Teenagers and old literature: The Princess of Cleves

YL posted this on FaceBook:

«La Princesse de Clèves, premier roman moderne de la littérature française, est le personnage central du film. Manel, Aurore, Mona, Abou et les autres lui prêtent leurs voix, leurs visages. Ils sont élèves du Lycée Diderot de Marseille, un établissement difficile des quartiers nord de la ville, et leur professeur a décidé de leur faire étudier ce roman. Jeunes Français pour la plupart d'origine étrangère, ils sont souvent stigmatisés, caricaturés. Aujourd'hui, certains s'interrogent sur l'opportunité de leur faire découvrir les grands textes de la littérature française. Quelle en serait l'utilité sur le marché du travail qui les attend? Quel intérêt pour les jeunes que ces vieilles élucubrations du XVIIe siècle? Ensemble ils s'emparent du roman, de ses représentations, des questions qu'il pose. Objet transitionnel. C'est à leur univers que ce roman du grand siècle nous donne accès»

Translation:

The Princess of Cleves, the first modern novel in French literature, is the central character of the film. Manel, Dawn, Mona Abou and the others lend it their voices, their faces. They are students at the Lycée Diderot, a tough upper secondary school in the northern suburbs of Marseille, and their teacher decided to get them to study this novel. They are young French people, mostly of foreign origin, and are often stigmatized and caricatured. Today, some are questioning the use of being introduced to the great works of French literature. What would be the point in the job market facing them after school? What interest can young people have in these seventeenth century ramblings? Together the students took possession of the novel, the reflections it provides, and its questions. It's a transference object. The students' world is opened up to us by this novel from France's Great Century.

Nous, princesses de Clèves

www.cinemovies.fr

Réalisé par Régis Sauder Durée : 1 h 9 Date de sortie : 30 mars 2011 (FR) Distributeur : Shellac Genre : Documentaire Pays d'origine : France

I commented:

Good literature gives us access to other minds that see, act, think and feel in ways we can empathize with. Takes us behind the barbed-wire fences and locked doors of our social fronts. It puts a key in our hands, and says: "Open my door - welcome in!". This is something that happens less and less with people we don't know in our world today. To some extent, if we're lucky, it can happen on the net, and in that way the net is fusing into a general cultural phenomenon that includes literature.
So good for these kids, and good for Marie-Madeleine de La Fayette.

Hidden curriculum and philosophical teaching

An article in the Guardian Teacher Network discusses the problem of bringing a philosophical approach to teaching, in contrast to "teaching to the test".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/2012/aug/14/philisophical-teaching-students

I commented:

Schools are an institution to socialize children and make them ready for the role allocated to them by society. This is a massive matter operating on a massive scale. The working class is huge, and schools are there to refresh it - not to make self-employed creatives or employers or administrators of all the kids. 

Traditionally, independent and critical thought is not required of workers or the poor, and as someone says here, it fails to recognize the barriers society wishes to keep in place, so it is liable to cause more problems than it's worth if it is instilled and encouraged in education.

So independent thought runs slap bang into the wall of Philip Jackson's Hidden Curriculum. The glass ceiling keeps women from rising in society, and the glass wall of the hidden curriculum keeps working class kids in their parents' factories, offices and dole queues.

The corollary of the hidden curriculum for teachers (education workers in general) who want to see it gone is the Double Curriculum. That is, we (I was in this game for twenty years, in a difficult school in a deprived are, goes without saying really) have to work both to the official curriculum and the liberating curriculum. 

Most, that is MOST, teachers won't even be aware of this, let alone contemplate undertaking such a project. And for a lot of teachers attempting it, the result will be burn-out - it's just as frustrating to bang your head against a glass wall as a brick one.

The solution is to organize publicly and politically against the hidden, reactionary curriculum - get it out in the open. Work for a programme of educational change incorporating all the effective learning methods mentioned here and in other discussions within a programme of changing society so that all people will have guaranteed meaningful employment with a guaranteed democratic say in managing their work and everything connected with it. In this way learning and work will become meaningful, not just spiteful hostile abstractions, and the activities of learning and working will be performed with pleasure and a satisfaction we rarely see today.

