MG Harris on BBC Daily Politics

I’ve been at the BBC Millbank studios today talking about my thoughts on the English Baccalaureate on the BBC Daily Politics show. In my role as a school governor (which I don’t talk about much here…!) and chair of our governors’ Curriculum Committee, it’s my role to support the school in implementing government policy. Under the last government there were things I had quibbles with but – to be honest – I couldn’t see that government lasting. So like many, I waited patiently to see what the change of government would bring.

And in the main, I liked much of what I read in the Coaltition Government’s White Paper on Education – The Importance of Teaching. I even liked the idea of an ‘English Baccalaureate’ or ‘EBac’, which would steer 14-16 year-olds to a core of broad and academic subjects and away from English/Maths and a ‘soft’ BTec worth 4 GCSE equivalents.

Except that the apparently exemplifying language of the paper ‘and a humanity such as history or geography’ turned out to be utterly proscriptive!

So that seems to be that other humanities; religious education, philosophy, economics, law…will not ‘count’ in the EBac.

MG Harris's 'Soapbox' on EBac

Well, it’s a half-baked policy, as I argued in the short sequence filmed at St Gregory the Great School, Oxford, where I’m a governor.

Maybe Michael Gove should pop back to Oxford University, where he and I were contemporaries in the 1980s. He could revisit the Bodleian Library, once the core of the University, and check out the ‘Scholae’ that formed the heart of an ancient University education. Moral Philosophy (modern-day equivalent is Religious Studies), Music, Natural Philosophy (modern-day equivalent is Science), Logic (modern day equivalent, Maths), Grammar and History (language and history).

If you’re going to hark back to a classical education, what’s wrong with Oxford University’s original curriculum?

Or maybe he’d argue that we’ve moved on from the 13th century. That’s fine. So how about adding a core technology subject? ICT/Design and Technology/Computer Studies?

At the West London Free School started by journalist Toby Young and some fellow parents, Latin will be compulsory to GCSE. And you know what – that is fine by me. Toby is a school governor. That’s who should set the curriculum of a particular school: headteachers and governors!

Come on, Michael. Don’t be a fuddy-duddy, meddling micro-manager. Let headteachers and school governors set the agenda, the way the White Paper promised! If we must have another performance measure, at least allow each school to choose the compulsory humanity for their students.

But why stop at a performance measure? EBac could be something actually useful, a pre-16 qualification with a core of English/Maths/Science/Language/Humanity+4 more subjects for the academic strand OR a chunky vocational subject or two.

Anyway, here are some of the criticisms of EBac as it stands:

Catholic Education Service Statement re Religious Education and EBac

Baccing our students - Archbishop Sentamu Academy Submission to E-Bac Select Committee

A Pied Piper leads Kennington villagers in protest at library cuts

Update on the Pied Piper March in support of the Kennington Library (see Save the Libraries – Kennington (Part 1 of 2))

I received a lovely letter from the organiser, Paddy Landau, as well as a CD of photos from the day. The event was a huge success! Councillor Keith Mitchell turned up to the tea party with the children and heard Korky Paul and I reading to the children of St Swithun’s Primary School. he then received baskets of petitions and posters from the children. In his address Keith outlined a number of options open to the council to make the savings required of them by the Coalition Govt.

The Pied Piper March was covered by local news, radio and TV. And here’s the GOOD NEWS! It seems to have worked – the plans to cut 20 of 43 libraries will be entirely rethought.

County tears up library closure plan

Funnily enough, Councillor Mitchell didn’t mention cutting salaries of highly paid council executives…of which I should stress that Councillor Mitchell is not one – he is an elected official. But there are people in Oxfordshire County Council who are paid top salaries to plan, for example, exciting new road schemes. Not to implement those plans – that would be people far down on the ladder.

Call me old-fashioned but I think that when your household runs out of cash you stop paying the architect to dream up that enormous extension and concentrate ONLY on repairs until there is money in the bank again…

That’s my tip for saving the libraries, anyway. Cut some salaries – just a bit! However, I suspect the extra revenue might be raised bythe return of Sunday and 24-hour parking charges, and the resumption of the speed cameras…

MG at Kennington Literary Festival (photo by Mostly Books)

It’s all over the Internet and the news – to save money, local governments plan to close down some libraries. In Oxfordshire, 20 of 43 local libraries are threatened with closure. The communities are protesting, demonstrating, writing letters. This is the moment to persuade the county councils to change their minds!

