Research, Pedagogy and Power

Stephen Bigger.  [Content also appears on warrenandbigger.blogspot.co.uk]
The last two months has been a baptism of fire in twitter-feed. Especially between 'Tell them things then test them" pedagogy and the broader learning which includes inquiry, activities, drama and so forth. As a teacher I did both, mixed in different ways, sometimes even in the same lesson. I embalmed a mummy and directed the class to act out bits of whatever we were talking about. A whole-school Passover, including 100+ pupils in the hall crossing the Red Sea was remembered a year later (pupils called me Rabbi) and a narrated and acted out Rama and Sita story was acted out for whole year assembly. This work was knowledge-rich, resulting in quality writing and was examined in the normal way - but it was delivered in as exciting and entertaining ways as I could muster. And definitely no worksheets, and few books either because suitable books were not available. Knowledge-rich need not involve droning teachers and unthinking pupils - it should encourage thinking and discussion.

My own education, primary and secondary, was of the tell them and test them variety with rewards (gold and silver stars) and punishments (normally public shaming). I was banned from being str monitor when I sabotaged the whole exercise, not discovered for several weeks. I was a bright pupil who didn't want external rewards (stars) so I laced my work with deliberate errors. Looking back, this damaged my progress until I was 14, but I was looking after two younger siblings (7 and 3), a house and a garden. I had older siblings, but they were away at boarding school. My head was not focused on school-work which generally involved teacher bullying and sarcasm, with canings from time to time.  At 14 I discovered self-study, became an avid book buyer and got on with it. At university I noticed that I was the only one in class who had not been 'spoon-fed'. I am emptying  my attic and looking at the notes I took for myself from A level onwards, in tiny handwriting I could not emulate today. In research terms, much of it is still usable.

So calls for bullying 'tell and test' leave me cold. I don't remember any teacher with pleasure, and I do remember most teachers. At least caning has been outlawed.  Why revert to what didn't work educationally sixty years ago?

So to my thoughts on research into pedagogy. First a truism not always appreciated. Education is not the same as schooling, and vice versa. Schooling is forcing children/YP to attend a particular place and do as they are told. Education is learning, developing, becoming curious and becoming exited about life and the world. The Unschooling Movement argues that education is better done outside school, drawing on the work of John Holt about children failing and succeeding to learn. It is possible to go through school and pass exams without learning much.

So we start with what is education and what is learning. Well before the age of 5 I really enjoyed picture books. Donald Duck, I remember. We weren't allowed comics since mother (a coal face miner's daughter with delusions of grandeur) thought them working class. Enid Blyton was middle class so that was our reading diet. I can still sing the Noddy and Big-ears records. Coming to the point, home was reading-rich and picture-book rich. I don't remember learning to read, but I do remember teaching others to read.I remember laughing during silent reading and having to turn it into a cough.

Coming out of this, motivating pupils to learn could be higher on the agenda than becoming passive receptors. Managing learning through fear, linked with expulsion of recalcitrants, seems poorly fitted to develop motivation. In saying this I am not saying that anything goes, since good self-discipline will benefit both the individual and the class. In the short term, some pupils may have developed negative attitudes over time so the teacher is trying to turn them around by building a good relationship which takes the sting out of their past experiences.

Ethics.  This gives us a key question to ask of pedagogy, To what extent does it value the pupils and respect their various needs? Does their experience in school promote their happiness and well-being? Are the benefits of the class experience appropriately shared? Our focus is on motivating pupils by being supportive, helpful, empowering and not being authoritarian, bossy and unfair.

Critical Pedagogy.  The word critical means a range of things in different contexts but always from the action of offering criticism. That criticism may be logical - i.e. the argument doesn't follow. It may be evidential, that what is said is not based on evidence. It could be ethical, where the argument made is not fair. Critical Theory asks all these questions but since the first two are common to all disciplines, the focus on social justice provides it with a very distinctive set of questions. Stimulated by the rise of the Nazis in Germany, its philosophical message of social justice was the stark opposite of the oppressive policies of the brown-shirt thugs. Many were secular Jews and the social message of the prophets is clearly visible. The Critical Theorists moved from Frankfurt to America for their safety. Their distinctive philosophy against oppression across society fed into feminism, anti-racism, studies of class and more recently sexuality. It has been applied to education as Critical Pedagogy, encouraging democratic schooling, hearing pupil voices (opinions) including school councils, the involvement of pupils in their learning and school lives, social justice in schools, respect for pupils with special needs and so on. In brief it is a philosophy of respect. Critical theory tends to be a grass roots movement against top-down instrumentalism making judgements and disrespectful authoritarianism based on punishment, sarcasm and belittling. The early stages of critical pedagogy is well summed up in Teaches As Intellectuals: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Learning by Henry Giroux (1988 and still available). His chapter (9) on 'Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals' emphasises that teachers are "transformative intellectuals who combine scholarly reflection and practice in the service of educating students to be thoughtful, active citizens" (p.122). This was an argument against a more instrumental view if the teacher's role "devaluing and deskilling", an insight still relevant today. More recently see   The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education Apple, Au and Gandin 2009,

Self  Study. There is not a great deal written about self study and different things are meant so I will be careful to define my meanings. One meaning is studying oneself, a kind of personal psychotherapy. That is not centrally what I mean but reflexivity (which I take this to be) is not unimportant. A second meaning I see online seems to be supplementary education, offering additional supervised schooling when they come home from school. This is not self study though is advertised assuch This sounds to me of unhelpful cramming when the children should be out playing.In my case play would have included free unsupervised reading of books I had chosen, but would also have included climbing trees and taking long bike rides.

I preferred to find out for myself than be told, and regarded (and still do) what I am told with some suspicion. This applied before the age of 5 when I campaigned to deny the existence of Father Christmas. I gather local mothers used to knock on the door to tell be to shut up. I didn't of course. My favorite  school activity was finding things out for myself. we had radio but no television, and of course home computers were not yet invented. I had the umpteen volumes of the Children's Encyclopedia (second hand) and was a voracious reader; and I remember trying to reduce a dead bird to a skeleton (age about 8) and helping with the harvest in days when horses still ploughed.

