I have just been listening to Radio 1 encouraging students to put random words into their homework and text the program telling them how much trouble they can get into.
I am utterly appalled.
Getting unmotivated students to complete homework to the best of their ability is hard enough, without DJs on Radio 1 advocating putting in random words and phrases jsut for the risk of getting into trouble.
The BBC should not be allowed to get away with this.
Our government consistently tells us of the rise in standards in our schools. Of course, this is clearly evidenced by the increase of numbers achieving higher grades at GCSE and A level examinations.
Clearly.
As one of the students who took the new style of AS and A2 examinations in 2002, I can categorically say that they are easier than the A levels that they replaced. I can prove this both anecdotally and, more importantly for our politicians, logically:
The new AS levels were meant to be half way between GCSEs and A levels, while the A2 exams would be the equivalent level to the old A levels. Now, please correct me if I am wrong, but if instead of studying at A level standard for two years students study at that level for one, their degree of knowledge, and expertise is logically going to be lower - they will have studied and learnt less.
If I may, I would like to put this discussion into a context; I don’t believe examinations to be a good way of assessing one’s grasp of a subject. However, I am yet to discover a better way for employers to distinguish between those who ‘can’ and those who ‘can’t’ speak French, for example.
In actual fact, I happen to think that foreign language exams are one of the few ‘good’ ‘real-life’ tests sat by students in schools today. In my opinion they recreate real-life situations far better than other exams - one goes through exactly the same emotions when asked ‘Was machst du in dein Freizeit?‘ in a German oral exam as they do when they try to ask for a railway ticket in Berlin. Why our standard-raising government wants to abolish oral examinations, then, is absolutely beyond me.
Having taught teenagers (and, I may add, from self-analysis!) I know that making exams easier doesn’t only allow students to get higher marks. It also allows them to do ‘OK’ by doing far less.
Should we not, if anything, be making exams harder and pushing students rather than allowing a generation of people who by trundling along know very little, unlike those who may have got Cs or Ds in the old A levels, yet worked very hard to get them, and achieved a great deal more than a B student of today?
“I am the Captain of the Pinafore”, HMS Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan
How could one pick anything other than a song from a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta to reflect bumbling Boris? The wittiness, humour and, it may be added, apparent idiocy contained in the operetas sum up the Tories’ Mayoral candidate so absolutely I wonder whether the Carl Rosa company have thought of employing Mr Johnson?
On the face of it, Sullivan’s music is very simple - just like Boris Johnson. However, what has given his operettas such longevity is the wittiness of the writing and the extent to which he pastiches previous styles. In this way, he is very much like Mr Johnson as well (though I am not quite convinced as to whether the present-day politician is quite a intentional in this respect!)
Just before the Captain and crew sing this song, there is a little section of recitative. Traditionally, recit (as it is commonly known) is pretty tuneless and only serves to further the story (the songs are generally about emotions and only enhance our understanding of the characters). In this example, however, the only words sung are general ‘passing-the-time-of-day’ niceties such as “Good morning” and “I’m in reasonable health”.
This may not seem particularly humorous or witty today, but to an audience used to the recit of Mozart and Rossini, Gilbert and Sullivan were really being rather subversive.
Before Boris Johnson was selected to stand for London Mayor, I saw a hustings session between the four Conservative candidates. I couldn’t help but laugh the Tory MP as he spoke; he was desperately trying to produce grandiose oratory and be a great statesman, yet he could only produce a poor imitation of the politicians he was clearly trying to emulate. He stumbled over words, spoke loudly, but far too quickly, and still managed to receive a rousing cheer at the end. Like Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas, we love Boris despite his failings and bumblings - perhaps even because of them.
The crew in this song are very much like that crowd at the husting. The Captain sings of his virtues and his greatness:
“I am never known to quail at the fury of a gale and I’m never, never sick at sea!”
The crew, knowing the shortcomings of the Captain reply:
“What, never?”
The Captain remains steadfast:
“No, never!”
The crew try again (with the music cleverly emphasising the word never)
“What, never?”
The Captain gives in (could this be a premonition of a Johnson vs. Paxman encounter of the future?):
“Well, hardly ever!”
Despite this, the crew are loyal and adoring and proceed to joyously sing:
“He’s hardly ever sick at sea! Then give three cheers, and one cheer more, For the hardy Captain of the Pinafore!”
Which they repeat for good measure.
But why should we be so much like this crew? After all, we are in an age of open disregard for many of our political leaders, yet we still adore Boris Johnson (which, as it happens can be the only possible reason the Conservatives have selected such a character to stand for London Mayor).
Surely it can only be because of Boris’ hilarious appearances on Have I Got News For You, and therefore his political status is a virtue of our celebrity-obsessed age.
Like the witticisms of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas, Boris Johnson’s popularity surmises our age. And in their words and music, it is all too easy to see this typically English, bumbling, witty Eton and Oxford boy playing at being a serious politician.
Every school in England is set to send two students to the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz, as reported in yesterday’s Daily Mail. The partially government-funded trips have been carried out on a pilot scheme since 2006 and are now going to be expanded to include every senior school in the country.
With few Holocaust survivors still alive, these trips must surely be a good idea; it will be all too easy to forget the atrocities carried out by the Nazis in the last century as memories become faint.
When I taught at an international school, the Holocaust was not commemorated in any way. This despite a small concentration camp being just over the border in the north of Italy. Perhaps because of my deep personal interest in the genocide, I found this hard to stomach - we should be doing everything in our power to educate the next generation so that nothing on the scale of the Holocaust can ever happen again.
The government are apparently putting up £200 of the £300 for each student to go on these trips with the schools having to find the remainder. I wonder whether any private sponsorship could be found to enable schools to spend the other money on furthering Holocaust education for every student?
In my view, the first stage in Holocaust education must involve Richard Dimbleby’s report from Belsen. His clipped voice and quasi old-fashioned language do nothing to detract from the poignancy of the last words he utters: “this day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life”.
Whenever I think of the attempted extermination of the Jewish population, these words return to me. Music always accompanies them.
I bought a book of songs written in the lead-up to, during, and directly after the terrible events of 1939-45. One that particularly stands out is called And Must It Be This Way? The music has the same haunting quality as John Williams’ music for Schindler’s List. With the Yiddish lyrics, though, this song somehow touches me more than Williams’ soundtrack. The minor modality and, more particularly, the striking dissonances in the music (especially a 9th played about the sub-dominant chord, for musicians) reek of anguish and suffering.
As a preface to the song, Jerry Silverman, the complier of the songbook recounts a story of one less-well-documented atrocity: as the Red Army appraoched from the East in early 1945, the fleeing SS guards from one concentration camp marched some 20,000 Jews westwards towards Germany in freezing conditions. Having reached a frozen lake, the guards forced prisoners to jump in through a hole in the ice. Anyone trying to get out was either pushed back or shot.
The sadistic nature of executions such as this are more personal and in some ways more shocking than the more commonly talked of gas chambers. To my mind, they highlight even more starkly the need for Holocaust education so that the mass indoctrination such as that of the German population can be stopped in its tracks, before monsters emerge to carry out the will of deranged leaders.