I’m involved with the Save the Kennington Library Campaign. I’ve written before about this lovely village library and the Kennington Free Literary Festival that the community organises to support their library.

Local primary school children who use the Kennington Library have written letters to Cllr Keith Mitchell, who leads the Oxfordshire County Council. The Save the Library campaigners have written to Cllr Mitchell and to local MP, Nicola Blackwood, inviting them both to tea with the kids on February 7th, and to receive the letters of petition.

I’ll be joining with Korky Paul, an Oxford neighbour and illustrator of many wonderful children’s books (including Winnie the Witch), to read to the Kennington children.

Local media have also been invited to record the event. We’re very much hoping that Cllr Mitchell will turn up!

Here’s an excerpt of a letter I wrote to both.

The Government proposes to radically overhaul education, which I support. In that instance, it isn’t proposing to close schools and let natural selection take over! Libraries deserve the same, albeit on a smaller scale.

Please – consult with stakeholders, ask for proposals and bring in examples of best practice.

So…roll on February 7th…! I will post a report from the event, right here on the blog.

UPDATE: To see how it all turned out, see Save the Libraries – Kennington (Part 2 of 2)

The sky is literally falling on our heads. Again.

If this is how stoked people can get in 2009 about a 2012 movie, what will happen in 2012?

Will we be totally over it? Can it get more hysterical?

Believe me, we’re all quite hot under the collar now. Articles are appearing from NASA, National Geographic, the BBC, the Telegraph, etc etc…and that is in addition to the squillions of twitter comments, articles on blog, Webzines and forums all over the Internetz.

(I know because we track references to 2012 on themgharris.com and because I set up a Twitterfeed based on a search for ‘mayan’ AND ’2012′.)

The world is going to end! The world isn’t going to end!

Which could it be?

The 2012 movie crew are getting flak from some quarters for stirring the fear. Well, if they’d taken an Al Gore-style approach to a doom-laden catastrophe-scenario and produced a documentary with Science Data And Evryfin, like ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, I’d be angry too. That would be lame and silly at best, dangerous and irresponsible at worst.

But – unlike a few wingnuts who’ve inhaled too much sherbert – they didn’t. They made a daft-as-a-brush-and-twice-as-fun megablockbuster, a disaster movie in which clearly at some point they’ve thought, ‘Screw it. Let’s blow everything up.’

It isn’t Bergman, that’s for sure. But you could probably tell that from the poster.

If you want to see some of these frankly hilarious wingnut films, check out the video section of mayan2012kids.com. Mainly these films are sitting on YouTube not harming anyone. I have to say that if you lose sleep over what you see ranted about on YouTube then you deserve it. Although some of the clips are from the History Channel. Naughty, smack you, History Channel!

The very best article I’ve read so far comes from Rod Liddle, a columnist for The Spectator (The UK’s equivalent of The Atlantic Monthly, a magazine with intellectual, political-right leanings.) His column this week discusses 2012 hysteria as part of a general passion of hand-wringers for apocalypse, now. If it isn’t that society is going to hell in a hand-basket, it’s that we’re all doomed because of global warming global cooling climate change, ancient prophecies of catastrophe or even the mysterious disappearance of honeybees. Don’t worry though. It wouldn’t matter if all the bees died.

Well if you’ve ever had to listen to a passionate Warmist over dinner, you may have had the thought ’they’re having so much fun. What a spoilsport I’d be to ruin it with actual scientific evidence and rational thought.’

You would be a rotten spoilsport. As Rod Liddle writes, “The bee holocaust myth is just another example of our strange yearning for catastrophe.”

We need to believe in catastrophe, like we need ghost stories, monsters and the paranormal. Doesn’t make it any more real.

Again, I’m with Liddle on the climate change thing. As Rod Liddle puts it, ‘My own view of climate change — or global warming as it used to be called, before the evangelists changed tack when they realised everything wasn’t getting warmer — is absolutely open. I am a little sceptical of man-made climate change because, for me, the raw statistics do not quite add up, but I certainly wouldn’t rule it out. And I also reckon that most of the stuff urged upon us in order to address climate change makes sense for other environmental reasons anyway.’