Up to the age of 14 I did not engage in study.I don't remember what was taught, but I do remember the derision were were held in by many staff. "You are going to learn this whether you want to or not"; "You will learn Latin even if it kills you". Teachers who were bullies remain most firmly in mind, bearing in mind that physical assault was allowed. I was brought up as an evangelical Christian (I have been an agnostic since age 18) and this caused me not a little stress in my teens, particularly as church elders were abusive and I was close to excommunication. I jumped before being pushed.

I did two A levels by self study (Latin and Religious Studies) the latter in nine months supported by a correspondence college. At University, learning Hebrew, Greek, Akkadian, Ugaritic as well as broad reading requires self-study discipline. Moving on the PhD straight after requires more of the same. I had been well set up. Later I completed PG Cert and later still MA by self study. The question is how can self study be encouraged earlier in school as a matter of routine. The internet provides a different context so research using it needs to establish criticality - testing the evidence for claims on social media and other internet sources. Don't accept it, test it. I am aware of schools in which this is taking place. If this becomes established generally, changes to assessment will have to take place. Self-study requires agency (feeling in control) and motivation (feeling the task is worth doing).

Authority as Relational.   I take my subtitle from a book by Charles Bingham. What is Authority? You can hear Trump saying 'I have Authority. I am President' as if it is a cloak he puts on when taking office. 'You have to obey or take the consequences' (that was Mugabe, not Trump yet). Authority is something earned, and may not be earned by authoritarianism. Ruling by fear and not relationship may produce compliance but not cooperation or collaboration. Model 3 he calls 'critical' meaning that all involved, pupils and teachers declare themselves to have equal status and voice. Self motivation and self discipline is the name of the game. The big task of schooling is how to achieve that goal. Within a framework of curriculum appropriateness, it has to involve pupils having some say over what they choose to study and letting them explore how to research properly. That authority is relational assumes that classrooms (and schools) are relational, that they are dominated by positive and helpful interactions and relationships, and that authority grows out of those interactions and their implied respect both ways. Resisting authority assumes that authority is claimed by particular individuals (teachers and leaders). If authority is distributed in a context of collaboration and cooperation, resisting authority means opting out of the group dynamic altogether. In a sense this form of group authority could be called distributed authority or perhaps collegial authority. It would need operating principles like keeping safe and showing respect, and some sort of mechanism to balance dominant personalities/voices.

Tom Sergiovanni spent his academic life reconceptualising leadership including Moral Leadership.
He regards competence and virtue as the two major principles of leadership. Most recently The Lifeworld of Leadership: Creating Culture, Community, and Personal Meaning in Our Schools explores the broader implications of school relationships. Whilst his initial thoughts focus on senior management, distributed leadership operates throughout the institution and throughout the community. He sums up:

"the more leadership is emphasised, the less professionalism flourishes. The more professionalism is thriving, the less need there is for leadership."

Pedagogy is an ethical and moral activity in which the whole community (in this case the school) create culture and personal meaning. This requires interpersonal relationships of a high order.

Part of a 2013 article

Critical education and embodied learning.

Stories are part of a broader nurture and education process that has itself to be examined for its assumptions and objectives. The tradition that the west pays lip-service to is that education should enable children to think intellectually, to express their feelings creatively, and to develop their character morally. The aim is autonomy, that is, developing the ability to draw inner guidance from within based on evidence. This message underlies government reports and inspection regimes, and has been the basic assumption of several generations of educational thinkers. I refer to ‘lip-service’ because policy and practice do not always match. Neither SAT tests nor examinations actually promote autonomous learning but reward memory and conformity. Schools are authoritarian institutions that demand compliance. Stories and literature are certainly part of the curriculum, but this does not necessarily bring about embodied learning.

I here explore two ideas, one old and the other new. The old is that of critical education, or education critical of society and the status quo. Early ideas in Frankfurt, Germany, were driven out by the Nazi party to America where critical studies were further developed. When applied to the reading of story, a critical reading would emphasise equal opportunities, discrimination and prejudice, status and class, justice, dominant voices and unheard voices, and so on. We could survey the whole published body of children’s literature to see whether these themes are covered or marginalised; and we could critique a particular book through these headings. This critical strategy has strengthened considerably over the past fifty years. Books written in the light of this agenda are increased gradually. There is not a chapter on critical theory in Hunt’s International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature (1996 or 2004) although some aspects are addressed to some extent under ideology. Meek opens the encyclopedia emphasising that child readers should “interrogate texts” and become “critical and not conformist” (Hunt, 2004: 10). Nor is there a treatment of children’s literature in The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education (Apple, Au and Gandin, 2009). Two starting points would be ‘Critical Media Education and Radical Democracy’ (chapter 21 by Kellner and Share) and Teilelbaum’s ‘Educating Children for “Good Rebellion”’, chapter 23, pp. 318-325. How to respond to television, film, comics and the internet has as its aim morally aware and (politically) active students. “Good rebellion” means not accepting unjust and unacceptable government and power structures. Its origins have socialist ambitions, of which groups like Leslie Paul’s Woodcraft Folk, with outdoor pursuits and fireside stories, are the best known example (Paul, 1951). This has links also to the work of Paulo Freire (1970) in turning literacy education into a politicizing act. The implications for children’s fiction is that stories can generate deep thinking on self and relationships if the readers are socially aware and engage with social justice. The child reader in turn learns to interrogate the relational and social implications of the story both in private and through group (including class) discussion. Teachers need to be tuned into this in order to facilitate the discussion. In practice, published stories are varied in quality and children will be in a position to critique stories for content, characterisation and assumptions of privilege. The selection of stories for publication favours the bizarre over the ordinary. The discussion of the book is thus crucially important to prevent readers simply accepting its hidden assumptions and messages.

The newer idea of embodied learning I take from studies of theatre and performance. Here, ideas are performed to audiences, and the actors embody the ideas, points of view and feelings. The aim of a performance is to be as authentic and convincing as possible, the actors living the ambiguities, dilemmas and contradictions that they depict (Riley and Hunter, 2009). This book emphasises that performance can become research into human feelings, attitudes and relations and moreover can reach its audience more powerfully and rapidly than a wordy research monograph would allow. I am applying this to children’s stories in two ways.

