Blog

A Week in Wales

Wales and I were, at best, ambivalent about each other for 58 years. It’s not the case any more. The week started with meeting a hero: one Arthur Furness. He’s set up a programme for ‘offenders’ at South Gloucester and Stroud College situated in one of the bleaker areas of Bristol, the intention of which is to gear the attendees up with the skills and qualifications to be personal trainers. I met two of the guys on the programme and, for them, it has been life changingly ...

The Flowers on the Estate

Past the caravan and past the broken cars and past the work area for semi itinerant families, there is a patch of scrubby land that has been accidentally given over to nature. You’d pass it by without noticing it, and most days most people do: they give not a thought to the grass to the side of them, to the scratchy trees diagonally above them; they give not a thought to the tiny wild flowers that bashfully peek their heads a smidgeon above the grass, or to the fact that, if you choose to ...

Person Specifications, Mind Control And Silent Corridors

I am contemplating a move to a different place. As part of the ridiculous idea of starting a new life two years short of my sixtieth birthday, I’ve been looking at possible employers. Is there a school on the Kent coast that might consider shoehorning a cantankerous, creaking presence made up chiefly of swears and in possession of a hairline that, in silhouette, resembles that of a disappointed cockatoo into an English Dept. workroom? Furthermore, does a school exist in that region I&rsquo...

The Problems with Subject Terminology

Exam boards, as is reasonable, reward the use of subject terminology in both Language and Literature GCSEs. And specialist terminology in the study of English is a tempting and seductive world, a conceptual landscape in which you might lose yourself and never want to return to the crushing prosaicness (itself a subtle, filigree piece of terminology) of timetables, tube trains and toil. The issue, however, is that it takes a life of study to uncover some of this. As a result, many less experie...

On Growing up Skint and Seeing Stan Bowles Play

When you grow up poor(ish) you don't necessarily know that you’re poor. There are indications, though. Your classmates are the sons of accountants and mid-managers: the hems of their trousers are never as far from their ankles as yours are, their Dads don't have haunted expressions when you’ve outgrown your shoes and none of them have to force down weekly vile dinners of gag-making, putrid and really deeply unsavoury overcooked liver. But, then again, none of their Dads ever ...

Tribute to Cathal Coughlan

Aside from my father, Cathal Coughlan has had a more profound influence on me than any other man, and I think it right that, in light of this, I record how sad it is that he has passed and to pay tribute to his achievement in the hope that someone who has not encountered him gets to enjoy his work. I first encountered him on Snub TV (how spoilt were my generation?) tied up with rope in a church (how on earth did he get permission?) intoning the song ‘Only Losers Take the Bus’. Microd...

Comparative Essay - 'Tissue' and 'Ozymandias' and their Treatment of Power

Compare the treatment of power in ‘Ozymandias’ and ‘Tissue’ The one-word titles differ in terms of the level of ambiguity involved, and the ambiguity in the latter (it means paper, skin and, at a push, networks) leads one to consider the relative complexities of the poems. Both examine versions of totalitarian power but, whereas ‘Ozymandias’ notes its limits, ‘Tissue’, despite the obfuscated positivity of its ending, examines a version of totali...

Oracy, Labov and Linguists

There are references in my relatively recent book, ‘The Fascist Painting – What is Cultural Capital?’ to the work of linguist, William Labov. Labov’s work, of which I’ll admit to having read only one paper, ‘The Logic of Non-Standard English’, is fascinating. His detailed study of the African American slang of parts of New York in the late 1960s revealed to him that the grammar of such speech was every bit as logical as that of what we call Standard Engl...

Recitation and The Charge of the Always Right Brigade

The Catholic Church, which, way back in the seventies, seemed very keen on the Irish side of my family’s fealty, implanted a number of things into my long-term memory. Many of us will be able to recall and recite ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ but, I believe, it is only Catholics who have ‘Hail Mary’ off to pat. Like all prayers and hymns and most elements of glorifying some historical tradition of the oppression of one set of people by another, it is a funny old be...

On Grammar Teaching and Fronted Adverbials.

Disclaimer – I’m not a grammarian. If I’ve got stuff wrong here, and it is more than likely, it is because I am entirely self-taught. Grammar wasn’t taught at all at my school. I’ve had to bolt on bits of knowledge as I’ve gone along and the some total of this can be higgledy-piggledy. I’m happy for people to let me know where the errors are, but crowing over them might be taken to be a bit yucky. Encountering the phrase ‘performative ignorance&...

Book Review - Zero Tolerance: A Novel

It’s a bit surprising that this book has had so little fuss or attention. Perhaps it is because it is fiction rather than a look into how you might use the revolutionary dual coding, erm, to show pictures while you are talking at kids; perhaps because the author, while a blogger, is not a member of any identifiable crew, nor of any kind of scene that celebrates itself; perhaps because the author is old school, is committed to the community he or she works in and exists to serve rather than...

