Three is the magic number…

…or, in actual fact, it’s not.

What is it about businesses that they seem determined reduce everything to groups of three? Three core strategies, the top three business priorities, three-letter-acronyms (TLAs)… even the buzzwords they use to talk about keeping things simple are in threes; “fewer, bigger, better”.

I don’t believe this is a fundamental human behavioural trait: indeed, more often than not humans have a tendency to reduce issues to a simple binary: man or woman, gay or straight, freedom-fighter or terrorist, when in fact there’s almost certainly a continuum or sliding scale. It is, as Ben Goldacre asserts, a bit more complicated than that.

BUT WAIT! LOOK WHAT I DID – I GAVE YOU THREE EXAMPLES OF BINARY DISTINCTIONS! WOW!

This isn’t a new phenomenon – it’s been present through pretty much every company I’ve worked for or with in the past 20 years. But I will say that it feels like something that is on the increase. Companies spend an awful lot of time talking about how they present the results of their marketing and other activity to their Executive Boards. Let me reiterate – they spend time (and money) discussing how they present their results internally; not actually doing things differently or better to improve their business performance, not even discussing what they could do to improve their business performance.

They can be obsessed with reducing the entire sum of their activities, often encompassing millions of pounds of expenditure and the behaviour of thousands or even millions of consumers, to three key numbers. Apparently it is essential to keep things as simple as possible, so the Executive Board have a really clear picture of what’s important. So we reduce the collective brain-power, imagination & creativity of whole departments of highly-paid staff to three numbers on a Powerpoint slide. Because apparently the Executive Board aren’t capable of handling anything more complicated than that.

Really?

Are the Executive Board of Directors, supposedly among the most able in their respective functions, the best leaders of their people, the most commercially or strategically aware, really unable to cope with anything more complex than three key numbers?

I Reckon that’s either wilfully negligent or woefully incompetent. In reducing the entire sum of their business to a trite set of so-called KPIs, they will almost certainly misunderstand or miss entirely the nuanced reality of increasingly fragmented and complicated relationships between brands and consumers, and the roles of different communication channels. The Executive Board are in charge of serious and complex businesses, responsible for the livelihoods of up to thousands of employees, agencies and suppliers, not to mention shareholders. And yet within their teams, people often spend as long re-inventing the wheel, re-presenting what they re-presented last year, simply to find a new way of saying the same thing, when in fact they should be working on what would make things better, what could really make a difference.

I recently attended a presentation by Kevin Beatty, CEO of the Daily Mail Media Group. Those of you familiar with my views on his parent company’s politics and approach to its so-called journalism (sic) might be forgiven for wondering how and why I didn’t spontaneously explode. However, I was (begrudgingly) struck by the clarity of his business thought and how his company has adapted to the changing media and digital landscape.

He asserted that (I’m paraphrasing)…

…it can be a big mistake to constantly attempt to simplify everything in business. The world is complex and we have to acknowledge that we cannot know everything. We have to learn to live with constantly shifting sands, with ambiguity, and with uncertainty.

The world is complicated: understanding it takes time and effort. Trying to force-fit it into a Powerpoint template or fixed 5-slide presentation does everyone a disservice.

Read Full Post »

A very funny man…

Rachel and I recently enjoyed a terrific evening being entertained (and more than occasionally challenged) by the terrific stand-up comedy of Marcus Brigstocke. During more than two hours on stage, he makes a point of encouraging interaction with the audience; he coaxes and even goads us into getting involved.  During the show, I responded aloud to three of his questions with the following answers…

“Michael Gove”

“Release the hounds”

“Is it Tuesday?”

You can find out what the questions were later…

I’ve liked Marcus Brigstocke for several years; his all-round righteous anger during guest appearances on The Now Show, his more eclectic turns on the CBBC sketch show “Sorry I’ve Got No Head”, and his hapless character Giles Wemmbley-Hogg. He’s definitely posh, a similar age to me, probably less bleeding-heart but definitely liberal.

His show The Brig Society takes on David Cameron’s supposed ‘project’ that supposedly aims to roll-back the role of Government in our day-to-day lives, replacing it (somehow) with individuals and volunteers spontaneously coming together to fill that void.

Brigstocke is clearly sceptical about both the actual progress made by the government on this, but also about the UK population’s willingness to get involved in performing tasks previously undertaken by the State. So the central thread of the show is his attempt to engage his audience in towns all around the country into actually doing something, or at least having ideas as to what they might do. In between this, he relates jovial anecdotes from Leeds or Nottingham or Chorley or Scotland to reassure his audience that they can’t be as insane as a previous town. He also intersperses the present-day discussion with tales from his childhood and everyday observations about our society today.

