Last Wednesday I began a Samizdata posting thus:
Denis Dutton is a new name to me, but I have the strong feeling that this says a whole lot more about me than it does about Denis Dutton.
I never blogged a truer sentence.
As Michael Jennings pointed out in a comment, Dutton is the editor of Arts & Letters Daily, to which I have been linking a lot lately, and in a simultaneous personal email to me he expressed surprise that I hadn't taken in who Dutton is, what with me reading and linking to 2 Blowhards such a lot. They've linked to Dutton, and quoted from Dutton, while naming him, as Denis Dutton, and generally made a fuss of the man, Denis Dutton, a lot. So why hadn't I noticed?
Further evidence that I should have known about Dutton is that he figures prominently in the chapter about "The Arts" at the end of Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, which I've also written about and quoted from.
Yet it was only when I read this article by Dutton that I began to focus seriously on this man and his writings and place in the world.
So, shouldn't I be drawing a veil over this embarrassing episode?
I choose not to. I think that it has an educational lesson, maybe not for us all (I'll get to that because that's basically the lesson), but at least for some.
Unlike people, say, four hundred years ago, we early twenty first centurions live in an information rich, as it is often called, environment. I would prefer, though, to call it "message" rich, because "information" implies truth and accuracy, and a lot of the messages we are now surrounded by are anything but true or accurate. (There's probably a mismatch here between how "information theory" uses the word "information" and how the rest of us use it. For the information theories, information is one thing and truth something else again; for the rest of us there's an implied overlap.
Anyway, surrounded as we all are by all this information, all these messages, most of us inhabit a mental world in which there is a huge gap between what we actually do know, and what you might think we would know, given what we've experienced and given all that has been said to us and aimed at us. I assume that there are parts of the brain whose entire purpose is (a) to ignore things and (b) to forget things, a function which I for one often find myself dominated by three seconds after I'm told someone's name for the first time. Almost invariably, I have to ask it again, and have got into the habit of saying, as so many do, that "I'm sorry but I didn't catch your name". Catch. In truth, I probably did "catch" it, but then in a reflex action I threw it away. It's almost as if my subconscious is asking: have I heard this name before at least twice in any other connections of interest? And if it's no, smack, out it goes.
My point is that "learning" consists not just of charging out there and hoovering up information, but also of rejecting lots of information as not germane to whatever seems to be the immediate and central issue at hand. Learning is like the growth of a plant, and plants don't make use of all the material in their vicinity, only of some. A lot, they reject.
I only paid serious attention to Denis Dutton, as I say, when I read that article by him (which he had helpfully linked to from Arts & Letters Daily) about piano playing. I thought it a wonderfully good piece, and for the first time, I found myself asking: who is this guy? At which point all the reasons why I might have asked that question a year or two sooner came tumbling down on top of me. I was re-reading Pinker's Arts chapter, and there he was, with a huge and important quote, and then several more. I scrolled down to the bottom of Arts & Letters, and there he was also. Editor: Denis Dutton.
Yet it was only when read something by Dutton which said extremely helpful and useful things on one of the subjects which is now of central interest to me, namely the immediate future of "classical" music – whatever classical now means exactly, hence the quotes, that being all part of the question – that Dutton went from being a name I spat out (smack) after three seconds of knowing it, to a name I really took in and held on to. At which point all kinds of things which had before been only semi-interesting about the man suddenly became interesting enough also to take in.
So, although I at first felt a distinct twinge of embarrassment about this episode, on reflection, I now believe that I need not feel all that embarrassed, and instead of apologising, I regard this Dutton episode as a fine example of how learning actually happens.
Are you a teacher of children, in some capacity or other? Be patient. From where you sit, the kid has just learned about 7, and he ought to be ready for 8. Yes? This seems like the logical next step. But instead of being interested in 8, and despite having been told about it 88 times, with big cards, pointings, repetitions, assemblages of 8 objects, 88888 … he's not interested. In comes the information, but smack, out it immediately goes again. Why? Because just for now, the issue that matters is why 7 sometimes has a horizontal cross in the middle of it, but mostly not. What's that about? Or something. But not: what comes after 7? That just isn't of interest right now.
