we value about reading will be better achieved by understanding our own priorities even as we respect the lively ways contemporary readers navigate today’s new possibilities.”

    The Thought Chronicle: Devaluing a Multimodal Repertoire of Response in Teacher Education by David Lewkowich – is a fantastic promotion of multimodal responses to texts. I love his assertion that “how and what we choose to read and write invariably affects how we choose to teach, and how we choose to communicate our understanding of social and individual experience, and our love of language and literature” and – especially: “Such choices, therefore, also affect how our students come to learn and how they come to know themselves in educational spaces.” Absolutely ageed! Lewkowich presents what he calls the Thought Chronicle, essentially a creative journal responding to studied texts in a variety of forms. He reproduces his assignment brief to his trainee-teachers which aims to “demonstrate knowledge in a variety of ways”. (As an aside: I think this approach is liberating in how it breaks free of the reductionist exam-response approach to measuring knowledge.) He discusses the role of teacher as expert and how sharing knowledge which is “non-authority”. His phrase “uncertain becomings” not only refers to trainee English teachers but anyone – child or adult – engaging with texts. Really love this quote from Nikos Kazantzakis: “True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own”. There are six pages of highly interesting examples of pieces from thought chronicles reproduced. Highly-inspiring article!

  • English in Education, Spring 2019

    Writing is the theme of this issue of English in Education. It’s an excellent collection of thoughtful pieces by English teachers and academics. The editorial sets the tone immediately:

    Trying to develop excellent writing pedagogy in a system dominated by standardised, politicised assessments makes the task even more challenging.

    The editorial, by Dr Jenifer Smith and Dr Mari Cruice, points out how the importance of the “primacy of meaning” in children’s Writing has been downgraded over the last 30 years. Towards the end of they make the point that teachers are looking back to the writing of educators from the 60s and 70s (something I’ve been doing increasingly) or drawing on their own practice as writers (something I’ve always done). The editorial ends with a warning:

    Meanwhile, in mainstream classrooms, the dead weight of a prescriptive and reductionist viewpoint is hard to shift. And yet individuals, especially amongst the young, have learned somewhere that writing is a vital human activity and that it works for us in many different ways. It has a moral and humane heft, it underpins critically, it is inventive and visionary, it can anchor us. Of course, writing resists “mapping onto levels”, but the failure to take writing seriously as a fundamental element of human growth has become a failure to take responsibility for children’s intellectual growth and moral becoming.

    Overall, the view of English teaching and Writing in particular is that our subject is in a pretty awful way. I agree!

    I found the following articles in this issue particularly interesting and useful:

    English and Meaning by Gordon M. Pradl – absolutely excellent presentation of the tradition of English teaching which I see myself as part which is child-focused and balance the “skills” and “cultural heritage” view of English with that of “personal growth” (enriching children’s social and cultural lives). There’s a terribly good section about the role of the primacy of meaning in the post-War teaching of English and its contrast with the present models: “[T]he current push for product accountability being imposed on our schools – where outcomes are often mandated by persons far removed from the actual learning encounters between students and teachers – can threaten the core ‘meaning making’ principle of our discipline. Meaning, it seems, remains resistant to measurement, especially of the short-term variety. Pradl focuses on the work of James Britton and David Holbrook.

    Teaching Bad Writing by Myra Barrs – argues persuasively that current teaching of Writing at KS2 does not improve the quality children’s writing. She believes that current assessment prioritises form over content. One piece of research conducted by Barrs points out the disparity between what teachers think are the elements of good writing (meaning) and the comments they write on children’s work (all about form). She demands that there needs to be a course-correction and that English needs to be recognised in relation to the Arts.

    “Death by PEEL?” The Teaching of Writing in the Secondary English Classroom by Simon Gibbons – Gibbons identifies the way that children’s writing has increasingly “constrained and constricted” by ever-prescriptive teaching. He says that teachers do not like structures like PEEL but find them a necessary evil (“necessary to arm pupils in their battles with assessment systems”). He concludes that “the teaching of writing is in a sorry state in many English classrooms”. There’s an excellent review of the history of Writing. Gibbons asserts that his experience doesn’t find the same issues in other English-speaking countries. He recognises that children’s experiences of learning to write are “a less than fulfilling experience”. Gibbons seems quite downbeat to me and ends on the hope that “Tides turn; times change”.

    English Teaching and Imagination: A Case for Revisiting the Value of Imagination in Teaching Writing by Helena Thomas – I found myself agreeing with Thomas’ argument about the value and importance of developing children’s imaginations in the English classroom. Thomas sees teachers working in a climate of “unprecedented accountability” where “teaching is dominated by a policy discourse that shuts down debate”. She advocates for teachers to view themselves as practising creative artists and I found the section on “A brief note on implications for practice” excellent advice.

