What a fabulous surprise.. not only shortlisted but this year’s winner. You can watch a short video of the presentation event here:
and read or listen to the winning story – ‘Rogey’ – here
Now I have to ease myself out of education and start taking my creative writing seriously!
Watch this space!!
See also blog on national testing.
This is my abbreviated response to the Scottish Government’s consultation on the proposed National Framework for Scottish Education. Responses are welcome either here as comments or to my e.mail at daniel.murphy@ed.ac.uk.
General
I wholeheartedly endorse the vision and commend the political commitment to realising it in practice. Setting out a clear vision and values for Scottish education is helpful. However, the document (and consequently the Framework) contains a number of conceptual confusions. Many of these conceptual confusions arise from the way in which the term ‘equality’ is used in the document, and in more general public discourse. As a result, the practical steps proposed are not well targeted. The Moray House School of Education, the EIS and others have made a number of valuable responses which contribute helpfully to the debate in terms of practice. As a result, I will limit this response to the foundational issue of conceptual clarity and one or two recommendations. I hope this response is helpful to you and would be happy to be involved in any further consultation / discussion on these matters.
The concept of equality:
[1] Murphy, D. (2014) Schooling Scotland (Argyll Press) p21
[2] See Murphy, D. et al (eds) (2015), Everyone’s Future (Institute of Education/Trentham Press)
[3] Ibid Chapters 5 and 11
[4] Murphy, D. (2014) p115ff
[5] Murphy (2104) pp61-63
This (click on the word!) is how I’ve been spending a lot of my time the past few months!
‘This is a must-read for those of us who have lived the theme of this excellent book. It is even more so for those who in their lifetimes could have an impact on the future direction of education in these isles. It is an excellent account of Scottish education over these fifty years and is a fitting tribute to one of Scotland’s foremost academics. Insightful, enlightening, thought provoking and very challenging, its timing in the development of Scottish education could not be better.’
Ken Cunningham, CBE FRSA, General Secretary, School Leaders Scotland
It is fifty years since comprehensive education was introduced in Scotland, England and Wales. But while the ideal of comprehensive education has been largely abandoned in England, comprehensive schools are alive and well in Scotland and command public support.
This long-term overview of the development of the Scottish system, with contrasting accounts from England, Northern Ireland and Wales, concludes that comprehensive schooling, linked to underlying democratic values of liberty, equality and fraternity, has made a positive difference to the development of contemporary Scotland.
Drawing on a wide range of research, documentary and policy evidence, the book provides a critical account of developments in curriculum and governance and the impact of comprehensive schooling on its students’ outcomes, social class and gender inequalities. It exploits a unique series of surveys to give voice to young people and their increasingly positive attitudes to school, especially among the less academic. But the Scottish system’s success is still only partial.
Looking forward, the book outlines lessons from the Scottish experience both for Scotland and for other countries considering how best to educate young people of secondary-school age. A valuable resource for students, teachers, academics and policymakers.
– See more at: https://ioepress.co.uk/books/schools-and-schooling/everyones-future/#sthash.03erjp6O.dpuf
During after dinner chat last night, we got onto talking about how well Karl Marx, the journalist, wrote. We had been looking for his quote on historical events repeating themselves, and I went back to my much abused copy of ‘Basic Writings’ to look up his take on the 1848 revolution in France… I was sure it was in there somewhere. Eventually, this morning, I found it at the beginning of his extensive essay ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon’ – a fabulous piece of sustained journalistic polemic.
Marx was so much better as a journalist than he was as an economist, his incisive analytical commentaries on the key events of the day based directly on his deeper philosophical writings, but not weighed down with the ponderous prose of economic theory. Racy, exciting, opinionated but often right on the button. Here are some sample quotes: the first is the one I was looking up, from the start of his essay on the seizure of power by Louis Napoleon, mimicking his uncle’s seizure of power in the 1790s:
“Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the ‘Montagne’ of 1848-1851 for the ‘Montagne’ of 1793-1795, the nephew for the uncle.”