Review of 'Skint Estate' by Cash Carraway

I don't really know what a disclaimer is. I think you are meant to put this bland signifier of broadsheety zeitgeist first and then make some admission you know the person whose work you are writing about. Disclaimer. I do not know Cash Carraway. Disclaimer. I grew up on the same streets as her and am inclined to liking anyone from those streets who attempts to steal a voice for themselves (since no one gifts influence to the denizens of Maple Road and its immediate environs). Disclaimer. I ...

The Story of Ear

A lot of people have asked me (no one has asked me: I’m lying to make myself appear significant and relevant (I’m certainly not one of these)) why do you use so many brackets? Actually, they haven’t. What no one has really ever asked me, aside from, “Which side had the best uniforms in the American Civil War?” “Do you believe in sex after marriage?” and “Who is your favourite Grimsby Town manager of all time?” is, “Why have you got a pi...

On Still Getting Things Wrong

I’ve come to the end of a year’s stay in a Secondary Modern and wanted to linger a while on how wrong I still get things even after two-and-a-half decades of parading knowledge (or its lack) in classrooms multiple. I was introduced to year 11 at the beginning of this academic year through a series of ‘masterclasses’ on Macbeth. I’m uncomfortable with this nomenclature as, while it is probably (technically) true, it comes with the sense of an ego out of control, but ...

Why I Teach

For a good few years I’ve been asking my students the question, ‘How do you kill God?’ It’s part of the study of Macbeth and precedes the students putting crimes of deicide, regicide, genocide, parricide, matricide, infanticide etc. into an order of horridness. They have to construct that order both for our time and for Shakespeare’s thereby understanding that our moral landscapes are rather different to those of Shakespeare’s audiences. Additionally, it leads...

On Authoritarianism

This England is a prison -- a walking shadow; it is a unit for the correction of the errancies of the juvenile, a young offenders’ prison. Our young people are viewed by policy makers as briefly animated pieces of meat herded into the present and future abattoir of lives of indentured slavery. They enter an education system that seeks chiefly to diminish cost and, secondarily, to identify elites who might prosper and graduate to being the next generation of protectors of the right to ru...

Lewisham Parents Fight Budget Cuts

I’ve just returned from the second meeting of the Forest Hill Parents’ Action Group. Again, a packed meeting: there were more parents than chairs and several had to be imported for the session. It turns out that the “Reorganisation of the school administration and non classroom support staff” that parents have been told about though a letter from the head teacher, and of which they have been further informed, “our extensive and meticulous planning has focused on min...

Parents Applaud Teachers' Strike Action

I’ve just returned from an open meeting at which a packed audience of parents applauded their children’s teachers for voting in favour of strike action. Forest Hill School for Boys, a community school in south London which serves a mixed demographic, has uncovered an eight hundred thousand pound deficit. Lewisham Council will not reveal how that deficit was allowed to accrue, and when it is suggested that the council themselves must accept liability as they had a duty to audit the sc...

Old Age Traveller - The Problem of the Third Act

Impending old age presents a number of problems: not the least of which is reconciling one’s self to oncoming oblivion. Pondering elimination is a bore. More interesting is the puzzle of a way forward. Given the inevitability of the hopefully ‘eventual’ outcome, how does one motivate one’s self? What versions of life are there to be enjoyed given that you will never again bare toned shoulders in shirtless dungarees in a bar delighting the womenfolk of Stoke Newington? Wha...

A Journey to Calais

“Multi culturalism is genocide.” So reads the sign stuck on a lamp-post as you exit Dover Priory Station in the direction of the docks stomping in a pair of battered Doctor Martens like a Liverpool docker on his way to work. “Well, that’s not strictly semantically accurate” I think to myself: “maybe in the regions, but certainly not in London. And isn’t an aspiration towards mono-culturalism reputed to lead somewhere bad? I’m sure I had a lesson ab...

Whelks and the Working Class

It costs £100 for a family of four to be allowed through the turnstiles of Chessington World of Adventures: this sum, which is no small beer if you’re within coughing distance of the minimum wage, entitles you to a day spent in interminable queues as you listen for the four thousandth time to the tannoy announcing in a cod Chinese accent that, “Wise dragon, he/she say (sic) keep your arms inside the gondola at all times.” You get to go on a sum total of about four rides w...

On English Departments, Magic and Loss

It has been a difficult few months: my Norwegian friend, Werner, who, to me, was sunshine itself, and who was described by his uncle in the following accurate terms, “He was an easy boy to love” will not be playing music with us any more. A band that has played together for twenty years becomes a family (though fewer cross words are said), (of course) and his death hit the remaining four-of-us like an avalanche. He was profoundly loved, was the most talented person I have ever been i...

