The other day I read an article
relating (once again!) to Michael Gove who was, until last week, Secretary of
State for Education in England. As anyone who has read my blogs before will know this gentleman is not my favourite
politician – I am not alone in that. His tenure in the post for the past 4 plus
years has seen a continual war being fought between him, teachers, academics
and many parents. He has been, to say the least a controversial figure.
However, he has now been moved on to other spheres of influence so there will
be fewer of my blogs devoted to him. You will, no doubt, cheer that fact!
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| Just like the desks we sat in when I was eleven - and the inkwells are visible. Mr Gove would be proud! |
The article that I read was a
collection of memories and anecdotes by various people who had dealings with
Gove over the past few years. With very few exceptions they were universally
critical of the man. One item, however, caught my eye. It was written by a
primary school music teacher who, over the past few years had on numerous
occasions visited the Department of Education in London to attend
meetings/courses etc. This is an extract from what she wrote:
I used to go to the Department for Education
when it was the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Then, it was
smothered in imagery of children and playgrounds. Wherever you were in the
building you always knew where you were – it wasn't health or environment, it
was education. After the election, Gove took this all down and put this
19th-century pupil writing desk in the foyer. It was such a clear sign of what
was going to happen to schools.
As anyone who has lived through the
past 4 years while the Department for Education has been under Gove’s
stewardship will know the antique pupil writing desk was indeed a physical manifestation
of what the man stands for - of Gove’s desire to turn the classroom clock back,
for schools to be more “traditional”, to be more “academic”, to be more
rigorous in their testing, to return to well tried and perhaps “old fashioned”
teaching methods and discipline and to be more traditional in their values and
curriculum. Well, all that is as maybe. As a teacher of forty years and at a
personal level I often reflect that a bit of tradition is no bad thing. Having
said that the displaying of a 19th century pupil’s desk and all that
it implies about the Gove’s and government’s view of the nature of 21st
century education is worrying. I also find it concerning that one man should be
able to impose his own beliefs and prejudices on the nation’s education system
- no matter how laudable, inspired or, in Gove’s case, madcap they might be.
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| All my yesterdays - items that once ruled my world but soon became obsolete and the knowledge redundant |
But leaving all that aside let me
move on. Later on the same day that I read the article I was tidying a drawer in my office and came across
one or two things from my past – things that were once very important to me and
my life. Firstly, my old slide rule. Before entering teaching I worked as a
design draughtsman in an engineering drawing office. In those far off days –
the early 60s - a slide rule was a basic tool of every draughtsman or engineer.
In those pre-computer/calculator days it
was vital in every calculation that you worked out – logarithms, sines,
cosines, everyday calculations. It was
part of my daily professional world. Learning the skills to use the thing was
one of the first things that I was taught when I started my career in that
drawing office – John Newton, the chief draughtsman, took me into his office to
guide me. When I attended college as part of my training time was devoted to
ensuring that young trainees like me were fully conversant with this tool and
its associated skills. And now it lies redundant and obsolete in my office
drawer. As I held it in my hand the other morning I tried to remember what the
numbers on each scale represented and
how I should use it to perform a simple calculation. True, its use was fairly
specific, but it was of its time and has now been passed over in favour of
electronic aids which, of course, require different skills. As I rummaged further
through my office drawers I came across other items from my past. A set of
French Curves which was also part of my everyday work in the drawing office –
helping me to draw exact curves to meet certain criteria. These were not simply
to make the design drawing look pretty but to ensure that the men on the
workshop floor could make the required item exactly and accurately so that it worked and fitted into its correct
position to within thousands of an inch. Today, I would guess that sort of
thing is all computer generated – the skills and the equipment that I
practised, needed and used half a century ago have disappeared and been replaced by others - and all
my knowledge and skills in that area are now merely redundant and consigned to
the waste basket of history. And finally, in my drawer, a bottle of ink. Not,
perhaps, totally redundant today but still something that has been largely
replaced for many people as ballpoint pens, felt tips, word processors,
computers, e-mails and the like have made writing with an ink pen a marginalised
activity. Just as the quill pen (and with it the skill of quill sharpening) was
consigned to the waste bin when the “modern” fountain pen came along so, too,
fountain pens in their turn – and all their associated writing skill
requirements – are largely things of the past. As I looked at the bottle, which
has probably not been opened for almost half a century, I thought how many
hours I had spent in my early teaching career working with children to ensure
that they could grip and successfully use an ink pen. I reflected, too, that
although I have a fountain pen which I still use when appropriate, my modern
pen is charged with pre-filled cartridge, and doesn’t require a bottle of ink.
Times have changed. I recalled that when I was a eleven year old child at
school, sitting in a desk not unlike that on display at Michael Gove’s
Department for Education each desk had a little pot inkwell sitting in a whole
in the desk. We boys would dip our stick pens into the inkwell as we blobbed
and scrawled in our exercise books. Every Friday afternoon, my teacher, the
much feared Mr Roberts, would choose one boy to be the inkwell monitor for the
afternoon. We all desperately wanted to win Mr Roberts’ approval so worked
diligently on Friday hoping that we would be the chosen one. If I was lucky one
then late on Friday afternoon while other boys were still working I would proudly
and silently creep around the classroom with the ink container carefully
replenishing the ink in each of the little white pot inkwells so that all was
ready for Monday morning. And, of course, inkwell refilling itself was, in its
time an important skill - using the inkwell filler correctly so that no ink
splashed onto the desks was crucial if one didn’t want to incur Mr Roberts’
wrath!. But no more, times have changed.
All these items and skills are now
largely replaced by others. It’s the way of the world. That’s the problem with
knowledge and much of what we learn – it has a massive obsolescence factor. And it has always been thus. We cannot blame
it on the modern world. A thousand years ago William the Conqueror’s knights
practised their battle skills by riding at speed ducking and diving through
dense forests to imitate battle conditions – but with the invention of the gun
much of that became immediately redundant. Three hundred years ago, the skills
of the home weavers producing cloth were major parts of life and everyday
economics of every village and hamlet but the invention of the steam engine and
the modern loom altered the industrial and employment landscape. Great factories grew and the old home weavers’
skills and knowledge were no longer needed – different mind and skill sets were
required. And today, it seems, knowledge is expanding and accelerating at a
phenomenal rate – what is useful today will almost certainly have only a very short
life span.  |
| Just like the inkwell filler we had in Mr Roberts' class - the skill was to fill the little pots without makinjg a blob |
My mother in law, who died in 2006 just a few years short of her century often remarked how her generation had seen so much change. She was right and future generation will see even more – and schools have to be responsive to this. Mr Gove’s antique desk implicitly suggesting that “the good old days of education” were the best and something to return to could not be more wrong. Both in content and in approach education has to look forward and schools have to anticipate and continually change, evolve and respond to an ever changing world. I have absolutely no doubt that what is being taught to my grandchildren today in their respective schools (good though they are) will be less relevant and may, like my slide rule or French curves be redundant knowledge and skills by the time my grandchildren leave school to enter the world of work. Such is the nature of change, the world and education. Michael Gove’s desire to look back might be appealing but it is also very, very wrong and does children and society no favours at all.
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