He clearly understood Cirencester and its middle-class conservative heartland, full of quiet reserve. But just as he lulled us into a deceptively comfortable place, chuckling along with his stories from Boarding School, he erupted with proper rage, getting very sweary and seriously challenging as he repeatedly decried George Osborne’s comparison of the murderous Mick Philpott with all Benefits Claimants as “F***ING UNACCEPTABLE”. The audience didn’t know whether they should laugh, applaud or just take a long hard look at themselves…

Throughout the evening he asked for volunteers to serve as Cabinet Ministers in his Brig Society, asking them for their policies. We had

• Chancellor: John, a teacher from North Swindon, who wanted to hunt down personal and corporate tax evaders
• Health:  Mary, a health visitor, who wanted to recruit more front-line staff for the NHS to improve standards of care
• Education: Amy & George, both teachers, wanted to hire more teachers to help keep class sizes down
• Transport: Rob, a train driver, who wanted to simplify the ticketing process for travelling around the country, and longer trains to improve the customer experience at peak times
• The Elderly: er, that was me. Eventually my loudly vocal interjections got noticed, and he picked on me for putting my head above the parapet…

However, having made such an impression that he called me “a very funny man” (among my proudest moments!), I then seemed to freeze. I had no idea what policies I might employ for The Elderly, whether funny or serious. I wish I might have said something along the lines of free toffees or designated ‘slow-lanes’ in supermarkets or on pavements. In the end I tried to be serious and claim that young people are in more need of help than the elderly.  Luckily he realised quickly that he should move on, but thankfully he chose not to mock my dullness.

What that embarrassing 90 seconds brought home to me is that while I might be capable of a solid one-liner retort, I’m much less good at being spontaneously funny…

What was also clear from the policies on offer was that his audience, even in the compact-but-bijoux Sundial Theatre in Cirencester, seem not to share the world-view of the Tories. We seemed to want the government to take the lead in running the country and providing public services.

Perhaps the highlight sequence in the show was when he brought the Banking Crisis to life, walking among the audience, taking money from their hands and pretending to lend it to others, paying off credit agencies for giving AAA ratings, taking insurance both for and against the borrowers defaulting, then demanding the money back from them at a second’s notice. Most compelling and hard-hitting was the conclusion in which (acting the role of the bankers) he blamed his customer’s greed for wanting a home loan, all the while pocketing the money he had gleefully accepted from both other people and the government. Most amusing was watching several audience members squirm as he seemed to ignore any suggestions that he might actually return their actual money…

For a combination of self-deprecating tangents,  good-humoured rants and observations about the world, and genuine anger at the hypocrisy and paucity of thinking within the Tory Government, I Reckon you could do a lot worse than Marcus Brigstocke.

And for those of you who’ve read this far, the questions that inspired my interjections…

“What is acceptable to find hanging from a railing?” (Michael Gove)

“How would you deal with the tax-evaders?” (release the hounds)

“What would you do to support the elderly, who’ve worked hard all their lives, paid their taxes…” (is it Tuesday?)

Read Full Post »

Is this the definition of madness?

I got disillusioned with the UK Coalition Government pretty quickly after it was elected. My vain hopes that the Liberal Democrats could actually hold some sway over the Conservatives vanished long ago, which is why I can Reckon with a high level of confidence that the calamitous budget and economic forecasts presented this week are all George Osborne’s responsibility; not the Lib Dems, not Gordon Brown, not the world economy. Gideon has apparently been in charge of the UK economy for nearly 3 years.

I Reckon he must be desperate to stay in his post, despite the brickbats and criticism from virtually every corner after this week’s lacklustre budget, because for one thing he’s never worked outside of the Conservative Party in his entire adult life, and for another thing, by all sane measures and criteria, he should never be able to get a real job in the private sector he so brazenly idolises.

Here are a few reasons why not…

Performance

Osborne seems to want doctors, teachers and all public servants be judged on their measurable results. A coruscating article by Mehdi Hasan lays George’s results out in the open. It also wins points for the best title I’ve seen in a while. Along with the rest of the neo-Con Right Wing, Osborne often likens running the economy to the same principles of running a household or a company. But it’s not just George’s results that would see him sidelined out of any halfway decent company.

So… quite a bit worse than even the 1980s

Inability to forecast

Companies and markets like certainty, they like to hit targets. A key trait of many successful businesses is the ability to manage expectations. Osborne has patently failed to even get close to his forecasts.

If you can’t forecast, the business can’t plan and perform…

I’m prepared to give him one year’s grace, that the world economy was even worse than expected after the Government took charge, but the ongoing performance is so weak, and so far away from his previous forecasts that in most plcs the shareholders would have taken action long ago. But in the marvellous UK system of democracy, that ability to take action seems more limited to us mere voters. Osborne is as hard to remove as the mythical ‘coasting’ teachers, school governors and other public servants he and his colleagues decry at every opportunity.

No Plan B

The US comedian Stephen Colbert assaulted George W Bush’s Presidency at the White House Press Corps Dinner in 2006 with a series of astonishingly barbed and brilliant gags, none more so than this one…

The greatest thing about this man is he’s steady…You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday.

George Osborne has convinced himself that his way is the only way, in the face of so much evidence from around the world. Any company showing the results he’s delivered would be crying out for a new approach, anything to get things moving again. But there’s nothing.  The paucity of thinking, of anything that even resembles creativity, is disheartening to the point of being downright upsetting. The British economy deserves better.

