Soft Machinations

Image:  The cover of The Soft Machine Volume Two (1969). Design by Byron Goto, Henry Epstein.

It’s not often that All Change Please! reads something about a politician and thinks: ‘Yes, by Jove, I think he’s got it’, but that’s exactly what happened in response to a recent piece about Ed Milliband in the Guardian when he was reported to state: “We need to ensure vocational education is seen as just as much of a gold standard as academic education.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/may/21/ed-miliband-snobbery-vocational-courses?

Obviously he’s been reading ‘Going For Gold‘!

At the same time All Change Please! also felt a smug sense of anti-Govian satisfaction when it read a report alerting everyone to the fact that what employers really, really want is not so much evidence of academic potential, but more experience of so-called ‘soft skills’.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/9282665/Young-people-increasingly-shut-out-of-first-jobs.html

Now All Change Please! has already written about so-called ‘soft subjects’, which, while assumed by the popular media to describe any subject with work-related content rather than so-called harder academic so-called  ‘deep thought’ subjects, is in fact simply a reference to any subject not on the Russell Group’s list as being appropriate for entrance to one of the small, elite group of universities they represent.

So what of so-called ‘soft skills’? According to Wikipedia:

‘Soft skills are personal attributes that enhance an individual’s interactions, job performance and career prospects. Unlike hard skills, which are about a person’s skill set and ability to perform a certain type of task or activity, soft skills relate to a person’s ability to interact effectively with coworkers and customers and are broadly applicable both in and outside the workplace.

[They...] include proficiencies such as communication skills, conflict resolution and negotiation, personal effectiveness, creative problem solving, strategic thinking, team building, influencing skills and selling skills, to name a few.’

Now one could be forgiven for supposing that it is the so-called soft subjects that deliver so-called soft-skills, but that does not necessarily follow. Just as it’s possible to teach academic subjects in non-academic ways, so it is also possible to teach soft subjects without giving enough emphasis to the development of soft skills.

Some serious machinations are therefore going to be needed to resolve the issue of how best to deliver soft skils.

Meanwhile the title of this post, ‘Soft Machinations’ is of course in the first instance a corruption of ‘Soft Machine’, a band that All Change Please! followed devotedly in the late 1960s when it should possibly (or more probably not) have been spending more time on its homework, and then in later life went on to teach in the school in Canterbury that the main members of the original band had first met at some years earlier – but that’s another story. The band’s name was taken from the book of the same name by William S. Burroughs, first published in 1961, in which the ‘Soft Machine’ is a name used for the human body. The main theme of the book concerns how external control mechanisms invade the body.

But what’s more interesting is that the book was written using the literary ‘cut up’ technique in which a text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. Most commonly, cut-ups are used to offer a non-linear alternative to traditional reading and writing, invented in the 1920s by the Dadaists and popularised by Burroughs and others in the 1960s.

Again, according to Wikipedia:

‘The ‘cut-up’ and the closely associated ‘fold-in’ are the two main techniques:
Cut-up is performed by taking a finished and fully linear text and cutting it in pieces with a few or single words on each piece. The resulting pieces are then rearranged into a new text. Fold-in is the technique of taking two sheets of linear text (with the same linespacing), folding each sheet in half vertically and combining with the other, then reading across the resulting page.’

Now, given the sense they make, I reckon this must very probably be the way that most government education policies and National Curriculum documents are put together?

Think do you what?

How to succeed in everything, and nothing?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/aug/31/gcses-english-baccalaureate-vocational-subjects?CMP=twt_fd

So here’s The Guardian reporting on what we all anticipated – substantial increases in pupils ‘choosing’ to study academic subjects such as geography and history for GCSE, and a decline in courses such as music, the performing arts and textiles, along doubtless with many other similar options.

But what’s really breath-taking is Michael Gove’s assertion that:

“Subjects such as physics, chemistry, history, geography, French and German give students the opportunity to succeed in every field.”

Except of course in art, design, music, IT, film and television and a host of other so-called ‘soft’ fields of work that actually help drive the UK economy forward. And that’s where we really need the bright, capable but non-academic students who are now increasingly being led down the blind alley of unlikely entry to Oxbridge.

Gove continues:

“More young people are now following the courses which the best colleges and top employers value.”

Yet, as I posted in:‘ Educashun still isn’t working’, way back in the 1980s ‘top employers’ were stating what their real needs were, and they certainly didn’t include a plethora of academic subjects.

Gove’s ’rounded education’ looks rather more like a severely squashed oval?

