Teach First: Think Later (if at all...)

I have not been watching Tough Young Teachers, despite a a strong interest in the topic, for a number of reasons (like being away a lot, not having a TV, stuff like that).  However, I know that it tracks teachers on the Teach First programme, who are placed in schools after an intensive summer course, and gain their pgce that way, rather than in the more conventional way. 

As they say on their www site: 'We work with primary and secondary schools where more than half of pupils come from the poorest 30% of families in the UK, according to the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI).' Hence the Tough Young Teachers title.  However, what I wish to comment on isn't really related to the fact that this was a Teach First programme, because I think the issues which concern me are more widespread.

As I say, I didn't watch the programme, but I did read Tom (always entertaining and often thought-provoking) Bennett's review of the programme. He wrote, inter alia:

Sex, desire and relationships: one of the most important topics in the human experience. Naturally in schools we make sure it gets taught and discussed in a professional way, with trained specialists and....nahhh, let's just dish it out to whomever's free on the timetable and chuck some worksheets at them. That's bound to be good enough. Poor Nick did something that I have seen so frequently from new teachers that I can only assume they train them to do it in teacher college: he got them to brainstorm all the sweariest words they could. The intention appeared - and always appears - to be to somehow 'get it off their chest' and out of the way. The outcome is, of course, a train crash of [expletives deleted by BT] written on the board as the class literally shake themselves to death with excitement.

 I find this as worrying as Tom does amusing. 

Who could conceivably think that this is a good idea? Even by their own odd notions of education, this is wrong-headed.  What learning objectives does such a filth-fest support? Where is the evidence base that this is a sensible thing to do with a mixed class of adolescents?

The intention, I can only assume, is to signal to the children that we can talk freely about things that are normally embarrassing. Or to put it another way, that we can talk freely about things which modesty and social convention teach us should not be part of normal conversation. Or to put it a third way, to de-sensitise them.

What actually happens, of course, is that the children who know the most risqué and deviant words, and the ones who have been watching pornography, are rewarded. They are the ones who can say the most original things, and (if they are lucky) break through the teacher's assumed nonchalance and provoke a blush or a stammer.

The most depraved kids are thus given the power, permission and platform to corrupt the rest.  The expletives I deleted from Tom Bennett's review included two that I was not familiar with. I really don't need my kids being taught this sort of vocabulary, and still less introduced to the ideas it expresses.

This 'liberal' approach is actually very doctrinaire. Those of us who take seriously our responsibility to preserve our kids' innocence are over-ridden by this ideologically-driven approach. Never mind that we have no TV, teach them custody of the eyes, and so on: at school not only will they be introduced to depravity, but also to the notion that this is all normal and acceptable.

Doubtless, people will argue that we must teach our kids about this; and that I am naive not to realise that most kids are watching porn, and so on.

Yet most is not all, and I do not see why the innocent should be corrupted and the perverse rewarded.

And as I have blogged before (here and going further back in the archives, here) what evidence there is, suggests that even getting them thinking about and discussing sex may increase the likelihood of early sexual experimentation.

My other reflection is how bad this is for the teachers: individually and as a profession. Either they don't want to talk to kids about sex (which is a normal and healthy reaction) and are being made to do so, overcoming any scruples they may have. Or they do want to talk to kids about sex, in which case they are the very last people who should be doing so.

Still not taking it seriously...

Further to yesterday's post...

With the passage of time, I have learned a little more.

The dreadful comments on Eccles' blog were apparently deleted by Eccles the very day that they were posted.  Their circulation now is thanks to those who decided to screenshot and circulate them, doubtless with the best of intentions.

Bernard Manning, whom Eccles was compared to, was an unfamiliar name to me.  As my regular reader knows, I was bought up without a TV, and subject my kids to the same cruel and degrading regime. However, Wikipedia has cast some light on this, and I am struggling to see, from that description, why Eccles is said to be like him.

Both Mulier Fortis and Eccles himself have blogged on this, and both are worth reading.

I have also realised a few other shortcomings in the way I use twitter:

I don't follow and unfollow people on a regular basis to show approbation or disapproval. 

I don't block people, other than spam accounts, still less announce it as a badge of honour. 

I don't assume people whom I dislike must be sock puppets. 

I don't think the most effective way to influence someone is to assume bad faith and insult them.