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please.. but under circumstances encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living..”
“It is not enough to say, as the French do that their nation was taken unawares… It remains to be explained how a nation of thirty-six million can be surprised and delivered unresisting into captivity by three swindlers.”
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”
Pure political and philosophical gold.
Very gratifying to find a good review of ‘Dilemmas’ in the latest EMAL journal. Full text in Educational Management Administration & Leadership, March 2014, 42: 314-315, but some key extracts of the review below….
If this whets your appetite, search this blog on ‘dilemmas’ and you’ll get some extracts.
Book Review: Professional School Leadership: Dealing with Dilemmas (2nd edition) Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press, 2013; 176 pp.: ISBN 978-1-78046-018-5 (pbk). Reviewed by: Karen Stephens, University of Leicester, UK
Murphy’s second edition develops previous insights into how teachers and school leaders perceive and approach the tensions and dilemmas encountered in the daily life of modern schools…. he paints a clear picture of the expectations, aspirations and practicalities that compete for attention, thereby producing potential experiences of dilemma…….
The book is divided into two clear sections, the first dealing in detail with the theory underpinning Murphy’s model followed by a practical application of this model. …… A range of vignettes, taken from the real life experiences of school leaders in a variety of schools and career stages…….help illustrate and …. provide examples for further discussion and reflection……
Murphy emphasises the evolving, developing nature of wisdom and insight that leaders accumulate as they engage with dilemmas, making the structure of the book useful both as an initial training resource and as a continuing guide…..
I found this book very interesting and inspiring ….. School leaders, especially those finding themselves grappling with dilemmas, would find may useful insights here……
The book makes a timely and useful contribution to the profession at a time when schools and school leaders face huge change and challenges.
Just back from a chilling exploration of the US Food Industry – the film Food Inc
If you weren’t vegetarian before, this may just change your mind. I’m shamed to be a human being, one of a species that treats other species in this way. If you must eat meat, eat ethically sourced meat!
The other major aspect of the movie was the extent to which global corporations control the production of food in the US on an industrial scale. In UK, it seems that the major supermarkets have a much stronger role, and are often responsive to consumer pressure. This is one of three ways in which individuals within a democracy can act to resist the force of international corporate greed dominating the production and distribution of food to the ultimate damage of individuals (health, liveliehood), the environment (mono-cultures and food miles) and our fellow species on earth (degrading and unhealthy lives before industrial scale slaughter).
The second is through education. I think Scottish schools are making a better go of this these days, with healthy eating, global citizenship, eco-awards etc. all prominent in many schools, particular at primary ages.
The third is through political campaigning. WDM (click here ) has been at the forefront of political campaigning to support justice in trade and international finance for 40 years. Most people have not the time, the energy, the expertise of the resource to ‘investigate’ complex matters like the impact of international futures markets on farmers in developing countries or of new trade agreements between the US and the EU. Pressure groups such as WDM play a vital role in taking on the corporate legal and lobbying teams of big international companies. The briefings and information they provide are educational, informative and come from sound values of justice and equity in human affairs and environmental sustainability in our relations with the planet and its other inhabitants. Sometimes they get things a little bit wrong, or in their enthusiasm, don’t see room for useful compromise, but that’s what you want in a campaigning organisation. I’ve not been that active recently – other than through campaigning letters and personal behaviour – but I’m proud that my annual subscription for all of those 40 years (I think!) has helped to keep up their excellent work. The relevant campaign to this evening’s film is on the concept of ‘food sovereignty’. Key points are:
Sign up for more information or join up and join the campaign HERE!!
Joan and I watched this film at a crowded Cinema 3 in Glasgow’s Renfrew Street Cineworld on Sunday evening. I have added Solomon Northrop’s account of his captivity, subjugation and eventual escape (click here to read online) to my ever expanding list of ‘must reads’.