However, my conclusion is not that you should forget about 8. By all means continue to mention 8, if you think 8 is important, as most of us do. Don't stop with the 8 message. Many conclude from the temporary rejection of the 8 message that the whole subject of 8 should be abandoned. Wrong. The point is, don't be hurt if this message gets rejected a lot, smack smack smack. Don't take it personally, or start a fight about it. Just accept that there is this huge gap between what teachers think it's worth the kid learning, and what the kid actually learns next. It's natural. It's not a problem. You don't try to solve this non-problem either by forcing the kid to learn everything you think he should learn, or by sterilising the learning environment of stuff which he is now mostly rejecting, but which he may later suddenly get excited about. He can handle excessive and temporarily irrelevant information. Surround him with the stuff. It's nice. Just be ready for him to ignore it for a month or two. And then suddenly to start asking: 8 – what's 8? And what connection does 8 have to eight? 8eight8eight8eight8 gimme gimme gimme. Hey, two 0s on top of each other, how about that? Etc. And he can't register 8 if you have purged it from the world, like Stalin scrubbing a murdered minion from the history books, merely because two months ago he wasn't interested.
Take my case. Would it have helped me if the Denis Dutton meme had been purged from my learning environment – perhaps by some impatient software programme desperate to get my attention with everything it says to me – merely because I had not been giving it the attention which, I now realise, it all along deserved? Certainly not. That would have been no help at all. In fact it would have been downright pernicious.
Teaching means dangling a mass of possible paths in front of the pupil, and most of them being rejected, and the teacher relaxing, and just carrying on with the dangling.
This sounds like something's being done right.
A small London primary school with a "village-style" atmosphere was celebrating last week after achieving its best ever results. Tetherdown Primary School, in the leafy hill-top suburb of Muswell Hill, was one of only 142 schools - out of more than 20,000 in the country - to be awarded a perfect score in the national tests for 11-year-olds this summer.Every 11-year-old reached the required standard for their age for the first time, and a proportion of students achieved at a standard expected of older children. Put together, these results meant that the school was ranked as the joint-highest-achieving "community" – or non-faith – school in the country.
Personally I think this is a model for primary education in a lot of other places. And if a lot of schools were this small, then in places like London they could be quite close together, and that means people could, if the system allowed, choose between them in a way that would really count. Choosing between a very local school and a faraway school, is not nearly so real a choice.
As a generalisation, there should be more schools in Britain, and smaller schools in Britain. And small has another advantage besides opening up choices for people. I recall reading a management book many decades ago, which said that six hundred was about the upper limit of how many people you could know. That's how big a Roman legion was, and a modern regiment. In a school of six hundred or less, strangers will immediately be spotted. The place will be an order of magnitude safer than a school with, say twelve hundred pupils.
Oddly, this Independent story doesn't seem to say how many children attend Tetherdown. And I can't find this out anywhere here either. But it's a whole lot less than six hundred, that's for sure.
A Russian high school textbook has had its official government seal of approval removed. State high schools can no longer use it. The latest edition offered the following contrasting interpretations, and invited students to form their own opinions about them:
Prague, 5 December 2003 (RFE/RL) -- President Vladimir Putin is an authoritarian ruler bent on establishing a new dictatorship in Russia. President Vladimir Putin is a democrat at heart whose structural reforms are paving the way for Russia to emerge as a liberal democracy. Present your evidence and discuss.That, in essence, is the assignment which Igor Dolutskii's textbook poses to Russian students about to graduate from high school. It is an assignment considered so objectionable that the Russian Ministry of Education's council of experts last week recommended the book's removal from the classroom. This week, the ministry confirmed the decision and formally withdrew its stamp of approval from the text. Unless the decision is reversed, Igor Dolutskii's "National History, 20th Century," which has served as a textbook for half-a-million students across Russia over the past 10 years, will be permanently shelved.
This Radio Free Europe story concludes thus:
The Russian Education Ministry says there are plenty of other historians up to the task of presenting Russia's history in a manner that is at once inspiring and patriotic without being unbalanced. It is a task that has faced Russian historians in the past. As an old joke has it: "The future is assured, it's the past that keeps changing."
Yes, the inspiring, patriotic and balanced tendency must now be falling over themselves.
Rather mischievously, I've classified this posting under "Sovietisation". I hope I'm wrong.