Not Learning from Mistakes

One of the very few “positive” actions in the Budget this week was an announcement to try to stimulate growth through the housing market. Having failed to deliver the export-led economy he previously promised, Osborne is throwing money at house buyers. But this is the same man who last year declared

This country borrowed its way into trouble. Now we’re going to earn our way out…

Has he forgotten that the current recessions were largely caused by banks lending too much money to people who couldn’t afford to keep up the payments for over-priced properties. And yet here he is promising money to subsidise banks to lend money where they wouldn’t otherwise. In short, people who can’t afford houses will be lent additional money to be able to afford them. So now it seems even the Government is getting into sub-prime lending, but at least 7 years after it stopped being a good idea. The economicshelp blog lays out with brilliant simplicity and simple brilliance why this is a bad idea. Houses are still too expensive.

Good luck keeping this job, George. You don’t deserve it, and we don’t deserve you.

Read Full Post »

How long is a piece of string…?

The problems of measuring the effectiveness of business activity have long since been apparent. Since the 19th century and greater mass distribution and the beginnings of mass communications and advertising, it’s become more difficult, something that was not lost on either/both John Wanamaker in the US, or William Lever in the UK, both of whom have been attributed with the maxim

I know that half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but the trouble is I don’t know which half…

In the 1960s William Bruce Cameron, an American Sociologist, first coined another seminal phrase

It would be nice if all of the data which sociologists require could be enumerated because then we could run them through IBM machines and draw charts as the economists do.
However, not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

But today it seems we live in a world where the media like to reduce complex issues to their most simplistic, where League Tables are all-important, and politicians live (and die) on policy-by-sound-bite. A pithy, punchy statistic is worth more than nuanced arguments that acknowledge the inter-dependence between issues or subtleties within an analysis.

My daughters’ primary school recently experienced an inspection by OFSTED. The previous inspection a couple of years ago had been classed as satisfactory. That report highlighted lots of positive aspects about the school, including comments from parents and children, about how they liked going to school, that the atmosphere was friendly and supportive, and that the school was well on the way to improving its rating to good.

Since then, there has been a change within the Department of Education. Just weeks before taking up his appointment as the new Chief Inspector of Schools in January 2012, Sir Michael Wilshaw said

If anyone says to you that ‘staff morale is at an all-time low’ you will know you are doing something right.

Really… that’s not a style of effective management I’ve ever had recommended to me.

The most recent OFSTED report on our primary school has felt the full force of the changing framework and moving goalposts for school inspections. Before I get started on this, let me say that I am in many ways delighted with some of the tough lessons the school management has had to learn in recent weeks: there are clear areas for improvement and I’m already confident that they are addressing them.

But the report has changed in tone, style and format. The grading ‘satisfactory’ has been renamed as ‘requires improvement’. Its opening lines are not accentuating the positive; quite the reverse. Lest anyone be in the slightest doubt, its opening gambit is

This is not a good school…

…by which it means the official OFSTED rating of ‘good’. But don’t try telling me they don’t know exactly what they’re doing…

The report focuses in the starkest terms on what OFSTED regards as the failings and shortcomings in the school. Positive comments and recent improvements are noted, but almost in passing. Many positive aspects of the school that seemed valuable 2-3 years ago don’t even feature.

There seems to be an enormous focus on management systems, data and measurement, as though they’re only interested in the things that can be measured and quantified, such as “what’s the absentee rate among children with SEN? how has that changed since last year?”  I’m not saying this isn’t important, in fact it’s probably a hygiene factor, and the school’s weakness in this respect is to me an annoyance, an unnecessary distraction. It needs fixing, but it should never have been a problem.

Because now the OFSTED report about my daughters’ school is online and official, and it doesn’t read well. I know that it doesn’t reflect our full experience of the school and omits all sorts of positive elements. But new or prospective parents don’t know that: the OFSTED report is a major influence on what they think. All the positive word of mouth and community goodwill can only go so far.

In the same way as children are tutored to pass the grammar school entrance tests, schools are now focusing, at least in the short-term, on data-capturing and reporting. I hope it does improve the outcomes, I genuinely do. But I’m not especially confident.

During the last General Election campaign, David Cameron pledged to drive the education system to do more teaching and less testing. But I Reckon he’s achieved the opposite. SAT tests appear ever more important, league tables are still published in most major newspapers as the be-all-and-end-all for parents to judge their schools. My younger daughter was tested on her phonics aged just 6, despite all sorts of evidence against that approach.

There is more testing and measurement now, and on pre-defined criteria that are not always based on the weight of evidence, but on a political agenda. Moreover, this testing starts sooner, such that we could soon be testing and grading our children from a very early age, when they develop differently with different types of intelligence and skills. We could marginalise those who do not match the profile of what Michael Gove regards as a Model Pupil; rigidly academic, with a prescriptive curriculum, based on facts and memory.

I Reckon a one-size-fits-all set of criteria for measuring children is flawed, and the current obsession with quantifying and counting everything is at best imperfect and at worst could suppress children’s personalities and creativity. I’m no expert, but Sir Ken Robinson is, so if you I haven’t convinced you, maybe he can.

Read Full Post »

Let the children play…

I try not to go over too much old ground in these posts, but sometimes there is a conspiracy of coincidences that just come together. Over this past weekend the main catalyst came while I was having lunch with Hannah, my elder daughter.