First, the writing of stories for children is a performance (ideas and values being displayed for public audiences) bearing the same demands for honesty, sincerity and authenticity as applies in drama and the theatre. Quality writing is thus a craft requiring talent and dedication. Writings for children potentially affects their development and ideas, and needs therefore to be of the highest quality and integrity. Although authors need freedom in their writing, stories should be defensible as promoting healthy personal and social development, and not promoting prejudice, hatred, disrespect and other such negative attitudes. However, stories need to be thought-provoking rather than bland homilies, and are likely to stimulate thinking about these negative themes.

Secondly, the child reader as audience can be emotionally moved by the book, and led to consider issues that might be potentially world-view changing, even life-changing. In a story in written form, this demands vividness in description and honesty in characterisation, characters who impress as real, engaged in dilemmas which are true to life. This will not be the case where characters are cardboard and adventure plots banal. A serious issue emerges on what is suitable for children to read. In adventure stories, children have routinely been placed in danger, and excitement linked to this. The limits are constantly tested, stories for example engaging with death, war and atrocities (such as Elli: Coming of Age in the Holocaust by Livia E. Bitton Jackson. Where a story is sensitive and does not indulge in gratuitous and sadistic violence, it should be capable of promoting personal development. If the story gives the impression that human life has little value, then it is potentially harmful.


Imagining Reality.

Both writing stories and reading stories involve acts of imagination, but they are different. The child does both by telling, acting out or writing stories as well as reading them. The writer’s imagination needs more research, since there is a subtle combination of research, observation (ethnography, in fact) and make-believe in the production of a work. An event described in fiction may have happened in real life; characters may be combinations of people encountered; personal characteristics may have been observed in real people. Yet the combination is a new act of creation. The population of a story with characters requires the integration of these background factors, and their visualisation into a new character. Some, like Harry Potter, will have positive qualities, but others, like Pullman’s Mrs Coulter will be anti-heroes, threats to the main characters, enemies in real life. Children of course need to deal with friends and enemies, so each has a literary purpose. And evil characters have the potential for redemption. For the child reader, the story provides a new world to enter, with new people to meet and deal with. They may resemble people they know, or be larger than life. The reader becomes part of the virtual community created in the book, an onlooker who likes or dislikes the various characters. The reader shares the emotions encountered in the group, the tensions as danger comes, the anger at acts of selfishness or betrayal. Even where the characters are creatures of fantasy, with talking animals, or wizards, or evil 5 spirits, the story provides an adventure which has to be engaged with intellectually, emotionally and morally. Since real life is full of ambiguity and uncertainty, a story can develop a high level of complexity.

In conclusion.

There is a place for both stories as entertainment and stories with a serious message. However, many story writers for children create their stories within uncritical comfort zones, and the exceptions to this surprise and delight. I agree with Meek (in Hunt, 2004:1-12) that criticality should begin in the kindergarten, with infants. Children tend to be bombarded by media materials and skills to distinguish the good from the bad can prove useful. Of course, good and bad are to be problematised – it is the discussion about what is good and bad that is important. The same applies to books: stories bear messages which should not be blindly accepted but rather challenged in an attempt to understand them more deeply. Children will not be able to do this unless they are guided and taught.


References

Apple, Michael W., Wayne Au and Luis Armando Gandin, 2009, The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education,

Bitton Jackson, Livia E. 1980, Elli: Coming of Age in the Holocaust

Briggs, Raymond 1983 When the Wind Blows

Foreman, Michael 1972 Dinosaurs and All that Rubbish

Freire, Paulo 1972 Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“Hope, Laura Lee” (pseudonym) The Bobbsey Twins, available at Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/737

Hunt, Peter (editor) 2004 International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature,

Paul, Leslie 1951. Angry Young Man.

Pullman, Philip 1999. The Subtle Knife.

Riley, Shannon Rose and Hunter, Lynette (editors) 2009 Mapping Landscapes o Performance Research: Scholarly Acts and Creative Cartographies

The Lark Ascending.

Life is joined up, honest.

To end a radio broadcast next month I have been ask to choose the closing music. I have chosen Vaughan Williams's pastoral sound poem The Lark Ascending.  This put to music, without words, the poem of the same name by George Meredith who died in 1909. The music was written just before the first world war for violin and piano, and lines from the poem inscribed on the score. RVW was arrested in Margate at the outbreak of war when a schoolboy reported him for making notes (actually he was preparing for a lecture on Purcell) but his score was finished by then.

Meredith was greatly influenced by the nineteenth century romantic poetry, and especially his idol John Keats.

The music has another meaning for me. It used to be played by the violinist Iona Brown with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in 1972. I taught with and got to know her father Tony Brown, an elderly music teacher, in Wiltshire in 1974, visiting him through his terminal cancer. Our conversations were about the importance of Arts education, and the need for teachers to enthuse. Tony was a good friend of his neighbour William Golding, who wrote an outstanding obituary in the Salisbury Journal. It spurred Golding out of a long alcohol fuelled writing block. Golding taught in the boys grammar school in Salisbury, and my neighbour Brian in my current house was in his class with his twin brother as an 11 year old. Lord of the Flies was modelled on that class and the twins were immoralised. Iona alas also died of cancer in 2004 after a fine career as soloist and conductor.  Alas I cannot find a video of her performance.

Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzONNtE_WqM

The Lark Ascending

George Meredith (1828–1909)

HE rises and begins to round, He drops the silver chain of sound Of many links without a break, In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake, All intervolv’d and spreading wide,         5 Like water-dimples down a tide Where ripple ripple overcurls And eddy into eddy whirls; A press of hurried notes that run So fleet they scarce are more than one,         10 Yet changingly the trills repeat And linger ringing while they fleet, Sweet to the quick o’ the ear, and dear To her beyond the handmaid ear, Who sits beside our inner springs,         15 Too often dry for this he brings, Which seems the very jet of earth At sight of sun, her musci’s mirth, As up he wings the spiral stair, A song of light, and pierces air         20 With fountain ardor, fountain play, To reach the shining tops of day, And drink in everything discern’d An ecstasy to music turn’d, Impell’d by what his happy bill         25 Disperses; drinking, showering still, Unthinking save that he may give His voice the outlet, there to live Renew’d in endless notes of glee, So thirsty of his voice is he,         30 For all to hear and all to know That he is joy, awake, aglow, The tumult of the heart to hear Through pureness filter’d crystal-clear, And know the pleasure sprinkled bright         35 By simple singing of delight, Shrill, irreflective, unrestrain’d, Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustain’d Without a break, without a fall, Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical,         40 Perennial, quavering up the chord Like myriad dews of sunny sward That trembling into fulness shine, And sparkle dropping argentine; Such wooing as the ear receives         45 From zephyr caught in choric leaves Of aspens when their chattering net Is flush’d to white with shivers wet; And such the water-spirit’s chime On mountain heights in morning’s prime,         50 Too freshly sweet to seem excess, Too animate to need a stress; But wider over many heads The starry voice ascending spreads, Awakening, as it waxes thin,         55 The best in us to him akin; And every face to watch him rais’d, Puts on the light of children prais’d, So rich our human pleasure ripes When sweetness on sincereness pipes,         60 Though nought be promis’d from the seas, But only a soft-ruffling breeze Sweep glittering on a still content, Serenity in ravishment. For singing till his heaven fills,         65 ’T is love of earth that he instils, And ever winging up and up, Our valley is his golden cup, And he the wine which overflows To lift us with him as he goes:         70 The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine He is, the hills, the human line, The meadows green, the fallows brown, The dreams of labor in the town; He sings the sap, the quicken’d veins;         75 The wedding song of sun and rains He is, the dance of children, thanks Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks, And eye of violets while they breathe; All these the circling song will wreathe,         80 And you shall hear the herb and tree, The better heart of men shall see, Shall feel celestially, as long As you crave nothing save the song. Was never voice of ours could say         85 Our inmost in the sweetest way, Like yonder voice aloft, and link All hearers in the song they drink: Our wisdom speaks from failing blood, Our passion is too full in flood,         90 We want the key of his wild note Of truthful in a tuneful throat, The song seraphically free Of taint of personality, So pure that it salutes the suns         95 The voice of one for millions, In whom the millions rejoice For giving their one spirit voice. Yet men have we, whom we revere, Now names, and men still housing here,         100 Whose lives, by many a battle-dint Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint, Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet For song our highest heaven to greet: Whom heavenly singing gives us new,         105 Enspheres them brilliant in our blue, From firmest base to farthest leap, Because their love of Earth is deep, And they are warriors in accord With life to serve and pass reward,         110 So touching purest and so heard In the brain’s reflex of yon bird; Wherefore their soul in me, or mine, Through self-forgetfulness divine, In them, that song aloft maintains,         115 To fill the sky and thrill the plains With showerings drawn from human stores, As he to silence nearer soars, Extends the world at wings and dome, More spacious making more our home,         120 Till lost on his aërial rings In light, and then the fancy sings.

Michel Faber, Whitby

Review in Goodreads
The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps by Michel Faber
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A short novella of 130+ pages set in Whitby, Yorkshire by a Dutch/Australian author I have not read before. Lots of accurate Whitby observations, a bit of (failed) romance and a dog. I read it with enjoyment in one sitting. The female character, an amputee, has an understated complexity from various personal experiences. The male character is callow and supercilious and not at all in tune with her. I liked the gentle uncovering of this complexity, a petal at a time. The 18th century back story shows empathy with a primitive religious world view. I intend to read some of his other books.


View all my reviews

New book, Living Contradiction

See dedicated blog to the book at https://warrenandbigger.blogspot.co.uk and recent post  https://warrenandbigger.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/some-thoughts.html.

Malcolm Saville, The Purple Valley 1964

I have written on the books of Malcolm Saville for 20 years now, most of which can be found on line, and will write a retrospective towards the end of the year. Girls Gone By publishers are working their way through Saville titles in paperback and this week brought out an adventure story loosely modelled on James Bond called The Purple Valley, set near Marseilles. Price £13. Experience shows that the print run sells out fairly quickly.

I have written the introduction, introducing the Marston Baines Series and pointing out some of the plot and location details without spoiling things for the new reader. Until this publication, this book was difficult and expensive to source. The first of the series, Three Towers in Tuscany, can still be obtained from internet traders.


Here are the book details.

My 1970s

Have spent today sorting out my attic which has revealed a few things I am sharing here. Boxes of stuff from the 1970s. It can be hard to remember  what I was involved in. I notice a notebook of prehistiric features including stone circles. I was living close to Stonehenge, which might be the reason. Whether this list is of any use today is an interesting question but I don't have the time to type it out.  The source was Treasures of Britain (AA 1973). What was the point? Why was I interested? A good question. I remember my wife asking. Over the years since we have visited many of these sites from Cornwall to Orkney. Ancient history gives me a buzz.

My files have regular clippings (from the Guardian) about Israel (this was the time of  the 1973 war which brought Sinai into the Israeli empire. We were to visit during that decade, going to St Catherine's  monastery when it was in Israel. There seems not a lot worth keeping now, but it is a good reminder of those days

I was a good friend then of Tony Brown, a peripatetic music teacher in our school. He drove an ancient grey  car, Austin 8 or something. His daughter Iona was a talented violinist with The Academy of St Martin in the Fields and conducted The Lark Ascending on a record which I will take to my desert island. She was later to die of cancer as her father did. I visited his cottage in Broad Chalke, Wiltshire, with veg beds and bee hives. He lived close by William Golding, and Tony used to visit him regularly to play chess. Golding was deeply into alcohol at that time and not writing. After Tony's death he wrote a moving obituary for the Salisbury Journal (I hope I find it somewhere) and settled down to write Rites of Passage. I was to become neighbour to Brian, who was taught by Golding in Salisbury and depicted as one of the twins in Lord of the Flies. Sadly Brian died last year of a brain tumour. His response to the specialist was 'Bugger'.

Other press cuttings reveal an interest in social justice. I notice book reviews on social morality. I was becoming involved with world religions and I notice pieces about ethnic minorities living side by side positively with white neighbours were preserved. Not outstanding today, but the memory of Enoch Powell's rantings was still recent then. Inter-cultural friendships were something I hoped for and would enrich my life a decade later.