More from My Early Life:
I had scarcely passed my twelfth birthday when I entered the inhospitable regions of examinations, through which for the next seven years I was destined to journey. These examinations were a great trial to me. The subjects which were dearest to the examiners were almost invariably those I fancied least. I would have liked to have been examined in history, poetry and writing essays. The examiners, on the other hand, were partial to Latin and mathematics. And their will prevailed. Moreover, the questions which they asked on both these subjects were almost invariably those to which I was unable to suggest a satisfactory answer. I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They always tried to ask what I did not know. When I would have willingly displayed my knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance. This sort of treatment had only one result: I did not do well in examinations.This was especially true of my Entrance Examination to Harrow. The Headmaster, Mr. Welldon, however, took a broad-minded view of my Latin prose: he showed discernment in judging my general ability. This was the more remarkable, because I was found unable to answer a single question in the Latin paper. I wrote my name at the top of the page. I wrote down the number of the question " I." After much reflection I put a bracket round it thus "(I)." But thereafter I could not think of anything connected with it that was either relevant or true. Incidentally there arrived from nowhere in particular a blot and several smudges. I gazed for two whole hours at this sad spectacle : and then merciful ushers collected my piece of foolscap with all the others and carried it up to the Headmaster's table. It was from these slender indications of scholarship that Mr. Welldon drew the conclusion that I was worthy to pass into Harrow. It is very much to his credit. It showed that he was a man capable of looking beneath the surface of things: a man not dependent upon paper manifestations. I have always had the greatest regard for him.
In consequence of his decision, I was in due course placed in the third, or lowest, division of the Fourth, or bottom, Form. The names of the new boys were printed in die School List in alphabetical order; and as my correct name, Spencer-Churchill, began with an "S," I gained no more advantage from the alphabet than from the wider sphere of letters. I was in fact only two from the bottom of the whole school; and these two, I regret to say, disappeared almost immediately through illness or some other cause.
The Harrow custom of calling the roll is different from that of Eton. At Eton the boys stand in a cluster and lift their hats when their names are called. At Harrow they file past a Master in the schoolyard and answer one by one. My position was therefore revealed in its somewhat invidious humility. It was the year 1887. Lord Randolph Churchill had only just resigned his position as Leader of the House of Commons and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he still towered in the forefront of politics. In consequence large numbers of visitors of both sexes used to wait on the school steps, in order to see me march by; and I frequently heard the irreverent comment, "Why, he's last of all!"
So, Young Winston did well only when he was answering the question: Who's your dad?
To be more serious about it, he was a highly visible bottom of the school pecking order, not a pleasing combination of experiences. He was the worst, and he had nowhere to hide. In his aristocratic way, Churchill had quite a tough time of it, and he certainly acquired a grasp of what it felt like to be at the bottom, as well as the top, of the social heap.
In a deep sense, deeper than mere Latin and Greek and Maths, his was one hell of an education.
Janet Daley helps me make sense of one of my biggest Education Policy Blind Spots, namely top-up student fees. I favour a total free market in everything and hence in particular in Higher Education, but will topping-up make that much difference? ZZZZZZ. Brian's head hits table. A total free market gets my interest, but re-mixing the mixed economy ... Like I say: ZZZ
This in particular is helpful:
What is at stake is not so much the principle of university education being free to all. In practice, that disappeared long ago. The question is: can higher education continue to be a government monopoly? Is it economically, or politically, viable for the universities to have their financing, employment and admissions arrangements determined by politicians?The trouble with top-up fees does not lie in the second part of their name – tuition fees already exist and are paid by any student (or parent) who earns more than a statutory amount – but in the first part. What the new charges would do is "top up" the existing government subsidy which, like almost all blanket subsidy to a monopoly service, is given indiscriminately and spent unaccountably.
Daley provides an example of the latter:
I lost count, during my teaching years, of the ludicrous overspending on materials purchased from suppliers who saw the state-subsidised sector as a cash-cow. (One private art school I knew arranged to hire a photocopier. Having done the deal, the principal was rung by the sales rep the following day to be told that he had mistakenly been quoted the "commercial price" which was lower than the education price. You have to understand, the rep said, that education is where we make our profit.)
And the trouble with top-up fees is that they won't change this:
What is wrong with top-up fees is that they are just that: they will come on top of a subsidy that does not permit universities any serious freedom to rethink their economic or administrative practices. It allows government to interfere in decisions about what proportion of students should be admitted from which backgrounds, the balance between teaching and research, and which courses are fit subjects for study.
I still don't get how top-up fees will make so very little difference, but no doubt I'll grasp it in due course. But surely, if universities get paid, somewhat, according to how many students they attract, that will be something, won't it? What follows, on the other hand, is completely clear:
None of this is the proper business of politicians.
Indeed.