I don't imagine we can guess who is behind some of the nastier blogs/sock puppet accounts with any confidence: particularly after one sock puppet whom we were told was certainly a particular individual turned out to be a sad old woman in Wales whom nobody had previously heard of.

I tweet what I see fit to tweet, and refuse to have that dictated to me by anyone else. 

I continue to see the whole thing as pretty trivial, except for the fact that some people can genuinely get hurt...

Perhaps with time I'll learn to take it more seriously, but I am a slow learner.

Fr Finigan interviewed

I have just made time to sit down with my new edition of Mass of Ages, the LMS magazine, and find a very interesting interview with Fr Tim Finigan, of the Hermeneutic of Continuity.

It is all worth reading, so if you're not a member already, join the LMS now, and ask for a copy!

I was particularly struck by this: following the unpleasantness in the parish which spilled over into the national Catholic press, Fr Finigan was asked by his archdiocesan superiors to undertake some research to identify trends and opinions about the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.

The insights were very revealing. Those strongly in favour of the EF were from mixed ages.  However, those who were strongly against it were markedly in an older age group, those who were young in the 1960s.   I don't agree with their opposition, but you get some understanding by reflecting on their reasons.  For they've invested so much in the reformed Church.  They were caught up in the 60s euphoria.

That resonates with my experience, too, and not least when it comes to priests (and, dare I say it, bisops).

It is understandable, it may be annoying, but it is also a passing phenomenon...

I also note that Fr Finigan explains that he can find the time to blog as he has no television.  So there's one thing we have in common.

TV bad for kids - official

Don't you just love it when research confirms your prejudices.

The BBC reports research demonstrating that watching TV is bad for kids.

Apart from it being a statement of the bleedin' obvious, I was naturally gratified to read this, having denied my kids TV all their lives.

They don't seem too deprived: Ant is at a top University studying Maths haven got straight As at A level as well as being an active sailor, climber, frisbee player (!) etc etc; Bernie has just got distinction in her grade 8 flute, top marks in her A Level Art course work, is working on grade 7 piano, and has an active social life; and so on...

Their horizons don't seem to me to have been too limited by depriving them of Neighbours and Coronation Street...

I was interested to see that it is the attention span issue that is highlighted here: I have long thought this the structural problem of TV - regardless of the quality and content of the programmes.

The Distorting Mirror

I've just been on a media training course: great fun, culminating in a day in a TV studio being interviewed several times and watching the results.

One of the things that struck me was how dreadful a profession journalism is. The journalists and broadcasters running the course were drumming home two things: one is that if it isn't 'a good story', it isn't news; the other is that it must be told simply as people will not attend to anything for very long.

By 'a good story', essentially they mean it has to be conflict-ridden; and by 'simply' they mean in short words, short sentences, and a short time overall.

All of which I knew already, but hearing it in such stark terms - and working with people whose professional skill is to package information in that way and discard information which doesn't fit that model - made me reflect again on what a distorting mirror our media are.

This distortion, in favour of over-dramatising and over-simplifying, is then amplified by the media culture; it struck me anew that a particular type of person is drawn to work in the media (or possibly that working in the media results in one becoming a particular type of person); and that is typified by the BBC culture,w here they all associate so much with themselves and their types that they genuinely do not see the bias that they bring to everything: they are genuinely outraged when any one suggests that they have any bias: yet to the outside observer with a different set of prejudices, their bias is obvious, persistent and consistent.

As a father, one of the things i have worked hard at is protecting my kids from being damaged by the prevalent culture: hence counter-cultural father. A key part of my strategy has been to minimise their reliance on the mainstream media as sources of information and comment. We have no TV, we don't have a paper every day, we listen to the radio news infrequently; we do talk about news and current affairs (a bit) at home and discuss it from our perspective. We watch films rather than TV (among other reasons, films demand a longer attention span: TV's crazy pace is one of its stuctural problems!), and choose them with some care, watch them together and talk about the implications of the stories, including the moral implications and the attitudes underlying the characters and their decision.

Above all we encourage the kids to think about things themselves, to challenge received ideas and opinions, and to do so from within a framework of beliefs, opinions and attitudes which we set, rather than those who think the key attributes of reality are conflict and simplicity (and a BBC worldview)...

Half term

It is now the half term holidays, which is a great relief: we were all getting rather tired.

