Well here I am, and I didn't miss a day. And for me, it's already been quite a day, let me tell you.
I'm in an internet cafe in Krakow, which is in the south of Poland. This morning I and a handful of others (we'll all be attending the Libertarian Conference here that begins tomorrow morning) were driven to Auschwitz concentration camp - museum, and remains of. Quite an education. It's in two bits, separated by real life, so to speak, in the form of the industrial area where during the war Auschwitz inmates were used as slaves, and where people still now work, but in far more civilised circumstances.
The small bit, Auschwitz itself, Auschwitz I, is where the official museum is. Lots of black and white photos, which is how these events are now most vividly brought back to life and to mind. Heaven knows, this was ghastly enough, but the life of a reasonably well educated person has included a look at a few of such photographs and recollections, and nothing there hit me hard enough to really hurt.
But Auschwitz II, Birkenau, is if anything even more terrible than Auschwitz I, because it is so huge.
The horror of the Holocaust is not only what was done to individual victims of it, but the sheer scale and ambition of the enterprise. And at Birkenau you see this scale. Most of the huts have been ripped down, but the layout of the place remains exactly as it was. And it is big, about the size, I should guess, of somewhere like Fords of Dagenham, or of a medium-sized city airport. Hut after hut after hut, each with its own tale of horror to tell. As we walked, often briskly, at exhausting length, and on a sunny but bitingly cold morning, we all brought what we knew of all this to what we didn't know, which was the size of this damned place. It was all so horribly organised and industrialised. It was a huge storage facility for humans, one of my companions said. A giant filing system, but for people rather than paper.
I could say a lot more in a similar vein, but let me confine myself to an educational angle, as befits this blog.
I don't know quite what I was expecting, but for some silly reason what I was not expecting was that the overwhelming proportion of the visitors would be in the form of quite large parties of very obviously Israeli teenagers. These were either high school or college students, I couldn't tell which and I didn't ask.
At first I stupidly thought that some of these young people might not have been taking everything totally seriously. They were dressed in generation-X logo-decorated late C20 plasticated garb - the garb, in my country, of indifference to such things as grandfathers telling tales of the past. On the other hand, the big blue-on-white Star of David flags said that they were very serious, and indeed they were. As did the identical woolly hats that many of them sported, in exactly matching colours to the colours of their flags. What they looked like, now I think about it, was crowds of football supporters, supporting Israel United, you might say. Oh, they really meant it.
When wandering about in one of the little Auschwitz I buildings, I climbed some stairs at random and encountered a group of about thirty or forty of these people, singing along to a tape recording of Hebrew songs played on what sounded like a accordion. The room was dark and they were in a big triangular shaped circle to fit in the space left by the exhibits, if you get my drift. All were visibly moved, some were in tears and being comforted by friends, perhaps thinking of dead ancestors.
I have already touched lightly on the teaching of history here - sorry I'm not equipped to supply the link back, but it was in connection with a similar matter, namely the Hitlerisation of school history, in Britain. But this was different. This was no mere accident of the syllabus. This was history red in tooth and claw, being drunk in like newly found water in a desert, by the next generation to those that got it in the neck. This was history teaching with a hell of difference, that was going to make a hell of a difference.
I've heard it argued that the state of Israel faces a strategic predicament so difficult that it could end up being totally engulfed, and its citizens being subjected to a new diaspora. But after seeing all those Israeli youngsters with their flags and their songs of sorrow, I have to say that I now doubt this. I don't know how they'll hang on in there, but hang on they are surely determined to do. Everything about them - their presence in this place in the first place, the flags and woolly hats, the singing - said: Never Again. And I'll bet that the older people who were instructing them in loud and mournful voices about what it all was and what it all meant were saying Never Again in those exact words.
Apart from the singers, the other memorable group I chanced upon was the one being told about the exact place, for this is what it was, where the nearest thing to a violent uprising that Birkenau witnessed during its horror years actually took place, one of the very few such places in all of Nazi Europe.
You know the kind of thing. A few dozen inmates, deciding they had nothing to lose, dying with dignity instead of without it. You can imagine it. A major shrine of the soon-to-be born State of Israel, I should suppose.
All very different from education back in Britain. But education nevertheless. And how.
Well, it's just before midnight as I write, and I'm nowhere near done with my travel preparations, so here I am, still wide awake.
And I'm watching a fascinating last-minute change to the TV schedule in the form of a documentary about William Tyndale, the first man to translate the Bible into English. Dynamite. No time for a prolonged discussion of this, but one little phrase caught my attention, even as I sat typing something else, about the war that people say is about to happen.
People learned to read, just so that they could read Tyndale's Bible.
The "powers that be" (William Tyndale's phrase as well as ours) knew at once what a dangerous man Tyndale was and what a dangerous book his Bible was. Because of it, people were learning to read. And people who know how to read are an order of magnitude more powerful – and therefore more dangerous and troublesome – to those powers that be than are illiterates.
