Voices blog

Today, most of the nation is voting again. Every citizen over 18 gets the chance but relatively few will, they reckon.

The last weeks have seen more research figures relating to the drop in belief in politics. Yet the national challenges we currently face are huge – mostly emanating from the effects of a global downturn. By contrast the population probably has little interest in local matters.

Some cities are having referenda on whether to have local mayors.

I can’t help wondering whether or not the whole vote isn’t something of a referendum on localism?

Surely by one measure, localism is working when people care about who’s making local decisions - so they turn out to vote? With power increasingly pushed down to local levels (the premise of the localism act) then we should start to sense that more is at stake in the hands of such powerful local decision-makers. After all, they’re now holding a higher percentage of the budget, and they can do more of what they want with it as it’s less demarcated by central command…

By that argument, more people should show up at the polling booths today because they can see that it matters more than ever. No one expects them to.

Localism, like any ‘ism’, implies an overriding ideological belief. But local matters are too mundane for most people’s interest. Too undramatic to make it onto telly. It seems to be an ‘ism’ that fails to fire up the belly – no jihad, no messianic fervour or grass roots movement blazes its trail. Its main rhetorical purpose seems to be a bit like “Big Society”, to stand in contrast to its antithesis: “Big Government” and “centralism” (or even globalism?).

Isn’t it just pushing power into a vacuum? Will it run the risk, if not taken up, of being a bit like the Academies programme, where in the name of greater freedom and autonomy an increasing number of schools are given local control but are answerable only to the Secretary of State? Where in the name of localism the smaller state becomes more powerful and citizens become less powerful for want of not stepping up to the challenge of their increased, unrequested responsibilities?

There are few signs that anyone has interest in today’s elections. Neither the democratic process nor localism seemed to have many takers as I went out leafleting tonight. Britain’s’ Got Talent is popular though.

Just, not political talent.

Tomorrow we launch the latest research into the impact of citizenship education. It looks at the understanding and behaviour of those who were the first to receive Citizenship from age 11. It was taken after they had been able to vote for the first time, at the General Election of 2010.

The launch will be in the House of Commons and all MPs and Lords are invited.

It comes at a timely point after the Curriculum Review published on 20th Decemebr 2011 recommended a change in the status of citizenship education.

The Review created two new categories within the statutory curriculum: both intended to free up teachers’ discretion around their subject delivery. They move the choice of course content into the hands of teachers within each school.

The top tier of content-defined curriculum will still be called the ‘National Curriculum’, and the next two, more localised tiers will be the Basic Curriculum and the Local Curriculum. So Citizenship remains in the statutory curriculum, but is in the latter two categories.

The government will prescribe the content of the National Curriculum (not the Basic or Local) under its traditional Programmes of Study which define what all students should know. This time the skills that students should develop will not be included as educational outcomes. The revised curriculum is conceived around knowledge.

The distinction is never that simple of course.

For example: knowledge for citizenship would be different to knowledge about citizenship. Knowledge about the conclusions that our society has drawn from history would be different to knowledge about things that have happened. Knowledge relating to human geography is very different from countries and climates…

It is an unenviable task to sort all that out and I would happily credit Michael Gove with having both the intellect and dynamism to take on that battle: more than most Education Secretaries of our time.

We have a fundamental gripe though.

We think that there really is an omission here. It has come in deciding that Citizenship has no core knowledge that every member of the next generation needs to have: what the Review has called ‘socially valuable’ or ‘powerful knowledge’. Knowledge that unlocks doors and perspective for other knowledge and that facilitates development of the intellect, of understanding and of capabilities. Basically for citizenship: contextualising knowledge you won’t get anywhere else.

The research backs this up – not necessarily by showing how refined the most civically active can become – but by illustrating how far on the outside some can be left.