Yes, there's an obituary of Clark Kerr here:
"Clark Kerr did for higher education what Henry Ford did for the automobile,'' said Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College, Columbia University. "He mass produced low-cost quality education and research potential for a nation that hungered deeply for both.''The chancellor of Berkeley, Robert M. Berdahl, said yesterday, "Clark Kerr is, without question, a legend in higher education.''
As president of the University of California, Mr. Kerr created a multicampus public institution that became the model for the state universities across the nation.
Under Mr. Kerr's plan, California created a three-tier system that became the largest and most admired in the nation; other states sought to emulate its structure and objectives. At the highest academic layer were campuses like Berkeley whose students came from the top 12.5 percent of the state's high school students. A second tier was state colleges function as teaching institutions focusing primarily on undergraduate education with some graduate courses; they enrolled a third of California students. Community colleges completed the system, offering two-year transfer and vocational programs open to every California high school graduate.
Whatever you think of this man – and I smell a lot of taxpayers parting with a lot of money to make this man a "legend" – he certainly made a difference.
I remember him as a major protagonist in the campus ruckuses (rucki?) of the sixties, an episode which this piece also touches on. He got caught in the middle, which is a bad place to stand when you are dealing with uncompromising adolescent fanatics who were spoiling for a fight, and would have carried on attacking and caterwauling until they got it. (If it hadn't been Vietnam, they'd have invented another grievance. I was at a British University at around that time. British students weren't being conscripted to fight in Vietnam, but that made no difference to the protesters. They simply wanted a fight. Vietnam, perfect for their ideological cousins in Ameria, sufficed for them, and something else would have suffice for both if Vietnam hadn't been happening.)
But that shouldn't totally distract us from considering the more enduring legacy of men like Clark Kerr, which was the semi-publicly financed modern mass university. We are now trying to introduce a bit more of that semi- stuff here. And guess what, the people who protested against the likes of Clark Kerr are protesting again.
It may sound ideological and churlish, but I sincerely believe that I have good and honourable reasons to be quite pleased about this:
A flagship learning scheme has been branded a failure after attracting just 900 students. The online teaching programme, UK e-Universities Worldwide, has spent £30m so far, equivalent to more than £33,000 of hard-pressed education funds on enrolling each pupil.Launched three years ago in a blaze of publicity by then Education Secretary David Blunkett, only 15 universities have so far joined the attempt to introduce internet courses for students the world over.
The programme banked on attracting 100,000 students by 2010 on to a set of undergraduate, post-graduate and life-long learning courses. Experts were confident it would be immensely popular by allowing international students to take advantage of a UK university education.
It's not that I'm against e-ducation, to coin a hyphenation. Far from it. E-ducation is a regular theme here. But the way to get anything started is to start it small, then do lots of ducking and weaving while you find out what works and what doesn't, and only when you have perfected things on a very small scale, to start expanding. The besetting sin of politicians is that they jump to conclusions ("experts were confident" - aren't they always?) about what will work, and neglect that early experimental phase. Governments do this (a) because they can – because they have the money, and (b) because for them, the appearance of activity is at least as important as the reality of it. A big launch, followed by nothing much, serves purpose (b) quite well. If they do too many schemes in the (a) category, public spending gets so out of control that even their interests are severely threatened. But much more damaging, in my opinion, is that if the government did throw big money at e-ducation, lots of other small schemes along these lines which are being funded by, you know, people, would face being trampled under foot by a herd of government funded e-ducational elephants.
The reality of e-ducation is that huge numbers of people are doing it in huge numbers of different ways. The less the government piles in with big money, the better. If the failure of this scheme causes the government to back off, good.
Besides which, one of the things that e-ducation should surely be is cheap. And you can't discover what is cheap by writing out cheques for thirty million quid, and when that disappoints, throw in another sixty million.
As so often these days, the Conservative complaint/response is not based on the principle of whether some scheme is or is not a good idea, but merely on the alleged unsatisfactoriness of its execution. Time and again, the Conservatives say, as here: words are all very fine, but where's the action? - but without troubling to consider whether it might not have been even better for there to have been even less action, or no action at all.
Tim Yeo, Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Education, said: 'As with so many of its initiatives, the Government failed to move from eye-catching announcement to effective action.'
But as I say, that's probably no bad thing. Do the Conservatives favour lashings more money being thrown at e-ducation? In their own way they are being just as sneaky as the government and in much the same way, implying that they would spend more on whatever scheme they are complaining about, but not actually saying that they will.
