Day Five: The Ukulele Group

The highlight of my day was attending Elham's ukulele group. I was welcomed with great enthusiasm, even though there were fifteen of us (which is quite a lot). We rattled through a lot of material. I had to sight-read all but one piece, which was exhilarating. Their overall approach is slightly more 'professional' than that of the Durham group, which suits me because it feels as though I shall be given the opportunity to develop.

Afterwards we retired to the Kings Arms where I started to learn people's names. They were highly impressed when they learned that I had made enquiries about the ukulele group even before moving to Elham - and it was not me who informed them of this.

We shall be performing in a ukulele concert in Cheriton (Folkestone) on Saturday evening. I have no idea for whom we shall be performing, but tickets are on sale.

Day Four: A Trip To Canterbury

Attended the Quaker Meeting in Canterbury. After the meeting people were so friendly. Bought some tempeh at Canterbury Wholefoods, and some cauliflowers and a cabbage at a farm shop in Broad Oak. Almost every time I drive from Canterbury to Elham I am able to find a different way home. It is delightful to live in such gorgeous countryside. Almost back in Elham I had to stop the car because a baby rabbit was sitting, probably petrified, in the middle of the narrow lane. My wife got out of the car and lifted the rabbit into the hedgerow.

Day Three: Visiting The Acrise Flower Festival

We visited Acrise Flower Festival, held in and around St. Martin's Church in Acrise. It was like stepping back in history. Hundreds of people turned out for a rural village fete straight out of The Archers, including a real coconut shy, ploughman's lunches, and historical photographs. The tiny, ancient church (a simple chancel and nave) was dressed with floral arrangements, and in the organ loft the village organist played Bach.

Day Two: A Trip To Howletts

Day Two began with a protracted thunderstorm and some much-needed rain, so instead of going for a walk in the rain I backed-up the contacts from my now-old Sony Xperia X1, and transferred them to my brand new Sony Xperia E, in preparation my cellphone number being ported from Vodafone to O2 - the Elham Valley must be the only place in the world without a Vodafone signal. The afternoon was given over to a restorative activity: a visit to nearby Howletts Animal Park. Famous for its gorilla colonies, Howletts is strongly animal oriented, focusing on breeding programmes for some of the most endangered species. I enjoyed spending a long time observing the gorillas behave in ways that are more natural to them in the wild. Seven million years ago the forebears of the gorillas I was watching would also have been my forbears.

Day One

Shuffling packing boxes as though in a three-dimensional version of the sliding tile puzzle; pruning bushes and trees that belong in a set for a Jurassic Park movie; inventively cooking with three sprouts, an olive, and some black pepper, or at least that's how it seemed.

Day Zero: Moving-in Day

A team of removers arrived in an articulated lorry. They unloaded, and unloaded, and unloaded (300 cubic metres) all our worldly goods, and then had to call in additional help. They left at tea time, and we are treading water in an ocean of of cardboard boxes. We also have telephony and broadband, and hot water. I already have council tax, water and electricity bills to pay, and the requisite forms to register with the local GP. It is strange that a simple statement such as "I live in Elham" appears to be made up of a multitude of confirmatory components, without which there would remain some uncertainty.

A time to scatter stones

10:17 

The removers are busy removing the final items of furniture, boxes of crockery, and disability-related equipment. At the moment this feels like moving-out day - although, interestingly not quite yet moving-on day - that comes a little later. Ecclesiastes 3: "A time to scatter stones."

13:06

The removers have gone, and all our possessions are trundling southwards in a lorry and articulated trailer. The house is empty and quiet. Soon my wife and daughter will be following in the wake of the lorry. At some point today BT will sever telephony, at which point I am recalled to all centuries prior to this. Once the estate agent has checked over the house and I have returned the keys, I shall close the door for the final time, and drive away. Crossing the Tees to the west of Darlington, I shall have left County Durham and the North East of England. 

End of Book Three.

Cooking pizze in a wood-fired pizza oven

Last night we sat beneath a starry sky, keeping warm in the 'afterglow' from the pizza oven: I cooked wood-smokey pizze in a real wood-fired pizza oven - a culinary first for me. Sadly, I did not prepare a vegan pizza for me, so only my wife and daughter benefited from the wood-smokey flavour.

