Democracy in Europe?

Politics and Literacy. These are amazing times.
On Friday, Nov. 11, Time magazine published an article by Stephan Faris with the title: Regime Change in Europe: Do Greece and Italy Amount to a Bankers’ Coup? It says the following:

“The voice of the people isn't something the markets seem to want to hear these days. First there was Greece, the cradle of democracy itself, where early this month, the merest mention of a referendum offering its citizens a say in a series of severe austerity measures was enough to send the markets into a tailspin. The ultimate result: the collapse of Prime Minister George Papandreou's ruling coalition, the rejection of any notion of bringing the proposal before the people, and the installation of a caretaker government under the leadership of Lucas Papademos, a former vice president of the European Central Bank and, until earlier this week, a visiting professor at Harvard.

“Then came Italy. As Athens threatened to go under, Rome found itself under pressure not so much for its level of debt — which though high is generally considered within the limits of sustainability — as much as for the erratic behaviour of its flamboyant prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. On Monday [Nov. 7], investors seemed to make the collective decision that he could no longer be trusted at the helm of the euro zone's third largest economy and sent Italy's cost of borrowing up towards crisis levels. By the end of the week, not only was Berlusconi finished, so was the very idea of holding a vote to replace him. The markets had spoken, and they didn’t like the idea of going to the electorate. ‘The country needs reforms, not elections,’ said Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council on a visit to Rome Friday.”

"What was it Sisyphus pushed up the hill?"

Reading Carol Ann Duffy's new book 'The Bees' and her poem 'Big Ask' made me go back to Greek Myths to answer her question

Then there was Albert Camus

I now tweet more than I blog...
#ALambirth

Blogging

I have been neglecting this blog. I must put it down to having two new jobs in two years. i suspect no one has noticed...

I have begun tweeting, but this may prove to be rather pointless.

The painting here is by Peter Greenham.

News: I'm currently recruiting teachers from the local area to work with me and two colleagues on the funded 'Poetry Champions' project which starts in January 2012. There are many basic but fundamental issues around the teaching of poetry in primary schools which continue to be a problem and need some attention. A little matter of how teachers can respond and formatively assess the poetry written by children is one of these issues. I have just written a small article for NAWE about this subject.

'Teaching Early Reading and Phonics' has just been reviewed favourably by the UKLA and English Association magazine 'English 4 - 11'

Ken Loach at the BBC

At last, the BBC have released a 6 DVD set of Ken Loach's work at the BBC including 'Days of Hope'

It has been a long time coming and may well be very timely.

Crown Woods School

Read this article from the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jul/25/secondary-school-streaming

Poetry Champions

I have just won some funding to begin the 'Poetry Champions' project in schools around my University. We will be recruiting primary school teachers to the project which aims to develop poetry teaching in Foundation to Key Stage 2. This is exciting as I'll be working with a great team of experienced colleagues and poetry is the central focus!!

Sats tests shift more to teacher assessment

This news was buried.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14186263

The SATS writing test will now be marked by teachers in schools

But according to the BBC web site:

'The creative writing test will be replaced by a composition which will be marked in schools by teachers.

Teacher assessment will make up the "larger part" of the overall writing mark.

But the writing part of the English test is still likely to also include some external marking, says the education department.

There will be a pilot to develop a test in spelling, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary' (Oh dear).

In terms of school accountability, league table results will include a rolling three-year average, which is intended to present a more rounded picture, rather than a single snapshot of one year.

More on the 3K

Here are the Phonics programmes that have ('not') been 'approved' by government so far. These are the programmes that have provided a self-assessment of what their programmes contain.
http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/pedagogy/a0010235/publishers

'Primary schools will be able to claim up to £3,000, if they match that funding, to spend on materials which meet the Department for Education’s criteria for an effective phonics programme.

A list of approved resources – including phonics products for teachers and pupils and training for teachers – will be published by the Department by September although some products and training will be available by the end of June. Schools will decide which of the resources will help them to deliver high-quality phonics teaching for their pupils and will be able to buy products and training with the match-funding any time up to March 2013'.


Please note that the procurement of approved products and training for the catalogue is a separate process from the arrangements for publishers’ self-assessments of their phonics programmes. The list of self-assessed programmes on the Department’s website is not an ‘approved’ list and the programmes in the list are not automatically eligible for match-funding. Schools should not, therefore, assume that the list in the catalogue of approved products will be the same as the self-assessed list already on the website.