The film was compelling viewing with script, cinematography, music and actors combining to deliver a moving personal story in the most powerful medium. Like the story of Kunta Kinte (here), the hero of Alex Haley’s 1970s novel ‘Roots’, it brought the worst reality of the slave trade straight to the heart.
Of course, as a onetime student of History, I think I know a great deal about the Atlantic slave trade, and its many parallels in other parts of the world and other eras such as the Muslim Indian Ocean equivalent (less publicised and active much longer). But the emotionally engaging technology of a well-made full size film touches the heart in quite a different way.
As a onetime teacher of History, I can only envy the capacity of the film maker to spin the story of the past, whether evidenced or imagined or a mixture of both, to tell an important truth about humanity in such a powerful and affecting way. The proper study of history, with due attention to evidence, is a necessary part of the truth of the past, ensuring that those with access to the most powerful media do not distort the story for their own ends. Yet film can communicate in a way that a history book never can.
I like to believe that had I been a Scottish or Irish gentleman of the 18th or 19th Century, forced to seek my fortune elsewhere by family poverty, I would have avoided the southern states or the West Indies and gone for the clean living honest labour of the frontier, like John Muir, though I acknowledge that even he had the advantage of being able to follow a peaceful path across the continent, as his predecessors had already eliminated most of the original inhabitants!
In fact, I have my own ancestral ‘get-out’ clause, an easy route to an easier conscience. When Solomon Northrop was labouring as a cotton picker on the Louisiana plantation where much of the action is set, many of my ancestors were starving in the Irish potato famine, or fleeing Ireland to settle in the worst slums of Victorian Edinburgh. Yet I still feel a strong sense of ‘guilt by association’, as a child of a country that profited more than most from the slave trade. This is not about race. It is important to recognise the conceptual trickery by which a false, ‘white’ identity can be assumed. I completely reject such a ‘white’ identity. I equally dislike the false prison of ‘national’ identity, one of the reasons I am uncomfortable with the nationalist undertones of ‘Scottish independence’. I assert a human identity. Pale skin cannot make me responsible for the crimes of the 19th Century slavers.
However there is some responsibility. The wealth of contemporary Scotland was built not just on the labour of the cotton factories or coal mines, or the Irish navigators who built the railways and canals, but also in part on the backs of the sugar and tobacco plantations of the New World. My current wealth and ease is built on the stories of the past.
We, who live today in comfort, must acknowledge the harm that was done, empathise with the sense of loss and injustice of those who share a slave heritage and ensure that the future is built on stronger foundations of human dignity and rights, our shared humanity and our shared responsibility for each other.
I commend both the film and the book. I want now to read his story, to hear Solomon Northrop speak to me down the ages; to hear him speak for himself. The following extract from the book, faithfully portrayed in Steve McQueen ‘s film, finds Solomon at the point when he has been kidnapped into captivity and refuses to accept the demands of the slave trader, Burch, that he should acknowledge his new identity as a slave:
As soon as these formidable whips appeared, I was seized by both of them, and roughly divested of my clothing. My feet, as has been stated, were fastened to the floor. Drawing me over the bench, face down-wards, Kadbum placed his heavy foot upon the fetters, between my wrists, holding them painfully to the floor. With the paddle, Burch commenced beating me. Blow after blow was inflicted upon my naked body. When his unrelenting arm grew tired, he stopped and asked if I still insisted I was a free man. I did insist upon it, and then the blows were renewed, faster and more energetically, if possible, than before. When again tired, he would repeat the same question, and receiving the same answer, continue his labor. All this time, the incarnate devil was uttering most fiendish oaths. At length the paddle broke, leaving the useless handle in his hand. Still I would not yield. All his brutal blows could not force from my lips that I was a slave. Casting madly on the floor the handle of the broken paddle, he seized the rope. This was far more painful than the other. I struggled with all my power, but it was in vain. I prayed for mercy, but my prayer was only answered with imprecations and with stripes. I thought I must die beneath the lashes of the accursed brute. Even now the flesh crawls upon my bones, as I recall the scene. I was all on fire. My sufferings I can compare to nothing else than the burning agonies of hell!