We have had a couple of good walks already, as well as spending a bit of time just messing about together. Charlie and Dominique spent most of Saturday playing a very complex game of their own invention that involved a lot of dressing up, as well as several board games and toys.... There is something about having the time and space together to do nothing that really stimulates good family time. And the absence of a TV certainly helps!

Casablanca

As a treat for the last night of the holidays (it's not really, but tomorrow night we'll be travelling to an EF Mass for the (real) feast of the Epiphany) we watched Casablanca. I'd been given it for Christmas, so you can see the strength of my will power that it had remained unwatched until today.

We put up the big screen and hitched up a projector and speakers to my Mac, so it was a proper film showing (this is what we do to make up for no TV!)

The kids, who had been shocked that I could read How to Live For ever without shedding a tear, were astonished to find the tears rolling down my cheeks during the film... But they seemed to enjoy it, too. As did Anna's mum, and Anna herself, of course.

I hadn't seen it for years, and was a little worried that it might not be as great as I had remembered. But it was greater.

Making our own entertainment

Having no TV, and with these long winter evenings, the kids get adept at providing entertainment for themselves and us. With visitors, they really go to town.

So every New Year's Eve they do a show, written in rhyming couplets, by one of the dads, with - traditionally - very strained rhymes, with lots of dressing up and songs.

This year, we were treated to Harry Potter The Musical: all seven books in one fifteen minute performance. The songs included (to the tune of America from West Side Story):

That rotter Snape has killed Dumbledore!
What did the Draco boy stumble for?
And what did Dumbledore mumble for?
Now there is no Albus Dumbledore!

I liked the way he was so kind.
I liked his razor sharp clear mind.
I liked his humour and weird speech
I liked the fact that he didn’t teach!

We all remember our Dumbledore!
What was that wizard so humble for?
What did he take that big tumble for?
Now there is no Albus Dimbledore!

and (to the tune of Singin’ in the Rain)

I’m reelin’ from the pain
Just reelin’ from the pain
What a horrible feeling
I’m wounded again
I’m just like the clouds
So dark up above
The pain’s in my heart
And I’m empty of love
Let the evil spells chase
Every one from the place
Come on with the pain,
I’ve a frown on my face
I’ll limp down the lane
To a tragic refrain
Just reelin’
and wailin’ from the pain...

Goldie played both Fluffy ( a three headed dog - so she had two ballons attached) and a Hippogriff (with some gold wings from the dressing up box) and the kids were even more imaginative when it came to their own costumes. A splendid time was had by all, from the 7 year-old to the 18 year old... (not to mention the audience, ranging up to 85 years old!)

Family Jazz

Another entertainment is the family jazz band. With all the kids at varying degrees of competence on first or second instruments we can now line up with various combinations of flute, trombone, piano, cello, drums, electric violin and clarinet. At present they are working on You’ve Got a Friend in Me (from Toy Story) and are planning to do the Bare Necessities, the Pink Panther theme and one or two others over the Christmas Break.

I’m also teaching them to sing a carol or two in four part harmony (I take the bass, Ant the tenor, Bernie the Alto, and Charlie and Dominique sing the treble line.

Games and log fires

As the evenings are drawing in, we are spending more time by the fireside. Having no TV we have to make our own entertainment. At the moment, card games are very popular: our favourites are knockout whist and cheat. Cluedo is also popular, and once the kids are off school we’ll probably be playing more board games, especially Monopoly.

Those kids...

This afternoon Ant took the other kids down to the local river, and set up an abseil off the bridge for them. She went first, then realised getting back up was a problem: dangling over the river too far from the shore. I think Bernie lowered a second rope and helped heave her up. After that they sorted a system that worked and all four of them took turns descending as quickly as they dared to just above the water and then being hoiked up by their siblings. And to think, they could have been safely at home watching TV...

Head Girl

Ant has just been appointed Head Girl of her school. This is quite funny, as the head, when he interviewed her for admission a few years ago was very concerned at our weird way of bringing our kids up - particularly the de-humanising policy of not having a TV. I wonder if he remembers that now, and whether he's drawn any conclusions.... Probably not.

Results

Ant got her GCSE results today and did very well - 10 A*s and an A. Her friends all seem to have got the results they hoped for too, so everyone is very happy.