We were visiting friends as their daughter is close in age to our younger daughter, and she had invited us (Eleanor) to her birthday party. As this party was ostensibly geared for 7-year-old girls, both Hannah (10½) and I (nearly 44) made ourselves scarce. We walked into town for a bit of Dad-and-Daughter time. Often this is restricted to a few minutes at bedtime or when I pick her up after Guides, but on Saturday we had a couple of hours to ourselves. We installed ourselves in a café, she ordered the biggest milkshake on the menu, and I tried not to worry that people would think I was a Divorced Dad having my alternate-weekend access. Actually, I’m just having a bit of lunch with my daughter ON OUR OWN…

We started talking about our plans for a summer holiday – we’re hoping to go back to SW France – and I asked Hannah if there were any things she would like to do again, or places she’d like to revisit. I was expecting something along the lines of swimming in the rivers, but instead, after some thought, she declared…

I know what I’d like to do but will never be able to…

I tried not to look concerned, wondering where this was going.

…I’d like to go back in time and see the look on Oliver Cromwell’s face when I play him Gangnam Style… I’d take back the biggest speakers we could find, and I’d get Jack Wright (her classmate) to do the dancing. I’d love to see his face…

OK. I hadn’t thought of that one.

She knows Olive Cromwell was a puritan, and the puritans were no fans of dancing (thankyou, Horrible Histories!). So what would happen if…

I’ve written before about the innate creativity in children, and their fearlessness at expressing it. Sir Ken Robinson has spoken and written marvellously for years about the dangers of our education system treating all children the same, assuming that one type of intelligence is more important than others. When Hannah started learning to swim, she couldn’t seem to focus on swimming in straight lines across the pool. Even by my standards her concentration  span is flaky, but she has an imagination that regularly surprises me, making lateral leaps I can barely fathom.

Later during the weekend I read an article in which the Tory Government finally completed the circle of demotivating every stage of UK education. Having already dealt with secondary and primary schools, Michael Gove has let loose his minister Liz Truss to champion changes in nursery and pre-school care.
In an impressive double-whammy, the Government plans to relax rules to allow nurseries to take on more children without having to hire more staff, yet at the same time, according to media reports, Ministers want youngsters to start being taught reading and maths at a younger age.

Nursery staff have a job of educating. It is not just looking after children.

But, and I’ll say this as calmly as I can, playing is an education for toddlers. They learn motor skills when they start to make marks with crayons; they learn social skills when they share crayons; they develop self-awareness and consideration for others when they take turns with the crayons. They build their imagination when they create stories, dress up, dance to music, listen to stories being read to them, sing songs. And at the same time, caring for pre-school children is really labour-intensive: it just is. Young children require more help and attention, socially, emotionally and physically, and it’s commensurately tiring for the carers.

While I was digesting this (IMHO) insane and inappropriate plan, I also discovered this article from nearly 5 years ago, suggesting precisely the opposite approach to that of our increasingly prescriptive Government. Self-regulating make-believe play is immensely important to develop the skills that will later be important for more formal education. But…

Despite the evidence of the benefits of imaginative play, however, even in the context of preschool young children’s play is in decline. According to Yale psychological researcher Dorothy Singer, teachers and school administrators just don’t see the value.

“Because of the testing, and the emphasis now that you have to really pass these tests, teachers are starting earlier and earlier to drill the kids in their basic fundamentals. Play is viewed as unnecessary, a waste of time,” Singer says. “I have so many articles that have documented the shortening of free play for children, where the teachers in these schools are using the time for cognitive skills.”

It seems that in the rush to give children every advantage — to protect them, to stimulate them, to enrich them — our culture has unwittingly compromised one of the activities that helped children most. All that “wasted time” was not such a waste after all.

Childish imagination is a marvel of the human brain. Impossible leaps of faith and vision can be magical and inspiring. In a final coincidence this past weekend we were reading the wonderful Emily Brown stories, in which the titular heroine plays with her favourite toy rabbit, Stanley, exploring the Amazonian rainforest or reaches of Outer Space, all from the comforts of her garden or kitchen.

When did we become afraid of our children being children? I’m as middle-class as they come, but where’s the clamour of angry parents demanding their children get a ‘proper’ education from their pre-school nursery? I don’t doubt that Gove et al. genuinely believe they’re doing the right thing, but when did sincerity and honest belief make something OK? That didn’t go so well with Iraq and WMD.

I Reckon this Government is systematically ignoring the weight of expert evidence and best practice to instead pursue an agenda based on their personal experiences and prejudices. But they’re messing with children at their most vulnerable, seeking to make childcare cheaper when it’s most important that providers don’t cut corners. Parents don’t want the reassurance their toddlers are getting an education; they want to know their toddlers are safe and happy.

Read Full Post »

…saving lives, etc…

A good friend of mine is a heart surgeon. Occasionally, when we meet for a drink, we might run through the formality of how our ‘work’ is going. As I work in marketing, I’m fully, desperately aware that what I do can seem trivial, almost insulting when compared with his job and skills. When I try to offer the subject back to him, what has he been up to, he usually replies “oh, you know, the usual, saving lives etc…”

And he’s only partly joking.

Yesterday I might actually have helped save a life. For the first time in nearly six years, I gave blood. Call it a New Year’s Resolution perhaps, but it was a bit of an impulse decision, as we had a mobile blood donation unit close to our offices for a couple of days. While I was there, the staff were great; professional, friendly and calm. One person there at the same time felt faint after donating and they were terrific at putting him at ease, letting him take time to recover, drink and eat as many biscuits as he desired!