Why I’m voting for Mickey…

Will the proposed half-GCSE Vocational Qualifications become known as Minnie-Mouse courses?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2016995/Michael-Gove-4-500-Mickey-Mouse-courses-face-axe.html

As usual the Daily Mail can be relied upon to trivialise any story about education. Although the recommendations of the recent Wolf report are clear, it is thin on explanation and exemplification of what is unsatisfactory with current vocational education courses. Simply saying some are excellent and others aren’t is not terribly helpful. And seeking the views of employers and moving towards more external assessment is something we’ve heard many times before. Reducing the number of GCSE equivalents for each course might be seen as having some merit, but mainly for reducing the validity of vocational courses within academically-based school league tables, rather than putting the needs of students first – some of whom might actually have had a better chance of finding employment at the age of 16. Now all they will end up with is a string of F and G GCSE grades which are less likely to impress potential employers than evidence of real, on-the-job experience.

And while it is true that some courses have become little more than an exercise in completing politically-correct tick-boxes, what the Daily Mail article actually reveals that much of the course content is highly relevant to working life. For example, here is a proposed list of 50 things everyone should know how to do – precious few of which are covered in the eBacc.

Meanwhile I can’t help wondering why poor old Mickey Mouse is continually associated with vocational courses? Mickey was created by Disney in 1928 as a ‘pleasant, cheerful character always trying to do the best he could’, which  sounds to me a most positive attitude towards education.  The more negative association probably started when entering the name ‘Mickey Mouse’ on a ballot paper became a way of expressing dissatisfaction with the available election candidates, i.e. that Mickey Mouse could do a better job. Around the same time the phrase ‘Taking the Mickey’ – meaning to mock or ridicule – came into usage, and although not a reference to Mickey Mouse, the two seem to have become associated.

As a result ‘Mickey Mouse’ has over time come to mean ‘small-time’ or ‘trivial’, which is curious really, because in reality Mickey Mouse is an iconic, multi-million dollar, best-selling trademark – and as such exactly the sort of approach to business we should all be striving for if we are to revive the nation’s economy. So yet again it seems to be another example of the politicians and media perpetuating the old-school myth that only high-brow academic studies are of any value, and anything vocationally or commercially orientated, or relating to popular culture, is entirely worthless.

And finally…. for those readers still without a Twitter account:  Man goes to the doctors: “Doctor I’m addicted to twitter and I don’t know what to do”….Doctor: “Sorry I don’t follow you”…

Beware of Learner ministers

The 1950s specification for the L Plate

So Mr Gove, champion of the Academic, how are you and your department when it comes to the more practical things in life? Not so good, it seems. For example, on the 21st March he was asked a question in the house about his policy of not allowing re-sits in e-bac subjects:

Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab): Ofqual says that the Secretary of State has asked it to look at A-level and GCSE re-sits, including in the English bac subjects. We learnt this month that it took the accident-prone Secretary of State seven attempts to pass his driving test and that his car was badly damaged recently when he got it stuck in a car parking lift. If it is seven times for  Gove, how many times will mere mortals get to pass the bac?

In the same session, John Hayes, an education minister, was asked about the teaching of design. Not only was this incorrectly taken to refer exclusively to design and technology, but it was assumed that d&t was something to do with apprenticeships.

Mr Hayes: The white heat of technology has never been more important. Britain’s future chance of success lies in our being a high-tech, high-skilled nation, which is why the Government have agreed an unprecedented level of commitment and expenditure to apprenticeships, which are being taught in many schools. We will continue to build that high-tech, high-skilled nation. I recommend our strategy to my hon. Friend – signed copies are available.

And elsewhere, again equating D&T with getting your hands dirty, Nick Gibb said in response to an Ofsted report suggesting that D&T needs to place more emphasis of robotics, electronics and computer-aided design:

“The Budget set out a big expansion of technical colleges – to provide high quality vocational education alongside academic classes, to thousands more pupils.”,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12850211

What’s emerging seems to be a fundamental ministerial misunderstanding of the difference between technological education and technical education. The Government clearly has a lot to learn about what Design and Technology is all about. Perhaps it should make more of an effort to read the D&T Subject Importance Statement as laid out in the National Curriculum documents? And then perhaps a re-sit of its policies?

Let’s just hope other government departments are a bit better informed about matters such as the economy,  the health service and Libya…

Bake me a cake as fast as you can…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11776453

Well, if his press-releases about his proposed New University Technological Colleges are anything to go by, it seems that nice Mr Kenneth Lord Baker has finally got the message about the need for high-quality, well-regarded, work-related education.

The [new university technical colleges] will develop high-level technical skills for 14 to 19-year-olds, developed in conjunction with employers and universities. “We’re desperately short of technicians. If we want to have nuclear power station, fast broadband across the country and high-speed trains, we haven’t got the technicians to do it. We’ve got to train the technicians.” The UTCs will seek to bridge the gap between vocational and academic education, with a curriculum including both technical work-based training and core academic lessons in English and maths.