Her school has had exceptionally good results this year, so a lot of credit must go to them. However, I can't help reflecting on the Head's nervousness when he first interviewed her and learned that she had no TV and wondered how she could stay abreast of current affairs and the modern world. I feel our policies have been vindicated too.

Making time for the family

One of the issues in being a counter cultural father is making time for the family. I won’t go on about how much time I save by not watching TV (though it is considerable), but rather offer some reflections I’ve gleaned along the way in my reading and in going on a couple of time management courses at work over the years, and applying them to being a father.

On one of the courses, were asked to write down the four most important things in our lives and then prioritise them. Naturally, my wife and children featured... We were then challenged to consider whether the way we spent our time reflected those priorities... That lesson has stayed with me.

So one of the things I try to do is make time each week to plan the week ahead: not just in terms of work activities and other commitments, but also thinking about Annna and the kids and considering what I most need to do to be a good husband and father over the coming week. Sometimes it is very mundane stuff: listening to their music practice, making time to help with homework; at other times it is more nebulous: making sure I find some time simply to talk with and listen to one of them if I feel we’ve not really connected in the previous week; and sometimes it is very specific: having a conversation that needs to be had.

I have a theory, based on observing some of the problems that friends have had with their teenagers, that spending time with them when they want to spend time with you is very important. If you fail to do so, there comes a time when you want to be with them and they don’t want to be with you; when you want to put them right about something and they see you as the last person in the world whose views are worth considering.

So making time for them regularly, especially for the little things and the things that are important to them, is a high priority. And so far, my teenagers are still talking to me...

What are we reading?

In this sad family where we have no TV to fill our idle hours, we have to resort to reading. In fact we read a huge number of books.

At present, I (in my habitual fashion) am reading several: To Know Christ Jesus (a superb book by Frank Sheed which I re-read every few years, along with his Theology and Sanity); A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby for lighter reading; Syd Field’s Definitive Guide to Screenwriting; Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Browne and King, and Writing a Children’s Book by Pamela Cleaver, as well as St John’s Gospel. I’ve also just finished The Heresy of Formlessness by Martin Mosebach, which I thoroughly recommend to anyone interested in the impact of the Liturgical changes of the 1960s on the Catholic Church.

Anna is reading My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, St Frances de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life, and Peter Ackroyd’s biography of Shakespeare (which is extravagant by her standards - she’s more inclined to read one at a time (always excluding cookery books).

Ant is away at camp with the Adventure Scouts at present, but when here is reading Benedict XVl’s A Lenten Journey and Scorpio by Anthony Horowitz. I think she may also be starting The Seventh Raven (by Peter Dickinson) and Out of the Silent Planet, bu CS Lewis, as they are on her desk - but she’s not here to ask.

Bernie is deep in Sabriel by Garth Nix - she’s very much a one book at a time girl.

Charlie is reading The Lord of the Rings, The Rotten Romans, Belloc’s Cautionary Verses and Sophie’s Tom (Dick King-Smith) and any cartoon books that come his way. He’s a bit like me - a book in progress in every room of the house - including the bathroom...

Dom has just finished Escape From Blood Castle and is wondering what to read next. No - she’s decided: it’s How to Train your Dragon

Charlie and Dom are also having the Voyage of the Dawn Treader read to them as a bedtime story.

I don’t need (I hope) to extol the benefits of reading. We find that by making sure there are plenty of good and exciting books around, and by reading to them a lot when young, they all get the reading bug in various degrees.

It's probably worth saying that we all re-read a large number of books (I work through my P G Wodehouse collection once every few years, for example...). I believe a book worth reading is normally worth re-reading - or to put it the other way round, a book only worth reading once is probably not worth reading at all. So much of our culture is instantly disposable, but literature really shouldn't be. So perhaps that's another aspect of being counter cultural - not always seeking the new pleasure, thrill or sensation, but being enriched by re-visiting old friends in the world of literature.

If you’re not interested in books, this will have been a very boring post - but then if you’re not interested in books you are probably a very boring person....

treehouses and dens

One of the ways the kids entertain themselves is to play outside a lot. And one of their facvourite activities is building treehouses and dens.

These are great projects both for the teenagers and the little ones. They are labour-intensive so fill a lot of time, they require imagination and physical effort, and a lot of teamwork. The treehouses also need some supervision and occasional help from me - but the kids very much own the projects and can spend hours in creating them and then playing in them.