It was an intensely summery activity: sitting outside beside a warm fire counting the stars as they twinkled into existence. Small pleasures. However, I resisted the temptation to inflict my ukulele playing on the immediate neighbours - I reserve that pleasure for when we move into our new house in Kent where there are no immediate neighbours on either side.

Less than a week to go

In less than a week we shall emigrate almost to France. I have forebears and relatives who emigrated variously to New Zealand, to Australia, to the United States, to Canada and to France; in addition to many former colleagues who emigrated to Australia. Even my father made it as far as Cornwall. Somehow, given all that context, emigrating to Kent really doesn't sound especially adventurous ... and yet, is that a television advertisement for Hovis bread I can hear, or is it simply nostalgia upsetting my tinnitus?

We have asked to transfer our membership of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) to East Kent Area Meeting, and will mostly attend Canterbury Friends Meeting. Folkestone Meeting is closest, but meets only fortnightly, and I am told is a small meeting. Ashford Meeting is also only small. Canterbury Meeting, which I have attended several times, is similar in size to Durham Meeting.

Good Energy

Moving house has presented us with the opportunity to select a new energy supplier. It has long been a matter of deep principle to me to distance myself utterly from nuclear power, and to move away from electricity produced by fossil fuels. I am happy that Good Energy both supports micro-generation and has its own wind farm.

Our future plans

We intend to make part of the house into a mid-price holiday let, especially to accommodate walkers (the area is thick with footpaths), vegans, people with physical disabilities and people who live in France (which is less than 30 miles away). I intend to replant the orchard with apples, pears, cherries, plums, damsons, greengages, mirabelles, and maybe some figs and persimmons. Some nut trees would be good. There will be substantial vegetable beds, and cages for soft fruit. A principal challenge will be to encourage the rabbits to emigrate (there are six warrens), to discourage the badgers from eating the intended strawberries, to dissuade the wood pigeons and collared doves from snaffling the buds and seedlings, and to re-educate the mole population about where it would be best to dig.

Soon to be on the move

We shall soon be on the move. We have bought a house between Canterbury and Folkestone. We shall be leaving Durham and moving to Kent in July. I shall have lived in Durham for almost 37 years, so this is a significant move. It will be sad to leave behind the people who have been part of my life for so long. However, it will be exciting to be creating a new life, especially so close to France and to London. 

The promise of multiple trips to Howletts, and a wealth of new places to visit in Kent, in and around London, In northern France, and elsewhere in continental Europe is part of what is pulling us towards this corner of the UK: new horizons beckon.

Health & Safety

There are several different points here.

First, correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I understand Health & Safety, I cannot facilitate someone else in taking an identified risk for which they have not been assessed as competent to manage, and therefore if I assess a situation between a person and a risk as non-compliant then either the person must be prevented from taking the risk, or the risk itself has to be reduced to bring the situation into compliance, otherwise I am responsible if an incident occurs.

Second, like everyone I hear mocking reports on the radio news about this or that "not being permitted for reasons of Health & Safety", when there is probably much more behind the issue than journalists are willing to report or even discover. However, it does sometimes feel like if electricity had been discovered / invented last week, Health & Safety concerns would ensure that it never reached consumers. I have been able, safely, to change a fuse in an electrical plug for the best part of fifty years, yet I am not permitted to do so at the University. Instead, I am required to post online a request for a University electrician to come and replace the fuse, and then wait for a week until the overworked electrician arrives, only to find that I am counselling and cannot be disturbed so they go away again.

Although it is not a Health & Safety issue, a similar attitude prevails over the use of IT equipment. I have been using computers on a daily basis since 1976, long before many of the IT departmental staff were born. Unsurprisingly, therefore, I became increasingly frustrated with the extreme level of control that the IT department maintained over the desktop computer that I used at work. The irony is that I was also required to keep a major piece of legacy software, essential to the operation of the counselling service, running for eight years with no support whatsoever from IT department.