This is the only realistic way to better education for everyone. If the political and social perspective is set aside, we'll just see a repetition of the vagaries of education policy over the past century in Britain and other developed industrial countries (ie imperialist countries, like Sweden or the USA).

Utopian corners of good educational practice can and will exist meanwhile, of course, and provide a growing list of excellent examples to learn from... but cultivating a tiny model garden in an industrial wasteland will never satisfy a truly independent and critical mind. It's the wasteland that needs transforming.

Communism - good on paper but doesn't work

Here's a short Facebook exchange about "communism" not working. Naz had been discussing things at home with her dad.


Naz: 
Hello chops I was having a talk with my dad about communism and he was telling me that it looks good on paper, but it doesn't work. If you nationalize land there's less production, he said south africa was more successful under apartheid because they had more production. He also included that Poland had a lot more progress in 3 years of Capitalism than in 40 years of communism! Explain!! 

Thanks 

Me: 

Hi! Depends how you measure being "successful", doesn't it.

Ask him that first. Success is what? And for who? Would he be among those enjoying the "success"? Why?

Poland. "Progress" is like success - depends what you mean, how you measure it and for who.

And Russia is more appropriate to look at when it comes to what happened under the Stalinist version of "communism". Poland and the other eastern European countries did make progress under the Soviet regime, but they were also badly hit by being treated as occupied semi-colonies and forced to be run for foreign interests by agents of the foreigners.

Despite this Polish women have suffered very badly since 1990, and education and culture have been under the thumb of a very primitive Catholicism since then, too. And the jury's still out on the effects on the peasantry (the mass of small independent farmers) of the return of capitalism. So far the governments haven't dared to attack them in the interests of agribusiness the way they do in most other EU countries.

As for Russia, I don't think anyone living there thought life between 1990 and 2000 marked an improvement over Soviet days, except in relation to certain limited areas of civic rights (there was greater formal freedom of speech, but you could get shot if you exercised it) and the availability of some foreign goods. In the USSR people had money but little to buy. In post-Soviet Russia people had no money (their Soviet savings were DELIBERATELY wiped out by Yeltsin and his pro-western friends) but lots of things they could (NOT) buy with it.

Also the majority of Russians resented being governed by a drunken clown and his robber baron oligarch cronies - and the MOB, which was a genuine product of reborn capitalism. People died younger, were sicker, committed suicide more, drank more, were worse housed, got worse education and health care, had to put up with the horrors of racism, terrorism and war, and watched US-style crime grow unchecked.

Progress and success for some...

Now that was between 1990 and 2000. After Putin became president in 2000 most ordinary Russians felt an improvement came. A lot of the most important resources were brought back in to national ownership (oil, gas). A lot of the least "patriotic" oligarchs were driven abroad, jailed or bankrupted. The mob was tamed. Russia started winning international sports competitions again (like ice-hockey). Russians were very proud of Soviet achievements, and felt humiliated by Yeltsin turning them into a mockery and selling their arses to anyone with a fistful of dollars.

I'm inclined to think that Yeltsin himself was sick of being the laughing stock of the world. From super-power to mange backstreet mutt in ten years flat....k

Yeltsin chose Putin to be his successor. I'm pretty sure one of the reasons was to get his revenge on all the people who had been laughing at him to his face.

You should ask your dad what he thinks about Putin's Russia. By all the criteria of success he seems to use Russia is doing pretty well. But it's doing so by laughing in the face of the US and going back to greater state control. It's looking after its own interests, thank you very much. And of course it's tightened a lot of the civic freedoms that were relaxed after 1990.

Does that make the new Russia "communist" again?

It certainly looks like "our" (ie the West's) enemy again.

But of course the real question behind all this is what is "communism"?

Ask your dad what he thinks capitalism is, and when it started.

Ask him if he thinks capitalism in the US after independence was such a great success.

If he does, ask him if he really thinks the slavery of its first 90 years were such a great thing...

