'Race to the Bottom' Savage Cuts

Is it me, or is it rather curious that all the main political parties are boasting about the extent that they intend to make public spending cuts?

Is this really the way to attract votes? Their rush to out-do each other over the cuts they want to make has been called a 'race to the bottom'.

It was the tax payer who has provided the money needed to prop up the banks. Did I also read, that bankers were back to giving themselves huge bonuses...?

I try to avoid overtly party political comment on this blog, but this strikes me as remarkable.

A Culture's Culture

I am writing a book about literacy and it's political background. I find splurging ideas out on this blog can help in the process of understanding the different positions. So forgive what comes next...

Marxists would support the view that the cultural life-styles of working class people should be respected and valued.

Yet, Marxism would argue that the cultures that have been developed within the working class have come about because of the relations that have been produced through the organisation of production within a capitalist economy. The working class are an oppressed group.

For Marxists, Capitalism is one important stage in the development of human societies. The next stage - a classless society - brought about by a revolution led by the working class would eradicate the state and the exploitation by one class upon another. Marxism wants to see the end of relations of production that make a working class and a middle class and with it bring in a new society where all can engage in the riches of a human culture.

No one can know what this culture will be like, but it will mean that all will have access to the fruits of humanity's scientific and artistic potential. What is certain, for Marxists, is it will not be a 'working class culture', that will never exist - not a culture that belongs to the working class. Nor would it be desired. The culture that currently corresponds with groups of working class people under capitalism cannot be looked at in a particularly favourable light by Marxists. It is simply the culture attributed to working class people under capitalism. In a sense it belongs not to workers but to the ruling class of society, but will ultimately be swept away when the next phase of human development is brought about. A culture linked to the working class could only be good in so far that it forms part of the seeds of capitalism's own destruction. It has no universal validity and it will perish.

In my reading of Marxist literature I see that Trotsky, one of the two leaders of the Russian Revolution, believed the working class to be a 'nonpossessing class' - that they own nothing - and who are not given access to the forms of culture that the more wealthy have. I shall read on...

Film and Education

I am about to start teaching on a course called 'Film and Education'. It is concerned with how film has represented teachers, schools and education. It is based on the belief that it is possible to learn about many of the issues that surround education through watching films.

Often teachers have been represented as charismatic figures who have the means to tackle all the problems that school students face, forming special relationships with them and persuading those in the toughest of circumstances to make the right choices in school and in life.

What's your favorite film about school?

New Term

I'm on my way to Cambridge to lead, with Professor Tony Booth, the faculty's Writers' Workshop. This is a superb opportunity to work alongside colleagues who want to begin writing in their academic careers and Cambridge is a great place to 'get away from it all' to start that process.

Tony and me have been running these trips for a number of years and it gets more and more popular the longer we run it and as word has spread.

The poster, by the way, comes from the USA - seems to suggest that teachers are recognised as holding a unique form of social power that should be feared by those who rule society...Teachers may look very wholesome and innocent but...

Professor Honey

In reading the arguments over literacy between the left and the right, I had the opportunity of reading Professor John Honey's book: Language is Power: The Story of Standard English and its Enemies (1997) again. In this book Professor Honey takes on those, like Brian Street and James Gee who advocate a tolerance and appreciation of literacy in all of its forms and shows that the way people use language has been hard fought over as a means to dominate society. From this perspective, standard English is not simply a neutral and benign way to communicate across cultures, but a hard fought sign of domination by one class and culture over others. Those who control the literacy curriculum ensures social reproduction through success at school and other institutions that privilege those who already have begun to master these forms of literacy and language-use before they come to school. In finding favour in one form of literacy over another others lose out. Professor Honey says:

"We know that the particular values which dominate our educational systems, which have to do with cultivation of the mind by reading, by trained methods of thinking and observing, etc., are not in fact found interesting by a significant proportion of people in out society. They may defer to those interests in other people but do not desire them for themselves, indeed they may feel the symbols of educatedness to be threatening" (1997:234)

"Are Footballers who do not make the first team, but only play for the second or third, robbed of their human worth?"

MA in Literacy and Learning

Numbers for the MA in Literacy and Learning are on the rise and once again, we should have more than enough applications to run the programme. There has been more interest than most years. As usual, I ran two promotion evenings in Chatham and Canterbury, with a very large group attending the Canterbury session. I have a list of contacts which I send promo material to and plug the MA where ever I go. Nothing new there. So, what has made the difference this year? I can't know.

The book is underway with the first chapter about to be finished in draft form. This chapter needs to draw in the reader and I attempt this by perversely offering intellectual discomfort and challenge. I declare, that after reading the book, readers will be able to plot their attitude and approach to literacy education on the political spectrum.

A friend of mine has just bought the house that appeared in the film 'Withnail and I' as Monty's Cottage. A favourite film. He intends to restore the house to how it appeared in the movie and rent it out for holidays to the faithful - "free to those who can afford it, very expensive to those who can't"

Return from Holiday: UKLA Key Note Speech

I am home from Tuscany and Umbria. We stayed at two great places, one in Tuscany and the other in Umbria. Leave continues until the end of August.

My task now is to write 'Literacy on the Left'. I also learn that the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) has invited me to give a Key Note speech at their International Conference next year, to be held in the University of Winchester. I see Gunther Kress is giving one too...

Whilst staying in Umbria, we witnessed the most ferocious thunderstorm I have ever seen. The hotel was high up in the hills. We sheltered with hotel staff in the main house which was struck twice during the storm. Mean while outside, a tree was hit and cut in two (see picture above). This storm was not typical of the weather during our stay. Sunny and warm for most of the time.