Self-Assessed List

'All self-assessments that appear on the site have been scrutinised by independent evaluators to make sure they provide an accurate reflection of the products they represent. Settings and schools should note that this does not constitute an endorsement of the products themselves and should not be regarded as a list of approved programmes or resources.

Full programmes:
•Phonics International – Debbie Hepplewhite
•Read Write Inc – Oxford University Press
•Sound Discovery – Synthetic Phonics Ltd
•Jolly Phonics – Jolly Learning Ltd
•Floppy’s Phonics Sounds and Letters – Oxford University Press
•Phonics Bug – Pearson
•Letters & Sounds – DfE
•Sounds-Write – Sounds-Write Ltd

Supplementary resources:
•Project X phonics – Oxford University Press
•Songbirds – Oxford University Press
•Read Write Inc. Fresh Start – Oxford University Press
•Bug Club – Pearson
•Reading Corner Phonics – Hachette Children’s Books'

I recognise many of the names associated with these schemes, don't you? Can I buy shares? ; )

Schools 'pushed into phonics by financial incentives'

The BBC web site has this report

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14029897

It says: 'Schools in England are being given financial incentives by the government to use certain phonics materials to teach reading, MPs have said.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Education said matched funding was directing schools towards a "small range of products".

It also warns this way of teaching reading by blending sounds can "switch off" children from a love of books'.

It goes on:

The report, by the independent cross-party group of MPs, says: "For cash-strapped schools the incentive to take advantage of the matched funding offered for phonics products and training will push them in the direction of synthetic phonics."

"The message appears to be that if educational professionals want to take advantage of matched funding, they have to buy from only a small range of products and only from one source.

"The financial incentive will be very strong and will be hard to ignore for many cash-strapped schools."

The report says: "This is in contrast to many teachers' experience that a broad-ranging approach to literacy, alongside one-to-one tuition is most effective."

It says: "There should be no government prescription of resources, and funding should be given directly to the professionals to deal with their school's literacy issues, for example, targeted support for a wide range of programmes that have been proven to work such as Reading Recovery."

It also argues that schools should have a whole-school approach to reading, in which teachers and parents are encouraged to work together

Chris Riddell: click the picture to read the caption

Financial Times (30 June) commented:

“A 48-hour Greek general strike over austerity measures, coupled with running battles between police and stone-throwing youths, will surprise few. But today's one-day stoppage by up to 750,000 teachers, lecturers and civil servants in Britain, over reforms to public sector pensions, raises fears that trade union militancy is suddenly being reawakened in a nation where it has long been dormant.

“The dispute creates a serious test for David Cameron's Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. The situation may – so far – be nothing like as difficult as in the 1970s heyday of militancy, which culminated in a 'winter of discontent' that brought the Thatcher government to power. Nonetheless, it threatens to become the biggest labour struggle for a generation, the outcome of which could define the state of industrial relations in the globe's fifth-biggest economy for years to come.”

Francis Gilbert on Teacher Training

Good piece by Francis Gilbert in the Observer about the importance of retaining the essential link with Universities for teacher training. Thanks Francis! http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/17/teacher-training-education-university

CLPE Poetry Prize

The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) has asked me to judge their poetry prize. I did this last year with John Agard who had won the previous year. I will be judging this year's competition with the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. As you might imagine, I'm thrilled.

I'll be sitting in a room with the Poet Laureate, Margaret Meek (Chair) and others discussing poetry written for children. Bliss.

I want to recommend 'Little Red Hood' by Marjolaine Leray. It was originally published in French. It's a quick read, but with plenty of depth. It's an intriguing take on the traditional tale. The illustrations (in pencil) are superb.

Phonics Dawn

Dame Tickell has written a response to newspaper headlines that her report into the EYFS appeared to suggest that phonics was not all that learning to read was about

'I have not recommended that phonics should be downgraded. Phonics is one of the most robust and recognised ways of helping children to learn to read and write. My report clearly highlights the importance of children starting school ready and able to learn, and I set out in the reading and writing goals the phonic development children should have reached by the age of five.'

The Times Educational supplement reported: 'In contrast to the Government’s promotion of phonics, reception teachers should use a wide range of approaches when preparing children to read, a review of the early-years foundation stage (EYFS) published this week recommended. Dame Clare Tickell, who led the review, has recommended that assessing five-year-olds on their ability with phonics should be scrapped. Instead, children should be tested only on how good they are at reading. The proposals appear to be a stark contradiction of Government plans to introduce a test of children’s phonics skills in Year 1 as a stand-alone skill. Ministers are pressing ahead with the plans, despite opposition from teaching unions'.