I joined then the Wiltshire Folk Life Society concerned with social history and folklore.. Why? No idea. We were invited to an outing to Longleat where we saw the 'mucky murals' (sexually explicit  reliefs made of oilpaint and sawdust covering the bedroom ceiling). There must have been an intellectual point to the meeting but I can't remember it.  The Society had a journal which I wrote for and built up my skills in writing for publication. I haven't made these openly available (though I have them), but they were OK. Since then I have been regularly involved in non-academic writing, which helps my academic writing. An important person to attract me into this was June Buckley, who became a key figure with the National Trust's Beatrix Potter/Healis operation in te lake district. She sadly who died early this year (2017). The Society developed The Great Barn in Avebury into a Folklife Museum. By 1980 I had stepped back and moved on to other things. One wise member, Bernard Stiles said to me (just before his own death) 'choose your battles, your time is short'.

I had sent off an article on Incest to the Journal of Biblical Literature - not earth shattering and I would write it differently today. I tried to get a book contract called The Curse of Eve: Ancient Hebrew Sexuality and Marriage. I have the sample chapter and may put it online. However, the relevant literature, especially of feminism, developed rapidly so a book then would have been premature so I am not unhappy that the book never happened. In addition, I had no support or mentoring to help me publish. I have since then encouraged PhD students to publish, although most have not. Warren and Bigger, Living Contradiction: A Teacher's examination of Tension and Disruption in School is my latest effort.

Spent the day sorting out the family archives. Here is my grandafther, born 1898, died 1990, introducing one of his notebooks:
On Old Age.
Age is a quality of mind.
If you have left your dreams behind,
If hope is cold
If you no longer look ahead
If your ambition's fires are dead,
Then you are old.
But if in life you seek the best,
and if for life you have a zest,
If love you hold,
No matter how the years go by,
No matter how the birthdays fly,
You are not old




It is from How Old Are You? by H. S. Fritsch an American poet from near Chicago. Zest in this version is 'jest' in the Google version, but I think zest works better. Grandad talked about helping old ladies who were usually twenty or so years younger than him. He was a Nottinghamshire coal miner who was down below from the age of 12 till 65. He refused to become management as he said this took money from the working man's family and produced a non-productive member of staff. That tallies with my experience of universities, anyway. He refused to strike in 1926 (the general strike) on conscientious grounds. I have been uncomfortable with the song Death to the Blackleg Miner when I hear it. He was an evangelical preacher with fundamentalist biblical beliefs, refusing to believe in the moon landings (the Bible says the moon is a light, not a solid body). A conspiracy theorist before conspiracy theory, maybe influenced by his reading of the Daily Express. Strike refusers were gathered together into Newstead Colliery where he saw out his years 1926 to retirement in 1963. I have an 8 hour tape recording of his life, which I asked him to do in the 1970s. I remember having a row with Nottingham University when they sent him a form ascribing copyright to them. I did not let him sign. And received no reply. He died of miner's lung, prematurely, cross and in pain, at the age of 92. His compensation was £5000, payable after death, which crooked solicitors tried to get their fingers on

Old Bill - Tutor

One of earliest stories of James Lennox Kerr, in a 1931 issue of the magazine/journal Blue Peter, was called Old Bill - Tutor. In it the narrator is 18 years old and about to jump ship in Melbourne, Australia. The story recounts a conversation with an old hand, Bill who had left home to return to sea, intending to return. But he drinks away his wages and probably never will return. The story ends: "I would be almost afraid to meet him now; for I might look with the eyes of maturity and see him for what I suppose he was, a lying old cadger of "fills", muddied yet glorifies by the life he had led". He mentions this story in his 1948 book A Tale of Pimlico which features another cadger.

Marriage, God's Sacred Institution?

May Day 2017. Republican Congressman Randy Weber has just spoken to a Christian conservative rally in America. "Father we've trampled on your holy institution of holy matrimony" referring explicitly to same sex marriage, sometimes called  marriage equality. This is by way of a fact check.

Across the world girls barely teenagers are married to someone of their family choice, someone they may previously they have only met briefly and sometimes not at all. The illusion of consent may be promoted, although in reality the girl may feel that the match is a fait accompli, and that saying no will heap trouble on themselves. Or there may be no pretense of consent.

It has been a modern aim to set a minimum age of 16, the effect of which is to disrupt the girl's education and future career prospect. Such marriages give the husband unfettered sexual access resulting in a career of childbearing which prevented social progress. There is a class divide, since wealthy families can encourage their daughters into law of medicine and hire very cheap servants to look after the children. Families who marry their daughters at 16 in many cases take them out of school just before their GCSE exams resulting in early pregnancy and no qualifications. Across the world, this happens in all religions.

It is clear that marriage is a social institution to protect a daughter's sexuality and fertility to serve family needs. The husband may be a cousin to keep matters in family. In large extended families there may be dozens of eligible family members and parents may seek an early understanding even when the daughter is very young. The function of such marriages may be to promote migration to the west.

The tradition of making one's own choice of a spouse is in historic terms a recent phenomenon. In the west we take it for granted when from a global perspective we shouldn't do so.

So how does this relate to marriage being a holy institution? The context is an attack on same sex marriage based on the assumption that marriage is ordained for the production and upbringing of children. I have been married for almost fifty years, so i have no ax to grind. Maybe my choice of PhD, on marriage in the Bible (Old Testament) was influenced by my getting married as a student. We didn't I am afraid fulfill the stated purpose of marriage as we had no children. Marriage created a status in law providing tax and pension advantages and security if a spouse died. When a broader range of relationships became regarded as socially acceptable, it became increasingly difficult to prevent same sex couples having the same benefits.

Not all include themselves in regarding this as acceptable, and in particular conservative Christians and in America the 'Bible Belt' of fundamentalist Christians, represented here by Weber. The new President did a deal for votes which may lead to this minority attitude attacking same sex relationships. Although there is no chance of influencing conservative Bible interpretation, I am engaging here in an analysis of its basis. Brought up by evangelical Christians, I challenged their position even as a teenager and suffered the full wrath of offended believers.

