EADT Column: Englishness
EADT Column: Englishness
EADT column: Englishness
My East Anglian Daily Times column:
The poet Philip Larkin wrote powerfully and movingly about England and Englishness. His poignant narrative poem ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ takes us on a train journey down the east of England one blazing hot Saturday through stations where nervous new couples clamber aboard heading for honeymoon.
The lyrical ‘To the Sea’ describes ‘the rigid old’ being wheeled out ‘to feel a final summer’. As one of my sharpest Year 11 students pointed out to me some years back, the colour scheme of the poem, with its beaches, skies and bathing caps was red, white and blue. ‘”You see”, Mr Barton’, she said excitedly, ‘”he’s using the colours of the Union Flag to show how British the scene is’. She got an A*.
Larkin was an understated fan of this country. Once asked whether he would like to visit China he said yes, but only if he could come back the same day.
I was thinking about this while on holiday in Italy last week. Sometimes being overseas makes us appreciate our own contexts more. I love Italian food, but I also appreciate the sheer diversity of food from so many cultures that is the norm in Britain. I love those sprawling French markets, but I always come home appreciating the quality and consistency of British supermarkets.
And while I’ve enjoyed my occasional bouts of long-distance travel, there’s always something special when flying back into Stansted or Heathrow, of seeing those verdant English fields dotted with houses, farms and occasional swimming pools, making us appreciate the sheer beauty of the English landscape.
So yes, like Larkin, I think Britain for all its knobbly faults is a place to rejoice in and celebrate.
--
Why this unexpected outburst of patriotism and what has it to do with education?
It’s because I’m tired of being told that in Britain we’re rubbish. And nowhere is that more loudly proclaimed than when talking about our education system.
Parents have to go through a contorted double-think here. Surveys suggest that most parents are happy or very happy with the school their child goes to. Yet what they hear too often from the Secretary of State or the Chief Executive of Ofsted is that our state schools are never good enough, that teachers have low expectations, and that school leaders are complacent.
And here in Suffolk and Norfolk, so we keep being chided, we’re some of the worst offenders.
I think a bit more care needs to be taken before bandying about cheap and sneering soundbites. Many of the criticisms of our schools are based on a regular battery of tests called PISA. These create the international league tables frequently brandished before us with a stern accusing glare of admonishment.
Some rather distinguished academics have been looking more closely at the PISA tests. Professor Svend Kreiner, from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, says the flawed use of statistics means that in the 2006 rankings, Canada could have been positioned anywhere between second and 25th, Japan between eighth and 40th and the UK between 14th and 30th.
Meanwhile Dr Hugh Morrison, from Queens University Belfast in Northern Ireland, goes further, saying that the model Pisa uses to calculate the rankings is, on its own terms, “utterly wrong” because it contains a “profound” conceptual error.
He points out too how naïve it is to assume that a reading test undertaken by students in, say, Shanghai can meaningfully be compared with the same test taken in Denmark. Contexts vary and they matter. He reveals that half the students in the tests were not actually asked any reading questions at all. Instead they were allocated ‘plausible’ reading scores.
My guess is that in the future – in saner, less chiding times – we’ll look back and see how we allowed ourselves to become intoxicated by the myth of international comparisons. Those in power will have stopped using them so blithely and unthinkingly to do us down.
And - without being at all complacent - when it comes to education, we will celebrate more of what we do well, and recognise why many in the world look at our schools and colleges with admiration. We should too.
--
Joke for scientists:
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
Geoff Barton
16 August 2013
Friday, 16 August 2013