At last I became silent to his repeated questions. I would make no reply. In fact, I was becoming almost unable to speak. Still he plied the lash without stint upon my poor body, until it seemed that the lacerated flesh was stripped from my bones at every stroke. A man with a particle of mercy in his soul would not have beaten even a dog so cruelly. At length Eadbum said that it was useless to whip me any more — that I would be sore enough. Thereupon, Burch desisted, saying, with an admonitory fist in my face, and hissing the words through his firm-set teeth, that if ever I dared to utter again that I was entitled to my freedom, that I had been kidnapped, or any thing whatever of the kind, the castigation I had just received was nothing in comparison with what might follow. He swore that he would either conquer or kill me.
Letter to the editor of the Guardian newspaper after recent articles on this theme:
Dear Editor
Last weekend’s articles in the Guardian and the Observer on the possible impact of Scottish independence on English politics (‘Scottish yes vote would drive change in England’ and ‘The Scots have a chance to drive change in politics. Why don’t the rest of us?’) echoed our Boxing Day family discussions on the referendum. Of our four children, two attended University in England, two in Scotland, while three have lived and worked in England (two remain in London, one recently returned to Glasgow). With the various partners from Quebec, Zimbabwe and Scotland, and Joan and I tending in different directions, we explored the issues well into the ‘wee sma’ hours’ and this theme dominated the discussion: right now, the best way for a Scottish voter to break up the obsolete carbuncles of Westminster politics is to vote for Scottish independence. But why should it be necessary for those who long for a better politics to take the drastic step of divorce (even as improbably amicable a divorce as Alex Salmond promises)?
In the 1980s and early 1990s, a groundswell of political opinion across Scotland led to the Scottish ‘Claim of Right’. The Labour Party, the natural leaders of such a debate, played their full part, with their most natural allies, the Liberal Democrats, in bringing this forward into a consensus-seeking constitutional convention, whose deliberations, and investigations of constitutional arrangements in other democracies, led to the devolution settlement promised in the 1997 manifesto. It seems that the Labour Party has now fled from constitutional issues, whether in Scotland or in the UK. Labour’s best Scottish politicians sit comfortably in Westminster, seemingly unaware of how much Scotland needs them now. Meantime, their Scottish counterparts are trapped into inevitably negative campaigning (what else can a ‘no’ vote be?), based on fear of the unknown rather than a positive vision of a better UK. The Liberal Democrats are neutralised by their dance of death ‘damage limitation’ coalition, which prevents them collaborating with their natural allies on the changes which they believe in. The SNP meanwhile ignore their responsibilities to represent the social democratic vision of their constituents by playing a positive role in UK politics and argue that that vision can only be achieved in a separate Scotland. When we need a self-publicising narcissist like Russell Brand to give voice to civic alienation and put constitutional change on the front pages, we surely know that our politicians are failing us.
Last summer, I put these arguments to Douglas Alexander. I argued that the ‘no’ arguments in Scotland lack any vision about how politics in the UK can be made more representative, less adversarial and more engaging; that we need a constitutional vision for the UK which is about seeking the good collectively rather than scoring points to gain marginal electoral advantage; that a UK constitutional commission, echoing the process we followed in Scotland in the early 1990s, could rally the civic community around such a vision. He has argued in later correspondence that, “following the referendum there should be a National Convention – “Scotland 2025″ – to chart a new vision for our nation”. Why only Scotland? After the disappointments and disillusions of the years since 1997, who can believe that the present rickety constitutional arrangements of Westminster, West Lothian question and all, will chart a worthwhile vision of the UK’s future? Meantime the mean-spirited politics of fear inspired by UKIP’s success, cuts a swathe across England. Much as I dislike the chauvinism which lurks beneath the urbane Europeanism of Salmond’s SNP, and much as I dislike the idea of casting adrift from the cultural wealth that the Union brings, the complacency of UK politicians, trapped in their Westminster bubble with no vision of how the UK can avoid endless cycles of Tory dominance, might well lead me to vote ‘yes’. It is time for progressive Westminster politicians who believe in social justice to wake up and smell the coffee. The issues in the Scottish referendum are of vital importance to the UK. This time, and there’s not much time left, it’s not the economy, “it’s the constitution, stupid!”
