Academies, academies, academies: Michael Gove's 3 Rs?

Education is, of course, something on which everyone is far more expert than the professionals who dedicate their lives to it.

And they don't get much more expert than former journalist Michael Gove, the new Secretary of State for Education.

Parents are keen to run schools?

Somewhere or other (Sweden, perhaps) he came up with the bizarre idea that parents not only can't wait to run their local schools, but would also make a far better job of it than those who are doing it at the moment.

Somehow or other, he managed to sell the idea first to the Conservative party and now to the new coalition government - and has apparently already started writing to primary schools to tell them the good news.

But there are two rather serious flaws in his argument:

1. Most parents only take a passionate interest in the running of schools for the very few years during which their own children are at school - as almost any chairman of school governors (or parent over a certain age) could have told him had he bothered to ask.
2. Only a tiny minority of parents are willing or able to spend the huge amounts of time involved in running a school - as almost any chairman of school governors (or parent any age) could have told him had he bothered to ask.

'Rigour'?

But, as you'll see from this video clip (originally posted on webcameronuk last August), Gove's attitude towards evidence is a bit lacking in the kind of rigour that he claims is lacking in our exam system, especially when it comes to examining 'rigorous' subjects like mathematics and science. And, with an Oxford B.A. in English, Mr Gove knows a thing or two about which subjects are 'rigorous' and which ones are not.

As a former president of the Oxford Union and debating adjudicator, he also knows enough about rhetoric to know that you don't need much in the way of evidence to make an argument sound plausible. All you have to do is pick three examples that support your case, wrap them up as three questions, each of which juxtaposes two contrasting categories, and the conclusion will be obvious for all to see:

Now for some research to prove I'm right

Having 'established' that maths and science exams obviously aren't rigorous enough, Mr Gove goes on to tell us about a rather ambitious project to prove that his assertion holds true on a much wider front.

He doesn't mention what objective (or rigorous?) measurement procedures will be used to assess the quality of exams over the past hundred years - yes, 100 years. But why bother with trivial details like that when you already know in advance that the answers to your two main research questions will be "No"?

Gove's 3 Rs?

For me, the thought of anyone with such a cavalier attitude towards evidence being being allowed to meddle with something as important as education is, to say the least, extremely worrying.

It's reminded me of some lines I wrote for the first speech I ever worked on with Paddy Ashdown - for the launch of the SDP-Liberal Alliance general election campaign in 1987, when he took the platform as their education spokesman.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, the most depressing thing is that the same words apply so aptly to Mr Gove:

"When it comes to education, the Tories have come up with their own 3 R's: rigid, ruthless and reactionary. [APPLAUSE]

"Putting a Conservative minister in charge of education is like putting Herod the King in charge of the Save the Children Fund." [APPLAUSE]

Almost as depressing is the failure of the LibDem coalition negotiators to veto the elevation of Mr Gove to such a crucial job, not to mention the inclusion of his 'fast-track' Academies Bill in the Queen's speech.

See also Simon Jenkins in The Guardian: Gove's claim to be 'freeing' schools is a cloak for more control from the centre.

An interesting discussion of the schools issue is also developing HERE.

Why Black Rod knocks 3 times & why pointless rituals are not always as pointless as they seem

Watching the State opening of parliament today, I noticed that Black Rod (or, in this case, his substitute) knocks three times on the door of the House of Commons, after it's been slammed in his face, to summon them to the House of Lords to listen to the Queen's speech:

In a previous post - Why lists of three: mystery, magic or reason? - I discussed why so many lists come in three parts. But that related to speaking, whether in conversation or in speeches, not to door-knocking behaviour.

So this video clip got me wondering whether there was any particular reason for knocking three times, which was quickly resolved by resorting to Google - and the discovery that it's 'once for the executive, once for the legislature and once for the speaker' (for more on which, see HERE).

It reminded me of something I'd written long ago about how reforms designed to make behaviour less formal and/or ritualistic need to take into account why such forms of behaviour originally came to be there in the first place.* Otherwise, reformers can easily end up throwing out a baby - that they didn't realise was there - with the bath water.

The case of the informal smiling Pope

My favorite example was the case of Pope John Paul I, who died after only 33 days in office. Amazingly, after so short a time, he was described in some obituaries as one of the greatest popes of the twentieth century.

Before him, popes had apparently never been seen smiling in public, which was one of the reasons why he was hailed for having brought a new level of informality to the papacy. Others were that he'd refused to have a coronation and preferred walkabouts in St Peter's Square to being carried aloft on the traditional gestatorial chair.

The sight of a pedestrian Pope, smiling and mingling with his fellow men and women, presented a much less formal and more favourable image to millions of television viewers around the world. But for those who'd taken the time, trouble and expense of going to St Peter's Square, it was a complete disaster - apart from the tiny minority who happened to be standing a few rows away.

In fact, the Vatican had so many complaints from frustrated pilgrims that, before he died, John Paul I had already done a U turn and returned to the gestatorial chair.