    Additionally, the references of the articles offer a tremendous treasure trove of lost knowledge for English teachers (or for me, at least).

  • Teaching English, Summer 2019

    The latest issue of Teaching English, N.A.T.E.’s magazine, dropped through our letterbox this morning and is a always a welcome insight into the best thinking of English teachers’ professional association.

    It’s a magazine I always look forward to reading. The theme of this issue is using self-research to develop classroom practice. Among the articles, I found these ones most interesting:

    ICT: Opportunity Missed by Trevor Millum – an article that examines what’s happening to the use of digital tech in English classrooms. Millum says the “over the last 10 years, ICT has been undergoing something of a crisis in English schools”. His analysis seems accurate to me: the axing of BECTA, the perception that digital tech isn’t needed in English classrooms and budget cuts. He argues that this is different in other parts of the UK. I agree with Millum’s concerns about the way that big corporations are influencing pedagogy. He suggests that established constants, like word processors, that can be used in all aspects of English study and composition.

    Confronting Gradgrind: Employability and English by Robert Eaglestone – looks at why numbers of students studying English at A-level and university is in decline. Dickens’ Gradgrind is used to illustrate the current perception of education simply being about employability. Eaglestone goes on to use examples to show how English is advantageous in furthering a career, citing Google’s Project Oxygen and the company’s desire to recruit employees with skills in “communication, collaboration, critical thinking, independence and adaptability”.

    39 Steps… To Engaging With Poetry by Trevor Millum and Chris Warren – here are steps 13-15 of what has been an incredibly useful series so far.

    The Case for Language by Dan Clayton – reminds us how important teaching Knowledge About Language is.

    Rethinking KS3: A Novel Approach by Barbara Bleiman – a fantastic report on teaching a novel with Year 9 classes. I liked the way in which the department developed a shared (planned) approach to the novel, group work, no explicit planning – or teaching – to a test, encouragement of broader written responses rather than tightly structured ones. There were positive outcomes, most notably that boys were more engaged.

  • The Supremacy of Doomsday Clock’s Metaverse

    The Supremacy of Doomsday Clock’s Metaverse

    Supposedly, it’s a struggle between the dark despairing Watchmen universe and the bright hope of the DC superhero universe. Of course, the old cynic in me is skeptical of the fervour in which issue 10 of Doomsday Clock has been greeted. Despite still feeling that trying to write a sequel to Watchmen was folly, there have been some engaging moments in the series so far and Gary Frank’s artwork has been faultlessly amazing. There are two more issues to go and the impression I have (which hasn’t been helped by the publication delays) has been that the narrative is a little fragmentary. I’m not sure that it’s deliberate. A great deal has been set up – not least that a dying Ozymandias is attempting to save the Watchmen universe – that has to be wrapped up in 60 or so pages. I’m not sure that a coherent, satisfying ending is possible. We’ll see.

    The general interest in issue 10 has been in Dr Manhattan’s explanation that the main Earth in DC Comics is a “Metaverse” rather than simply one of many alternate worlds. In the preceding issue, there’s a scene where Manhattan shows his manipulation of the timeline to prevent Alan Scott from becoming the original Green Lantern, the Justice Society of America being formed and – consequently – the Legion of Superheroes being established in the future.

    According to Manhattan, the Metaverse isn’t just a version of a timeline continuity. It’s an organism that responds to interference. It pushes back against Manhattan’s meddling and Wally West’s return is its most powerful sign of self-correction.

    Manhattan’s interference show in Wally West’s return in Rebirth.

    On arrival in the DC Universe, Manhattan observes Colman’s concern for the policeman who had beaten him and this sparks his interest. For Manhattan, the DCU is a “universe of hope” and he develops an obsession with Superman’s presence in the universe. Superman appears to be a point in the metaverse that simply has to come into existence despite attempts to prevent it from taking place. Manhattan theorises that Earth 0 is the centre of everything which Manhattan calls a “Metaverse” something incessantly altering but acting as a fixed point that “stands apart” from it and “reacts” to the multiverse.

    What seems to have been revised in Manhattan’s (Geoff Johns’) conception is that the alternate Earths have not always existed. They arose out of some form of interference. For example, when Barry Allan met Jake Garrick in Flash of Two Worlds – when the Multiverse was first introduced, reconciling the Golden and Silver Ages – these two universes were subsequently promoted in DC continuity as always simultaneously existing.

    Changes to Earth 0 alter the Multiverse.

    Manhattan says that it is the metaversal Earth 0 that existed all along and that whenever it has been changed and updated it caused the other variations to take place. (Yes, I’m trying to get my head around this, too: Jay Garrick existed as Flash until there was an alteration in the timeline and Barry Allan is now the Flash and Jay’s history was revised. Is Johns’ suggesting that Manhattan is behind the changes in the DCU? I look forward to the forthcoming Dr Manhattan Tries to Fuck DC Continuity co-starring Ambush Bug as Manhattan’s sidekick).