What a pity it didn’t all dawn on Lord Baker when he was Education Secretary in 1988 defining the structure of the academically-biased National Curriculum. And why are the new colleges being developed in conjunction with universities? And why make the teaching of English and Maths academic when applied English and maths would be far more useful? And why does it all read rather like a sound-bite from the 1960s?

Of course the old argument against the scheme is that the courses will be seen as more appropriate for those from a working-class background and will consequently deny them the benefits of a traditional academic education:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/aug/10/university-technical-college

Mind you, here’s another study that thinks that choices should be made at 14 instead of 16
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11796626

And I wonder what Mr Gove thinks about Mr Baker’s proposals? Will it prove to be a case of too many cooks?

The sound of teaching

In recent posts I have written about the need to move away from a culture in which academics tend to became teachers who prepare children to become academics, and that we need to develop a new relationship between teachers and the world of work, in which it is important for them to keep up-to-date with the practical realities and experiences of the present day that they can then pass on to their students.

So I was interested to read this item in yesterday’s paper:

Essentially, it seems that having been refused permission for time off to undertake a professional engagement, a music teacher took sick leave in order to go on a piano-playing tour in America, and it also subsequently emerged that she had lied about her academic qualifications.

Now I don’t want to condone the mis-truths she appears to have told, but the point is that when teachers are offered positive commercial experiences outside the classroom during term-time, it shouldn’t be necessary in the first place for them to have to lie in order to be able to undertake them. It is also interesting to note that, despite having misled the school about her qualifications, there is no indication in the article about whether or not she was a good teacher  – perpetuating the myth that having a Phd and an MPhil somehow by definition makes one a successful teacher – and even more so than having completed a teacher training course!

‘The schools are alive with the sound of teachers
With lessons they have taught for a thousand years…’

Everybody Out! Industrial Relations Breakdown

A couple of recent articles have led me to reflect on the on and off-going relationship between education and industry and commerce.

There are still those in education – usually the most traditional academics – who see education has having nothing to do with the world of work at all. And there are many in industry and commerce who still see schooling as providing little more than a literate, numerate, punctual and essentially passive workforce. Fortunately over the past decades there have been an increasing number in both camps that have been willing to explore a middle ground, but at the end of the day there is still a long way to go before we arrive at a successful balance between the two extremes and start to offer an educational experience that offers an appropriate preparation for life and work in the 21st Century as opposed to the 19th.

I came into education in the late 1970s having trained in Industrial Design, and with the conviction that there was a need to move away from traditional academic approaches towards the development of a new set of skills and approaches to knowledge that would not only serve the economy but make students more critically and socially aware, better able to creatively solve everyday problems and to be able to think and act for themselves.

As a result, over the past thirty years there have been a number of occasions when I have approached industry and commerce for assistance with case-study materials, photographic resources or support for workshops and other live projects. In that time, with a few notable exceptions, things have not changed a great deal. Usually there have been one of two responses. The first is a simple ‘We’d like to help but we don’t have the time’, and the second a much more positive, but ultimately more frustrating, ‘We are really keen to support education, just let us know what we can do’, but despite the good intentions, the latter offer often fails to come to fruition as it later emerges, they don’t have the time to make any more than a rather superficial contribution: ‘We do have a business to run, you know’. It seems that industry and commerce has always been ready to criticise, but generally unwilling to actually do anything.

So just what is it that industry wants? There seems to be two answers to this. First, a literate, numerate, punctual and essentially passive workforce. Secondly, and increasingly over the past 30 years, young people who are flexible, technically skilled, interdisciplinary creative problem-solvers with excellent communication and teamwork skills. What’s going wrong is that industry still believes that GCSEs, A levels and academic-based diplomas and degrees will provide what it wants. In reality the current curriculum and qualifications tend to develop exactly the opposite – a rigid, subject-based experience in which original thought and action and any hint of collaborative work (or ‘cheating’ as it’s often thought of as) are positively discouraged.

In this recent article the director-general of the CBI is highly critical of the ‘wasteful’ spending on education which he claims has failed to produce improvements in socially and culturally deprived areas of the country. Or rather, as he goes on to explain, to provide a workforce that can read, write and turn up on time. But predictably he seems is to identify raising the number of students gaining five good ‘academic’ GCSEs as the solution to the problem.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/dec/31/school-system-shameful-cbi-boss

Meanwhile the discussion is more fully aired here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jan/01/manchester-academy-success

Beyond the account of the Manchester Academy, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders attacks the CBI for simply ‘standing on the sidelines and criticising’. Alan Smithers attacks the government for providing the wrong sort of qualifications, and Mike Tomlinson challenges the appropriateness of the curriculum.

So there’s still a long way to go. Perhaps we need the services of an arbitration tribunal?