Indeed, you can plot the course of modern history by studying literacy rates in different countries. As soon as large numbers of people get literate, trouble. This never fails. Never. German Reformation. English Civil War. French Revolution. Russian Revolution. Islamofascism. And there's more to come after that.
I don't have time to elaborate, but I'll try to do so when I get back from my trip to Poland.
Well, that was Thursday. I wonder if I will be able to manage Friday as well.
UPDATE 12.30 am. Apparently the 1611 Bible, the so-called King James Bible, is largely the work of Tyndale. about "80 per cent", so they said. I didn't know that. I thought the Authorised Version was the work of a committee of Shakespeare's contemporaries.
TV. You learn something new every day.
I'm off to Poland tomorrow to speak at a Libertarian International Conference. This means that tomorrow and on Friday of this week, I will, for the first time since I began this, almost certainly not be posting anything here. The almost is because (a) I may manage to get my hands on an internet connection while there, and (b) I may, and this would be even more remarkable, even manage to get it to work. But don't hold your breath. Libertarians are famously well connected people, and I expect the Conference to be bursting with laptops. But it may not be so bursting with laptops with internet connections. I'll try, is all I'll say here. Also, I might manage something at 12.05 am tomorrow, if I can't get to sleep any earlier than that.
But, if you hear nothing from me tomorrow or the next day, use the time to catch up with your homework, or read a good book.
Now that I am probably about to break this rule of putting up something every week day, let me now emphasise that at least come Monday, the rule will be back as if nothing had happened.
I am interested in education as it is, and not just as it ought to be. And one of the dogmas of education as it is is that teachers should Keep On Coming. It's one of the great teaching cliché's of our time (because true) that whenever a new teacher arrives in a class room, there is a huge power struggle, during which the teacher tries to stay and the pupils try to make him go.
Partly of course this is just a pure blood sport without blood, the thrill of the chase, and the chance to chase down a week member of the hated adult herd. Life in prison is like this.
But there is a rational point here as well. The pupils don't want to commit to a relationship which isn't going to last. Remember that moment during other relationships where he/she (usually she, I suggest) moves from best-face-forward romancing to seeing if you have staying power. Okay, with pupils versus teachers it goes straight to phase two, but the principle is somewhat the same. Far better the stability and emotional continuity of uninterrupted hostility to Them, all the time, than committing to one of Them, and then possibly being abandoned.
Thus it is that the Average Teacher, a person I do want to communicate, despite my severe criticisms of a lot of what he or she does (and because of it of course), sets great store by just keeping on keeping on. Like marriage, teaching, as it mostly is now, requires a daily effort, a daily grind, a constant gritting of the teeth and biting of the tongue. And, an absolute ability to resist the temptation to commit any acts of violence.
And talking of marriage, I also want to make some sense to the Average Parent, and also to the Not So Average Parent who is into home educating, child autonomy, and other such besandled exoticisms.
I don't think teaching and parenting has to be this hideous daily grind and nothing else. But insofar as both consist at least partly of simply looking after and out for children, they do required a daily commitment from someone every day of the week. (Actual teaching can often be done very well in a much less relentless and dispiriting fashion, in my opinion. See the posting immediately below this one.)
Well you can see where I'm going with this. If I can't even manage one little blog posting every day on the mere subject of education – with the whole world of education to choose from, and with a completely non-captive readership, none of whom are forced to be present and none of whom therefore require to be quietened or fought off by me without me being sued by their psychotic parents for assaulting them before any of the quieter ones can even hear what I'm saying, to say nothing of filling in a hundred forms every week explaining what I've been doing about racism awareness, the School Bullying Policy, the encouragement of foreign languages and computer skills, oh and the fact that two of my alleged pupils (whom I've never met) have just been done for armed robbery and three of them are pregnant, etc. etc. – then what the hell right to I have pontificating about anything educational whatsoever?
Well, the logical and true answer is that I have every right. But I wouldn't feel comfortable doing this. I wouldn't, that is to say, feel comfortable posting for this blog in the lackadaisical way I post stuff on my other blog. I wouldn't feel that I had any place in the world of education if I couldn't even do this small thing.
One of the orthodoxies of blogging is that you should only do it when you feel like it. Well, for this blog, I feel like doing it five times a week, minimum, at least once every working day.
This rule has, I'm sure you agree, resulted in some very so-so postings here. But I believe it has also resulted in me writing things which have turned out better than that. All serious writers have a daily routine, and I do too. Writing daily here just means fitting this blog into my routine.
So, on Monday, I'll be back, and on Tuesday, and on Wednesday …
With any luck at all I'll have discovered all kinds of educational wisdoms and thinkings in Poland, from Poland itself and from the various other libertarians assembled.
One of the better books ever written about salesmanship is How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
It's some years since I've looked at this book, but as I recall it, its central message is as follows.
You start by stating, unambiguously, your sales pitch. You are selling double glazing, which means that if the guy you are talking to ever wants to buy double glazing, you want him to buy it from you.