At the time, I remember saying that, if only the Vatican PR department had understood the chair's importance in enabling the pope to be seen by a crowd, they could have simultaneously minimised papal formality and maximisied papal visibility by the simple device of installing a chair on the roof of a bog-standard Fiat - which is why, a few months later, I was delighted to see my sugestion come true with the invention of the popemobile for his successor, John Paul II.

Black Rod's 3 knocks on the door

So I was also delighted to learn today that there's a historical reason why Black Rod knocks three times on the door of the House of Commons and that it hasn't been forgotten - not, you understand, because I thought it was another example of the rule of three or had some other theory up my sleeve, but because it confirms, yet again, that there is often a logic behind apparently pointless rituals that isn't obviously or instantly apparent to contemporary observers.

(* 'Understanding Formality', British Journal of Sociology, XXXII, 1982, pp. 86-117).

Is Nick Robinson pompous and patronising - and, if so, why?

After watching the State Opening of Parliament earlier today, I was sufficiently struck by some of the contributions by their political editor to post a question on Twitter:

'Just watched BBC Queen's speech coverage & wonder if I'm alone in finding Nick Robinson a pompous patronising twerp?'

I was surprised (and reassured) when quite a few people quickly responded to confirm that I was by no means the only one on whom he'd had that effect.

This got me wondering just what it was about his contributions to the discussion that could have given rise to such an impression. Here's part of the sequence that prompted my question about Robinson.

If he also strikes you as 'pompous' and/or 'patronising', the analytic challenge is to identify what it was about the way he spoke that can be interpreted in such a way, at least by some of us:

Hillary Clinton warns North Korea of 'consequences' (again)

It's nearly a year since North Korea announced it had exploded a nuclear weapon as powerful as the one that destroyed Hiroshima - which prompted US secretary of State Hillary Clinton to warn them: "There are consequences to such actions"

After the sinking of a South Korean ship by the North Koreans, she's on about 'consequences' again (see video clip below).

'Pre-delicate' hitches

Last year, I made the point that her warning about 'consequences' was punctuated by a large number of 'pre-delicate' hitches', for more on which see HERE and HERE.

What's interesting about Mrs Clinton's latest dire threat to the North Koreans - 'provocative actions have consequences' - is that there are so many 'hitches' (i.e. ums, ers and pauses) after she issues the warning.

'Post-delicicate' hitches?

This raises the question of whether conversation analysts should be turning their attention to analysing a new and possibly related pheomenon, namely 'post-delicate hitches'.

Or do they simply indicate that the US Secretary of State knows perfectly well that the Americans' 'best actions moving forward' will be exactly the same as they were last year - i.e. nothing much?

Labour leadership: "Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the most bourgeois of us all?"

Long ago, when I had to mark hundreds of first year sociology exam papers, the only way some of us managed to stay awake and focussed was to keep a lookout for 'howlers'. For example, one I still remember went as follows:

'The original proletarian worker wore overalls and a cloth cap.'

These days, the embourgeoisment (to retrieve another memory from my sociological past) of the Labour Party has progressed so far that MPs who've ever worn overalls and a cloth cap are an endangered species.

This is presumably why some of the leadership candidates have been invoking their proletarian background. Andy Burnham has written of his humble origins in Liverpool and Ed Balls has told us that one of his grandfathers was a lorry driver.

Simple measurement indices

All this has taken me back to other experiences from long ago, when I used to invent simple indices to assess things as diverse as the probability of ex-prisoners being reconvicted after release from gaol and the suitability of student applicants for admission to a university department.

By giving prisoners a different score on measures like type of offence and number of previous convictions, we were able to discriminate different groups with a high degree of accuracy, ranging from one with a 7% probability of reconviction within three years of leaving prison to another with a reconviction probability of 75%.

Later on, when in charge of admitting students for a university course, I attracted hostility and admiration in roughly equal amounts by devising a weighting system that included different scores according to the type of school they'd attended - in those days, as follows: secondary modern (5) , comprehensive (4), grammer (3), direct grant (2) and public (i.e. fully fee-paying) school (1) - where the higher the score, the lower the 'A' level grades we demanded from them.

With this in mind, I thought it might be an interesting exercise to devise a similar index to guage which of the Labour leadership candidates (so far declared) stands where on the proletarian-bourgeous scale.

Atkinson's proletarian-bourgeois index

To compare them, the scoring system is based on 4 variables - so that the most bourgeois candidates will have the lowest scores and the most proletarian the highest:

A: Father's job

4 Unskilled

3 Semi-Skilled

2 Skilled

1 Professional/managerial

B: Candidate's first job

4 Unskilled

3 Semi-Skilled

2 Skilled

1 Professional/managerial

C: Type of secondary school attended

2 State school

1 Fee-paying school

D: Higher education

2 Non-Oxbridge

1 Oxbridge

RESULTS

According to this, John McDonnell comes out way ahead in the 'most proletarian' stakes, with Ed Balls pipping the Milibands to the post as 'most bourgeois'.