All the same, it’s eerie to watch insane notion, like 2012 doom, being taken seriously enough that big news organisations feel the need to refute it.

Hey guys, you are intruding on MY territory – the world of make-believe!

It makes me wonder how seriously anyone should take them on issues like climate change. Or politics.

Because the truth is, some clever publicists have hooked into the irrational fears of the public, into a segment of people who have by now swallowed so much Warmist garbage that choking down a bit more unscientific or New Age daftness will be very easy. They’ve made a viral marketing campaign so successful that it’s tricked all those serious news agencies into publicizing the movie.

It couldn’t have been done though, if people weren’t already primed.

If my turn ever comes to speak to the media about 2012, you know what line I’m taking. And you know what, if you listen to what Emmerich et al are actually saying in interviews, it’s the same thing. 2012 simply represents a generalised fear of the end – a fear that is pretty old.

Remember St John and the Book of Revelations?

California falls into the ocean! We were warned...by Lex Luthor.

Well, every reputable scientific agency is producing information on why the 2012 ‘threat’ is not real. So much choice of 2012 debunkery!

I’ve picked National Geographic’s recent article about 2012, which similarly to our mayan2012kids own page about 2012 theories (only much more emphatically), it goes through the various – ahem – theories. Nat Geo admirably refutes each one, which is good, saves me the time.

If you’re worried about 2012, read the National Geo article. It’s good and concise.

What seems to be more of an interesting question is that NASA and National Geographic are even bothering to take time time to engage with this as a serious Thing.

As someone who thinks that the 2012 threat is suitable only for fiction, (much like the wicked witch and her gingerbread cottage, Voldemort, his Death-Eaters and the Priory of Sion), it’s quite baffling to me that serious, proper people like NASA and FAMSI etc need to actually dispute this.

What’s next – a sober article in Nature about how vampirism doesn’t exist? (And I mean an article. News and Views doesn’t count, they put any old gossip in that.)

What a credulous bunch we all must be. Not you, reader. If you’re a young person reading this because The Joshua Files made you anxious, be assured that the threat of 2012 is no more real than vampires, werewolves and wicked witches. It’s the stuff of nightmares and stories.

But you knew that already, didn’t you? Whatever thrills you enjoy from a bit of fictional threat, deep down you have Common Sense.

Everyone else, shame on you! How could the ancient Mayans possibly know the date of the end? Unless, like in The Joshua Files, (SPOILER ALERT – highlight the following text!) they had time travel…

I don’t know about you, but I’d need more than the possibility of t(spoiler) -time travel to persuade me to lose a night’s sleep thinking that the world is going to end. I would need cast iron proof of t(spoiler) -time traveland a LOT more.

All the same I’m still going to enjoy seeing 2012 – Emmerich’s apocalyptic vision of mayhem. Some people like movies about virus-infected, flesh-eating zombies taking over a ravaged planet; I enjoy doomy eschatological fantasy.

Because I know it isn’t real…

Meanwhile, without me having so much as sign up to any kind of trade union of authors, for the second time I find that a cadre of established, successful children’s authors have again taken it upon themselves to speak for me.

Last time the message was that we didn’t want consumers to be given any help choosing which books might be suitable to buy for children of which age. To a new author like me who is glad to have any extra people encouraged to buy my books, the subliminal message coming from this celebrity-studded group sounded rather like – I think you’ll find that I’m famous! That’s all the information you need to buy my book for your child!

This time the message is that we authors won’t be doing school visits anymore, not if we have to register with the Independent Safeguarding Authority, how very dare you!

Hmm, well not all authors are thrilled to watch the self-appointed group of spokesmen in action again. @RobertMuchamore, author of the mega-popular urban teen spy series CHERUB tweeted, “Irritated at another round of whinging by the usual grey haired mafia of ‘renowned’ kids authors”

Luckily Anthony Browne the new children’s laureate and Gillian Cross are showing more level heads.

This one, I’m in two minds over. As a school governor I’ll have to register anyway and the fee is waived. School governors aren’t complaining but then school governors tend to be community -minded volunteers who give hundreds of hours of their time to help run schools. School governors are motivated by the desire to make our schools as safe and effective as possible. This legislation probably will make it easier to protect children in schools. So we don’t complain at the imagined affront to our integrity. Mainly, we don’t even imagine one.

Authors should no more be offended at being asked to register than teachers, governors or parent volunteers.