In e.mail correspondence with Bernard Barker, a friend and education colleague today, he told me that much to his surprise, his father’s wartime letters to his mother have gained recent literary success. He told me that after his father’s death, he had …
“… deposited 500 letters (fully archived) at Mass Observation – they have been found and published in Simon Garfield’s To The Letter (see here ); and promoted assiduously in various ways. The reviews, from the Washington Post to the Guardian have celebrated my parents as wonderful writers and now there is talk of a freestanding book and an audio version with Benedict and Kerry Fox. I had envisaged the letters providing verite for second world war historians in years to come, the odd footnote; I had not anticipated a sensation. The experience is surreal but very exciting and enjoyable…..”
Here is Benedict Cumberbatch reading from one of the letters:
Here is a link to the reviews:
While there’s inevitably a slightly intrusive feeling about listening in on intimate conversation (unless it’s a publicity seeking celebrity), there is something about this intimacy that warms the spirit – it is a gift from those who have passed away to us who still live.
Thank you Bessie and Chris and and thank you Bernard. Your sharing has enriched us all.
One of Adam’s contracts as a freelance artist is to write/draw a weekly strip in the children’s comic ‘The Phoenix’ (click here )
This year Time Magazine listed it as 2nd best of the Top 10 Graphic Novels/Comics of 2013 . Here’s the citation:
The Phoenix: You can only get it as an iPad subscription in the States, but this weekly British series is aimed straight at 7-to-10-year-olds’ sweet spot: multiple, ongoing adventure and comedy serials, plus how-to-draw features, puzzles and banter from cartoon-animal editors Tabs Inkspot and Bruno Barker. It’s a beautifully executed cluster of variations on the classic Euro-comics tradition, crafted with obvious affection for kids and their parents. Best feature: “Corpse Talk,” in which Adam Murphy interviews the corpses of historical figures from Boudicca to Nikola Tesla.
You’ll get a flavour of Corpse Talk here or read about Albert Einstein here.
I’m really pleased for Adam. He took a lot of risks to pursue his dream as a comic artist and he’s worked incredibly hard. It’s great to see that he’s beginning to get the recognition he deserves!!
PS I think The Phoenix is way better than the one that got the #1 spot!.. not that I am biased or anything…..
‘Close Your Eyes’ won the Scottish Book of the Year (Fiction) Award earlier this year. An intense psychological page-turner, the story follows a first time mother struggling to cope with her relationship with her baby. I read the book in one sitting as I didn’t want to leave her troubled soul until she had found peace. I posted the following review on Amazon.