The staff were also all very concerned at the possible cutting of this mobile service. They were genuinely worried that their roles were under threat. I Reckon this would be a tragic mistake. While I was in the unit in Bristol on Thursday, five people approached the staff asking if they could donate. All of them claimed they were first-time donors, none of them might have come forward had the van not been present near their places of work, a stone’s throw from Bristol Temple Meads station. Take away the mobile vans and access to blood donation facilities becomes much harder.

Blood donations are vital – take a few minutes to read through the website. If you’re not moved by these stories, I can’t help you.

It shocked me to read that blood stocks in UK hospitals run to only a few days, and have been hit especially hard this winter by the more widespread incidence of illnesses like the norovirus. Constant renewal of stocks is vital, and right now this is more important than ever.

Apparently 96% of us rely on blood donated by 4%. Why don’t you do something worthwhile for a New Year Resolution and save a life?

Read Full Post »

Teach to the test…

I’ve thought long and hard about writing this piece, because I recognise that it uncovers all sorts of contradictions and tensions, almost even hypocrisies in my feelings. But then, as a Bleeding-Heart Liberal, I suppose I should just get used to them, and I hope, dear readers, that you have too. If you’re still here, then thanks.

I was educated at a state (public) primary school, then won a scholarship to a nearby independent private school from 11-18. My parents entered me for the scholarship/entrance exams because (among other reasons) they and some of their friends perceived that, at the local state comprehensive school, “bright children do well despite the school, not because of it.”  I was a bright child, one of the top in my class.

My elder daughter Hannah is a bright child, one of the top in her class, despite being one of the youngest in her year-group. She’s got a vocabulary that sometimes seems to baffle her friends as well as grown-ups and she reads voraciously. Her concentration span varies from the excellent to the non-existent, and she gets bored/distracted quite easily, always on the lookout for new ideas.

I know, I know, how could any child of mine be like that?!

Anyway, we recently entered Hannah for the 11+ exams for entry into a local Grammar School. Everyone we knew seemed to think Hannah would get through easily, she seems to have a natural head for the problem-solving types of questions, she’s bright (etc etc). We bought some practice papers and exercises to help her practise the question techniques, and over a couple of months her efforts in timed practice papers at home were encouraging. But she didn’t achieve the required standard in the actual tests, and so won’t be considered by the Grammar School.

We were disappointed. I’m a bit of an academic snob (being bright and all), and I thought she was bright enough to go to the best academic school in the area. But after a bit of reflection (and post-rationalisation!), we’re pleased she can go to the local comprehensive school. It’s less than a mile from our house, so she can walk there and back with her friends. It’s a relatively small school, so it’s pretty friendly and many of the children there live locally. We were very impressed with the Head Teacher and many of the facilities (especially for the Performing Arts), and while it’s not had a great reputation, it’s definitely improving.

What has become clear to me in the past few weeks and months, is that we were in a distinct minority, as we didn’t have Hannah tutored for the tests, and indeed only started to practise with her at home a few months beforehand. There is an impressive (but to me, pretty depressing) website that seems to have everything you need to know about these tests…

If you have found this site at the end of Year 4 or the start of Year 5 it is the ideal time to begin your 11+ DIY “campaign” through with home tutoring…

I’m either naive or stupid for not treating this whole process like a military campaign, like a project with timelines and deadlines. I actually thought this was about whether my child was bright enough and had the right problem-solving abilities, vocabulary, verbal reasoning skills. But it turns out it’s all about teaching for the test.

That same website has a detailed questionnaire that has received over 9,000 responses (more like 6,000 for the financial questions I refer to).
Among the respondents…

• Just under 2/3 admitted to using a private tutor
• On average, they started preparing their children for the 11+ just under a year in advance, with 37% starting more than a year before the tests (when their child was still in Year 4, probably aged 9)
• Those who did use a private tutor spent over £20/hour on average, and over £1,000 in total on tuition

All this makes the 11+ more about teaching and preparation than anything else. Certainly the children have to be bright to pass the exam, but as Michael Rosen so rightly remarks, multiple choice tests are not really about knowledge, or curiosity, or exploration. They are about focus and technique more than discovery and interpretation.

What’s more at the heart of multiple choice tests there is a question of technique. Teachers will teach the exam-taking knowledge to a) bomb on through the test, don’t linger. b) if you don’t know the answer, guess – you’ll have a one in four chance of being right. This last point will almost certainly win you extra marks over the person who is not doing that and has absolutely nothing to do with the syllabus knowledge and everything to do with exam-technique knowledge.