The thing is, new social systems grow, and even though they can be fundamentally stronger than previous ones (capitalism was fundamentally stronger than feudalism) their early years can be very ugly indeed.

Especially if they are surrounded by very hostile and powerful representatives of the old system doing their damndest to exterminate them, which was the case in the USSR.

And one last thing, if capitalism is so good and free and successful and progressive, how come it didn't just cheerlead the whole world to celebrate a capitalist white christmas after world war 2?

The poor people of China threw it out and laughed. Same thing in Cuba and Vietnam.

And all those millions of East Europeans just let themselves be corralled into slavery???

Stalin wanted to hand Yugoslavia to the West on a plate (like John the Baptist's head), but the Yugoslav's didn't want to be a head on someone else's plate and made their own revolution.

He did manage to hand Greece to the West, but not until the Greek people had fought and lost a revolution of their own.

Ask him to look at the world today. And ask him how attractive the rest of the world finds the US. Ask him how often he sees poor people in some war-torn part of the world running on the streets waving We Love America placards. Ask him why US soldiers don't dare walk around in jeans smoking Marlboros chatting and smiling to the locals.

Ask him what kind of success and progress a bunch of armoured SWAT goons smashing through a poor family's wall represents to the ordinary people of the world. US life on TV soaps is one thing. Murderous thugs in your back yard, pissing on your relatives' dead bodies and burning your sacred books, is another.

US forces don't even walk around smiling in places like Iceland any more.

Maybe Bob Hope and Bing Crosby looked like success and progress once. And John Wayne. But they're dead and no one wants them back. Their success has turned out to be a huge historic failure. US history is on fast rewind. Right now we're back in the Great Depression.

Have a great day, Naz! I

I'm taking the dog out for a walk now...

 ---

Why are Finnish schools so successful?

A blog article in the Guardian described the success of the Finnish school system:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2012/apr/09/finish-school-system

I commented:

The "free everything" element is not true of higher education. Tuition is free, and that's your lot. Living costs are high, accommodation is hard to find, and materials are not cheap.
The utopian tone of the article is a pity, cos it weakens a very strong case. Finland is riven by class differences and the usual social, economic and political tensions of well-off capitalist countries. Life is hard for wage-earners, and tough for the poor and for immigrants. And the egalitarianism (within class boundaries NB) is soured by Lutheran killjoy look-after-number-one-ism and who-the-fuck-do-you-think-you-are-ism. (Personally I'd rather live in Finland than Britain but that's cos I like saunas and the smell of wood...)
What the schools show is that decent education to a high general standard is possible and can feel natural without a socialist revolution - ie it's a bourgeois democratic aspiration that isn't utopian. All it needs is the political will. 
The proof of this is in the historical record. In Britain during the first flush of the postwar Welfare State local authorities sent hordes of wage-earners' kids to university for free - not just tuition, but the works, maintenance and all. And Britain (if we believe the capitalist mantra of "getting better all the time") in those days was a far poorer and shabbier place than it is today - far less able to "afford" this kind of thing. Which shows that "affording" is not the issue. 
Same thing in Sweden during the "golden years" of their Home of the People (folkhem) welfare state - say '65 to '90. The Swedish comprehensive system, like Finland's but far less formalistic, worked wonders for the kids and national skills, culture, etc. High PISA results for instance. Dazzling performance in research, sports, culture (ABBA :-). In 1991 (I think it was) the Economist even had a panegyric about it. Great high general level of education produces the skills and attitudes needed by business and industry. Trouble is, the article was published just after the then minister of education, Social Democrat Göran Persson, soon to be prime minister, had begun the ruthless dismantling of the system the Economist loved so much. 
Swedes, compromising hypocritical bastards that they are in government, are nothing if not ruthless and single-minded when they want to be (ask any Europeans on the receiving end of the armies of Gustavus Adolfus or Charles XII :-D. They began by emulating Britain, and have now ruined the educational system so thoroughly that Britain is beginning to emulate them (how about "free schools" allowed to operate for profit??).
Again, it's not a question of "affording" anything. Sweden today is pig-richer than ever. It's the political will. If you think (as a bourgeois government) that you can get away with screwing the working class out of past concessions, you'll go ahead. Money is the whole object. And fear the decisive factor. 
So, Sweden and Britain used to be up there with Finland as admirable examples of educational achievement. Now they're slithering in the sewers with the rest and no better than they should be.
For various reasons (including a powerful teachers lobby with real political influence) Finland is still admirable, while Sweden and Britain are despicable.
The main thing I suppose is that there are no miracles or utopias involved. Finland is nothing like Utopia. Nor were Britain or Sweden a few decades ago.

