Reductio ad Profundum

To spread interest in the 14-19 diploma programme, Mr Balls‘s corporation has enlisted a musician of the streets, one who calls himself ‘Kano’. A certain newspaper calls him a ‘foul mouthed rapper’. If one takes time to see and hear some of his production, it is possible to imagine – just – how his limited lyrics on the theme of ’There is Another Way’ might engage the attention of some pop-engrossed young people – if they aren’t distracted by his tedious gyrations. 

Mr Balls’s commissioned advertisement for his dodge, however, titled ‘Bringing Learning to Life’, scores  an own goal with its ambiguity. Serves him right for adopting commercial – and ignorant – publicity whizz-kids to handle his intellectual responsibilities (if he has them). 

Meanwhile, Mr Gove welcomes the aged US comedienne, Goldie Hawn, to breathe her quasi-Buddhist view of life into another of his range of funny academies. Goodness knows how a timeworn figure from transatlantic ‘stage, screen and radio’ is to add to the quality of our public education; by importing yet another piece of the now boring celebrity craze?

Are these two, leader and would-be leader of our national culture as distilled in our schools, so shallow in philosophies or even so empty of thought that they have to descend to these vulgarities to justify their policies? You could almost bring yourself to live with state control of education, if at least it were dignified.

O tempora, O mores!

Juvenile

Next Question?

The Head Poncho at the Department for Whatever It Is, Mr Balls,  was questioned by a certain Keith Mitchell of Sunderland (Education Guardian 16 February): “How can you [be] true to Labour’s core principals of equality and community when you have allowed questionable individuals and organisations to take control of publicly funded schools without any collective responsibility or democratic accountability?”.

Mr Mitchell’s question has a poignant ring, coming as it does from an area infamous for its weird tale of academy sponsoring, but it has a general application too. Congratulations Mr Mitchell! Your query  deserves to be put up in lights all over town and country. The Head Poncho’s reply? “All publicly funded schools are accountable”. Full stop. Next?

Either Mr Balls is so thoroughly embarrassed by the Sunderland situation or his étatism is so deeply ingrained that he doesn’t know how to respond to it at all. Either way, blankly he evades the point; doesn’t want to say anything so dangerous as concerns the little matter of local democracy?  Lord help us if, as rumoured, Mr B. has ambitions to be Labour’s next prime minister. Then, citizens, look forward to total enslavement under Leviathan!

Juvenile

A STEP IN THE DARK

The Basildon Academies are looking for sixteen outstanding managers. Each will lead a ‘college’ of 150 students, providing inspirational leadership and a senior presence throughout the working day. Their job is to create a positive ethos and ensure students observe the Academies’ core values, high expectations and strict code of conduct. They must focus constantly on student welfare and think strategically to respond to student needs.

Teaching experience and qualified teacher status are NOT required. They do have to be graduates who can demonstrate empathy for young people and strategies to support and inspire them. They must be able to communicate effectively with students, parents and colleagues.

These Heads of College will have wide ranging responsibilities for student welfare. How will they win the confidence and trust of qualified teachers, some with long experience of PSHE and pastoral care?

They will be well paid, these so called Heads, on £37000-£43000 a year. With on costs the sixteen posts will cost over £800, 000 a year. Or is it perhaps the case that these posts are not pensionable, and the whole scheme is some sort of gang master’s scam?

This is public money. How it is spent should be transparent. What steps will be taken, what steps have indeed been taken, to make sure it is money well spent, not just the passing whimsy of an eccentric sponsor given a blank cheque by an indulgent government?
 
DIOGENES

‘Twas Brillig

… And the slithiness of the toves continues. The Lord Adonis has left us, not as in the ancient myth gored by a boar (unless he is thought to have been shafted by a boar of a PM) but to transmute his enthusiasm for academies into a different transport of joy. And now a new claimant to office at Soft Furnishing, one journalist following another, comes up with a nifty wheeze for changing the colour of the coaches in the train set he too wants to play with: so – let’s have nonsense academies for weenies.

What is it about hacks like these that makes them so attractive to government supremos with an idée fixe on the next quick fix for public education? Did they manage to insinuate themselves into drinks parties at No 10 and party HQs where our leaders and hopefuls were dazzled by their practised sophistry and grasped it as a tool to befuddle the electorate? In the Wonderland garden where public education is just a Tom Tiddler’s ground to our rulers, are press whizz-kids thought to have a particular talent for manipulating the croquet rules? Do our panjandrums see in the scribblers of this sort, exercised to the nth degree in extruding sciolist opinion, a special zealotry – such as is realised in ‘academania’ – that can be made to supersede workaday political processes? Oh for an answer!

Perhaps constitutionalists should rise up to warn of a new tendency in the serial appearance of these inky-fingered lads. For is our current executive dictatorship set to usher in a degree of ‘Government by Grub Street’? Could  the Ministry of Roads go to a Jeremy Clarkson, or AN Other windbag of a columnist take on the Department of Sustainable Energy? 

Meanwhile Master Mimsyl Borrow-Gove needs to be put back down into the bunny hole he’s just popped out of, where he can join the early learning stream and get a bit of coaching from a sage White Rabbit.

Juvenile