Having stated your message, you then switch to discussion mode, and you let him set the agenda. You talk about anything he wants to talk about. If he has questions about double glazing, you of course answer them as best you can, emphasising the benefits of double glazing for him, reassuring him about possible problems and how to avoid them. On the other hand if he would like to discuss golf handicaps (this book is a very golf handicaps sort of book, from the discussions about golf handicaps era, i.e. a previous one to ours), then you talk about golf handicaps. Whatever he wants to talk about is what you talk about.
And then, eventually, he decides to buy some double glazing.
I mention this because I was recently asked by a Parent how to persuade Parent's Child to get serious about learning to read. I replied with the above salesmanship doctrine.
Parent starts by hard selling learning to read to Child, in one memorable session, amassing reasons, rhapsodising about benefits. Then, thank Child for listening to the sales pitch, and for agreeing to think about it. Then, shut up and let Child decide, answering any questions but not doing any more selling.
A common technique of persuasion used by parents is the quite different method of relentless nagging. Every day, in every way, Parent gives a little sales pitch to Child about Child learning to read.
The drawback of this method is that it doesn't allow Child to arrive at Child's own decision. Instead Child is forced to defend itself for inaction, and this may result in the creation by Child of a cast iron reason for not reading. Nagging, in other words, may stimulate resistance, and in general associate in Child's mind reading with unpleasantness and nagging.
The say it once and then shut up method works because the Child assimilates the sales pitch, processes the sales pitch thoroughly in Child's own mind, and thereby makes the decision Child's own.
Well, that was the idea.
And it worked! Child is now busily learning to read. Parent is helping, answering all questions, providing feedback of all kinds, making suggestions about how to organise the learning effort, but Child is in charge. Best of all, Parent and Child remain good friends, instead of soldiers on the opposite sides of a domestic war.
I'm sure I've somewhat oversimplified this happy story, and am even more sure that the above exaggerates my own contribution to it. Nevertheless, that, as I understand what happened, is what happened.
I surmise that perhaps what makes so many people so very suspicious of the idea of children deciding what they will learn and when, is that this is confused with parents not giving any advice or opinions to their children about such matters at all. Parental decision or parental nothing are assumed to be the only choices. Command, or indifference. Given only that choice, I too would probably go with command.
Old fashioned hard-selling salesmanship is the happy medium, combining concern for the autonomy and independence of Child with concern that Child does indeed learn what Child will need to learn.
Our culture – and most especially the basic intellectual tools (the 3 Rs etc.) for getting to grips with all the rest of it – does have to be communicated to the next generation. But the way to do this is to sell it to them, not force it down their throats. If the 3 Rs are as essential as most adults think they are, and they are, then the sales pitch, for that reason, ought to be very persuasive.
And that's how to do it.
Other sales pitches won't be as persuasive as the Learn to Read pitch, and that is as it should be.
This story is about an attempt by a London primary school head to chuck out the children of what seem to be some particularly malevolent "traveller" families has been rumbling along for some time now. It's yet further evidence of the vital importance of teachers not having to teach people they don't want to teach.
A head teacher fears for the future of his primary school after being told he must continue to teach children from two traveller families after a vicious attack on a parent in the playground.Police have been stationed at the school gates following the violent incident, witnessed by 300 children, in which a governor was also injured.
It has left parents, pupils and staff traumatised but the local education authority has refused to move the children of the families allegedly responsible and the head teacher has been told he cannot exclude them.
Last year the Government pledged a "zero tolerance" campaign against violent parents and Stephen Twigg, the education minister, said pupils could be excluded in exceptional cases for the misdeeds of their parents. But Colin Lowther, 48, the head teacher of Southfield Primary in Ealing, west London, says he is powerless to act against the families, and parents are moving their children to other schools because of them.
The incident is alleged to have followed four months of aggression and threats from mothers and two 14-year-old girls.
A parent governor has resigned and another has transferred her daughter to another school since the attack on Tuesday last week.
This story is the crisis in domestic policy of our present British Government in a microcosm. The Government is flailing about like a spoilt child. It demands "inclusiveness", and it demands that all those whom it "includes" shall behave themselves properly or else!! It is zero tolerant, and it is infinitely tolerant.
In other settings the Government demands rising prosperity and rising taxes. It demands train fares that are "reasonably" priced, and it demands that all trains run on time, or else, without any accidents, ever ever ever!!! It demands a world class national health service costing little or even nothing at the point of use, and demands that there be no queues for its ever more chaotic services. It tells the army to be the world's social worker, but won't even buy it proper boots let alone guns.
And this is me taking it to one side and patiently explaining that reality is reality, and that there are some things you can't have. You can't spend the pocket money I gave you today on sweeties, and be able to spend the same money tomorrow on a nice present for granny. You'll only be able to buy granny a present now if I give you a present of more money first. The universe works the way it works. And telling the universe that it's not fair won't impress it one bit.
Sorry. I'm getting too political. I'll go and stand in the corner and think about what I've just said.