Every morning I walk past one of the anti-capitalism camps in the City of London, and at night I often tune into TV shows talking about the limits of capitalism. This weekend’s BBC News featured an article about the Occupy movement being invited to talk to citizenship classes in a school near where I live. These are live issues relating to the need to transform the system in a country that is rapidly choosing neither capitalism nor socialism.

What will it choose and how will we choose?

Young people need fundamental knowledge here. They have to grasp how two ecosystems work. The two that they are being handed as a debt burden from the previous generation. Two very complex and intertwined ecosystems. The first is the global economy and the second is the global climate.

But the choices that they will face will not be technical. They will be social. Everyday life-choices that will see some join the next equivalent of the English Defence League and others downgrade their lifestyle or demand restraint on others’ freedoms. Choices that will set citizen against citizen and demand of us a refined capability to manage the argument in a potentially more divided nation.

It is hard to believe that such life choices should not be part of education. No offence to History, but surely more important than Geronimo and the colonisation of the American West (illustrative though they may be).

We’re not holding out for Citizenship as the only subject that one could possibly use to teach such issues – but to say that it isn’t something everyone in the next generation needn’t have a grasp of, and isn’t fundamentally powerful knowledge… well, no offence to RE: but it beggars belief.

As the Curriculum Review nears its conclusion teachers and schools across the nation are being prepared for a critical shift in the formula behind the national curriculum.

The context for the new orders couldn’t be much different from the prescriptive environment when the formula was last written. A Headteacher said to me a few weeks ago “The National Curriculum is an irrelevance to us now”. This wasn’t an opted-out Academy: it was a ‘super-head’ from an Outstanding state comprehensive who recognised that Ofsted had stopped inspecting in relation to the National Curriculum, and so had shifted his priorities accordingly. He still recognised the value of teaching to the inspection, but not to the curriculum.

This indicates that both the formulation and the context of the new curriculum – in a country heading towards a deregulated school environment – will not be the same as the previous prescription. It is expected to look more like a Menu of options with some core elements; the EBacc staples, nestling within a broader dietary mix.

Such ‘staples’ would be the equivalent of the five-a-day fruit and veg that is promoted to ensure a nutritional diet. Once a school has delivered the staples, it chooses the right elements from the menu to satisfy the bias and priorities of its customers: tailoring it to a mix of the parental palate and the child’s nutritional needs.

Deregulation means that each school will be left to create the menu, to market it to parents and validate its nutritional content to Ofsted who will then award its Michelin Guide star rating.

If you’re responding to this metaphor, you’re probably one of the wealthy few who can afford to consider the value of the Michelin stars. Meanwhile – those with less ‘educated palettes’ are looking longingly into the windows of McDonalds… which of course is a massively popular ‘restaurant’, particularly in poorer areas.

McDonalds may be a triumph of marketing formula over substantive merit, but it satisfies a certain section of the population that enjoys the pacifying nature of food more than the nuanced flavours of haute cuisine. An educated palette usually coincides with a life where basic needs have been without question, leaving one to relish its subtleties and higher sensibilities.

But here the metaphor of educational content as ‘menu’ starts to be more revealing. It suggests that we are somehow educated for appreciation: and such an education may not be through teaching, but the satiation of other needs leaving space for development. Put another way, the social and emotional prepares the context for savouring the finer elements of life.

This, for me raises the spectre of the ‘doughnut school’…. Where students can’t access the elements at the core but are satiated on the fat and sugar of the outer ring! In the same way that the menu at McDonalds contains the five-a-day (if you look hard enough) it has, on the other side of the nutritional balance, more fat and sugar than is good for you. But that does keep the customer satisfied… and coming back… and in the system.

So perhaps there needs to be a shift in the metaphor? The curriculum doesn’t need a new menu but a new recipe. Something that keeps ‘broad and balanced’ within the staples and not as a result of the menu choice?