Trivium II

I’ve been meaning to read Martin Robinson’s Trivium book for two years now, but there’s always been work to be done, dishes to be washed, parenting to be useless at. I’ve been meaning to read it, but the email that gets it washed and brought to me was only sent last week, and the book only arrived a few days ago (it is exquisite: I’ve been told this by people I respect, but it is better even than their positive reviews).   I’ve regretted my failure ...

The Impossibility of Lesson Planning

I taught a lesson this week to a nice group of thirty kids in year 10. It would not be too rude, I hope, to describe them as slightly lower attaining, but for a first meeting with a one-off teacher they were as kind as one might hope, and in the plenary they said that if there were a next time with the same teacher then the thing that would improve the lesson is that they would be more respectful. I liked them.   It was technically a very strong lesson without being in danger of being...

Pedagogy is political

It seems a glib truism to state that everything is political, but clearly (to even the vaguest of thinkers) it is. Your choice of partner is a political decision; your choice of friend too; (equally, and perhaps more obviously, your choice of enemy is political); probably, your decision as to whether you opt for butter or margarine is in some way a political one: I tend towards thinking that butter is probably a ruling class scam, but also towards thinking that margarine is much the same. But I ...

On Marking, @Krisboulton and why I do not contribute to the 'debate'

Sometimes the distinction between being a player in your own life and a knight or bishop in a script written by someone else can be difficult to discern. I’ll illustrate my own experiences of this a little later. This caveat aside, I have nothing whatsoever against the oft publicized work of the teachers at Michaela Community School, King Solomon Academy, et all. From what I can discern, this is a group of very bright young teachers who are questioning orthodoxies, trying to imagine better ways ...

Let's Play Master and Servant - Character Education

I was recently sounded out about speaking at an event devoted to ‘character education’. The organizers were charm personified, but when it was pointed out that I was decidedly not in favour of such a concept being treated seriously in our education system and I would argue against it, they thanked me for my honesty and discontinued their interest. The following is in no way a slur to those organisers, but it has caused me to articulate the reasons behind such vehemence. I feel much the same a...

Model Answers for AQA Language Paper Higher Tier

These might be of use for students studying the higher paper. They're model answers to the November 2014 paper that I've written. (Perhaps worthy of holding up to students as a model of average writing). Question 3 - Extract from Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island Explain the writer’s thoughts and feelings: Model Answer In this extract we learn more about Bryson’s feelings than his thoughts. He sets the emotional landscape with reference to the weather, which he describes as ‘...

Analysis of Inserts and Questions on AQA (Legacy) Language Paper

I've found myself having to do an analysis of what has come up in the AQA language paper in terms of inserts and questions for an Academy in East London. Here are the results from the Catford judge. Analysis of Past Papers – June 2012 – November 2014 What has been covered in both the Higher and Foundation Tier over the last few years? Higher Tier Inserts Source 1 - Magazine article, on-line article (Big Issue), on-line article (The Times), On-line article (Guardian), on-line articl...

Mavericks - Professor David Nutt

Professor David Nutt is as expert as it is possible to be on the various toxicities of recreational drugs; his job (or profession) is rather oddly titled: he is a neuropsychopharmacologist (he uses drugs to help people who have problems with their brain), a Cambridge graduate in medicine and, for a relatively brief period, was Chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) before being sacked by the Home Secretary for a representation of scientific truth. His story, though sad...

Mavericks - Yanis Varoufakis

‘Accidental economist’, Yannis Varoufakis, studied at Essex University; his father had previously been arrested, his uncle imprisoned and the family felt it was probably not safe for him to continue his studies in Greece. Essex University was, most recently, ranked the 35th best university in the UK in both the Complete University Guide and the Times/Sunday Times guide, 47th best in the Guardian rankings. These are relatively humble beginnings in academic terms and, even then, Varouf...

Mavericks - Irvine Welsh

Being ‘Controversial’ Did you hear the one about the novelist, the economist and the toxicologist? I’ll begin … Irvine Welsh is the writer of ten novels: at his most deliberately hallucinogenic he can be reminiscent of a narcotised Kafka; at his most accomplished he can draw together a finely plotted page turner that causes the reader to question their own impulses, morality and sanity. He is capable of inducing visceral repulsion in a reader followed, soon afte...

Stan Bowles

The first line of Viv Albertine’s autobiography, ‘Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys’ is “Anyone who writes an autobiography is either a twat or broke. I’m a bit of both.” Read into the above what you will. I’ll start sharing resources, edu thoughts etc. when I am competent. But as a trial (which reading it may well be) I share with you a yet to be published article I have written for the QPR fanzine, ‘A Kick up ...
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