It can be done, it has been done, and it can also be undone. ABOVE ALL, IT IS NOT A QUESTION OF BEING ABLE TO AFFORD IT.


---

Buy your own books and literacy, proletarian scum!

A good article in the Guardian by Michael Rosen on children and books:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/dec/24/government-against-reading?


The problem (as almost always) is that treating this sort of issue (usually a democratic one) as a single issue outside the framework of bourgeois society will resolve nothing - so I made this point in my comment:


Thanks Michael Rosen for reading and responding to the comments.

Now, let's go back to 1945. British voters dumped Churchill unceremoniously cos he was a cold-blooded reactionary butcher. They wanted health and education and a decent future, and they got it. The Welfare State was created and my great-aunt Lil could toddle down to the opticians and get some proper glasses and finally get to see what the world looked like (at least the Bermondsey part of it ;-)

Everyone thought it would go on for ever. I went to university and it cost me nothing - the local authority funded me and thousands of others. I had a free eye operation as a kid, free dental care, free schooling, free school milk, free libraries, etc. Free because we all wanted a better society that shared and cared and was willing to pay for it through taxes.

But it didn't go on for ever, cos it was a Liberal plan to start with, and Labour only put it through cos they were afraid the people would toss them out as well for being cold-blooded reactionary butchers.

The bourgeois governments including Labour started rolling things back as soon as they could, and the intention was clear from Thatcher on - not just roll back, but ratchet back.

All this while Britain was getting richer and richer (if capital doesn't expand and get richer it dies). So it's not a matter of affording anything, it's a matter of wanting it or not, and it's a matter of compulsion, ie force or the threat of it - the cops and the army, or us.

So why reduce the question to BookTrust? They're great people (I've met one)  doing a great job, but given the way the government and capital are taking the country ends up pissing into the wind.

We won't get these governments or British capital to change direction, and even if we did, they would roll things back again as soon as they could.

So this time round we need to ratchet them out of the way, so they can't take back what's ours. So we get health and welfare (teeth, glasses, medicine, emergency help, child care, pensions), and our kids get to learn things for themselves and their friends and everyone in society. And learn to read and enjoy it, and choose for themselves what they want to read (and write) once they've devoured Arthur Ransome, Roald Dahl and J.K.Rowling (or Enid Blyton, W.E.Johns or whatever).

Nothing is a single-issue issue any more. And people, like Michael R, who want to resolve single issues in the framework of this society are becoming more and more obvious pie-in-the-skiers and utopians. Their work on the issues is great, but they won't *resolve* them without a revolutionary change in society.

Förbättra skolan - improving schools

My comment in Swedish on an article about a school in West Sweden that magically improved its results over just three years.
http://www.sydsvenskan.se/sverige/article1262061/Nar-skolan-ar-som-allra-bast.html

Dagens ungdomar är morgondagens arbetskraft. Ju skickligare arbetskraft, desto större produktivitet. Ju större produktivitet, desto större profit.
Skicklig arbetskraft kräver vetenskapligt baserad tillverkning, alltså optimerade tillverkningslokaler (skolor, klassrum, bibliotek etc), optimerat handhavande av råmaterialet för att minska spill (inte halva råvaran kasserad eller klassat som andra sortering, som händer med ungdomsmaterialet idag), och optimerade processer fram till slutprodukten (alltså inte någon bäng höjdares drömpudding).
Borgarnas skolpolitik, som också är sossarnas för den delen, går stick i stäv med detta framgångsrecept. Investeringar i skolan minskar obönhörligt från år till år. Produkten blir dyrare och sämre.

Skolpolitiken klarar alltså inte ens av att frambringa produktiv arbetskraft! Kortsiktig vinstjakt minskar långsiktig vinstökning.
Det om det. När kommer de mänskliga aspekterna nånsin att diskuteras? Mera harmoniska, självständigt tänkande o handlande människor som är aktiva, skapande, ohämmade, medmänskliga o glada, som stimulerar sig själva o varandra att upptäcka o uppfinna nyttigheter o nöjen - detta ska vara målet med bildning o fostran för människor.
Vi glömmer hela tiden bort att vi lever i ett förhistoriskt samhälle när det gäller att förverkliga alla människor på likvärdiga villkor. Såväl i Sverige som i Indien.
Comenius visste mer om pedagogik på 1600-talet än våra skolpolitiker idag. Vi rör oss baklänges i tiden.

The place of Latin

A short piece in today's Guardian:
Latin: why we're better off with the ancient language
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jun/14/latin-language-in-schools)


My comment:
As anyone can tell you who has seen any of my comments on any blog relating to this subject I'm a huge fan of Latin. 
Partly for cultural reasons and partly out of an unusual passion for languages - one that has overcome a lack of autistic proficiency to give me useful access to a number of different but related Indo-European languages (some alive and kicking, and some half-dead and flapping), and to a fundamentally different non-Indo-European language. The iconic Finnish mentioned here a couple of times.
Some languages I got at school as compulsory subjects, some I studied voluntarily at college level, and some I just picked up on a teach yourself, learning by doing, voluntary basis. 
Compulsory French at school worked, compulsory German just about despite hopeless conditions. All the rest has been voluntary - whether formal or normal. 
Formal helps, but opportunity and incentive helps more. 
That's why Grabyrdy's comment bangs the button: 
"I would add that it's not only Latin that helps brains develop. Teach every child in the country to play a musical instrument and participate in orchestras and choirs, and the IQ level of the whole country will rise within a generation." 
Education has to provide opportunity and incentive, and needs to be polytechnical - intellectual, physical (sports, drama, music), practical (craft trades), interactive (politics, psychology). 
So that's Britain oot the windae as far as Latin or any other language is concerned. 
I regret none of my languages, except maybe Swedish for the way it's invaded and occupied my life far too obtrusively and disproportionately. I'd rather have had my life invaded and occupied by Russian, Chinese (yes please!) or Bengali (or Sanskrit. - I'm half-dead and flapping myself...) 
So... anyone who gets a foot in the door, or even better makes it all the way into the rip-roaring party that's another language and its culture, feels more fully human for it and helps others feel better too. And the special thing about Latin here is that it offers a widely recognized currency standard for language, culture and civil fundamentals. (Special Drawing Rights if not Gold...) 
My own favourite (with me everywhere, and more worn by the day) is Lucretius On the Nature of Things. Oh, and Tacitus. Mohammed Alis of culture -- deeply human, aware of their own value, no one's tool and no one's fool, unrepentantly nonconformist, dazzling masters of technique and harder hitting than anyone else alive. 
And nothing prissy, bigoted, arse-licking, or demeaning about them.


I made a further comment:
MSGlendinning writes: 
"I currently teach EFL. There is absolutely no coincidence that the students and people that I know that are non-native speakers that have the highest level of fluency and understanding of the nuances and other pecularities of English are the ones that have spent time immersed in an English-speaking country." 
So if they're so good why do they need you to teach them? 
How do you "immerse" yourself in a country? Burrow head down into the soil (or concrete)? If you immerse yourself in intercourse with people in that country (heh) how many people do you need to intercourse with? And how much and how? And what language and culture do the people you intercourse with use? 
Maybe it's communication between people that's the important thing... So god help us given the dreadful communication skills of the average teacher, if teaching has got anything to do with it. 
To communicate you need something to communicate about, and communicate with. And if you live somewhere you are forced to communicate with people there. But if you are well prepared to communicate about things that are common to humanity, and are skilled/trained at learning, you'll pick up a language like lightning - as I've seen in my teaching. If you aren't, and you're surrounded by your own culture and language (let's say you're Armenian or Russian in LA), then you're screwed. As I've seen with Kurds and Somalis in my teaching. 
OK, so the thing about Latin is that a lot of it is one way communication - but a lot of it is communication about things common to humanity (sex, money, politics, war), done in ways common to humanity (writing, striking language, striking settings). And it communicates these things using a common cultural legacy, adding familiarity. 
So why shouldn't acquiring Latin be more useful and attractive than acquiring pidgin Double Dutch? Should we force people to learn New Guinea Creole because living people use it and it has a thriving local culture? 
If you read novels or follow the news, then you're into abstract, non-immediate, non-immersive communication. That is, you're in a good position to derive pleasure and stimulation from Latin. 
The conditions for learning it aren't too good - but neither are the conditions for learning other languages in Britain. And Latin has one huge advantage - almost everyone involved with teaching it or using it is full of enthusiasm for the language, for the culture and for sharing this with others. But first let's have a decent society and a decent educational system, so non-local culture and communication mean something more than an old school tie. 

Education in Britain - a Brave New World

Some idiot gassing on about the need for slightly less elite schools for the increasingly sidelined petty-bourgeoisie and labour aristocracy. (He doesn't put it that way himself :-)
It's from the Guardian of course:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/26/selective-education-grammar-schools?

My comment:
If a school system isn't designed to raise the average standard of education/knowledge/joy of learning/solidarity, then it's going to reproduce all the old crap. Socialize our youngsters into well-off or destitute psychopaths, on class lines.

The British system is "designed" (ha-bloody-ha) - no, let's say structured -  to ease the rich and powerful into rich and powerful positions, to let the would-be social climbers tear each other to pieces as they fight their way up the foothills through jungle and swamp, and to consign the wage-slaves and the poor to the factories and streets. At any price. Particularly at the cost of education/knowledge/joy of learning/solidarity and culture.
O Brave New World!
I was able to go to university because of a local government grant, not because of the school I went to. While there I decided I would only go into teaching as a last resort if half my brain went home. Since then things have got much much worse.
Britain is a democracy by the skin of its teeth, and the enamel is wearing away fast. The class divide is very visible once more, and class hatred is returning. Healthy signs for our future!
But the necessary change and renewal will owe next to nothing to our - sorry their - schools and universities. And the little owed will be in spite of and not because of the educational policies of servile governments that divide their time between licking the spittle and licking the boots of capital - when their heads aren't stuck up its arse.

Educational policy and gambling in Pompeii

An article in the Times Higher Education reported and commented on Mary Beard's remarks on Roman gambling being more honest than our government's current policy-making on education.


http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=410349


I commented:


Mary B's right. Why? Well, the factors involved in evaluating the risks and benefits of a high general level of education and of research are just not accounted for in the models being used in relation to higher education to close departments and exclude working class youth, etc. Same goes for the models used for creating bad schools and criminalizing working-class kids and their parents (aka promoting excellence and freedom of choice). (Criminalizing because parents can be jailed if their children play truant, for instance.) 
It's an obvious case of market failure that those running the system will never admit. The best example of this kind of thing is the market failure of capitalism itself. The models used there assume that the system is basically in equilibrium and basically rational. This isn't the case. The system is out of control, as its recurrent crises since the 1850s (say) demonstrate clearly enough, together with the permanent state of war within the system between the states constituting the system. 
People like Mervyn King talk of the economy returning to a "normal state" - but boom and bust are just as much normality as the ups and downs between them. So the assumptions used in the models explicitly exclude crisis, for ideological reasons. 
Education and economic systems are excluded from rational scientific investigation, whereas most insurance statistical work isn't. You can't be actuarial about developments you refuse to understand. So toss those dice! And shoot yourself when you lose the society you've staked on the outcome.

Access to higher education and privilege

Mary Beard's blog:

March 16, 2007

Is university entrance squeezing the middle class?

Reinventing the wheel often causes a flurry of headlines. This time (once again) it is about university entrance and the decision to have information about parents included on the University (UCAS) application form. The idea is that it will help to “widen access” if admissions’ tutors know what the potential student’s Mum and Dad do, and whether have been to university themselves.

Squeals of horror from the usual (middle class) suspects.

There is in fact nothing new at all here.

For a long time parental occupation was a question on the special Cambridge application form. Some years ago (I can’t remember exactly when) that question was abolished. The idea was, I think, that this information was encouraging us to discriminate AGAINST the under-privileged – as if we were sorting through the forms and picking out the ambassador’s daughter and chucking the postman’s daughter into the “reject” pile. Socially elite dons looking for students in their own image -- or so the paranoid fantasy went.

I always thought that it was actually working the other way round. Knowing more about where the kids were “coming from” really did help to judge their potential and make a more level playing field.

To put it another way, when I am interviewing a student who wants to come and read Classics, one thing I want to know is whether they have made the most of their opportunities to find out about the ancient world. And it all depends what those opportunities are. If, for example, a girl who has had several long Greek holidays has never once taken the trouble to visit an archaeological site or museum, I will have some qualms. If someone who has never left the country, but lives within a mile of Hadrian’s Wall and has never visited it – well, similar qualms are raised (but I wouldn't hold against them the fact that they had never seen the Parthenon).

The point is that we are looking for those, from whatever background, who have potential – and the capacity to benefit from the course. More information helps (particularly now that the school’s reference is open to the candidate and can be almost useless).

The middle classes really don’t need to worry. I am not looking to favour the stupid daughter of the postman over the clever daughter of the ambassador. I am looking for intellectual potential wherever it is found. Exactly as I have always done.

Posted by Mary Beard on March 16, 2007 at 08:16 AM | Permalink

(There are some good comments, too.)

*****************************************************************

Choppa's response:

Marx's reflections on The Jewish Question in 1844 might help us clear this contradiction up a bit.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/

In a crucial passage he writes:

"The perfect political state is, by its nature, man’s species-life, as opposed to his material life. All the preconditions of this egoistic life continue to exist in civil society outside the sphere of the state, but as qualities of civil society. Where the political state has attained its true development, man – not only in thought, in consciousness, but in reality, in life – leads a twofold life, a heavenly and an earthly life: life in the political community, in which he considers himself a communal being, and life in civil society, in which he acts as a private individual, regards other men as a means, degrades himself into a means, and becomes the plaything of alien powers."

Thus he distinguishes between the human being as citizen (member of the state), with equal rights etc, and as "bourgeois" (member of civil society) with unequal possessions, wealth, clout, etc.

If we substitute "class" for "religion" in the first sentence of the next paragraph, we read: "Man, as the adherent of a particular *class*, finds himself in conflict with his citizenship and with other men as members of the community."

So basically what academics and universities are doing in their selection process is resolving this conflict between abstract equality and concrete privilege - a conflict that will last as long as the capitalist state itself - as best they can given the built-in contradictions of the task and the varying wiggle-room for different (often mutually exclusive) criteria given by the rules at any particular time.

In my day (the postwar retreat by the capitalist class known as the welfare state) working class students were sucked into higher education with grants that actually enabled them to live and study, and the glorious false flag of "academic freedom" flew over spires and lecture rooms.

Nowadays, with the resurgence of the capitalist class and the rolling back of the welfare state, this is no longer the case.

The solution is not to change the rules of admission or even the grants system (though this might help temper the glaring inequalities a bit) but to change society so the interests of the penurious human majority can no longer be steamrollered by the interests of the inhuman moneybags minority.

Learning languages at school

Reply to Kenodoxia

Monday, March 12, 2007

Languages

Some promising signs from the new Dearing report on language learning in schools. There will be recommendations for foreign language teaching in primary schools at least at Key Stage 2 (that's from 7 years old). However, the messages are mixed: there is no sign of a recommendation to reinstate compulsory language learning up to the age of 16. (The report is now available as a .pdf here; for some early reaction see here and here.)

Younger children love learning languages, as far as I can see. And there are some good (if expensive) courses for them. Try the BBC's Muzzy course, for example.

The report also makes some interesting comments about Higher Education, and in particular about the influence that universities can have on the uptake of languages in schools (p.21):

The influence of Higher Education

3.72 Although beyond the remit and competence of the review, the recent decision by one major University (UCL) to include languages as a criterion for selection of undergraduates has already attracted comment. Several Head Teachers have observed that if such a view was more widespread it would have a significant impact on the take-up of languages post 14. We therefore urge universities to consider whether, and in what ways, they can show that they value languages, albeit in ways that do not impact adversely on the widening participation agenda. We are aware, for example, of a recent proposal that where a candidate for entry does not have a language at GCSE level they might be required to continue their studies at university, or show evidence of studying a language, or a proven interest in languages.

This sounds very sensible and also rang a bell with another recent report into the general level of knowledge of science in the UK. It seems that since in the US, for example, most undergraduates are required to take at least some science-based courses at university, there is a higher general level of scientific understanding there than in the UK. Of course, university courses are crowded and busy as it is, and it would be a terrible task to add in additional language and science course, but I do wonder whether some of our undergraduates could benefit from a broader range of teaching than they receive at present.

Posted by JIW at 10:14 AM

************************************************************
Choppa's reply:

There's a problem with starting too soon on a foreign language that's not part of your everyday life, and that's the confusion it can cause in concept formation at a very basic level. It's not a problem for kids surrounded by articulate and concept-grounded adults who talk to them a lot of the time. But it's a *huge* problem for kids without that background - especially for kids who need to learn the language of their wider community as a second language. Immigrant kids or kids with a minority language or an "impenetrable" dialect of the standard.

The problem is compounded by disadvantaged kids sometimes wanting a different second language from the one offered. As in Sweden, where a lot of immigrant kids and parents fight like tigers to have their kids learn English while their Swedish is still very poor (and this can be at the age of 12+ still, despite a childhood spent in Sweden).

I've seen and suffered from this at first hand as a teacher of English at a secondary school with 100% immigrant kids, most of them at a conceptual level in Swedish in the seventh year (12-13) corresponding to second to fifth year pupils. Many of them have no chance of learning English. The language just refuses to stick. And they lose 3 periods a week which could go to learning their own mother tongue or Swedish. So they end up even more disadvantaged, having tried to learn more subjects than a Swedish kid of the same age with infinitely less social and conceptual preparation for it.

The studies I've read also indicate that the age of commencing a second language (if it's not part of the everyday life of the kids) makes little difference. In other words, no real advantage is bestowed by early learning, except perhaps for the pleasure of it in a good class in a good school with a good teacher.

I think the wiser thing is probably to rethink conceptual and social/human preparation for youngsters generally and take a leaf out of Comenius's book. Make sure kids up to the age of 12 get a thorough grounding in movement, rhythm, mother tongue, music, art,crafts, etc so they can communicate physically, orally and in writing and other forms of representation. So they can tell and present and absorb all kinds of human stories. And as much basic maths as they can take so they can have fun making things that are stable and have interesting forms etc.

If kids can be kept fresh and curious and creative till they're 12 or so, then they can get stuck into any number of demanding subjects in a more methodical and abstract fashion. And they will have a huge advantage when it comes to learning languages, because their imagination will not have been stultified, and they will know about other countries and people through stories of various kinds (history, discovery, animals, travel).

And today, with the internet it won't be long before they're snogging virtually with teenagers in other cultures using other languages ;-)

So I think the report may be good in its attitude to the benefits brought by language, but it's arsy-versy when it comes to the context of language learning in present-day Britain, with its "real-existierend" community, culture and schools. Given a human, creative and optimistic Britain, with meaningful jobs and a day full of self-discovery and self-expression, there won't be any problem with learning anything.

**********************************************************

(Additional - misguided - comment now at Kenodoxia)