What do experts really think about phonics? Anyone would think that people were afraid in some way to suggest that teaching phonics alone is not the answer. Ken Goodman in his book 'Phonics Phacts' and other writings has always said there is a place for grapho-phonics reading cues, but that semantic and syntactic cues must be taught and learned at the same time. Before we become hooked on phonics it is important to read the research. Visit the United Kingdom Literacy Association's web site. You can find the phacts there.

Masters and the March

Saturday saw the biggest march in the history of the British trade union movement, with some saying 500,000 people turned out. This has not gone unnoticed. “The most sustained squeeze on living standards since the 1920s is about to hit the UK,” explains the Financial Times. “There is no telling how the general public will react, or indeed what will be the impact on the Coalition’s cohesion. Mr Osborne would be wise not to count his chickens just yet.” (FT, 27/3/11) More news...I've been writing part-time Masters courses in Literacy to join the Masters framework at my University. They will begin in September. One is the core literacy course which is concerned with literacy and learning and enriching the practice in classrooms from foundation to Key Stage 3 and the other concerns the texts - oral, written and multi-modal - which are used in schools. They are exciting courses which also involve teachers in their own creative participation. Sign-up now!

Tolstoy

I'm a great admirer of the fiction of Leo Tolstoy. Here's some interesting footage from his last years.

Robin Alexander on the New National Curriculum

This article was in the Guardian newspaper.

The photograph was taken by Phil Polglaze

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/mar/15/national-curriculum-ministerial-meddling

New Standards for Teachers

Michael Gove has announced he wants new standards for teachers. The press release says:

The new approach will set out rigorous standards teachers should meet in order to:

• provide excellent teaching
• crackdown on bad behaviour
• improve pupils’ skills in the basics of English and maths • provide better support to those pupils falling behind.

New standards will help raise the bar for performance and help identify those who need more support to improve. Under the current approach, teachers and headteachers say:

• it is hard to measure a teacher’s progress • there is a lack of clarity about when a teacher is meeting the standards • the standards do not fit easily with the procedures for tackling underperforming teachers.

The review will be led by Sally Coates, the outstanding Principal at Burlington Danes Academy in London. Other excellent headteachers, teachers and education experts will sit on the review.

They will recommend to Government a simple and clear set of key skills that teachers must meet.

'Simple and clear' - the profession may wish to decide if these 'simple' standards represent what good professional teaching should be or whether this is an attack on the professionalism of teaching.

TUC March: March 26th

For those of you who wish to demonstrate your disquiet with this government's policy on public services, pensions, education and health reform...etc etc. the TUC, which is the organisation containing most of the Trade Unions in the UK, is organising a march in London on Saturday 26th March.

Here are the details:
http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/2011/01/tuc-national-demonstration-against-cuts-26-march-london/

The TUC are expecting large numbers of people

Teachers as Writers

This is an interesting article about a teacher attempting to interest her class in reading and writing by authoring her own novel.
This teacher has got into a great deal of trouble as a result.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/feb/22/teacher-risque-novel-tribunal-result

Well worth serious discussion.

Jamie at School

Jamie was interviewed in the Observer last Sunday

On Teacher Training (Education)

“I think 'Dream School' is questioning everything about schools that we know, including whether you need traditional qualifications to be a teacher – I think we both know that’s a no. Govey could be onto to something quite profound there” (p.8)

On children and their potential

“I think there are definitely two types of student: the academic kids and the 50% who fail. It’s very clear to see – it’s a fact. We’re not doing enough for those who fail; they need a more physical, tactile approach, involving people skills, team-building, problem solving, building things…they need to able to knock out seven 18-hour days in a row – you need to know what real f****** work is…” (p.8)

Jamie has his 'finger on the Pulse' (not a cookery reference) of latest thinking from the Tory Coalition government. I expect those who must work 18 hours a day will be the poor and working class. 19th Century values are seasoning Jamie's views.

Inaugural Lecture June 14th

My inaugural lecture has been set for June 14th 2011. If you would like to come do contact me. It will be great to have my friends, colleagues and students there to support me. The great fear must be an empty lecture theatre.

I'm going back the the 'day job' and will speak about children's poetry; drawing on the research I'm doing with colleagues at the moment and considering assessment and response to children's poetry by adults.