Why watch adventures on TV when they can have their own imaginary and sometimes real ones: it is not unknown for them to hurt themselves, and occasionally each other, in the construction of these. I see that as no bad thing: it teaches them about fortitude etc.

Here are some pictures of past projects: in order they are a treehouse (this one is actually designed to look like a nest, though that's hard to see here); a ground level den (with Goldie) and a wigwam den.

Fun and games

Charlie and Dom have been having a lot of fun recently. Firstly, they made their own set of Top Trumps cards (Top Trumps are all the rage here: they are sets of cards containing data about a specific category, which could be from Racing Cars to characters form The Lord of the Rings, and to play you choose a category which you think is strong on the card you are about to play and announce it (eg Top speed 126 miles per hour) and if it is higher than anyone else’s, you win and collect the others cards and so on).. So Dom and Charlie made their own set, featuring members of the family and friends (and pets).

The categories they used were age, friendliness, chubbiness, eating speed (quite an issue in this house on occasion!) and craziness. They also included a brief description and where possible a photo. The results are hilarious.

They have now moved on to constructing a game of Cluedo, using our house as the template fro the board, and the family for suspects. I await with interest to see what domestic items they choose as murder weapons!

The things they resort to for entertainment, being deprived of their natural right to a TV...

Watch less TV and be happy!

More reasons to cut back on TV. According to the BBC www site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4436482.stm), the happiness experiment in Slough has found that reducing TV viewing by 50% makes people happier. (That’s difficult for us of course as we don’t watch at all - does that mean we’ll never be happy?)

Doubly vindicated

Two reports in two days have confirmed many of my prejudices about the dangers of TV.

The first, in yesterday's Times (19 Feb) was about research linking watching TV from an early age with various health problems including obesity, and premature puberty in girls (this regardless, of course, of the quality of the programming). "Watching too much television as a child may trigger serious health problems such as autism and obesity, and in girls the early onset of puberty, a scientist has claimed. "

The second, reported on the BBC News WWW site today (20 Feb) was about the dangers of the sexualisation of young girls: "The consequences of the sexualisation of girls in media today are very real," said Dr Eileen Zurbriggen, chair of the group and associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz."

This second obviously includes many other media, especially the dreadful teen magazines, but for younger girls TV is probably the prime culprit.

Two more reasons to opt out of the prevalent culture and bring your kids up with your values, not those of the media, advertisers and other exploiters and corrupters of kids!

Sacred Drama

The Greeks (who knew a thing or too) took their drama seriously. The production of a Tragedy was an important communal experience, and one of the goals was catharsis, that purging of the soul through the extreme emotional and intellectual stimulation which good drama provides. Perhaps a close analogy is a family of wine connoisseurs who open a rich and potent bottle and fully appreciate the subtlety and power of the winemaker’s art.

We seem to have lost this understanding, and use drama and alcohol to while away idle moments.

This, you will realise, is one of the may reasons I believe that television is dangerous. Even if (and it’s a big if) the quality of programming is high, watching television regularly can be a bit like getting drunk regularly: we lose the capacity to enjoy the quality, we need stronger and stronger fixes to give us the same kick, and we develop a craving that makes life seem empty and flat (or at worst unbearable) without the constant stimulus of our drug of choice.

Which is why those who make television programmes have constantly to push the boundaries; why things which it would have been unthinkable to screen a few decades ago are the staple even of soap operas; and why the producers of Celebrity Big Brother in the UK have become the victims of the programme’s success. Through the media, not only television but also radio, press and much of the internet, we are bombarded with drama.

The key mechanism of drama is conflict. Open any book on how to write, or any critical analysis of a dramatic work and you will find that conflict is the spring which provides the motive force for drama, whether it is the inner conflict of an individual (Hamlet) or the epic conflict between Good and Evil (Lord of the Rings). That is why all news now has to be dramatic, every interview confrontational: we cannot follow sustained argument easily - we are so addicted to drama, that unless there is conflict, we lose interest and drift away.

So, as counter-cultural parents, we limit our children’s (and our own) exposure to drama. We make a big occasion of going to the cinema (and more rarely the theatre) and we notice that we and our kids get a far bigger kick out of drama as a result.