It is as though a change has taken place, and we are now all considered to be idiots unless we have umpteen certificates that purport to prove otherwise. In reality, I suppose, as frustrating as the issue is to me, it is not about me: it is about the institution protecting itself, mostly for legal reasons, but also from people who are not competent and might pose a danger to others. Were I permitted to change a fuse, then every Abbott & Costello, Laurel and Hardy, and Marx Brother would want to be permitted to change their fuses, too ... and a fine mess that would cause. Were I permitted to perform disk housekeeping on my office computer, then every Mr Bean, Norman Wisdom and Frank Spencer would be on the telephone to the IT department asking for their hard drive to be restored, having accidentally wiped the drive as clean as a whistle.

Turning Albatros: How to sail half way round the world

(1st draft)
Carl Hughes equipped and stocked his yacht, installed his family as crew, said goodbye to his work colleagues in Monaco, and sailed off into the sunset until reached Tahiti. This book is about that ten month voyage, and the years of preparation that he invested in his dream. For a person who has a similar kind of life-changing dream, Turning Albatross will be an inspiration. For the yachtsman intent on sailing round the world, Turning Albatross will serve as a checklist.

The book falls into a number of categories: it is part manual, part adventure story and part reflection. I am reminded of a literary genre of the 'old salt' sea captain setting down his memoirs.

Carl demonstrates that he is a superb yachtsman. Handling a small boat in mid-ocean storms would terrify ordinary mortals. Add a leak that threatens to sink the boat unless your wife and daughter constantly hand-pump the water back into the sea and the jeopardy becomes unimaginable. Carl reflects on how he handled that and other perilous siutations. His discussion about pirates is both thoughtful and sensible.

Conclusion
I read this book because Carl is my brother and he sent it to me. I have no intention of setting foot in a boat, never mind sailing round the world. Still, I found the book interesting.

Sloppy use of language

I  have a strong preference for competent communication. This does not mean that I respect only one style of 'ideal' language, for I am happy to celebrate dialects, language variants and the rainbow variety of restricted codes. Most people who know me will be familiar with my use of non-English words, my sometimes American terminology, and my preference for indigenous pronunciation, never for effect but mostly out of respect. I enjoyed reading Lynne Truss's book, albeit now some years ago. Yesterday I consulted spelling websites in order to check on the most appropriate spelling of the past participle of the verb to spell. I spell recognise with an s not a z. I enjoy word-play (e.g. the single-word purported military dispatch from India "Peccavi"), and I recognise that the term pedant is usually used as an insult.

I dislike the sloppy use of language, and consider it uncouth to revel in language laziness. I feel irritated when I read public signs (such as above express checkout lanes in some Tesco supermarkets), or hear people speaking on the radio (for example Peter White on In Touch, BBC Radio 4, Tuesday 18 December 2012), confusing less and fewer. I feel uncomfortable when I am subjected to the willfully incompetent use of apostrophes. I am at a loss as to why exclamation marks are used so widely and inappropriately, as though the person is standing on a street corner yelling at the passers-by. Where these instances are simply errors to be corrected, I have no issue. My discomfort lies partly in attitudes that revel and rejoice in poor attainment, and partly in that it is popularly held to be elitist ('class hatred' and 'social racism' are terms that have been used) to reject what is uncouth.

William Shakespeare spelled even his name in different ways because that is how English worked four centuries ago. It might appear contradictory that I am untroubled by poor spelling, by poor grammar or by poor pronunciation, as long as the writer, speaker or signer (q.v. Serena communicating with David in Four Weddings and a Funeral) is trying to communicate as well as they are able in their circumstances, and more particularly if they have some form of disability. My daughter has severe communication disabilities, tries hard to communicate as well as she is able, and I have enormous respect for her efforts. However, as I am well-educated, and I do not have a language-related disability, it should be expected of me that my written and spoken English are of high quality, anything less suggesting disrespect. I do my best to speak tourist French and German when on holiday, and although my efforts are not always especially attractive, I always make the effort, because it shows respect.