Marriage was declared a sacrament by the early church and this influenced the language of the marriage service. One passage seems to prevent divorce, regarding remarriage after divorce as adultery. A parallel passage adds the words "except for porneia" (porneia possibly meaning fornication here) causing the early exception in law to cases where a guilty spouse had committed adultery. There is no great narrative evidence for marriage practice in the New Testament, Jesus not being presented as being married. With asceticism in the wings, marriage was on occasion not even advised, with Paul suggesting that it was for people without self control. In the Old Testament, marriages are arranged by Abraham for Isaac and in cases when a husband of a child-bearing wife died, she was passed on to the next son. That it is true that many instances subverted traditional custom this was not within the context of marriage being a holy institution. It was a social institution which was protected to some degree by law and custom.

Same sex relationships are criticised via an ancient 'law' from the Holiness Code fixing the death penalty to homosexual sexual relations. This came in a long list of sexual offences, including incest and adultery but we do not know if this was ever an exacted law. Some of the discourse around gay bishops presumed that they are not sexually active. The story of Onan in Genesis 38 appear to imply that the purpose of the sex act is to impregnate, and any deliberate waste of sperm is itself a sin. This has had an effect on some Christian views of birth control. Paul also condemned homosexuality in the New Testament.

Evangelical Christian assumptions are based around this muddled mess of folklore and church order and realistically has no place in modern discussions. I can hear evangelicals shouting back at me on Adam and Eve, so that will take a separate post. Then Abraham, and then the rest. If you are impatient, check my other blog  where continuing posts will appear.

Vocational Education.

Paper from 2000. Click pictures to enlarge.

James Lennox Kerr, Pimlico

I have just written an obituary for Adam Kerr (actually in real time this is two months later) but I have scheduled the two items to appear together. I collected the writings of Peter Dawlish in the 1980s, and once I had discovered (in the late 1990s) that his real name was James Lennox Kerr I went on to collect his other works. Many were in his own name but he also wrote as Gavin Douglas, crime thrillers to start with in the 1930s.

The one book which evaded me was  A Tale of Pimlico by Gavin Douglas (Robert Hale, Publishers, 1948). To be sure I had read it. On my annual visit to Lamorna (I would guess about 2008) I begged to read Adam's copy before I left for home and took copious notes. A few months ago, as I was taking in the news of his death I looked again and secured a reasonably priced copy. It actually came from the library of my childhood, Kesteven in Lincolnshire. It was bought in 1948, rebound and re-guillotined in November 1953 and last lent out in November 1956. Where it has been from then till now is anyone's guess.

James Lennox Kerr started out as a socialist writer in the 1930s. One book I would pick out of the 1930s is The Woman of Glenshiels, a story of an enterprising but starving woman on Clydeside trying to make ends meet, but encountering the recalcitrance of the body distributing welfare, madeup of course by rich aristocrats. More on that later when I find my review.

A Tale of Pimlico has curious features. It is partly autobiographical in that Kerr left sailoring, and settled in Pimlico to write, where he produced a book a year. In this story, Captain Douglas had written a few articles in Blue Peter (I found this one and gave it to Adam) and Nautical Magazine (which I haven't found). In this story, as Captain Gavin Douglas, he rents a room in a seedy guest house, tries to write without success, and in the end goes back to sea. That's where the autobiography finishes, since in his real life he became a successful writer, found and married his wife and continued until war broke out.

In the story the author is also narrator. Captain Douglas arrives in Port Bellamy in South America (modelled on Belize/British Honduras) and discovered that he had known the Bellamy after whom the port was named. In his Pimlico guest house there is a resident called Bellamy. We hear his story told, which has two directions. When Douglas the narrator knew him, he was a bum, cadger, pimp and ponce (in the language of the book). That is, he was living on immoral earnings of a young woman who prostituted herself. One has to say she did so willingly. There was no love lost between the narrator and the bum Bellamy. This is where the socialism kicks in. Bellamy was from an aristocratic family, had a wife who expected him to make her rich and comfortable but he had the wanderlust and roamed free (and despite his popularity was cadging even then. He expected food on his table and had no way of providing for himself, and no incentive to do so. So he cadged. His room was a tip because there were no servants to clean it. His wife became an awful busybody chairwoman of some patronising society and his children became insufferable prigs

The second perspective is when Douglas arrives in South America in the republic of Porto Bellamy.  Bellamy had encouraged the locals to develop the port themselves and not let the major powers develop it and take out the profits (although this colonialist project was exactly why he was sent out).. Bellamy was looked up to as a national hero with statues all over town. He had also seduced most of the women.

Douglas had a secret. I will not reveal it, even if the likelihood of you finding a copy is remote. The memory of Ballemy helps to solve some political issues of some sensitivity. Lots of insight into aristocratic attitudes and socialist responses. Jimmy Kerr died before ever I could have known him but we were very happy to have known Adam and Judith.
to be continued...

Adam Kerr, chart maker, fisherman, sailor, watercolourist

Adam Kerr (1933-2016) died 8 August 2016 in his home in Lamorna, Cornwall after a heart attack. He described himself as a ’chart maker, fisherman and sailor’. He was a former director of the International Hydrographic Bureau. who wrote:

“We remember Adam as a most brilliant civil servant, one who could see very far - without being drawn into small matters, and a master at using his superior charisma and diplomatic skills to resolve conflicts that looked like unstoppable forest fires. We also like to celebrate Adam as a great example of how to enjoy life: the party at his home and his curriculum as a boater have always been a great inspiration for us.”

He leaves his wife Judith and his sons Andrew and Timothy.

My wife and I last met Adam and Judith in June 2016 at his home and in the Lamorna Wink, the refurbished pub in the valley. We have meet up every June since the year 2000, which is itself an interesting story. We had been interested in the writings for children of peter Dawlish. Though written for boys, my wife Jean remembered reading them as a young girl with great affection. We collected the Dauntless series, not knowing who the author was, until in 2000 reading a short book on Lamorna purchased from the watermill shop, written by Keith Gardiner whose artist father Stanley was once painted by Richard Copeland Weatherby. Keith by good fortune was with us last June. In his little book was the story of how Peter Dawlish was a pseudonym for James Lennox Kerr, who happened to be Adam's father. A notice said that the Kerrs, artists, still lived in the valley so we knocked on the door. The rest is history. We had literally walked past his house unknowing for over twenty years The internet makes book finding much simpler today so before long I had accumulated most titles, and had many a chat with Adam about his father. We even managed to find and bring home an unpublished manuscript, languishing in a Wirrel Record Office on the history of Cunard in Birkenhead. He was pleased with this, because most other people wanted to talk about his grandfather, the artist Lamorna Birch. He decided to follow in his father's footsteps and write his own autobiography. I read early proofs and was delighted to be given the published book, equally as good as his father's adult writings.