    Backmatter material, extra-narrative texts, intrudes into Doomsday Clock #10 through Manhattan’s interaction with the Hollywood actor, Carver Colman, who plays the role of detective Nathaniel Dusk, a 1980s DC comic book detective. This isn’t done in the manner of the parallel storytelling of the Tales of the Black Freighter from Watchmen. It’s less deftly executed and draws attention to itself to the detriment of the main narrative. (Interestingly, if we take Manhattan’s version of the Metaverse straight, then Nathaniel Dusk has been transformed from comic to movie character in a similar way that Jay Garrick featured in comics before the Flash of Two Worlds in 1961.) An attempt to replicate Alan Moore’s approach to Watchmen is pastiche.

    What’s intrigued me most is the way in which DC fandom has responded to Geoff Johns’ conception of the Metaverse as something extraordinarily original. I wonder whether or not Johns has been reading Moore’s run on Supreme?

    Supreme #41

    A violent Superman-analogue, Supreme was created by Rob Liefeld for Image Comics in the 1990s. Alan Moore signed on as writer for a turbulent couple of years – though the run is stunningly good. In the first few pages of #41 (August 1996), Moore establishes the metafictional nature of the superhero: Supreme encounters other versions of himself (including Squeak the Supermouse) who take him to a meta-hub of their existence called The Supremacy. This dimension is populated by every possible variation of Supreme who had appeared in the comic but had subsequently been updated.

    The Supremacy, a dimension where the previous incarnations of Supreme continue to exist.

    Supreme learns that he is simply the latest version of an ongoing archetype. He meets Original Supreme, the first, and is told an origin story where Original recounts that – in 1941 – he found himself “written out” into a void where all subsequent revisions of Supreme are relocated and he constructed The Supremacy “for Supremes who’d been displaced in the unfathomable periodic changes in space-time we call revisions!” There’s a period called “The Flickering” that causes secondary variant Supremes (the minor character redesigns that seem to happen) before a new revision (“It’s as if the universe is desperately trying different variations to get things right, before it gives up and starts again!” we’re told). A egg-headed future version of Supreme – who seems to have the same demeanour as Dr Manhattan – explains that what happens to the universe is that there is a “rippling” of a constantly-revising reality and – this is where I’d argue Geoff Johns is drawing from – a self-modifying reality:

    Johns’ “Metaverse” theory seem surprisingly like Moore’s “Revisions” from the 1990s.

    From Moore’s second issue (#42) there are flashbacks to Supreme’s origin (in this revision) told in a faux-retro style (with yellowed paper). These flashbacks are used as a descant on the main narrative in same manner that Johns uses Dr Manhattan’s encounters with Carver Colman. Where Watchmen takes a gritty, real-world approach to superheroes, Moore’s Supreme explores the disparity between current superhero comics and a nostalgic longing for a supposedly more innocent past. It’s delicately handled and wonderful to read (especially as a history of American comic books).

    Where Johns uses Doomsday Clock to foreground the positive, hopeful nature of the DC superhero universe (which is, after-all what he tried to course-correct the New 52 reboot with Rebirth, where he first showed that Manhattan was interfering), Moore used Supreme to examine the meta-history of superhero comics in a joyful, often parodic fashion that was able to present how changing tastes and styled affect them. I’m not sure why comics fans haven’t drawn links between Supreme and Doomsday Clock. Maybe it’s not well-known any more beyond hardcore Alan Moore buffs who definitely aren’t reading Doomsday Clock.

    So, maybe the real clash isn’t between the Watchmen universe and the DCU but between Johns’ Metaverse and Moore’s Supremacy.

  • The Great Pedagogical War is over? Huh? Since When?

    The other day I was sitting in a staffroom browsing through the April 2019 edition of Teach Secondary. My attention was drawn to an article by Ben Newmark, Whose Curriculum Is It, Anyway?, in which he argues that “the Great Pedagogical War is over” and that “‘what’ has beaten ‘how’“. A little like the recent series in the TES, Newmark seems to believe that those working in schools are now engaged in some sort of post-revolutionary process of redefining what it is they are actually teaching in schools.

    I’d agree with some of Newmark’s more general points, especially when he says things like “Deeper, more profound questions need to be considered and answered“. Like many reflective educators, he knows that there are fundamental issues affecting the development and wellbeing of the UK’s children which schools simply aren’t addressing (and it’s nothing to do with lack of funds). He quickly wanders off the main topic to express his views about “wrongheaded” History curricula (he’s worried that there are History teachers who think the subject teaches “The National Myth” and isn’t diverse enough). I’ve been in a number of schools recently and seen History lessons where the topic has invariably been… the rise of Nazi Germany! He spends time discussing the role of Mary Seacole in History teaching and ends his article:

    We do need to have this conversation, we really do. But this is a big, big debate, which might involve deep structural changes for many history curriculums. Erecting strawmen won’t help. Nor will blunderbuss non-specific accusations of racism. Nor will defensiveness from curriculum planners when faced with legitimate challenge over perspectives they have, for whatever reason, overlooked.