At the last election we were promised less testing and more teaching. I’ve not seen much proof of that, as new single tests for phonics and reading have been introduced for my younger daughter’s year, aged just 6, despite a wealth of evidence suggesting there is certainly no one way of learning to read that suits every child. The pressure of school league table results has been brought to the fore with a recent furore over GCSE marks. These league tables are useful ways to track comparative performance, but are increasingly seen as the be-all-and-end-all. I tend to agree more with this thoughtful article that advocates teaching to stimulate independent thought (wow! controversial, apparently…)

I don’t feel cheated. I do feel disappointed in the system. I don’t blame our friends who did have their children tutored. Not all of them succeeded, but I don’t know anyone who (like us) didn’t employ a tutor whose child passed the tests. It’s a shame that Grammar Schools attract the most able children as that has a knock-on effect on the local comprehensives. It’s a shame the Grammar Schools are so unevenly distributed, as that can affect some areas/schools (like ours) disproportionately. It’s a shame that the 11+ has evolved into something that seems to demand or require private tutoring, which means 9 & 10 year-olds are having hours of tuition after school every week for a year or more. Hannah already has piano lessons, used to go to Tae-Kwan-Do class, and has acted in a junior Am-Dram production. How much more do we expect of them? It’s a shame that this system seems to favour those who can afford £1,000 or more for tuition. It’s a shame that some people have reacted to our news with shock, have assumed that will ‘appeal’, and seem to think that this will blight my daughter’s future prospects.

Most of all, I’ve been upset, frustrated and angry at the way this whole thing has made me feel: like I’m not trying hard enough for my daughter’s education, that in not appealing I don’t care enough, that a few hundred pounds is an investment in her future and by not spending it I’ve failed her. It’s taken me a few weeks, but I Reckon that’s all boll*cks. My only mistake was not playing the system. But I don’t want to play the system: it’s not a level playing-field. I’d rather listen to Hannah playing pop songs by ear on the piano or watch a film with her than sit her down for more homework. She’s 10. And maybe that’s naive. Whatever.

Read Full Post »

It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting…

Last week I listened to an episode of the Freakonomics Radio podcast that featured extracts from a 2011 book by economist Robert H Frank. He uses examples from Darwinian evolution to highlight contradictions in our natural world, where individual interests and group interests are not always aligned, and draws parallels with our modern political economy.

Right! Now that I’ve got your attention…!?! ;^)

He cites Darwin’s examinations of bull elks. Their genetic imperative, like many other animals, is to take multiple female mates to maximise the chance of their genes being passed onto future generations. Bull elks compete aggressively for mates with their antlers as primary weapons. Typically, bigger antlers will make an individual elk more successful in these fights, meaning he can mate with more females. And so elks will tend to evolve with larger (and larger) antlers. But although this development works in the interests of the individual elks, does it really act in the interests of the group, the species? Larger antlers are heavier, more cumbersome, making it harder for the elk to manoeuvre in dense forest and escape predators.

I understand from some reviews that Professor Frank’s exploration of Darwin’s work is less-than-complete, but it still poses interesting challenges. How does Natural Selection cope with this inconsistency between self-interest and the interests of the wider group? In the context of the real economy, he challenges us to consider “how much is enough?”. When does the acquisition of personal wealth become detrimental to the society?

After listening to that thorny podcast, I switched to another transAtlantic favourite, This American Life, and the episode Take the money and run…for office, which only made me think that Professor Frank is right. It would seem that American democracy has evolved to favour the candidates or parties or interest groups who can raise the most money for campaigning their message, which is almost certainly going to work in their own interests. But does it really operate in the interests of the people, in the interests of democracy?

The US and its allies have waged wars in recent decades to promote democracy against tyrannical, despotic regimes, spreading freedom and democracy around the globe. But apparently the day-to-day, week-to-week practicalities of US democracy are not primarily about understanding the voice of the people, of listening to the entire constituency of citizens to perform the will of the electorate. Instead, what drives congressmen and senators is…

…a gnawing relentless voracious need for cash.

Walt Minnick was a conservative Democrat congressman, who claimed that from the very day he was elected

…I needed to raise $10-15,000 a day

…every day of the year. TAL reports that congressmen can spend 2-3 hours every day sat in offices managed by the Democratic and Republican Parties, making calls to raise political campaign funds. While they’re apparently on taxpayers’ time, they spend hours every day of every week begging for cash for their own campaigns. Walt Minnick jokes in all seriousness

…the best thing about being an ex-congressmen is my friends now return my phonecalls.

But not all congressmen are created equal. Congressional committee chairmen and members have a pecking order. The House Administration and Judiciary committees are definitely not on the ‘A’ List, whereas Financial Services, Energy & Commerce and Ways & Means committees are very interesting to all sorts of people. Just being on these plum committees can bring in up to $200,000 more than the average, according to research from the Sunlight Foundation. Chairmen of the ‘A’ List committees can bring in more than $1m. But this blessing is also a curse. The Party leadership know this, and they set targets for fundraising so those with privileged positions can help subsidise others. And God help you if you’re not meeting your targets.

This all reminded me of Glengarry Glen Ross, the salesmen taken to task by Alec Baldwin, waving the dream of “the Glengarry leads”…

First Prize is a Cadillac Eldorado… 2^nd prize is a set of steak knives… 3^rd prize is you’re fired.

Worse still is the more recent evolution of Super-PACs. Political Action Committees (PACs) have long been the central repositories for financial donations. But a Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case ruled that ‘Super-PACs’ need not identify themselves as the sponsors of political activities. These anonymous conglomerates can take unlimited amounts of donations from companies, individuals, or unions.

Super-PACs raise tens of millions of dollars, but “just” a few hundred thousand dollars can change the course of a close-fought congressional election. And they can do this without declaring who donated the money. According to critics of the Supreme Court ruling, the 2010 midterm congressional elections were the most expensive and least transparent in history.