We were fortunate that our annual visit coincided with his 80th birthday party, held in the Millennium Garden that he worked so hard to establish. The whole community turned out to partake of fish hotpot and wine. We were staying just up the hill, in the cottage, he told us once somewhat mischievously, in which he had been conceived We spotted him too sailing his beloved lugger Barnabas in the Thames at the Queen's regatta. Adam was also an enthusiastic watercolour painter of marine life and used to send watercolour Christmas cards which of course we keep.

Adam Kerr, Charting Polar Seas, 2016.

Sea Adventures: Peter Dawlish (James Lennox Kerr), a Writer Amongst Artists

Vivian Bartlett, Nurturing a Healthy Spirit in the Young

Publisher's page

I was very pleased to be invited to write a foreword to Vivian Bartlett’s book. I was then the Director of the Research Centre for Motivating Learning at the University of Worcester. Though not a Baha'i , I have been a friend of Baha'is for many years and keen reader of Baha'i  writings. One of my keen interests was to find positive ways for teachers and other adults to interact with pupils in ways which encouraged motivation rather than compliance with behavioral diktats. Motivated teachers and motivated pupils tend to go together, but authoritarian teachers are more likely to produce either timid or rebellious charges. The objective of schooling has been long discussed, and when I was beginning teaching in the 1970s, it was described as “autonomy”, that is pupils making up their own minds about things. We encouraged open minds and discussion. It may be true that the loudest voices were from closed minds, but we teachers were skilled at helping even these to be thoughtful. Autonomy (following rules you think out for yourself) contrasts with heteronomy, obeying rules given by others. Our education system follows the latter, with schooling informing and filling up empty vessels.

For two years we worked closely with disturbed and disengaged young people on ‘Tranquility Zone’ and ‘Discovery Zone’ activities. The first group of 11-13 year olds was chosen by secondary schools as needing particular support. I interviewed several after the project as part of my work as project evaluator. At that point the young men and women were of an age to go to College and University. They described their early lack of aspirations and expectations, which starkly contrasted with what they had managed to achieve. As one young woman said, ‘If I hadn’t come across the Tranquility Zone, I would have committed suicide long ago. I would not be here now’. She progressed to College, another to university where he did very well.
It is important to say that this work was an act of service of the Baha'i Community seeking to be of help to troubled and vulnerable youngsters. Readers with little knowledge of Baha'is are invited to find out more through books like The Baha'i Faith: A Beginner's Guide by Moojan Momen. The teachers and other champions in school who enthusiastically facilitated the Programme were not Baha'is, but professionals in tune with the (Baha'i inspired) approach to the spiritual empowerment of young people, and concerned about the well-being, potential and future aspirations of their students, especially those who for various personal and family reasons were most needy. As evaluator, I also am not a Baha'i, though fully sympathetic to its history and social values. The Project did not promote the Baha'i Faith focused on classroom pedagogy.

The project has simplified over the years and two key themes have stood the test of time – that the individual is full of potential, a ‘mine rich in gems of inestimable value’; and that the best way these gems (inner positive qualities and capacities) can be developed is in service to others.  These are two sides of the same coin: we need to recognize that we have something to offer, and then understand that we can make a huge difference to the community. We might express this as being contributors rather than consumers.

The journey towards this is however not simple. The young people enter the process with various life experiences, including in some cases dysfunctional and destructive relationships which can damage self esteem and cause emotional pain. Such personal burdens can be left behind once they are recognized and dealt with, and you will see in this book how The Discovery Zone (a period of activities and discussion) begins this process of personal reflection.  We may be drawn to bad habits and negative behaviour, experiencing their pull which needs to be resisted. Other activities  identify and celebrate the gems and positive attributes we see in each other,  increasing self worth and developing positive and empowering relationships.

The Tranquility Zone is however something else. An ambient space is created with drapes, candles, soft furnishings, flowers and gentle music. Participants sit on cushions and enter into a contemplative state. The voice of the facilitator takes the group on an imaginary journey to an island where each are met by a personal guide, a wise-person constructed from their own imagination.  A number of storylines speak of the mine of gems, fruit on a tree and similar metaphors of fruitful lives.      Outsiders would see the group in a very relaxed state, to be discussed later.  Troubled youth seemed to benefit most and the general feedback was positive.   

Going alongside these activities were a group of people, in the project and in schools, who cared and made it clear to these youngsters that they are valued and valuable; that friendship among the team of people survives the project as lives changed direction and new aspirations became possible. Vivian’s book charts the programme over the years and explains its spiritual basis, demonstrating that lives ‘lit up’ have a chance to overcome obstacles. This is not an easy time for children and young people to grow up, maybe with little hope of a career and the too tempting availability of drink and drugs leading too often to criminality. Schools would rather have winners than losers, so a too sizable proportion of school students are left to founder.

 I once worked with city comprehensive schools in Birmingham to raise the achievement of all pupils – a project called Birmingham Compact. Its results over the whole cohort were dramatic, raising achievement levels from 30% to 70%.  But the arrival of school league tables, and Ofsted, meant that it was more profitable to coach a small group of borderline pupils to obtain a grade C rather than a D. The league tables were the tail that wagged the dog. The work with all pupils was degraded  to service the league tables. What happens to the lowest achieving 20% of a school is a matter of huge concern. Instead of writing them off, or even expelling them so they don’t spoil a school’s league table returns, these troubled lives can be turned around. Of course we might add, should be turned around.