What a fabulous read this is. I can’t recommend it highly enough, but if you don’t believe me, then maybe you’ll take the recommendation of the judges who awarded it the Scottish book of the year award (fiction) for 2013. (Scottish Book Awards 2013). Three voices give us the story. Each voice is the same person. In the first person, she (Rowan) tells the story of her childhood growing up in a new age commune in the North of Scotland in the 1970s. In the second person, she is addressed in the present tense as a mother struggling to cope with the emotional demands of motherhood. In the third person, she tells various versions of her own mother’s mysterious disappearance when she was 11. A mother disappears and leaves her child and orphan; the child has become a mother; the new mother fails her child; the new mother goes back to her life as a child to find her own mother. This may not sound very interesting in my less than sparky summary, but believe me, the tension is there from the start. I picked the book up late in the afternoon, and only put it down after midnight when it was finished. Page after page shoots by, as Rowan careers further and further into a depression that can only be lifted by discovering the suppressed secrets of her childhood. The reader is brought right up close to, in fact inside the head of, a woman on the verge as she runs away from her comfortable Islington life, her baby, her well balanced husband and seeks the truth of her past in a journey of exploration, back to the commune of her youth. There are some lighter moments, particularly as the encounter group in the contemporary commune go through their bonding workshops and salivate at the prospect of meeting the 70s new age guru, Eva, who is now the mother superior of the commune, and was Rowan’s mother’s nemesis. For those of us alive in those years, memories are stirred – an interesting name-check through the music and the causes of the naïve social left, part individualistic self-indulgence, part romantic protest against the impersonal forces of the post-modern world ahead. Throughout, Rowan struggles to open her eyes to who she is and what she is for. Ewan Morrison clearly is in command of the writer’s craft. His style is at times pacy but necessary, spare but detailed. A compelling emotional intensity is generated through Rowan’s sustained minute by minute internal monologues. The reader, washed out by the end, will emerge with more insight and more questions than before, and just a little bit of hope that Rowan’s future will be better, that all our futures will be better.
Recently, the new format Times Educational Supplement asked for a piece based around the 2nd edition of my Dilemmas book. I was told I had 800 words and had to include a ‘top ten tips’ section, to fit with the way they set these things out on the back few pages. A young London editor at the other end of the phone then sent me his redraft – jazzing it up a bit. I edited out the phrases I least liked and we ended up with this: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6373327 . At the end of the process, I concluded, as people of my age has often done, that not all change is progress.
Apologies to my regular readers for my long absence – two months since my last post. Since my Mum passed away in July I’ve been hibernating in a muddle of work…. carrying on with life in a very busy way, juggling various writing projects…. but there’s a bit of me that’s still numb, so numb I’m not sure which bit it is. In Sept I said, ‘blogging again’. I make no such claims today. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.
Dealing with Dilemmas 2.0 advance copies are printed already. The official launch at the University of Edinburgh is tomorrow evening (13th). I’m excited about it. When the first edition was published in 2007, Christine Forde of Univ of Glasgow told me
“Your book is going down a storm with SQH candidates – it has answered a lot
of questions for them.”
This gave me a lot of pleasure, as I had set out to write the book to answer some questions that were bothering me! In particular, I wanted to explore why there is such a gap between the real life experience of school leadership (not just of the the headteacher, but all those who take on leadership roles) and what is written on bits of paper such as policies or guidelines or quality indicators. In the real world of lived experience, everything is much messier but also so much more real and exciting. This book goes some towards explaining ‘why?’
The new second edition is revised, updated and expanded, with many more exemplars. It’s also physically bigger and aesthetically more pleasing. I hope it continues to answer important questions for those who lead in our schools.
My thanks to the publisher, Dunedin Academic Press (click here), for their faith in the book and the importance of its message.
2nd edition
I can’t believe it’s been six weeks since the last blog. Assessment, holiday, assessment, Mum’s illness, more assessment and some time in the garden and this is where I’ve got to….
An out-of-touch Pope / A church led by men in robes / Faith thus perverted.
K P O’Brien / Cardinal and Archbishop / Let his people down.
Dressed up in splendour / The trappings of powerful wealth / Hide a decayed core.
Faith from our fathers / Charity from our mothers / Abuse from our priests.
Will Church leaders learn / That only those without sin / Can ‘cast the first stone’?
Asking forgiveness / Let all Catholic clergy / Wear ashy sackcloths.
In humility / The Catholic Church must now / Confess and repent.
Honour the women / honour the young boys and men / Clericly abused.
Do penance for sin /Preach no more but listen now / To other voices.