McDonnell

A Bus driver (3)

B First job (4)

C Secondary school (2)

D Higher education (2)

TOTAL: 11

Burnham

A Telephone engineer (3)

B First job (1)

C Secondary School (2)

D Higher education (1)

TOTAL: 7

Abbott

A Welder (2)

B First job (1)

C Secondary School (2)

D Higher education (1)

TOTAL: 6

Miliband D

A University teacher/professor (1)

B First job (1)

C Secondary School (2)

D Higher education (1)

TOTAL: 5

Miliband E

A University teacher/professor (1)

B First job (1)

C Secondary School (2)

D Higher education (1)

TOTAL: 5

Balls

A University teacher/professor (1)

B First job (1)

C Secondary School (1)

D Higher education (1)

TOTAL: 4

ANALYSIS

Maybe this is why Mr Balls has felt it necessary to go back a generation to tell us about his lorry-driving grandfather. His point, as in Andy Burnham's reminder of his humble past, was that their family's social mobility was made possible by the wonderful innovations of past Labour governments.

In their case, it may be true. But things aren't always as simple as that.

It took my paternal grandfather the best part of 40 years to progress from being a farm labourer to a tenant farmer to an owner occupier farmer. But, as the Labour Party didn't even exist for most of that time, they can hardly claim any credit for that.

And, as far as my own case is concerned, I've never been quite sure whether the journey from farmer's son to university lecturer and, more recently, communications consultant, counts as upwards, downwards or sideways social mobility - which is almost certainly one of the reasons why I was never quite convinced by mainstream sociology, and why my escape into the much more interesting world of conversation analysis came as such a relief.

Labour leadership candidates share the same hymn sheet, the same speechwriter or the same fear?

As you'll see in this clip, David Miliband and Ed Balls used remarkably similar words to announce their bids for the leadership of the Labour Party, both asserting that listening/hearing is more important than speaking/talking.

Do they really think the same, or are they merely using the same speechwriter?

Or could it be that they both share the same fear, namely that neither of them is as effective a platform speaker as a certain other candidate called Miliband?

A solution to the pressing need for a new Tory logo

During the election, I had a few conversations that went along the following lines:

Q: "What's that infantile scribble supposed to be?"

A: "A tree."

Q: "What's a tree got to do with the Tories?"

A: "I think it's supposed to say something about a greener agenda."

Q: "But why a tree? And why isn't the stump a darker blue?"

A: "Er ...."

Although I'm no expert on corporate imagery, I'd have thought that no such conversations would take place if the Tory 'tree' had been doing an effective job .

However, I did learn a bit about the subject at a fascinating meeting near Oxford in 1988, when the idea of the 'bird of liberty' was first mooted as a possible logo for the then recently formed Social and Liberal Democrats.

You may remember that, during the 1987 election, the SDP-Liberal Alliance had fought under a rather ugly diamond shaped logo that looked like one of those irritating 'Baby on Board' posters that some parents insist on sticking to their car windows.

New party: new logo

After the Liberals and SDP merged, Paddy Ashdown, the new leader, thought something more imaginative was needed - something that would be instantly associated with the party, like the Tory's former dark blue torch and Labour's (then) recently adopted red rose.

So he recruited a leading corporate image consultant who, as party member, was willing to provide his services free. A meeting was arranged, where he told us about how they went about doing such things and led a brainstorming session.

I vaguely remember words like 'liberty', 'freedom', 'taking off' and even 'phoenix rising from the ashes of the merger debates' (!) being bandied about.

I remember much more clearly that the idea of a bird came up very quickly, as too did fears that it might attract ridicule based on the Monty Python 'dead parrot' sketch - as indeed it did when Mrs Thatcher recited from it in her party conference speech just after the new logo had been launched (HERE).

But the eventual result was the very neat design of a bird flying upwards (that can be animated if required) that's served as the instantly recognisable symbol of the Liberal Democrats for more than twenty years since that original meeting in Oxford.

Fell the tree and plant a flower

Yesterday, while walking though a spectacular bluebell wood near Cheddar Gorge (and with complaints about the Tory tree lurking somewhere in the back of my mind) I had a 'Eureka moment':

Replace the tree with a bluebell.

Apart from eliminating the ambiguity of the scribbled tree, a bluebell logo would have at least five advantages:

1. It's the right colour for the Conservative Party.
2. Bluebells have a freshness and purity that any party would surely be glad to be associated with.
3. If you want to emphasise your green credentials, what better way to do it than with such an attractive and popular wild flower
4. As there's a well-known Scottish folk song called The Bluebells of Scotland, it might even help to broaden the party's appeal north of the border.
5. Almost any picture of a bluebell is more aesthetically pleasing than the shoddy-looking scribbled tree.

So, for these reasons, and in the true spirit of a 'non-aligned' blog, I offer this free suggestion to the Conservative Party for a logo to replace today's trendy but tacky-looking 'tree' with an image of unequivocal and timeless beauty ....