A good title is needed: 'Reading Voices: how to enjoy poetry written by children'. Perhaps that's too specific...hmm

Teaching poetry: Teaching Art

A new paper by Jeff (2010) discusses how art is taught in schools. The teaching of art is, of course, linked to the teaching of poetry. This is a bit of what the author says about the role of the 'expert':

"Art in UK schools...frequently characterised by hierarchical concepts of individual talent and genius, and the adherence to a well-established and largely unquestioned canon of great artists whose work within a narrow range of aesthetic codes, normally those associated with mimetic depiction (Downing and Watson 2004). Pedagogically, these regimes rely upon an expert specialist for delivery of skills and appropriate sensibilities to a largely positive set of recipients, the learners, which emphasises the role art plays in reinforcing the socially constraining and limiting function of education"

In this paper Jeff criticises 'Creative Partnerships' as being an example of this hierarchical perspective of 'the artist' and then everyone else. One could argue that in the teaching of poetry the model is often the same. Here, once again we are faced with the post-structuralist challenge and the question of power relations and the freedom of expression and the dangers of schools reinforcing messages about 'real art' only being about the individual genius of others.

James Britton on Play and Poetry (1982)

"Piaget states that roughly from the age of two to the age of eleven children's characteristic activity is that of make believe play, and he calls this 'Symbolic Representation'. In play children work over their experiences, and their enactments are a symbol representing actual experience. By the age of eleven, Piaget says a child is normally able to think in concepts. Children's writing reflects this development. Much that they write at six or seven or eight is more like poetry than prose in that it is a gloss upon experience rather than formulation itself"

"...Poetry, in common with all literature, is as much a rehearsal of experience as is make believe play (Here is trial without the possibility of error)".

Britton goes on to suggest that poems deal with poets coming to terms with ideas and events. Symbolic representataions of experience. This must mean that all forms of art could be described as a form of therapy.

Happy New Year

The ESRC poetry seminar series began this week in Exeter. I am co-convener. There were some excellent papers and stimulating discussion. Poems were read and written too.

One discussion I had concerned the concept of bad poems. I was interested to learn from poets and teachers of poetry what a bad poem looked like. Are there poems out there which are objectively 'bad'? Of course everyone is free to say which poems they like and which poems they think are 'good' and have value and which ones they think are not good (bad) and have no value...for them; but can a consensus be found about poems that are generally thought bad?

Is there a need to do this? There must be dangers here if we do. Being told that bad poems are out there may well contribute to the fear people have of poetry. Yet, writers and teachers of poetry often talk about bad poems, so it is in need of discussion.


Peter Sansum (1994), in his book 'Writing Poetry' says that some poems are 'tripe'. He is certain that bad poems are very common. These are poems which are some-how dishonest about the meanings they convey and how this is done and/or are full of cliche.

Seamus Cooney here ( http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/bad/index.html ) has this to say

"To achieve memorable badness is not so easy. It has to be done innocently, by a poet unaware of his or her defects. The right combination of lofty ambition, humorless self-confidence, and crass incompetence is rare and precious. (There is a famous anthology of bad poetry called The Stuffed Owl, which I recommend to those interested.)

For the student, having a genuine insight into the true badness of some poems is, I think, a necessary corollary of having a grasp of what makes good poems good."

On his web site about 'bad poetry' Cooney includes Wordsworth aand Coleridge. Cooney, playfully is looking for objective properties of bad poems.


Bad poems? Below I play with ideas.


Bad poems:
1. Poems which are written for occasions which contain language and/or are about subjects which are inappropriate to be read in particular contexts
2. Prose
3. Poems which are stated as being written in a particular form which break the rules - e.g. a ballad which is not a ballad.
4. Poems which are written by someone who has no interest in writing one and little effort has been made in its composition
5.Poems written by those who do not know what a poem is and what it can do and/or have read very little poetry.
6. A poem no one can understand
7. A poem that people know about, but no one has any interest reading
8. Poems written by those who are not genuine about writing poems. There is another motive other than poetry.
9. A poem everyone thinks is bad



None of the definitions of bad poetry above necessarily mean that the poetry produced will be considered bad by everyone. There will always be someone (with the exception of (7) and (9)) who will enjoy them, even if it is just the poet.

So, what is a good poem...? Try changing the definions above. What do you get? For example,

'Poems which are written by someone who has a huge interest in writing one and has made great effort in its composition'.

Will this produce a good poem, or just not a bad one? Or does it just increase the chances of a good poem being produced as it was with a bad poem.

I suspect the definitions of good poetry will be different in nature to definitions about bad poems.