All this means US politicians are spending more and more time raising money, simply to have a ‘rainy day’ war chest that they might use to respond to intervention from a Super-PAC. Individuals, companies and unions can use their wealth to further their own causes, to get access to law-makers and to influence democratic elections. But where does that leave the rest of us…?

Is this the real state of American democracy? The most advanced state of evolution in our human political systems? Where the politicians spend a sizeable amount of their time attending fundraisers, begging for donations from individuals and lobbyists, where money can buy access to politicians, where organised money can create political campaigns without disclosing their motives or even their identity, where elected politicians live in fear for their jobs if they can’t raise enough money for advertising.

Really?

Read Full Post »

You can’t handle the truth…

I’ve written before about how much I love This American Life, living proof that public broadcasting is a very good idea. Every week I download the podcast introduced by Ira Glass and its eclectic, insightful, human stories of life in all its forms.

In January 2012 TAL broadcast a monologue by Mike Daisey, a long-established and successful writer and performer. The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs was a compelling and powerful piece about Daisey’s experiences in China, when he visited factories used by Apple to produce their iPhones and iPads. His performance is extraordinary, relating meetings with people poisoned by industrial chemicals, with underage workers, with a man whose hand has been ‘ruined’ by machinery, with armed guards at the factory gates.

Mike Daisey is a great storyteller. That episode of TAL has been downloaded or streamed over 1 million times. He has become an unofficial spokesman for the campaigners seeking to expose industrial conditions in American companies’ plants in China and elsewhere. He has been all over American news channels. His monologue is extremely moving in many different ways. Most importantly, I believed that he had seen and experienced all these things, and it made me care about what’s behind the beautiful Apple touchscreens.

Last week TAL retracted their broadcast of his story; not because it’s all made up, because it’s not. Many of the stories he reports are true, well-reported and documented, often by Apple themselves. Their episode in which they explore the allegations against Apple and other suppliers makes for sometimes bleak listening. The scale of this industrial production is astonishing. Hundreds of thousands of workers fleeing rural poverty has elements of the 19th century about it. But as the programme explains…

There were times in this nation when we had harsh working conditions as part of our economic development. We decided as a nation that that was unacceptable. We passed laws in order to prevent those harsh working conditions from ever being inflicted on American workers again. And what has happened today is that, instead of exporting that standard of life, which is in our capacity to do, we have exported harsh working conditions to another nation.

It is right that people raise these issues. We deserve to at least understand what is done to produce these wondrous devices.

But, and this is a blindingly tough challenge for the bleeding-heart liberal, how far should the truth be manipulated to create a more powerful, more compelling narrative?

Mike Daisey accepts that his monologue is not a factual, historical document of his experiences in China. TAL contacted his translator after a simple Google search despite Daisey claiming he could no longer reach her. She says many of the things in his performance didn’t happen. He attributes conversations to her that didn’t happen. He told TAL producers that her name isn’t Cathy (but it is, for professional purposes at least). He never met a worker whom he actually verified was 12 years old, but in his monologue he says he did.

There are countless inconsistencies in his account. But why should that be a problem if the wider story he is telling is true, and if his methods are getting that story to a wider audience?

I Reckon that the truth should get in the way of a good story, when that story attempts to challenge the status quo, expose hypocrisy or double-standards, and crusades against the the System. A challenge to the vested interests or the established wisdom has to stand up to scrutiny. Scientific research that challenges the existing paradigms, that uncovers anomalies in the way we understand the world, has to be peer-reviewed before it can become the new reality, the new way of explaining the way things are.

Mike Daisey claims that his performance doesn’t need to live up to noraml journalistic standards of accuracy, that he can hide behind the smokescreen of theatrical licence. He claims to be exposing a wider context of truths, and as such his only mistake has been to allow TAL (which takes its journalistic standards very seriously) to broadcast his story.

But I Reckon he is kidding himself. Mike Daisey seems to believe his only mistake has been to allow TAL to broadcast his performance. So lying to their team of producers about the facts and accuracy of his story was their fault?

I Reckon that deep down he knows he has run fast and loose with the facts in a bad way. Noone with his experience writes a piece called The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs without thinking, expecting, hoping that it will become news. He wants to expose the reality of the manufacturing process of the iconic products of the 21st century, but instead of his recent interviews being about those realities, they’ve focused on questioning his integrity. TV & press journalists have been challenging his standards (yes, really…). He has become the story. But he isn’t the story. He’s just a messenger, and he’s become a distraction. The TAL team believed his performance was a reflection of what actually happened to him. I believed it. He wants us to believe it.

I Reckon he should apologise, tell the truth about his performance, but keep performing.

Meanwhile, Apple has reported that in the first launch weekend, it has sold 3 million units of the new iPad3.

Read Full Post »

My name is Chris, and I’m proud to be a (bleeding heart) liberal…

I was recently taken to task by a more conservative friend of mine who claimed that

…socialists are far more jealous at what they consider to be the excessive wealth of those above them in the financial pecking order than they are concerned at those further down.

Well, I take issue with that.