Unlike a Menu, a recipe is a set of ingredients that play off each other in order to create the most satisfying final result. In that sense – we propose that citizenship education is not just another subject – but the subject that brings sense to the rest. It engages the social and emotional into the rest of learning in that it contextualises and generates a substantive assessment of many other subjects. It also gives you the critical facts and understanding of your own context that could otherwise leave core subjects feeling abstract, particularly if other aspects of survival are absent or overwhelm you.

It’s therefore not an optional part of the menu, but an equivalent to the yeast in the dough: the thing that makes the rest rise.

Alternatively – you could say – its dose of reality is the grit in the Oyster: but that’s a whole other biological and culinary metaphor…

Last night I spoke at the Bishopsgate Institute’s Influencing Young Minds debate, in which I argued that there is more going on in schools than just lessons. This is the transcript of that talk.

There’s a saying “When nation gets an itch, the school gets scratched…” In other words, we so often reach for education as the long term answer to social problems as there’s an assumption that if we can catch people early enough we can shape them differently.

I suppose that may be possible if every child was removed from their parents at birth and then plonked into a boarding school to be raised under their sole influence: but even then, I think the jury’s out about the mixed blessings of such combined privilege and deprivation; in practice, people grow up in a context that involves much more than just school.

So in addressing education we have to start by recognising that, like any speciality, we might easily get embroiled in a conversation that starts to consider the topic as if it can be the answer to everything. Unfortunately, nothing is the answer to everything - more importantly then - it’s worth starting with ‘what’s education for and what can it achieve…’ if not ‘everything’?

Education is inevitably shaped in the light of how we perceive two things:

• the nature of the human - in particular the brain or mind;
• the nature of society - what understanding and skills people need in order to thrive together

Both of these topics throw up questions as old as civilisation itself.

So in my opening 5 minutes it’s probably worth just saying something about these - and in particular the relationship between these and a society that properly prepares people for citizenship: my interest in this discussion.

What is the nature of the brain or mind? Does it drive the human being or are we more than that. Are we heart and will as well as mind? If so where are the feelings and will if it they’re not in the mind?

I heard a good question in relation to how we might model the brain in order to consider the way we therefore educate it. It’s this:

Is ‘brain’ more like skeleton or muscle? In other words - we mostly think that our skeleton is pretty much genetically determined - will we be tall or short? Our bones may need nutrition to get the most out of our skeleton, but most of it comes pre-determined by our genes. Is our brain similarly genetically predetermined as either big or small? Clever or dense?

Muscle isn’t like that though. The more you work it the stronger it gets. It even gets bigger as it gets stronger. Basically, it responds to exercise.

So is brain more like one or the other?

Read Michael Gove’s speech to Cambridge University last week and you’ll hear the muscle model in action. The mind needs to be cultivated, he would attest, and exercised into life. As more bits begin to light up they need connecting to other bits until like an Olympic athlete, the body is working in close harmony - each bit toned for its purpose and able to get the most out of the other parts.

In that sense then, education exists to tone and exercise the mind. I don’t have too much problem with that - at least it doesn’t condemn some people to being characterised as small brained and destined for mindless manual work.

From the model of mind as muscle we can construct a model of education that is, at least, consistent. Gove’s liberal conservative conclusions, which obviously worked for him as an intellectual, sees prosperity and fulfilment springing for the cultivation of the mind. Innovation, acumen, persistence, even republican virtues spring up when individuals have their minds cultivated by good education.

That’s brain as muscle.

What about society? What model do we want to choose for that and will brain as muscle work for it?

Society can be characterised in a few ways. As organised culture, it’s just our traditions and heritage renegotiated into a manageable package. It’s a pile of compromises that gets the best out of our entanglements whilst doing the least harm.

Alternatively, society might need more management than that because it has a tendency to mutate more than harmonise. And it will usually mutate in favour of the already privileged: those who write the rules will tend to write them in their own favour, those with money may accumulate and use it to oppress or manipulate others.

Of those two views of society, the former is a more Tory / Liberal perception, the latter more Labour. And they’re currently playing out in discussions about education in the UK.

What we’re seeing at the moment is a rare swing between governments. People under 30 in this country have only seen that once before in 1997. Half of their lives was Thatcher, the next half Blair…

This swing between governments has shown clearly how strongly our education system is built to perpetuate some from of social DNA. Ultimately we imprint the next generation by passing them through the factory of education. How we choose educate is not as neutral as we may at first imagine.

Our subject - citizenship - was officially formulated around 1991 and then implemented as a National Curriculum subject from 2002. It has a definite view of the individual as an informed, critical and engaged member of an organised community - but not a left-wing community. A community where the capability to participate in the political and social life of the nation is within the grasp of everyone, as far as that is possible. Once everyone is more prepared to comprehend the nature and processes of democracy they are able to participate in shaping the communities and nation of the future.

Within this construction education therefore exists for three things: sure, to develop the individual as a lifelong learner; to develop capabilities for a healthy economy; and also to participate in a democracy where individuals are personally and collectively self-determining. That last bit is pretty much in the construct of the current National Curriculum, which is now unbelievably up for grabs under Michael Gove’s review.

Although that construct of educational purpose is a good ideal - we all know that in practice it’s never quite that simple. In particular I’d like to raise two problems with Gove’s ‘Mind as muscle and the market sort out the rest’ liberal utopianism.

The first is about winners and losers, and the second about learning, information and the context of adolescent development.

One of the benefits of a fresh look at our education system by this new achievement-driven, choice-and-competition led government is that the quality of teaching and professional judgement of the local teacher in the local setting has been affirmed. In opting to be more self-styled schools can differentiate their offer to their communities and develop their competitive edge.

This is great in principle but - as I tell my daughter when we watch the X-Factor - for every winner telling you that their experience has proven that ‘anything is possible if you just follow your dream’, there are another hundred in the car park wondering how their dream got shattered by Simon Cowell. Similarly any national provision based on creating winners, such as those who make it on to university to further their well-toned minds, there are a significant percentage leaving school feeling like losers. If that happens, surely education has failed somewhere. The formula was not inclusive.

The second caveat is about learning in an age where information is on hand.

My same X-Factor-watching daughter knows one thing about life that I couldn’t have conceived of at her age. She knows that whatever information that she wants about almost anything in life, it is usually about 10 seconds away when she puts the question into Google.

So education no longer needs to be driven by the acquisition and retention of knowledge. Of course, I’m not dismissing that: but I’m repositioning it. You shouldn’t have to fail at school because you can’t retain knowledge - the reason millions did in the past including me, on one level. Knowledge and information is there to be found on a whole new scale.

Schools then have a whole different job: it’s more like the arousal of curiosity in order to seek knowledge, and the contextualisation of information into the lives of their students.

This contextualisation is absolutely critical - it’s critical and it seems to be being missed out of the Curriculum Review. It’s critical because teenagers aren’t just minds - they’re adolescent minds. Minds where hormone-driven emotions can often subvert the higher levels of thought. Where the desire to prove and establish autonomy is rubbing up against authority and previous restraints. Where the context of education is increasingly important as education itself happens within the kind of community structures in which you are struggling to establish yourself. An absolute community where - just like in the rest of life you need to make sense of yourself in the big scheme of things. You need to comprehend and reckon with the law, decision makers, money systems and social imperatives… what we call ‘citizenship’. This is a critical facet of valuing education: grasping “Why does all this stuff matter??” Education is not just for its personal and cultural enhancements but also for its concrete, societal manifestation. If you’re 18 and you’re not curious about life and don’t understand how to contribute to the society you’re in - then education has failed you.

I’d like to end with two examples that might exemplify good practice and illustrate what I mean:

The first is a lesson led by Pete Patisson, a citizenship teacher in London, and it illustrates the power of arousing curiosity.

During the recent Libyan conflict Pete projected a photograph from a newspaper. From memory it was two women crying deeply at a scene that had a dead body on the floor next to them.

He simply asked the students ‘what questions can we ask of this picture?’

“Who are they?” they replied…

“Why are they crying?”

“Where are they?”

The obvious questions out of the way he asked them to think of deeper questions…

“Why is the man dead?”

“Who killed him?”

“Who decided he should be killed?”

“Who took the picture?”

“How did it end up in a newspaper?”

“Who chose this picture not others?” “Why this one?”

“Did the UK have any part in his death?”

“Did our taxes pay for him to die?”

“Who might have decided to pay for him to be killed?”

“Did I get a choice in whether our money paid for this?”

“Could I have stopped the man getting killed?”

“Did killing the man achieve anything?”

You can see the pattern… it’s about learning to question every day life and get under the skin of current affairs - to recognise the powers at play and your connection to them. That’s a different kind of education…

One last one. Microsoft are working in some schools to test new ways of educating the Google generation.

Here’s an example: after studying the Tudors for a few weeks the teacher announces a tutorial. For this tutorial she will not be in the room but in the staff room, online. They can ask her any questions they want as they revise the subject from the IT suite.

For once they don’t put their hands up when they have a question - they just type it in and the teacher guides them back by her reply.

What happens in this session? Students that never ask questions start to let their curiosity out - because this time they don’t have to overcome the social barrier of the classroom setting in order to learn. Online they are equals, and no one else in the room gets to hear the question that they might never ask because they fear it’s stupid and they will be mocked.

See, we all know this but we can pretend it’s not the case: there is more going on in schools than just lessons.

That’s enough for now - my last words - ‘curiosity’ and ‘context’.

Influencing Young Minds was part of the Bishopsgate Institute’s Whose Mind is it Anyway? series of debates.

The term ‘citizenship’ is impossible to sum up in an easy sound bite. At least, one that sounds interesting…

It’s one of those things you can take for granted until you don’t have it – then it seems to be worth life and death: ask a refugee.

Citizenship is good news because it guarantees people their protection and freedoms: by right. Citizenship is a gift from your fellow country men and women: usually those of previous generations who established our freedoms, sometimes with their lives. But the cost to every new generation is that each citizen should enact their responsibilities to their nation and community. Only that way can we together ensure our protection and freedom.

But that social, legal angle doesn’t really summarise how real people bring their energy into making enjoyable and fulfilling communities. “Active Citizenship” is all about contributing to society: frontloading it with security rather than patching things up should problems occur. That costs because you’ve got to invest your human agency to add trust and goodwill to protection and freedom. Always a risk.

But a risk worth taking if you’re living in a country where people have agreed to reckon with each other, not just try get the better of each other. To create order, not by chance but negotiation and management of choice together. This is similarly costly because no generation starts the process from scratch. Our collective life needs constant discussion because people are diverse and our histories and values have deep roots. Becoming organised and proposing solutions back to the community is the basic activity of politics within democratic citizenship. This adds reason and choice to our trust, goodwill, protections and freedoms.

So for the individual, citizenship puts a final price on freedom. It calls each citizen to reckon with their own priorities and values. It expects their allegiance such that they accept some limitations, and share in the risks and sacrifices of their people. The state expects citizens to create freedom and opportunity by sometimes placing the greater good above their own. And this obligation – negotiated by the people – shares the cost of being a citizen. When times are good the cost might be small; when times get tough it might be high.

There is a saying: “the cost of freedom is vigilance”. History shows us the many ways that our freedom can be taken from us, or how we can become complicit in taking away the freedoms of others. Only vigilance stops that. Citizenship is the unsung hero that stops this happening: it is organised freedom through organised vigilance. It leaves the majority of life to be enjoyed through creativity, trust and goodwill, paving the way for us to appreciate that - once we’ve got ourselves in order - the best things in life are free.