Sell off the riches / Of the Vatican City / And give to the poor.
I was pleased to read the article by Christopher Harvey in this week’s Scottish Review (click here ). One of the depressing things about the endless debate around the forthcoming referendum on Scottish independence is that it takes no account of the overall political shape of the United Kingdom, but is conducted purely in Scottish terms. Those who do not wish Scotland to be independent (yet, in my case at least) can only make a negative contribution to the debate, or are pressed into a position where it seems, somehow, that they accept the status quo as a desirable option. The status quo is not a desirable option. It allows minority parties to assume power and impose policies that the majority of the population have not voted for. It gives extraordinary power to Prime Ministers, allowing them to wage war against the wishes of the majority of the population.
From all points of view, it was, of course, a big mistake not to have a third option on the referendum paper. Such an option would have removed the partisan party politics which has led to the discussion into petty points-scoring, albeit the discussion would still have been cast in Scottish terms, since there are members of all political parties who would want to see some kind of Devo-Plus settlement.
However a Devo-Plus type settlement would still do nothing about the whole range of constitutional anomalies in the way that the UK is governed. As the debate progresses, I am increasingly drawn to the idea of a multi-party constitutional convention for the UK, which would be asked to sort out the problems currently facing UK governance, not least the West Lothian question and what to do about the House of Lords. These questions are far too important to allow them to be decided by whichever party is in government at any one time. I would want to see a bicameral federal parliament, with the governing Chamber directly elected and a secondary chamber, representing the constituent parts of the UK, holding UK governments to account in terms of constitutionally defined aims of government – social justice, the national and international rule of law, a bill of rights, long term economic stability and sustainability and so on. If these are the kinds of things which the SNP rightly calls for in an independent Scottish constitution, why can we not have them in a UK constitution and why cannot Labour, Liberal, SNP, Green and other parties broadly of the left see ‘governance’ as the first and most important issue facing the UK today. Such an agenda would be well worthy of campaigning for, instead of the rather negative ‘better with what we have just now’, when we know what we have just now is not very good, and constitutionally messy.
Well has not that been a slog?.. but it feels like it was worth it.
My first target date was December 20th. No chance.
Then it was January 5th.. and I did spend around five days over Christmas / New Year rejigging the main chapters on the psychological, political and ethical perspectives as highlighted in my earlier (enthusiastic) posts (here for example ) … I added the first and last chapter, but really wasn’t happy with them and mid-January, while working on other material, I was delighted that four able readers proof-read and gave critical comment. That persuaded me that further rewriting of Chapters 1 and 5, together with a beefed-up Author’s Preface, were required. I got into it again over the last fortnight and thought I had put it all to bed last weekend, only to wake up in the middle of the night with the sure conviction that Chapter 5 was still too weak. Like the rest of the book, it’s a generalist trying to put together specialist material from within disciplines that don’t speak much too each other.
It was completed on Saturday morning.
I had deliberately left tidying up the references till the end. My friends, you should never do that! I was using RefWorks, a perfectly respectable programme, but, to save time, had been using the direct import from Google Scholar for the detail. The trouble is that I had not realised that Google Scholar was not completing some of the fields – e.g. place of publication, while some of the dates in my text were different to those on Scholar. Cue 36 hours of slog between Saturday lunchtime (pausing only for a quick visit to my Mum and the recorded pleasure of a rare Scottish victory) and Monday 6pm when the final draft was ready and e.mailed off to Dunedin. The current estimate is of publication in June rather than autumn, provided we can work through the artwork etc. At least the cover is already designed … all those lovely coloured pencils….
2nd edition
Revisions to the second edition of my book on the Dilemmas of School Leadership (first edition here ) are still taking place.. hopefully to be completed this week (see earlier posts in January on this theme). I’m much happier now with the integration of elements in the Preface. One of the problems of editing your previous work is the temptation to tinker, all the time. However as bits are cut from one area and pasted somewhere else, flow and coherence are reduced. This has been the case particularly with the two Chapters which I have found most difficult: Chapter 1 (some of which is now in the new ‘Author’s Preface to the Second Edition) and Chapter 5 (policy implications).