I’m not that blissfully naive to ignore the shades of grey here: Abraham Lincoln was a Republican President who fought a civil war to end slavery, after all, but the general points stand. In the aftermath of this summer’s riots in London and other English cities, David Cameron and his Government were quick to condemn the criminal actions of the disaffected, alienated youths. Thousands were arrested, charged and tried. Many were imprisoned for seemingly trivial participation (stealing a bottle of mineral water) alongside those who definitely deserved such punishment. But by and large the response has seemed to me to be short-term and shallow, as I feared at the time.

Michael Goldfarb’s recent documentary for the BBC World Service explored the changing nature of the British Establishment, how it has maintained control through history, and how it has changed in more recent decades. It prompted me to remember my A-Level History studies, in which I spent some time considering the phenomenon that in the 130 years to the end of World War One, France, Prussia, Italy and Russia all suffered major revolutions, while Britain was relatively stable.

Part of the explanation for this was that the ruling British élite were far more adaptable than some of these other régimes. They acknowledged some sense of responsibility for the population and for general order. They recognised the needs for reform (however unpalatable it might have felt to them) in order to maintain a peaceful status quo. Robert Lowe opposed reforms passed in the 1860s, but was quick to warn his colleagues of the imperatives that came with such an extension of the suffrage, as he introduced the seminal education reforms of 1867…

we must educate our new masters.

Factory Reforms, education acts, voting extensions were all passed at fairly regular intervals during the 19th century in the UK, often representing the smallest possible change the élite felt they could get away with. The Chartist protest movement of the 1840s largely failed in its aims during its protests, but within a couple of generations virtually everything they campaigned for was enshrined in British law, and they were perhaps the first movement to ignite an interest in politics among the working class.

In the past century the British establishment has changed beyond all recognition. World War One put an end to the dominance of the landed gentry (even Downton Abbey recognised this!). The Commercial classes had been rising through the 19th century, and by the 1920s there was both an established Labour and Liberal Party seeking to represent the common man and woman in a way that scarcely seemed possible even 20 years earlier. Through the 20th century industry rose and fell away and was  replaced by the financial markets at the heart of the political economy.

Whereas the 19th Century Aristocracy retained some sense of noblesse oblige and sought to maintain order, passing reforms to benefit others while retaining their own control, there is none of that duty within the invisible hand of barely-regulated financial markets. The self-interest that led a landowner to distribute parts of his wealth to feed the workers who sow and harvest his crops seems largely absent from the new élite. Their driving motive is profit, and is far more selfish. Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz has remarked that

…the reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there.

Many conservatives (including my friend) make arguments like this (I’m quoting him here):

I am not affronted by inequalities per se: a society in which everyone has equal wealth is neither possible nor desirable – how would you produce the incentives and rewards for those who create wealth for others as well as themselves if it were so? The absolute (not relative) standard of living of those at the bottom is what really matters…

In 1789, a (probably soon-to-be headless) French Princess apparently said of the revolutionaries “Let them eat cake” (it was probably brioche). That went well, didn’t it?

I reckon so-called Trickle-Down economics is fatally flawed and promotes brutal inequalities in society. Those rioters in Tottenham and Ealing this last summer had expensive mobile phones and Blackberries, they weren’t looting for food or subsistence goods, but designer trainers and flat-screen TVs. Their absolute standard of living is higher than any generation before them. And still they rioted.

Conservatives talk about incentives and rewards for creating wealth. They assert the requirement that  people with resources, education and wealth enough already to be able to create opportunities require further subsidy to do so. So much for trickle-down economics and the invisible hand. On the other (painfully visible) hand, the poorest, most vulnerable, most alienated, least educated, least mobile people in society are challenged to commute for 90 minutes to get a job that barely covers the travel costs, and threatened and bullied with reductions in support.

Conservatives also talk in doom-laden tones about the terrors that would befall us if marginal taxes are increased as businessmen flee the country, taking their brains and bank accounts elsewhere. But as a recent report by ActionAid outlines, 98% of the FTSE100 companies already operate thousands of companies based in tax havens to ‘optimise’ their tax burden and profitability. The collective intellects and judgement of the banking sector largely caused the economic meltdown into which we are rapidly descending. Should I mourn their departure from the UK? Really?

Bleeding-heart liberals are by no means perfect. But at least we are blessed and cursed with being able to see, understand and distinguish different arguments, and judge their merits with an open mind.

Richard Murphy would probably blanche at me mentioning his name in the same paragraph as ‘bleeding heart liberal’. But his commentary on the current state of the world has (IMHO) been exemplary. He recognises the ideological failings of the neo-con world-view and argues powerfully for more courageous politicians to acknowledge these failings and strike out on a new course, with new strategies.

I’m really not jealous of the wealth of those above me in “the financial pecking order”, but I do resent the way they actively and aggressively perpetuate inequalities in society to the detriment of the vast majority of people, with an astonishing selfishness and self-regard. I take offence at how they manipulate democratic institutions for their own gain, and even more I resent how those institutions allow themselves to be manipulated.

I’m relatively well-off, but I am still part of the 99%. My conservative friend is too, and he also wishes for things to be better, but he is resigned to what he sees as ‘the only solution’ to the problems of excessive government spending and borrowing. I’m proud to think there must be different options, different ideas that could improve things for everyone. I don’t have those answers, but at least I’m trying, and at least I’m hoping.

Read Full Post »