I am reminded of some comments by my great mentor in education, John Dewey. Writing long ago, he set out his ‘Pedagogic Creed’ (1897, in McDermott, 1981: 442-454). In it, pupils participate in the social consciousness of the human race, so learning has to be embedded in society and promote the welfare of the group. The individual is a social being with responsibilities. An effective school will encapsulate positive social relationships and the well-being of the group. Far from education being a preparation for future life, it has to be relevant to the present lives of the pupils, addressing their issues and experiences, confident young people will adapt to whatever the future throws at them. The curriculum needs to focus on social activities, to build a foundation for the ethical study of school subjects. “Examinations are of use only so far as they test the child’s fitness for social life and reveal the place in which he can be of the most service and where he can receive the most help” (p.447).

Dewey’s educational philosophy dominated school thinking in the 1970s and 1980s, but has been supplemented by a subject-based national curriculum which teaches content and builds no ethical foundations. Nor does much school study encourage pupils to reflect upon life. Dewey ends: “the teacher is engaged, not simply in the training of individuals, but in the formation of the proper social life... every teacher should realise the dignity of his calling; that he is a social servant set apart ...for securing the right social growth ... in this way the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of God.  (p.454).

In other words, using the language of his time, teaching is a spiritual calling, the prime purpose of which is to promote personal well-being and intellectual curiosity about life itself.

There are many more recent books on well-being, emotional intelligence, happiness, spirituality, resilience and similar themes to do with the education of the whole child. Society today has many problems and pressures which impact on young people. Knowing old-fashioned knowledge will not help them to become effective members of their social group. When faced with the question, what do we want our education system to do for our children, having good qualifications is not at the top of my list. Rather it is to encourage young people to be well-rounded, personally confident, helpful and responsible members of the group, unprejudiced, intellectually curious, critical of authoritarianism, and champions of the less fortunate. 

Such young people are likely also to achieve well in reasonably constructed qualifications.  This needs to apply to the whole school population in the spirit of ‘no youngster left behind’ – with no pupil being written off as being beyond teaching and learning. This is still a challenging agenda; and unfortunately it is the opposite of the aspirations of successive governments, resulting inan increase in punishment systems and exclusions.  Vivian’s book offers a straightforward way of bringing more light into the lives of not only challenged and challenging pupils, but all pupils. Every young person needs help and support as they build up resilience in the face of the many burdens with which modern life encumbers them.

Meditation and Tranquility in School

Meditation in school
Viruses are unpleasant things but viral posts on the internet sometimes have an interest. That goes for this post from an American school which used simple meditation techniques to give pupils calmness and emotional control. They report fewer discipline problems, detentions and exclusions. This is reported at http://www.womansday.com/life/a56446/school-replaces-detention-with-meditation/.


Tranquility
We did something very similar in England a decade ago. We called it Tranquility to avoid the religious connotations of meditation. Like all projects, it took some thinking through in the early states. Its purpose partly was to encourage calm minds which could come to terms positively with emotions like anger, temper, jealousy and envy. It did this through story, listened to in an ambient tranquil setting, with flowers, gentle lights and quiet music. The story encouraged thinking, reflection. Discussion afterwards surrounded topics of hurtful behaviour, selfishness, helping others, cooperation and such like. Vivian Bartlett, one of the designers, wrote it up here where you can read a sample - Nurturing a Healthy Spirit in the Young. I interviewed all of the early cohort, all troubled youngsters turned off from learning who said it had drawn them back from suicide, put them on the route to training and careers, and even moved them into a university course, All had once been written off as no hopers. One ten year old had been very disruptive, liable to savage outbursts, but the story she got something from offered her a mentor in the head, a wise aunty as it were. When trouble brewed, she took herself off to a quiet corner to talk things through and calm down. She received a best behaviour prize the following year. The mindset encouraged was to be contributors not consumers - to contribute to the community around rather than just hoarding stuff. The project took youngsters into care homes and set up a drop in cafe for those who wanted to chat. Funded with almost nothing, it succeeded with these disturbed youngsters where highly funded institutions had failed.

For a list of my writings, see further  https://stephenbigger.blogspot.com.

A relaunch

My first blog here for four years though I haven't stopped writing. Now it i time for a new title and a catch-up. Barack Obama is gone and we are now in a world of fake news, mostly on twitter, and 'alternative facts'. It is time to commend and support responsible journalists who are able to show an 'alternative fact' to be a lie. I refer to both sides of the Atlantic.

I remind new readers of my areas of interest.

• education and motivation to learn
• children's literature
• gardening
• religious studies.

Links to my various writings can be found on http://stephenbigger.blogspot.co.uk .
I have a new Amazon page, for which open the Amazon home page and enter Stephen Bigger. There are details there of a new book coming out over the summer, title Living Contradiction (Crown House Publishers) written with my PhD graduate Sean Warren. There will be a detailed blogpost later, but enough to say here that it is the story of his journey from being an authoritarian teacher to becoming an empowering and motivating teacher.

Also on my Amazon page are details of my collaboration with Vivian Bartlett titled Nurturing a Healthy Human Spirit in the Young (George Ronald Publishers) describing a project called Tranquility, a meditative approach to working with pupils aged 8-14. Again I will blog on this later.

On children's literature, my paper of Rupert Bear in World War 2 is being serialised in Nutwood News by the Followers of Rupert society. It tracks through newspaper serialisation in the Daily Express between September 1939 and summer 1945 with an epilogue on the Cuban missile crisis. It was fun to write and episode 3 (out of 4) is about to come out. Google Stephen Bigger Rupert to find it.

Seven articles for the Malcolm Saville Society discuss the seven books, based loosely on James Bond, of thrillers for teenagers. I will gather these together in time into a self-complete volume. I am currently writing the Introduction to the Girls Gone By edition of the second of these, The Purple Valley (1964) out later this year.

My approach to literature is sociohistorical, setting the stories in their historical context. The blog http://1930-1960.blogspot.co.uk covers miscellaneous things relevant to these years, and http://fiction4children.blogspot.co.uk goes beyond these years.

On gardening, see my photo blogs on our own garden throughout the year, and the Kelmscott Manor Garden (March to November).

My most recent religious studies reflections are on the blog 4004BCE? (http://4004BCE.blogspot.co.uk). The title is a humorous comment on Archbishop Ussher's insistence that earth was created in September of this year.  More elderly are introductions to Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism.