#educationfest

Toilet roll: check.  Glow-stick: check.  Rock of weed wrapped in cellophane: check.  DM boots with band names marked in tippex: check.  Girl in bikini top on shoulders: check.  This is my imagined festival essentials list from 1993, the last time you'd have seen Kurt Cobain on the circuit and probably the last time you might have seen me packing for a real festival.

My festival essentials list for Wellington College last weekend were very different: map (to assist with locating the 'Spiritual Room', list of Twitterati I wished to meet, iPad and name badge (in the vain hope that someone bounded up to talk about this blog).  More festival nerd than festival chic, but I was excited for the event nonetheless.  The promise of 'freshly brewed organic beats' for the Friday night entertainment (presumably some recent Wellington leavers playing ukuleles whilst dressed in red cords) made me glad I was heading into London for the evening, but it was the daytime treats I was most looking forward to.  And here's what I did:

Day 1

Christopher Waugh

Donnie Darko disciple and wearer of double denim, Chris gave his excellent talk 'Deus ex Machina' about pupil choice, pupil voice and the co-creation of curricula.  He is certainly high up on my list to visit at the London Nautical School next year.  An idealist but also a realist, he draws you in with his enthusiasm and clear love of teaching and of his pupils.

Tom Sherrington

Predictably good.  I have read his blog for some years now, and he writes with great clarity but also humility - his gravitas comes from the fact that he is so able; he is collaborative and open to ideas without forcing them upon you.  I felt the talk was a little rambling, but maybe that was the purpose - look for a conclusion yourself rather than having it rammed down your throat.

Keiron Sparrowhawk

How could you not go to this talk?  He sounds like a cross between a fast bowler from the Leeward Islands and an LAPD traffic cop.  Sadly, he was neither.  His talk was on 'what makes a great leader' and during the 30 minutes I managed to stick it, I learned that pupils often thought MLK and Gandhi were great leaders, that I needed a mixture of luck and hard work, and I should drink only in moderation and eat my 5-a-day.

Laura McInerney

Laura is very sharp; her writing on education is perceptive; her Twitter feed is excellent.  I am sure that she gives excellent talks for the majority of the time.  This was not one of them.  Probably the most disappointing thing I saw because I know how excellent she could have been.  Instead, in her talk 'what makes a great education secretary' she presented a data-trawl on numbers of children, months of birth and time spent in the job, all to no obvious end or conclusion.  The more time in the job, the more they got done (and the more loathed they tended to be) and most of them were born in the summer.  Er...that was about it.

Dylan Wiliam

This man is superb.  He talks with articulacy, clarity and when he says 'research shows...' you know that he has read it, and really understands it.  Some teachers have chosen to trivialise AfL, but that's hardly his fault, and his embedding formative assessment materials are excellent.  He is interesting, inspirational and forces you to reflect on practice.  His 'debate' with David Didau was more 'Brokeback Mountain' for educationalists, but did provide for high-quality musing on some philosophical points of education.  When intelligent able people get together to talk education, it's a privilege to be able to sit back and watch.  

Day 2 

Andrew Adonis

Lord Adonis spoke impeccably for 40 minutes without notes.  His talk ranged from School governance to apprenticeships and though perhaps of limited relevance to me, here was clearly a man with a fine moral compass and serious ability.  The former 'thin controller' makes one wonder what might have happened had he been given the chance to push on his vision.

Ian Leslie

The find of the tournament for me.  There's something of the Gareth Malone about him, but far less irritating.  He spoke about his book 'Curiosity', and curiosity in general.  I love this word, and it has yet to be bastardised in the same way of 'passion' and 'engagement'.  With just the right amount of certainty, conjecture and whimsy, I found myself taken in by his calm manner.  Note to self: book him in for next year.

Kris Boulton

I liked him a lot, and clearly so do a lot of others, as room 1 of the Mandarin Pagoda was packed to the rafters.  All the gang were here in support: Daisy, Andrew Smith, Katie Ashford; just don't call them the 'new traditionalists'.  Kris is very likeable and earnest, and talked a lot of sense.  I got the feeling (as I get with a lot of the relatively inexperienced teacher bloggers) that his ideas are in the process of being formed rather than fully formed and that he is reacting to the circumstances in which he has found himself, rather than extolling some deep educational philosophy.  It felt a little as though I was in some sort of clandestine 'cell' a la Hans Fallada/George Orwell, where people of like mind felt able to express themselves without fear of Ofsted and/or progressive reprisal.  I agreed with pretty much all he said, and expect that he's an excellent teachers; I just don't recognise the system he's railing against.

Geoff Barton

I expect that he's given this talk (or something similar) many times before, so polished it was.  However, he could power the College with his enthusiasm, and the message is just as impressive as the man.  When I check Twitter at 6am, there's always some Barton to read already that morning.  He makes me want to read more, he makes me feel like a grammatical ignoramus and he does it all with plenty of jokes and being genuinely likeable.  What a star.  

Keith Vaz, Katie Hopkins, David Starkey, Claire Fox

Drivel from start to finish.  Keith quotes abstract soundbites (we need to give our children the best, it's not all about A* grades), Katie sounds like a rabid right-wing housewife (some people are failures and need to go into catering), David says f*ck and praises Brighton College and Claire says little, probably bemused by the directionless shambles of D-list celebrities with whom she's having to share a stage.

David Baddiel and Cosmo Landesman

David Baddiel was excellent, as always, but was let down in a huge way by his interviewer.  I had never heard of Cosmo, but he was very poor, with no research, no ability to sit and listen and seemingly no idea that people hadn't come to see him.  Even David was struggling by the end, resorting to telling a feeble anecdote about Gove just to get off the topic of pornography.

This was an outstanding educational occasion.  The opportunity to be inspired, to discuss, debate and to network was a great privilege and this is surely the gold standard by which all educational meets can be judged.  And the toilets were fragrant.

Numbers and memory

This time last year I talked a lot about numbers. I talked about the number of small prizes won and commendations awarded. There were over 2000 academic awards made last year; the number this year is similar.

Our lives are dominated by numbers.  Sometimes we are bombarded with so many numbers, they become tangled and lose meaning.  Understanding the meaning of numbers can help us to understand the progress we make at School, but in order to understand progress, we need to understand the numbers – is 65% good, or disappointing? It can be both, seen through the eyes of two different people.  Here’s an example, and I’d like you all to have a go: how long is a million seconds?  I haven’t given you very long, but if you said 11 and a half days, well done.  Now have a go at a billion seconds?  If you said 32 years, well done.  That’s how long it would take you to count to a billion, one number per second.  Translating those initial numbers into a more understandable format helped to give them meaning.

What are the numbers that are relevant to you this year?  Commendations gained, runs scored and wickets taken, exam percentages, netball results, A* grades predicted, Twitter followers, Facebook friends.  These are all numbers. Some matter, some are meaningless.  Make sure you concentrate on the ones that matter.  The number of A and A* grades achieved matters, number of Facebook friends doesn't. I am not suggesting that your number of actual friends doesn't matter, merely the number of Facebook acquaintances, which is hardly necessarily a measure of real friendship.

You need to make sure that certain numbers are going up - exam scores for example, and others go down - pink cards. Human lives can't be measured purely in numerical terms, but they give you a good idea of how that life is going.  Of course this relies on your being able to remember your numbers from last Quarter, or last year.  If you don’t remember anything from the past, it’s difficult to gauge how you are performing in the present.  I am always amazed by what pupils do and don’t remember.  We can't always control what we take away with us from days, but days are where we live.  Some advice that I give and I really want to stick gets forgotten immediately (it will happen during this assembly), and other throwaway comments are remembered for years.  Sometimes pupils ask me years later if I remember saying this or that to them, and even if someone did say it to them once, I'm pretty sure it wasn't me.

R S Thomas, in his poem Abersoch, touches on the nature of memory:

There was that headland, asleep on the sea,

The air full of thunder and the far air

Brittle with lightning; there was that girl

Riding her cycle, hair at half-mast,

And the men smoking, the dinghies at rest

On the calm tide.  There were people going

About their business, while the storm grew

Louder and nearer and did not break.

Why do I remember these few things,

That were rumours of life, not life itself

That was being lived fiercely, where the storm raged?

Was it just that the girl smiled,

Though not at me, and the men smoking

Had the look of those who have come safely home?

I wonder how many of you will remember this poem, its sentiment, its name and the name of the poet?

It's the process, stupid

I came across the following quote, linked from a link from a link. It's a quote from Saracens Rugby chief executive, Edward Griffiths:

https://twitter.com/mrocallaghanedu/status/473001203685920768 

I think this can apply to Schools, at least in some ways. Appointing clever, hardworking people, who have a broad range of interests themselves and are able to communicate with the pupils they teach is the most important part of my job. If you get it right, your School will develop organically into an effective institution without very much tinkering from the top.

Treating people well is important, but it is perhaps more complex in a School than in a rugby club. The players in a premiership rugby club are all men, and will be aged between about 20 and 35. The Oktoberfest (and similar) trips might be the stuff of dreams to lads in their 20s, but the thought of transposing my common room to Bavaria in the autumn doesn't sound like a very good, or realistic idea. People certainly need to feel valued, but being thanked at the end of a lesson by the pupils you have just taught is enough for me. I want management to give me a decent space for teaching, a reasonable timetable, a variety of classes and a sensible extra curricular load. I also want to feel supported in the sense that if I need help, I know who to ask. They should be able to help me, and won't judge me for asking. Beyond that, the rewards of the role are obvious: when pupils understand something that they didn't understand before, when they enjoy a book you have introduced them to, when they ask a question that makes you think about a topic in a whole new way. These are the daily rewards, and they have nothing to do with finding note-cards in your pigeon hole thanking you for something that was part of your job anyway. Small gestures, such as buying a colleague a drink at the end of a long day, are likely to be more appreciated than financial rewards, or timetable allowances, which lack the personal touch.

Perhaps where the Saracens approach most closely mirrors that of Schools is in the need to build a community. It is perhaps easier at a Boarding School, but if the majority of your common room treat the School as an office (enter at 9, leave at 5 - and yes, I know everyone marks and plans at home), it's hard to build that community. Helping pupils before or after School, having a drink with your colleagues at the end of the day, speaking with parents at Saturday sports fixtures, these all help to build a community where pupils, teachers and parents feel welcome. Never ask what your community can do for you. Communication can be effective over email or social media, but your community is easier to build if it has firm foundations - it must be centered.

The other point I think is worth emphasising is results being seen as outcomes of process. If you get the process right, you don't really need to worry about results. Again this is different for Saracens and Schools. Saracens play a lot of one-off 'winner takes all' ties, certainly in the cup competitions. In the latter stages of these competitions, all of the teams are good, and any team can beat any other team on any given day. One of the joys of sport is its unpredictability: the bounce of the ball, the Schoolboy error, the moment of genius that can decide games at the highest level, and Griffiths is right when he says that judgement on results alone is futile. The concept of 'deserving' in sport is often mentioned, with managers bemoaning the negative result when they had the majority of the possession and chances. You certainly don't always get what you deserve in top-level sport, but when it comes to examination results (at least from a whole-School perspective), you do get what you deserve. You are not competing against anyone else; one moment of genius from another pupil in the exam hall does not take away your grade, nor does another pupil not reading the question boost you to a higher level. You are in control of the situation, more like a snooker player in the balls than a rugby player scrapping to secure possession.

Schools need to be brave enough to ignore the quick fix. Don't start with the results and ask 'how can we improve?' Start with your process of education, start with your philosophy of education - and then question this. Exams are simply a celebration of knowledge gained up until that point. You might have two years with this set of pupils. How are you going to create the best set of chemists/geographers/mathematicians/linguists that they can be? A few weeks before the two years are up, you can then prepare them assiduously for an examination, but don't let the examination drive you. If you want to create pupils with a serious interest in literature, introduce them to everything you think is worth reading, don't simply plough through the ponderous Of Mice and Men (sorry, couldn't resist) because it represents the quickest and easiest route from A to B. You are not really doing the best for your pupils.

In summary: concentrate on process and results will be the glorious byproduct; look to build a community that includes everyone connected with the School; small daily rewards provide all the job satisfaction that most people need; working with talented and committed individuals day in, day out is something we should all be grateful for.

And if you do decide on Oktoberfest, remember to pace yourself and don't go for your first wee too soon.

Written for @edutronic_net #blogsync June 2014

That's Rich

I remember this image from my School days.  It's certainly quite powerful.  Given the likely scale of the 100th anniversary celebrations (books, magazine articles, newspaper columns, historical dramas, things starring Benedict Cumberbatch, programmes beginning 'The Real...' on Channel 5), it may well be the case that in twenty years time children will be asking their fathers what they did during the Great War festival of remembrance. It may go on for so long that you'll get trench foot sat in front of the TV or neuralgia from squinting at Max Hastings' latest tome.

I wonder if anyone in years to come will ask the question 'What did you do during the great Of Mice and Men debate?'. Twitter has been pretty red hot on this issue since the published changes to GCSE English Literature were made public last week.  Hashtags so ridiculous they would have made Robin Thicke wince were developed such as #govekillsmockingbird and #getgovereading. Celebrities as well as us normal folk jumped on the bandwagon, without bothering to read up on the detail of what was actually happening; the bandwagon swiftly gained momentum and wild assertions followed that books from outside the UK had been banned. Familiar Gove-bashing themes such as his (supposed) obsession with C19 literature, the Little Englander mentality etc didn't take long to be trotted out. It is amazing how quickly things snowball when people know what they want to believe. Even when people had the good grace to apologise later, it still came with a but...

If you were unfamiliar with the texts under discussion, you might have believed that Of Mice and Men in such an essential text that it trumps all others.  Once you've read this book, essentially you're done, because no book encapsulates racism/sexism/economic hardship and cultural change in the way that OMAM can, and all in around 100 pages too.  Hey, there's a film too, and a stage play, and if you're really lucky, that chap from Stars In Their Eyes might be playing Lennie.  OMAM is very good; it's relatively easy to read (and short); the characterisation is strong; it deals with fundamental human issues.  I can see why people would want to teach it, but surely it has become something of a crutch if around 9 of every ten pupils studied OMAM for their GCSE English Literature examination last year.  This can't be right can it?

I remember reading the book as a double-header with Cannery Row and I found the latter to be far more powerful, in particular with its depiction of maintaining dignity despite poverty and the strength that can be gained by being part of a community.  OMAM is not the only book that allows pupils to explore the issues it touches upon. A widening of the texts to be studied, an appreciation of the great literature produced in this country, with no text from anywhere being banned.  Not that controversial, surely?

The problem of teaching time was cited by many as a key objection to the new syllabus - there simply isn't enough time to cover the material, they say. Given that many Schools took advantage of the modular approach to GCSEs by sitting exams in year 10, thus voluntarily diminishing teaching time, this argument is specious. The other main argument was that the changes to the syllabus would harm the 'lower grade' pupils, or as I also had it put to me, the 'disadvantaged' pupils. Now I suspect that the latter comment referred to pupils who are less rich, economically speaking, though I was assured that it referred to the 'disadvantaged reader' (you may work out for yourself what that means). I believe that is it the most common and most dangerous fallacy in education that cultural capital is the preserve of the wealthy. Education should be the greatest driver of social mobility, but as long as well-meaning though misguided individuals continue to perpetuate the myth that great works of literature, Art, music are for 'Them not Us', we will continue to preserve this schism in education. We should be ambitious and expect our pupils to show ambition. We should not shy away from the seemingly difficult texts just because the language isn't modern. After all, Twilight has a larger vocabulary than Sense and Sensibility.

Bank account wealth does not equal cultural wealth, but education can be the key to both. A weekend in Dubai will set you back a four figure sum. A weekend spent reading Orwell won't cost you any money at all, but your eyes will be opened that bit wider. I noted a petition with 50,000+ signatures demanding a volte-face on the new GCSE specification. It is these petitioners that will hold back pupils, through a lack of ambition and a misguided sense that academic education isn't for everyone.

Some reflections at the end of the School year

Writing this on 19 May will undoubtedly irritate some people.  It's not even close to the end of the School year.  In my defence, the Upper Sixth and Fifth Form have gone (gone into exam overdrive, certainly) and the sun is out, which means that it is summer.  I have also taught 26 Saturdays this year, so in terms of days taught, my 19 May is your 1 July.

The end of the School year approaches, and this means cricket and exams.  Some other things happen at this time of the year too, but these are the most important.  There are just over 1100 pupils at my School, and as each pupil group shifts up a year, the current Upper Sixth will drop off the end and are let loose into the real world.  Around 10% of the 155-strong teaching body will spread their wings and fly (or fold back their wings and retire).  So the School prepares for its 459th new year, and everything changes.

I play a part in the lives of others, and I neither under nor over-estimate my impact.  My abiding sense of guilt means that I try to ensure that I could have done no more to help any pupil that under-performs.  When such a poor performance occurs, I like the line (delivered to the pupil): I suppose it is fair to say that we have both failed.  I, at least, have tried.  I've never used this line of course, and I don't suppose I ever will.  Taking responsibility for the performance of those you teach is one of the fundamental parts of getting teaching.  There are teachers who trumpet the part they played in the excellence of grades achieved, but explain the poor results with a they get what they get shrug of the shoulders.  I like the approach which involves stepping into the shadows when the result is excellent and stepping forward with a comforting arm when the result is poor.

I was 17 years old when I left School and I am 37 years old now.  This is my 20th year out of Schooling from a pupil perspective, though I will complete my 16th year of teaching in June.  I have been hanging out with School pupils for roughly 30 of 37 years and the longest time I've ever spent not in School was the first four years of my life.  Maybe I should find out what the real world is like some time?

Can one ever become friends with pupils they have taught?  I think it depends on the nature of your dealings with them.  As a senior manager, it is hard enough to make genuine friendships with colleagues let alone pupils.  Many of us like to put people in boxes and from a pupil perspective I think I'm well and truly in the person who tells you how hard you should be working all the time in assemblies and there's no way I want to listen to that any more than I have to kind of guy.  Perhaps the thought of a drink with me the year or two after leaving School isn't all that appealing.  We can't turn our perception of people on and off like a switch, and I don't resent that italicised perception.  How I really like to be perceived is summed up quite neatly here:

 

In every year group there are a select group pupils in whom I take a real interest - these are the ones I wonder where they will end up in years to come.  They are sometimes the ones who don't quite get it right at School and you want to know whether the extra freedom will allow them to shine.  Open the cage door and some fly, others fall and some can't seem the leave the perch.  Or they happen to be the pupils I think have genuine deep human qualities and I hope that others allow this to be realised.  I stay in touch with some, but it should be more; after all, it's easy not to lose contact, but I'd quite like them to want to stay in touch too.  Maybe I should teach the last lesson with my Twitter handle and Facebook address on the board, but then suppose no-one followed or added?  

I think many friendships are a matter of convenience.  How many friendships survive because of geography or dwindle because of the hassle of keeping them going?  Many friends are quite tangential - brilliant fun to play cricket with during the summer but put back in their cricket box come September.  Anyway, it's possible to have fun with almost any individual for a short amount of time: most people bring out their best stories upon first meeting.

I think I'll post this now, just as it is.

Do we really need to know this?

Questions form a large part of the educative process.  Teachers ask a lot of questions and are asked many in turn.  Most of the questions are welcomed, but the one in the title never falls into this category.  I have never answered the question with a straight 'no' (I tend to employ my best withering stare), but I wonder what the response to this answer would be?  To pack up one's books and leave?  To tune out until the material becomes more relevant?

What the pupil is really asking is whether they are likely to be directly questioned on this material in an examination.  This implies that all knowledge can be categorised as necessary or unnecessary.  The necessary stuff is to be found on the GCSE or A level syllabus, and the unnecessary stuff, well, that's simply unnecessary.  Why would you ever want to know anything that you weren't going to be tested on?

Examinations are important, or at least doing well in examinations is important, but examinations are best seen as a celebration of all knowledge gained up to that point.  The examination syllabus guides the teaching and revision process, and in the run-up to examinations, it becomes an almost biblical document.  But for most of the educative process, we do not find ourselves in the run-up to public examinations, and it is important to realise that not all great literature is to be found in the GCSE English syllabus and one cannot find all that is worth knowing about philosophy and ethics in the GCSE RS syllabus.

Teachers tend to blame the syllabus and to use it as a crutch in roughly equal measure.  If the pupils aren't finding the work interesting, laying the blame at the door of the syllabus is a standard strategy: 'we have to get through this, it's in the syllabus'.  Highlighting work that 'comes up on the exam all the time' is another tried and tested method to perk up the reluctant learner.  I do think it's important for pupils to know why one topic leads on to another and to be aware of how the subject is structured, but this shouldn't be done simply because section 3.1a of the syllabus leads into section 3.1b.  I wonder how many Lower Sixth lessons go by before exams, coursework, modules and syllabus are mentioned?

A simple philosophy for all Sixth Form teachers is this: you have two years to allow pupils to become the best Physicists/Historians/Hispanists they can be, and at the end of this time, you need to assiduously prepare these pupils for the examinations that will allow them to access the Higher Education institution of their choice.

Going back to the concept of necessary and unnecessary knowledge, can it be argued that any knowledge is unnecessary?  After all, even the most trivial fact might help you win some money in a pub quiz.  But it's far more than that, and I firmly believe that knowledge enhances your life.  Knowledge of the painter El Greco makes a visit to Toledo far richer; driving large distances when in the US is more pleasurable having read works by Kerouac and Steinbeck; knowledge of the Hillsborough disaster makes the recent Liverpool surge to the title far more poignant.  None of this knowledge will ever help you pass an examination, but without them, Toledo is simply a pretty town, a long drive in the US is simply necessary to get from A to B and Hillsborough is just a football stadium in Sheffield.  Knowledge means interest, knowledge means context and (in some cases) knowledge means power.  

Absence of knowledge can never be a good thing; this point I feel is unarguable and some fault must lie with the approach taken by teachers.  'Extra' knowledge, that is knowledge beyond the confines of the syllabus, is too often seen as being the privilege of the academically able, with academic extension something that is laid on for the scholars, the bright and the interested.  Of course this is not true; academic extension is for everyone, though it is inevitable that the nature of that extension will differ from pupil to pupil.  It is fundamentally wrong that any pupil should fail to interact with material that raises them from the bare bones of a subject.  A certain academic liberation exists when learning is done for its own sake.  Improving one's knowledge is an enjoyable process and in turn this leads to greater enjoyment of the world around us.  We need to get away from the mentality that all learning is simply a means to an end; I often hear pupils stating that they 'have to read this book as part of preparation for Oxbridge'.  If this is literally true, and it is simply being read for some necessary progression up the academic ladder, is the enjoyment of the book not removed, or at least seriously diminished?

And just to be clear, if any doubt remains: yes, you really do need to know this.    

Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition

I spend a fair amount of time reading education blogs and interacting with teachers on Twitter.  It is very clear that outside my sector the spectre of Ofsted looms large and the fear is genuine.  Ofsted's directives of 'progress every 15 minutes' and preferred styles of teaching are used as sticks with which to beat teachers by those in power in Schools.  Teachers cower before their SLT and the members of the SLT are beholden to do the will of Ofsted.  Ofsted knows what outstanding teaching looks like, and woe betide any teacher who does not fall in to line with the wishes of Wilshaw.  The difference between 'outstanding' and 'requires improvement' often seems to be whether one is willing to play the game and show Ofsted what they want to see.  This week's #SLTchat is an Ofsted special and @learningspy 's blog on his visit to Ofsted has broken viewing records.  It seems that the whole teaching fraternity in the maintained sector has an unhealthy obsession with the 'O' word.  

But I feel very much like an outsider on this one and the sensations I have described come only from the written experiences of others.  I don't know of any member of the teaching staff at my School who feels compelled to teach in a certain style nor any member who lives in constant fear of having their lessons graded.  We had a trainer in recently to deliver a PD session on 'outstanding teaching'; he spent a fair amount of time talking about what Ofsted like to see, and after a while people switched off, considering this to be less than relevant.  Gimmicks were high up on the agenda - all techniques designed to engage the reluctant learner - starting from the principle that no pupil is interested in working hard or learning about stuff.  They would all appreciate an easy way to memorise the names of all 20 teams in the Premier League, however.  

I felt more part of the gang when we received notification 23 days ago that our School was to be inspected (by ISI) 7 days later.  The inspection lasted for around 80 hours; it involved 15 inspectors, 154 teachers, support staff and 1100 pupils.  Here are a few things I learned from the experience:

1.  The inspection process is very stressful.  It's been a while since I felt the need to justify (over an extended period) what I do and how I do it to anyone, but inspection week felt like nothing else.  We were last inspected in 2008 and it felt as though 6 years of progress was being put to the test.  Would the inspectors see where progress had been made?  Would they understand our vision and ambitions for the School?  

I had four separate meetings (though they felt like interviews) and by the end my preferred approach was limit the talking (Ofsted would have liked this) and to simply feed each inspector a diet of paperwork comprising exam analysis, value added data, pupil voice mechanism and appraisal process.  Clearly the documentation could explain things better than I could.

2.  An Inspection brings people together.  Pupils are proud of the School.  Teachers are proud of the School.  Both groups take a pride in the role they play in making the School successful.  A deep sense of 'caring' was palpable during inspection week and this had the effect of knitting the community just a little more tightly together.  

3.  It doesn't take long to go out of touch.  I took up my current position in 2009 and when I think about how I (and my surroundings) have changed, it's by a factor of plenty.  Changes in the educational landscape take place quickly, with change dictated both by the Government and by technology.  Some of our inspectors had been retired from the front-line from around 2009 and have been retired from the classroom for even longer.  The excitement with which one of them greeted a ceiling-mounted projector suggested that the impact of Moore's Law had rather passed him by.

4.  Common ground is important to inspection success.  It seemed that often the things picked out for being examples of particularly good educational practice were related to things being done in the Inspectors' Schools, or things that they were looking to embed soon.  If an initiative is to be embraced, it requires teachers to be on-side.  Little is different for the Inspectors.

5.  Inspection is a good time to reassess your own priorities.  All I really wanted to do when I entered the profession was to teach really well (actually, I think moderately competently was the ambition in the early days but I can pretend that I set my sights higher).  I am proud of all the paperwork, policies, tracking, reporting etc but it isn't the reason I became a teacher.  I still teach a 60% timetable and I think I will find it hard to reduce this any time soon.

6.  After it's over, does anything change?  I don't know any School that is perfect.  There are always things to work on and to improve.  If a team of inspectors could unearth significant and systematic weaknesses that you were hitherto unaware of during the 3 days they spend with you, it suggests that your School management is highly deficient.  It's good when no far-reaching recommendations are found, but this is accompanied by a slight sense of anti-climax. 

And following on from point 5, what happened during my lessons in inspection week?  I thought they were pretty good, as it happened, but the inspectors wouldn't know that; no-one came to see me.

Clarifying roles and responsibilities

I've been lucky in my teaching career that I have never had a complaint about the quality of my teaching.  This is not supposed to be false modesty: I know of some excellent teachers who have been the subject of complaints and some pretty lousy ones who seem to go beneath the parental radar.  I have been challenged over things I have said when discussing the academic progress of individual children (sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly) and I have defended the teaching competence of colleagues, firstly as a Head of Department and latterly as Director of Studies (mostly because the accusations were baseless, occasionally because it was simply the professional thing to do, whilst all the time trying to solve the problem behind the scenes).  In the vast majority of cases, the expectations of parents are wholly reasonable; they understand their children, their interests and capabilities and will play the Wenger role to perfection, meaning that they will defend their offspring to all outsiders in public whilst giving them a proper going over in private when the situation demands.  I don't respect those individuals who feel that paying a large sum of money for an education somehow guarantees enhanced grades and places at 'top' universities and I think that the triangle of child, parents and teacher should be close to equilateral at all times.  It certainly shouldn't be the case that two sides of the triangle ever gang up on the other side.  I have experience of all three possibilities here, but the most common side to get a bashing used to be the child, and now seems to be the teacher.  When a parent looks to strengthen their relationship with their son or daughter by picking a fight with a teacher on their behalf with no evidence of need, it is unfortunate.

In terms of education, both parents and teachers (and many other people besides) have some responsibility.  Clearly the two mentioned above are the key people, but authors, journalists, TV presenters, documentary makers, musicians, sportsmen etc will end up playing some part in the education process, whether they like it or not.  I don't think I have ever been explicit when it comes to defining my role as a teacher in the education of the pupils I teach.  No parent has ever asked me to define my responsibilities in their child's educational development.  It's as though there's always been a tacit understanding of what was offered and expected.  I suppose that my role as a teacher of chemistry would have involved (in no particular order):

1.  Teaching the contents of the exam syllabus so that it was understood
2.  Preparing for examinations to ensure a pupil's grade represented the best of their ability
3.  Exploring areas of interest and relevance within the subject
4.  Preparing pupils for challenges beyond School, which has usually meant university
5.  'Sowing seeds'

There isn't much crossover between what I would do as a teacher of chemistry and how a parent would be involved in the education of their child and I have deliberately left out the pastoral care aspect of boarding education (where I have spent 13 of my 16 years as a teacher).  The area of commonality across all Schools is the academic side of education.  The point where I think that teachers and parents cross-over is number 5: when it comes to sowing seeds.  This is also maybe the point at which parental responsibility trumps that of a teacher.

Why do I have deep interests in Art, science, cricket, music, food, wine, travel and literature as a 37-year old man?  It is because I was exposed to them as a child, and not in a manner where they were rammed down my throat.  I was taken to Lord's (when the day was sunny), the Science Museum (when it rained) and many places far from these shores.  I was read to and it was expected that I would read.  I used to devour books on holiday but when I wanted to watch TV at home I was never forced to pick up a book instead.  I was taken to concerts and I asked to be taken to more - I remember one time my father asking if I really wanted to come.  I didn't think parents asked questions like this.  When I considered it, I wasn't sure what the answer was, but I thought it was my choice and this was important to me.  I was taken to art galleries, but not dragged round art galleries, and there would usually be a nice lunch or a picnic to make the memory of the day a good one.  I was encouraged to be adventurous with food (even though I was naturally very cautious) and I was given wine which made me feel grown-up.  Each and every Welsh castle had an interesting and different story associated with it, even though they all tended to look the same.  And again, there would always be a picnic to have somewhere in the grounds.  Put simply, whereas I think that all the interests I have now are ones that I have come to myself, the reality is that the seeds were sown years ago, mostly by what happened in the holidays rather than by what happened at School.

That's the role of parents when it comes to educating children.  Leave the syllabus, exams and subject extras to the teachers.  Don't complain if the teacher is boring (children can still learn a lot from boring people, and they'll have plenty of boring lecturers at university and boring bosses later in life).  If the teacher is incompetent, that's the time to complain.  Children need exposure to books, films, walks, music, art, theatre, food and conversation.  Sow the seeds and then stand back and watch your child reap the benefit.  Some seeds will germinate immediately, some will take years and others will never see the light of day, which is inevitable.  

As a final point, it is worth remembering that financial richness does not necessarily equal cultural richness and it's a modern fallacy that art is elitist and football is the game of the people.  Last time I looked, it never cost £60 to visit an art gallery.  Some seeds take to ground that may appear stony and lacking depth; fling enough quantity and type of seed and something will come of it, be sure of that. 

Desert Island Discs

1.  Dayvan Cowboy - Boards of Canada

Few songs are truly epic.  On a day like this by Elbow isn't epic, but Davyan Cowboy is.  BoC write music for the films that were never made - most of their songs have an air of foreboding, like the soundtrack to a Hopper painting, but Dayvan Cowboy is one of the few that are uplifting.  I like to think that it was the music going through Felix Baumgartner's head when he made his jump from space.

2.  Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks

Reminds me of my parents, who met in London in the late 1960s.  I hope that they met at Waterloo station on at least one occasion and I hope they walked across Waterloo bridge together, arm in arm, listening to the Kinks.

3.  3 Hours - Nick Drake

His only song with a personal friend named in the lyrics (Jeremy, who I think was a friend from Marlborough).  Voice and guitar have been done to death but Nick Drake makes voice and guitar sound like this is how it should be done.  You feel like you've already heard the songs, you feel like you know where they are going and you get a strong sense of the kind of person he was - quiet, introverted and sad.  A man not for this world.

4.  Clash - Caravan Palace

If you could be a member of any band in the world, wouldn't it be this one?  The nearest thing any of us will get to the soundtrack of the hedonistic 20s.  I like the fact that Baz Luhrmann went for the obvious choice of Jay-Z for his overblown Gatsby re-make.  Caravan Palace have a bit too much class for that.

5.  The Age of the Understatement - The Last Shadow Puppets

Arctic Monkeys meets David Bowie, and what's not to like about that?  It's the music I think Alex Turner would produce more of were he a solo artist, it's got a touch of the epic about it, a very silly cold war video and one the best titles.  We live in an age of perpetual over-statement, at least where social media is concerned, and I think I wish that the title were an adequate description of Britain today.

6.  Requium - Mozart

Ok, it's a bit like choosing 'Catcher in the Rye' as your favourite book, and it looks like it's making a rather obvious nod to all things classical, but try watching Amadeus as a ten-year old and not being taken with the Confutatis Maledictis.  It's even better than Falco.

7.  King of Carrot Flowers - Neutral Milk Hotel

Reminds me of my favourite person - musically spare, mostly lyrical nonsense but these two things some together to make something that is beautiful, and seems profound, even though it's probably not.

8.  Entertainment - Phoenix

A band that makes you feel like you know them.  They don't try too hard to make perfect pop music and their 'Take Away' set of videos for La Blogoteque is the best thing you'll see on youtube.

9.  Sugar Kane - Sonic Youth

A song that you notice more things about the more you listen, musical arrangement-wise.  It's about Marilyn Monroe's character in Some Like it Hot and I think she'd have liked the overall feel.

10.  A day in the Life - The Beatles

Ahead of its time.  Lennon's finest hour.  Meaningless and sad.

Russell Brand's Televised Revolution

The modern form of political activism, involving sharing or liking on facebook, has gone into overdrive since the appearance of the darling of the unthinking classes on last week's Newsnight.  The 'Brand makes Paxman look ridiculous' youtube clip keeps appearing in my timeline, and Twitter pages roll over and over with platitudes for the man.  It seems as though the nation has finally found a champion, someone who speaks up for them against the villainous disingenuous politicians. It's quite clear that Russell Brand exemplifies a modern form of style over substance, but mention this on Twitter and you can almost hear the boing as many leap to his defence.  The standard line is that he's raising important issues that get glossed over by politicians, but this goes against fact and reason.  The news is full of copy about exactly the issues he raises: fracking, social mobility, drug crime etc.  Maybe politicians aren't doing enough, but he's doing nothing.  He's not even suggesting anything concrete.  I'm pretty sure that Kennedy didn't rely on the use of long words and antiquated English to make his point, but RB certainly does, and he's taking the country with him, onward toward revolution.  One other difference is that Kennedy had some ideas to go along with the multiple sexual encounters.

How has RB managed to win over so many?  His message is simplicity itself - "let's be compassionate", "let's share the wealth", "let's stop killing the planet".  So far, so reasonable.  But these are vague utopian ideals, hard to argue against, but rather harder to implement.  It's akin to saying that gassing innocent people in Syria is bad therefore I am against it.  Cue liking and sharing.  No need to do anything about it, because 'awareness' has been raised.  We're all about raising awareness these days, less keen on actually doing anything.  The most obvious question is "what do you suggest we do Russell?" but on that point he goes rather silent.  Apparently thinking through solutions to complex political and social problems and inequalities is a little more tricky.  Never mind that - just tell people that a revolution is coming (and it's already started in his head remember) and that'll be enough for the moment.  Like and share.

But it's not really RB's fault that the public has taken to him.  It's not really even the fault of the unthinking masses - we live in an age where most people are so busy with modern life that getting them to use a quarter of their brain to think about issues such as these is asking a lot.  I blame the BBC.  The BBC has some in for quite a lot of stick in recent months, and here's how they are to blame for the rise of Brand's brand:

1.  Paxman's performance on Newsnight was surprisingly lacklustre and when his opening salvo of "you don't vote, so you have no right to an opinion" didn't seem to work, the fight seemed to go out of him, leaving Brand to dominate the rest of the interview.  Brand is certainly articulate - no ums from him, nor pauses for breath - but Paxman let him go on, streaming verbal diarrhea at the camera without offering serious challenge.

2.  The BBC put him on Newsnight last year as an antidote to Peter Hitchens.  I'm pretty sure you could put Fred West on the other side of the table from the Daily Mail version of Hitch and at least some people watching would come down on his side.  He's intelligent (Hitchens) but lacks any noticeable humanity so that RB looks like a saint simply by disagreeing with him.  Their debate on sentencing for drug use was childish and go no further than "lock them up"/"show them compassion".  Ever since Ian Katz (he of the "innit" tweeting) took on Newsnight it's been noticeably downgraded.

3.  The BBC put him on Question Time regularly.  Similarly to the point above, he never has any genuine competition.  Just like that chap from the Beautiful South used to be wheeled out as the antidote to complicated political ideas, now RB is that Messiah-like figure (to use his own modest description).  He is never going to need to prove himself in the political arena so he is the one with the license to make broad political statements about how we can improve the country.

Put simply, the BBC put Brand on a platform so low that he is unable to fall off.  Why not give him a genuinely challenging platform, or better still, ask for some substance to go with the style people seem to like so much.

The hipocrisy is self-evident.  Happy to hawk HP tablets but rails against big business.  He's disgusted by the inequality of wealth but happy to shell out $6.5M for a Hollywood Hills mansion.  I'd start to look a little closer to home Russell, when it comes to looking at distribution of wealth, because we really didn't need to re-make Arthur, and so badly.  And if you really think that Hugo Boss "make the Nazis look ****** fantastic", how about you don't attend the GQ Man of the Year Awards, which they sponsor.

Russell Brand is on tour tonight in Newcastle, just in case that had escaped your attention.  No doubt the show will lay out his manifesto for political and social revolution.  Or maybe he'll just speak like a child from a Hogarth etching and talk about his penis.  I know which one my money is on.

A few thoughts on passion, motivation and inspiration

Passion: possibly the most overused word.  From personal statements to the Great British Bake-off, it seems that everyone is has a passion, whether it be for the works of Sartre or the contents of a muffin tray.  I don’t consider myself to be passionate about anything.  I am simply interested in lots of things and I suspect that most people substitute the word interest for passion simply because it sounds more impressive (in the same way that inn sounds more spooky and foreboding than pub).

Inspiration is another word misused on a regular basis, because admiration and inspiration are two different things.  I was recently asked for some advice from a friend who is a consultant to an ‘inspirational speaker’.  This speaker was keen to expand his repertoire to include Schools.  He has only recently become an inspirational speaker and the catalyst for his new career was having his leg blown off below the knee whilst serving with the British Army in Afghanistan.  I have great admiration for the British Army and I admire him as a person, after all it can’t be easy having your leg blown off.  Putting admiration to one side, I was unsure how such a background would be ideal preparation for a career in inspirational speaking?  He’s got a good story, but surely we could tell how it began and ended even before he got up on stage?  A comment from one School was that “previously pupils had complained that their History coursework was hard; now they know that it’s nothing compared to losing a limb in a roadside explosion”.  They are right of course, but simply being presented with a worse thing than the task with which you are currently struggling shouldn’t count as inspirational.  It could be argued that one’s own struggles have been put into perspective, but we’re generally aware of the natural order of things (losing a limb > troubles with coursework) without having it spelled out.

People who have been successful in one career can generally rely on a ready-made second career as an inspirational speaker.  Former Olympic athletes are a good example.  The general message seems to be that if you have a good amount of natural talent (at running or swimming, for example) and you nurture that talent for many years, often to the total exclusion of other pursuits, you have a chance at becoming good enough to challenge the people who are the best in the world in that field.  It’s difficult to disagree with the logic, but I’m not sure how inspiring I find it.  Essentially I’m being told that natural talent plus hard work plus single-minded determination gives good results.  It is logical but is it inspiring?

Would we not be better advised to take inspiration from people closer to home?  To quote a simple example, every year sees wild fluctuations in the academic performance of the Houses, despite similar exposure to all the external inspiration that the School can muster.  We are inspired (either in a positive or negative way) far more by our peers than by former Olympic middle-distance runners, war-hero amputees and even our teachers.  Our peers don’t tend to have the catchy back-story, but their attitude to work and life impacts upon us on a day by day basis.  No man is an island; the effect of those around us on our performance is significant.

We can take inspiration from a variety of people, but I much prefer the idea of self-motivation to motivation from an external source.  It is our duty to be self-motivated.  We should take a pride in being motivated to be the best we can be in all that we do.  I often hear that grade predictions act to motivate or demotivate pupils.  But motivation comes from within.  If you are demotivated you should look inwards to find out why rather than blaming external factors.  If your predictions are high, you’ve got high targets to aim for.  If your predictions are low, you’ve got something to beat to prove the doubters wrong. 

So, to summarise: be inspired by those close to you; have admiration for those who are successful; be self-motivated; be passionate (if that’s really what you mean) and be interested (because that’s what you probably mean).  No-one should really be passionate about bakery products, unless you’re Marcel Proust.        

How Twitter ruined your life

Twitter replaces an awful lot.  It replaces live sport, breaking news, your actual friends.  It's great for connecting you to people and events and it's true to say that almost everything in which I have an interest (museums, galleries, sports teams, newspapers, travel destinations) has an associated Twitter feed, in many cases a better start-point for information than the website.  I always try to explain Twitter to people as an information-filter: it's about the information that you gather in, not the information that emanates from you.  Twitter is for your eyes, not your mouth.  My own use of Twitter has changed over the 5+ years I've been a user (phrase deliberate).  I now use it in a far more professional context, which may explain why I've become more dull over time.

A recent study shows that over 70% of Twitter users check their feed within 3 minutes of waking up.  Leaving aside this most obvious way that Twitter can ruin your life (addiction), there are several more subtle negative aspects to Twitter.  Guard against them.

1.  Only following people whose opinions you agree with.

Being open to ideas and opinions is important, but following only people who agree with you is likely to cement your position even before a discussion has started.  I've had the misfortune to work with one or two people whose confidence in their right-ness was astounding.  If at any point you disagreed with them, you were either an idiot, or someone who had simply not thought enough about the argument: think it through again, and I'm sure you'll agree with me.  If you are going to argue, it's important to be open to persuasion.  It's the discussion that should be important, not the 'winning'.  It's also hard to 'win' an argument in 140 characters, especially against someone with a long-ish Twitter handle.  For every person who agrees with you fundamentally, try to follow one who doesn't, unless the first person you followed was the Anne Frank house, for example.  You'll find your feed has far more balance and you might even come to respect the opinions of those who disagree with you.

2.  The over-thought Bio.

Changing your profile picture on a regular basis is just about acceptable, but changing your Bio is odd.  You are not David Bowie and you don't need to continually re-invent yourself.  I'm not even sure what the point of a Bio is, and if you're trying to crow-bar some comedy into what you write, stop it.  Stop it now.  There are some things that shouldn't need to be written: if you have kids, we take it as read that you think they are 'wonderful'.  If you work in IT, you do not need to state that you have 2.0 kids (that joke became obsolete around the same time as the ZX Spectrum).  Stating that you are 'partial to the odd glass of wine' does not make you sound like a lot of fun, just someone without any genuine interests.  The Bio is meant for people to see at a glance if they wish to follow you or not, but reading the top 5/10 Tweets from someone's timeline is a far more reliable way of telling what you're getting.  It didn't take me long to find two examples of bafflingly pointless Bios:

'Editor and professional procrastinator.  Massively confused by the whole thing'

'Curmudgeon.  Neither in School, nor of school, but by school.  Brace yourself - there may be a kerfuffle'

No, I've no idea either.

3.  Your dinner.

No-one cared what you ate for dinner before you were on Twitter, and nothing has changed.  Did you ever take a polaroid photo of your evening meal and pass it round the office the following day? (note: this is rhetorical, I hope).  By all means post photos of your culinary creations, but to avoid a false sense of over-importance, you must first assume that no-one is going to view them.

4.  Being proud to be blocked.

Blocking people is fairly unusual.  The only people I ever block are generally spam sex-bots with alluring names like @ej35xxx80.  Famous people with lots of followers seem to have endless reserves of patience and will generally threaten blocking before actually doing so; you've actually got to be pretty offensive to have people hit the block button on you.  Being blocked shouldn't be something to be proud of, but I've seen lots of Bios where people are delighted to state that they've been blocked by someone they disagree with, which strikes me as wrong.

5.  Protecting your account.

Twitter is public.  It's pretty much the whole point of Twitter.  If you want to protect yourself from everyone but your nearest and dearest, that's what Facebook is for, your real friends.  People with 7 followers and a protected account might just be missing the point.  I'd understand if what you're writing is top secret (maybe you're working towards who really killed Kennedy), but then Twitter is probably not your ideal medium.

And now I'm off to make some truffled eggs.  Photo on Instagram in 5.

Outside In: Education, Twitter and the Herd Mentality

Outside In: Education, Twitter and the Herd Mentality: During my teacher training, Twitter proved an essential tonic. Sat at the back of the latest class in which some daft idea was ‘offered’ (I...

False dilemma

I am no expert on critical thinking, but the title of this blog post refers to a standard argument fallacy, that of the false dilemma.  It's a technique beloved of low-grade arguers, where in order to promote their line of thought, it is presented as one of only two possible alternatives, with the other option usually picked for the reason that it's totally inappropriate.

Here's a good example, about global climate change:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ in which the presenter limits our options for dealing with climate change as 'do something' or 'do nothing'.  Whereas I understand that 'do nothing' is a stand-alone option, a myriad of possibilities lie within the 'do something' heading.  If I were to donate £1 to climate change research, we would still be doing something, just nothing very significant and I'm not sure that many climate change advocates would consider this to be doing enough to allow them to rest easy.

Twitter is a good forum for educational debate, though as @oldandrewuk and @toryeducation proved yesterday, it's tricky to win an argument on Twitter.  It's also good for providing links to education blogs that are worth reading.  The problem with many of the blog posts, though probably not the bloggers themselves, is that the majority can be placed firmly on one side of the argument or the other.

The argument goes something like this:

Blog A: teachers are meant to teach.  There's nothing wrong with tried and tested didactic methods.  Pupils aren't in the class to have fun, they are there to learn.  Learning is characterised by good teacher subject knowledge and hard work from pupils.

Blog B: teachers are facilitators.  Pupils should work in groups as much as possible in order that peer teaching can take place.  Education is more about skills and problem solving than merely acquiring dry facts; all information can be found on google anyway.

This will generally be followed by all those who agree with Blog A re-blogging it to their own blog, re-tweeting its existence and complimenting the writer for telling the truth about education.  All those who agree with Blog B will do something similar with Blog B and will challenge (usually on Twitter) those who agree with Blog A (with the reverse also being true).

But this argument isn't black and white.  Blog A is no more true than Blog B and vice versa.  To see the debate as one with only two answers is a false dilemma and if the answer needs defining at all it's more of a continuum than a right/wrong.  Every teacher should feel happy placing themselves at one end of the continuum or the other, depending on the subject, topic, year group, ability of the class, time of day or just for the need to experiment.  

Sometimes I teach lessons which are characterised by an awful lot of teacher talking and other lessons involve pupils finding out things for themselves with very little input from me.  Sometimes the pupils walk out and I know they possess far more knowledge than when they entered the room and other times we've just had some fun (though I feel sure to be corrected on this one if any of the pupils I teach ever read this).  There isn't a right way and a wrong way to teach - I've seen superb lessons that bore virtually no resemblance to other superb lessons I've observed.  I've also seen dire lessons dominated by the teacher and dire lessons where it was difficult to know if a teacher was in the room.  One of the greatest things about teaching is the flexibility it affords and yet some people are keen to be hamstrung by their own certainty that their method is the one that 'works'.

Much as I like Twitter, some people spend so long defending their own method and attacking others that it seems as though that's all they do - defend and attack.  There are other alternatives; it's what one might call a false dilemma.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Actually, espresso seems to be the hardest word, at least to pronounce and if you happen to work as a 'barista' for any major UK coffee chain, it's nigh on impossible: hashtag eXpresso.

The need for an apology has been highlighted several times in recent months, with David Cameron's apology being the most in demand.  He's been asked to apologise for the British massacre at Amritsar, for the Bloody Sunday shootings, for the police errors and subsequent cover-up at Hillsborough.  Each time the significance of the event seems to have been lost in the desperate clamour for apology, which is unfortunate but inevitable given the need for a simple banner headline.  The events (in 1919, 1972 and 1989) have nothing to do with Cameron personally and therefore he is in effect being asked to apologise for the faults of others.  I don't think anyone would argue that British people in authority were at fault in each of these cases, and given that few if any of them are around to apologise now, it seems that if an apology is required it must carry most weight when delivered by the man at the top.  Not even the most ardent Cameron-haters would suggest that he's apologising for any wrong-doing on his part, so what's the problem?

We all apologise multiple times every day - when we hand over a £20 note to pay for a single stamp to when someone barges into us in the street - we simply can't wait to apologise.  Maybe it's because we'll never see these people again, or because we feel that it's merely customary to apologise, or because it's simply a learned reaction.  We're not really sorry of course, and maybe that's why it's easier to get the word out.

An apology should make everyone feel better, or at least make a person on one side of the apology feel better.  It's a way of drawing a line under things; it signals the time to move on.   I hesitate to use the dreadful word 'closure', but that's what I'm hinting at.  However, in too many cases it's seen as a sign of weakness to apologise; one is handing the initiative to the other person and providing them with back-up ammunition to be brought out during a later argument. 

Problems tend to arise because we feel the need to categorise apologies under so many headings, some of which are likely to inflame the situation:

1.  I'm apologising for something I have done wrong and feel that it's right to say sorry.

2.  I'm apologising even though I don't think I've done anything wrong.  This tends to be used as a way of diffusing an argument one wants to get out of.

3.  I'm apologising because you're upset with me even though I don't think I did anything to upset you.  This is usually delivered as an apology which isn't really an apology at all: 'I'm sorry that you feel this way' i.e. it's actually mostly your fault that you feel this way.

4.  I'm apologising for the situation, even though it's clearly someone else's fault.  I shoulder overall responsibility and therefore it's reasonable for me to apologise.

I'd suggest that 1 is a pretty good reason to apologise and 4 is not someone we should shy away from.  I do a fair amount of 4 in my job and it's surprising how often it catches people off-balance when they demand an apology and you give it to them.  They often seem disappointed and had hoped they would be able to get in a few jabs before the knock-out.  It's as though there's something disconcerting about the immediacy and unexpectedness of an apology.

Maybe a few people in power could learn from bogun Aussie PM Julia Gillard.  Her recent adoption apology was well delivered and fully appropriate.  It didn't make her seem weak, merely reasonable.  It may not have provided 'closure' to many, but I'm sure it increased the collective 'feeling better-ness', and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.  

The Stag Do

I am getting married in April.  I'm also in the middle of planning my stag.  This should be one of the easiest things to organise, bearing in mind that (at least technically) I have a free-rein to do whatever I want.  The main problem here is that when I have the freedom to do whatever I want to do, one of the last things I would choose is to spend an evening/weekend in all-male company, with various friends from different stages of my life.  This is the eternal quandary of the stag-do, namely that if they're so amazing, why don't we do exactly the same thing more often? There's nothing stopping us after all.  This is of course also known as the 'Christmas pudding dilemma', bearing in mind how many people claim to love it and yet only eat it once a year.

The first thing about the stag is that we are no longer in our early/mid-20s.  When men gather for stag-dos, they tend to regress into the person they were when they were about 21, which for most of my gathering is about 15 years ago.  When we were 21, we were keen to drink any sort of filth that would get you drunk cheaply, we thought shots were a superb idea (yes, even Goldschlager) and we went to dance in fairly gritty London clubs (please do not mistake gritty for 'cool' - we were firmly in the Loop/Oxygen/Crazy Larry's end of the market).  The reasons that none of us do this any more are simple and complimentary.  Firstly, no-one wants to see a group of fat, balding 35-year olds dressed in chinos and a 'party shirts' attempt to chat to women around half their age whilst dancing like Geography teachers at the end of term disco.  On the flip-side, we don't really want to put ourselves through this shame either, and this suits us (and those that have taken over residence in Embargos) just fine.  Until the stag that is, where it becomes compulsory to make this part of the evening's entertainment.  For every married man with 2 young kids who chooses to go mental at the opportunity to do a Jagerbomb, there's about another 15 looking about as awkward as those at a trappist monk convention in Vegas.

The evening entertainment of course has to follow on from the day's activity.  The word 'activity' is one to be wary of.  It generally tends to mean one of four things - off-roading, clay pigeon-shooting, go-karting or paint-balling.  These are all quite manly, but they're also things that no-one ever chooses to do unless they're on a stag.  When was the last time you saw a group of grown men go go-karting or turn up at laser-quest?  It's worth pointing out here that this is still better than the hen-do mentality, where women mentally regress even further (to approximately about age 9) and do arts and crafts stuff such as plate-painting and decoupage.

The other thing is the dynamics of the group.  Unless you've kept all your friends from School (and have made none more) you're likely to have a pretty diverse set of friends with diverse interests, few of which have even met each other.  Has anyone ever said that their best night out recently was in a single sex-crowd, where each person knew only about 20% of the gathering, but really really well?  Somehow I doubt it.

Anyway, we're going to eat a pig and if this doesn't sound like fun to you, you're not invited.  

   

Dead Pool 2013

First post of 2013, and pride of place goes to the Dead Pool.  Here are my predictions of those well-known faces unlikely to see out the year.  I've taken a scientific research-based approach this time round since none of my picks for 2012 did the honourable thing and all are still alive and well as of today.  Fingers crossed that we haven't seen the last of the cold weather this winter.  Please remember that this is all tongue-in-cheek.

1.  Hugh Hefner.  Lorded in the 90s as some kind of new-lad favourite, it's difficult not to feel a sense of nausea as the 86-year old Hef married one of his Playmates this week, who happens to be 60 years his junior.  Going on the plot of the terrible Madonna film 'Body of Evidence', the plot of which involves her marrying older men (though they'd need to be well into 3 figures now for any re-make to be possible) and sexing them to death to claim the life insurance.  Maybe this is the plan of Hef's new bride (the rather standardly named Crystal) as I can't imagine how keen she is to rub up against something with the texture of a leather briefcase.

2.  Michael Winner.  Surely a shoo-in?  He's already been on the phone to Dignitas since doctors told him in mid-2012 that he has approximately 18 months to live.  Stoic and unapologetic to the end, he's burgled a career out of making several poor films in the 70s, some truly execrable movies in the 80s and re-inventing himself as an uber-snob food critic in the 90s.  Will probably be remembered as some sort of loveable British eccentric, but don't expect a season of films at the BFI - it's strictly channel 5 if you're lucky.

3.  Margaret Thatcher.  She's in hospital more often than Price Philip and looks a darn sight worse.  Deserves a proper tribute when she does pop off.  She's done far more for women than the Spice Girls ever did and yet she's likely to be pilloried by a load of dim folk that don't even remember her from the power days.  

4.  Clare from Steps.  Not sure if her exponential weight gain continues apace, but this chubby-chaser's dream went from size-Moss to size-Adele pretty quickly and far beyond.  She's projected to weigh more than a Caribbean island by the end of 2013.

5.  Ricky Hatton.  During his career he displayed the ability to lose (before a fight) and gain (after a fight) huge amounts of weight (a bit like Clare, only with the losing bit too).  Now that he's finally packed up from the ring, it looks like nowt but chips and diabetes for RH. 

6.  Shane McGowan.  How is this man still alive?  Does he buy a new defibrillator every Xmas when the fairytale of NY royalties come in?  He made the skeletal chap from the Stereo MCs look healthy, and that was over 20 years ago.  I've not done my research here, so maybe he's calmed down, moved to the country and is now growing his own organic veg and championing the benefits of pilates, but it seems unlikely.  I can't bear to google him to find out, lest I get a look at the teeth.

7.  Woody Allen.  Midnight in Paris was one of the most horrendous films I've ever watched, and his output diminishes with every flick made.  Extrapolating from MiP, he's likely to be making films that even Winner would disown at some point soon.  Maybe this one would be for the best.

8.  Clint Eastwood.  Shame to think that Gran Turismo wasn't all that long ago, but in those few short years Clint's gone from being hard-man Grandfather to utterly mental rambling codger.  Of course everyone's seen his 'invisible Obama' speech to the Republicans:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIBGIXLDrAk

which at least proved that there's one more insane Republican than Mitt Romney.  It would be a shame if Clint ended up being remembered for this.