This is now the concluding section of the Preface.
“The analysis of dilemmas offers a rich ‘bottom-up’ viewpoint on the experience of life in a school community. Through the attempt to understand dilemmas, we understand better the strands and tensions of our lives together and our hopes and aspirations for the development of our young people; we understand better the complex link between our disciplines of learning and their application in our daily lives, between emotion, cognition and valuation; we understand better the flows of power and influence within our communities and the role of the school in developing our democratic ways of living; we understand better what it is we value in our lives and what we value by our behaviour and the systems our behaviour supports.
The analysis of dilemmas helps us understand better the purpose of schools and schooling. Every school leader, and everyone who has an interest in what happens in our schools, has something to gain from that attempt.”
Yeah.
Cold rain has mushed the snow into slush but how clean the salt air, quickening the step along the strand.
Gullane bay panorama
Looking to Edinburgh from the 7th tee, Gullane Golf Course
One of the joys of spending a bit time on the 2nd edition of my Dilemmas book (due out in the autumn) has been re-reading Macmurray. My favourite quotes come from the Moray House Lecture 1958, ‘Learning to be Human’ (published for the first time in the special December 2012 edition of the Oxford Review of Education dedicated to Macmurray):
‘..the first priority in education – if by education we mean learning to be human – is learning to live in personal relation to other people. Let us call it learning to live in community. I call this a first priority because failure in this is fundamental failure, which cannot be compensated for by success in other fields…. ‘ (2012 p670)
‘.. the greatest threat to education in our own society [is that] .. gradually we are falling victims to the illusion that all problems can be solved by proper organisation; that if we fail it is because we are doing the job in the wrong way, and that all that is needed is the know-how’. To think thus in education is to pervert education. It is not an engineering job. It is personal and human.’ (p674)
All politicians who think examination results are a good proxy indicator of the quality of schooling would do well to read Macmurray!
The special edition of the review is introduced by Michael Fielding, whose recent book (with Peter Moss), ‘Radical Education and the Common School’ ( see here) put forward arguments for a different kind of schooling, based around less instrumental values; arguments partly founded on Fielding’s reading of Macmurray. It’s well argued and describes an ideal model of schooling – it’s nice to see these arguments put, arguments that went out of fashion in the 1980s when the profession retrenched on what it thought was a defensible line against the attacks of the right. It doesn’t really engage with the difficult ‘how do we get from here to there?’ question – just sets up the ideas. Given the present Education Minister in England, you could compare a book like this to spitting into the wind (classy ‘spit’, right enough, but a bit of a hurricane coming the other way). It may not be very effective in changing the world, but it helps keep up your morale!
Today’s extract from the 2nd edition of ‘Dealing with Dilemmas’ (in preparation) is taken from the section which reflects on how the confusions and competing interests and values of Politics (bit P) and politics (flows of power in school communities) create situations experienced as ‘dilemmas’ in the school community where Political / political forces can pull in contrary directions. This sections is taken from a discussion of social capital:
“Social capital is a vital aspect of a school’s capacity to meet the needs of its students. The recent tendency in public discourse to conceptualise schooling as a service misunderstands how schools work. Schools do not provide an educational service in the way that a garage or retailer provide a service, valuable as these services are. Like other public services such as health, education is a jointly constructed project, undertaken in a partnership of child, parent, teacher, school and the wider community. The narrow ‘service’ conceptualisation of the work of schools both masks the inequalities across our communities that are highlighted by the concept of ‘social capital’ and denies the agency of the others involved. Addressing inequalities in schooling is not just a question of improving individual schools, as so many involved in the public political management of education appear to think; it is even more a question of addressing inequalities in society at large.”
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