It’s true that authors aren’t left alone with children, not often. Especially not famous authors who address hundreds of children at a time. But occasionally I’ve been left alone with small groups of children, both as an author and as a governor. It does happen. Life is so much easier for teachers if they can walk away for a few minutes now and again. Don’t we want to help teachers?

I suspect that these handful of celebrity authors are no more seeking to represent fellow children’s authors, nor are they claiming that authors are automatically morally superior to, let’s say, school governors.

They are reacting naturally and with dismay to something that has quietly been happening in state schools for years, which is a fairly radical change in the culture.

You can no longer be automatically trusted to be alone with children just because you are a respected adult, a famous author, a Head Teacher. The hard lesson that’s been learnt from the few horrible cases of unsuitable adults gaining access to children in schools is that you can’t easily tell who might pose a threat.

No-one is above suspicion, so everybody is checked. To leave certain people out implies a value judgement. A teacher is not above suspicion but a parent is? A governor may be dodgy but all authors are fine? Such judgements will inevitably cause a ruckus, which is why the ISA has opted to register everyone.

Child protection is a serious issue, the most serious one for governors. Governors have always agreed to the CRB checks and will sign up to the ISA.

The authors who’ve complained are right to point out that this says something sad about society. Simply put it says that we acknowledge that we live in a world where kids are abused and we have to do everything in our power to prevent such abuse.

But refusing to acknowledge that truth is also pretty naïve and can have dire consequences. It’s like pretending there’s no such thing as death.

We all live in the midst of pathology. The police, doctors, prison wardens and countless other grown-up professions deal with the daily consequences of this truth. You don’t hear them gripe.

Authors spend huge amounts of time in fictional fantasy worlds where kids endure some fairly horrible dangers. How ironic it is that some authors should be the last to accept such a grisly truth.

I have friends on both the hard left and hard right of the political spectrum and interestingly, they are all griping in a hardcore way in their blogs.

Ni by ears-and-eyes sounds like good advice.

I’m almost there myself. I stopped watching TV news about 10 years ago, on account of the ridiculous sensationalism and manipulation of all news programmes. Lately, I hear, they barely report actual news, the kind that isn’t about minor celebrities, that is.

Newspapers have always been banned from our house – they take up valuable space and require endless recycling.

The last thing to go was Radio 4′s Today programme, which I gave up about 5 years ago.

I’m not quite nil-by; I read TIME magazine until about two years ago and I still subscribe to THE SPECTATOR but that’s thin on news, it’s more essays, arts reviews and analysis (of issues of which I’m barely aware).

And that’s it. I am blissfully only vaguely aware of what’s going on in the world. As far as I can tell it’s the same as ever, war, pointless war, drugs, gangs, violence, stupid government reforms and of course, we’re going to hell in a handbasket.

Same as last year, same as the year before or any year I’ve ever lived.

Why do people need to tune in to the news to hear that every day? I must admit I don’t understand.

Okay I’m ill-equipped now to do what I once did i.e. argue noisily at dinner parties about things I can’t affect and matters that I probably don’t have enough factual information to understand.

Solution – don’t bother with dinner parties, at least not with people who think that the problems of the world can be understood or solved by a bunch of overfed, semi-drunk members of the bourgeousie trying to impress each other.

The problem is – when you have to make a decision – for example a vote – it’s probably wise to have a clue.

It may be the fact that I don’t have a vote – not being British – may be part of my decision to go (almost) nil-by-ears-and-eyes.

Or maybe it’s the longer term impact of my scientific training.

Living as a scientist teaches you – in the most weary way possible; the 90% failure/inconclusiveness of most of your experiments - that things are very rarely what they seem. They are something else. Something that you can’t know today. You may know tomorrow, or later, when new facts have come to light. But not today. Life surprises, delights and disappoints.

So why worry on a daily basis?

Surely reading the news once a month is enough for anyone, unless you are one of those who needs to make a decision, or you can actually get your information from a primary source and don’t just regurgitate your favourite propaganda rag.

And if you want to sound smart at dinner parties – here’s a suggestion: read history books.

That way you don’t have to speculate and pontificate about how things are going to end up.

(Any child readers who are still reading this far…all I got is this…study your lessons, get some fresh air, eat yer greens and read the odd good book now and again. Can’t give you any better advice than that.)