    Like the rest of – what I’m sure are genuinely-motivated – expressions about the shift towards curriculum-focused school models, I simply don’t believe them. There won’t be fundamental changes to the schools’ curricula. Like a lot of things in education, the chatter around the curriculum acts as a salve on the conscience of school leaders. It’s a little like the protracted discussions about “life after levels” assessment in secondaries several years back which saw a smorgasbord of models adopted which in practice became a HappyMeal of GCSE gradings (some honest secondary schools ditched any pretence and simply used GCSE criteria). It made school leaders feel that they had some control over what they were doing and gave the impression that they were somehow liberating classroom teachers from the tyranny of the old National Curriculum assessments. For most teachers it actually meant more work, more assessments, more data collection. It’s led, I’d argue, to the fallacious fashion for what’s currently called “knowledge-based learning” (which is, behind all the guff, an excuse for protracted exam-teaching).

    All the time that the toxic obsession with GCSE outcomes dominates schools practices there won’t be any fundamental changes to the cultures of schools. Lots of schools have for all intents and purposes started teaching GCSE in Year 7. I’ve even seen a number of schools where GCSE exam papers in English are used for assessment purposes from Year 7 onwards. Certainly, there are few schools where GCSE isn’t explicitly taught from the start of Year 9 (even though, as OFSTED reminds us from time to time, GCSE is meant to be a two-year course).

    It’s essential to remember that the purpose of education in the UK is quite limited and is thoroughly politically-driven. It’s about passing exams and finding work. “Strategies” like the social mobility agenda and Dweck’s mind-sets are tied into this. The purpose of the curriculum in the UK isn’t to encourage and enable young people to develop into happy, fulfilled human beings with a love of learning, critical faculties, creative imagination and understanding of justice and responsibility to others.

    As for the end of the “Great Pedagogocal War”? All the time that mechanical, high-stakes lesson observations exist in a culture of schools insisting that professional educators adopt teaching approaches based on no evidence at all, the war continues. Newmark needs only to read the other articles in Teach Secondary to see that some quite aggressive pedagogies (more ideologies, really) still dominate. It was only a couple of months ago I was in a school where there was a huge display celebrating Learning Styles…

  • Say No to Plastic by Harriet Dyer

    Dyer’s book is a short, straightforward presentation of 101 ideas for cutting down consumption of single-use plastics as well as what to do with some of the plastic waste you already have. At the start of the book the author gives some no-nonsense information about the damage that plastic does (for instance, the UK dumps 1 million tonnes of plastic in landfills every year, 8% of oil worldwide is used to manufacture plastic and that 8 million tonnes of plastic ends up in the sea each year).

    So How?

    From the book, I thought these were useful changes that we’re going to put into practice:

    • use solid shampoos and soap bars instead of anything in bottles
    • buy bamboo toothbrushes rather than plastic ones (I need to source vegan ones, of course)
    • avoid tubes of toothpaste and buy tabs
    • for cleaning use carbolic soap, borax substitute, vinegar and baking soda (and make use of the plastic bottles we’ve already got)
    • get hold of washing bags to catch microfibres in the washing machine
    • reuse old clothes and toothbrushes for cleaning
    • wax (vegan alternative, of course) wraps for food
    • always use own shopping bags (we already do this for supermarket shops, just need to make sure we don’t get caught out without a bag other times)
    • try to only purchase loose fruit and veg (this is super-hard where we live as there’s not a greengrocer; we do our best in the supermarket but lots of what we need is prepackaged in plastic)
    • always buy cans instead of bottles (this is something I need to do better)
    • buy loose-leaf tea (I had no idea there was plastic in tea bags until a few days ago!)
    • make our own bread rather than buy bread wrapped in polythene (we have a bread-making machine that we’ve lazily stopped using)
    • use soap berries / wash nuts for washing clothes (this is something I need to research)
    • carry our own cutlery with us so we don’t need to use throwaway ones

    So Useful?

    I found Say No to Plastic incredibly useful as a starting point for our attempts to plan reducing our environmental footprint. We’ve always been well-intentioned, semi-mindful (and certainly guilt-ridden) in trying to avoid needless waste but know we need to be more planned, more deliberate in what we do. This book has given me some reasonable next steps (there are many more) and several recipes for creating eco-friendly cleaners. Adopting a “slow living” approach is something I want to embrace and certainly move to taking a 30-day zero waste challenge within the next 12 months.