I hold several closely-related points as near-axiomatic:
1. The excellent use of language communicates most accurately and precisely what is intended. It is to be applauded and celebrated, and should never be sneered at. Language use superior to my own offers me both a target at which to aim, and the opportunity to learn. The excellent use of language does not confer superiority on the user, but it is both considerate and communicates respect for the recipient.
2. The poor use of language, perhaps including obfuscation, obscures understanding. Once I am aware of shortcomings in my communication, I am fully responsible for overcoming them. Whilst not knowing the difference between there, their and they're is a shortcoming, refusing to learn the difference is uncouth.
3. Nobody should be belittled for their poor use of language. However, shortcomings in accuracy and poverty of expression should be recognised, and, where appropriate, acknowledged. This is especially the case with notices. Brazenly placing on public display that which is patently a poor use of language is ill-mannered.
4. The use of a dictionary (in book and on-line formats) allows me both to spell accurately, for which purpose a dictionary should be used whenever there is doubt, and also allows me to refine my understanding of the words that I use. The use of a thesaurus (in book and on-line formats) allows me both to expand my vocabulary and to chose the most appropriate word or term to use. Just as a car helps me to travel greater distances than can be covered on foot, so dictionaries and thesauri allow me to range more widely in thoughts, concepts and ideas.
5. Most word processors have a spelling-check function, offering little excuse for poor spelling in a type-written document. Failure to use a spelling checker communicates a lack of respect, perhaps inadvertent, for the recipient.

Not wowwed

At least a part of me has a strong preference for politeness, good manners and the giving and receiving of respect. I use the words 'please' and 'thank you' when making requests; I greet strangers walking along the riverbanks to and from Durham City; when I see people examining a street plan of the city I ask them if they require guidance; I open doors for people. These courtesies are minor virtues that I expect of myself, and hope for from others.

Yet every day I am required to tolerate ill-mannered behaviour that is aimed directly at me. Young men and women call out to me insultingly because I have a beard. Track-suited parents turn away from me to talk to their children who then stand and stare at me as I walk past, giggling about what they have just be told. Men in their thirties driving white transit vans honk their horns at me as they drive past. Car passengers wind down a window in order to shout abuse at me, even though their words are lost on the wind. A passenger in a passing car threw an almost-empty drink can at me; on another occasion it was a lighted cigarette. On several occasions as I have walked along  shopping streets, local men and women in their twenties have yanked at my beard, and then stood laughing both with hilarity and challenging me to do something about it.. On two occasions middle-aged me, again people unknown to me, have approached me while I have been standing waiting in the Market Place, poked me in the stomach and asked: "When's it due?" The most upsetting and disturbing incident was when, only a hundred metres from my house, I was set upon and beaten by three young men who did not like the look of me.

A more benign part of me recognises that the person who I am means nothing to any of these people. I speculate about their life experiences that account for their ill-mannered, uncouth, sometimes yobbish and aggressive behaviour. It is clear in every instance that they are seeing someone they recognise as different from themselves. There have been two well-publicised examples (Shotley Bridge, Consett; and Redhouse, Sunderland) of local young men and women terrorising, assaulting and killing a person with a learning disability. In another well-publicised case (Darlington), several young men beat to death a well-known old man who was homeless. I am far from the only victim of loutish, sometimes brutal behaviour, singled out for being different. It is not only me who feels as though I am not given the respect of common courtesy. I suspect that the perpetrators do not respect themselves to any depth, and may not feel respected by others.

However, this cannot be the whole story, because to a person, every younger or older person, man or woman, who has behaved poorly towards me is white. I do not experience abuse of any kind from Black British or Asian British people.

Recently there was a tragic incident in which a London nurse ended her life because she was unable to bear the shame of public humiliation inflicted on her by the uncouth behaviour of two Australian radio presenters. "It was only a bit of fun," (just not for the person who was humiliated).

I feel disgust for a television advertisement that appears to revel in ill-mannered, uncouth behaviour. The advertisement is for a group discount product called Wowcher, in which a young woman behaves in a triumphantly uncouth manner stabbing at her food when attempting to eat sushi with chopsticks.

I found the following instructions on the web:
"Do not hold the chopsticks close to the end. The farther away your hands are from the food, the better. Do not stab food, as this is considered rude and/or an insult to the chef or cook who prepared the food."

I have much respect for Japanese ways, customs and manners, as well as a taste for Japanese (vegan) cuisine. During my visit to Japan a few years ago, I found no-one to be other than helpful, well-mannered and polite.

My impression is that the television advertisement intends to poke fun, not at the ineptitude of the young woman, but at 'foreign food and foreign eating habits', and to suggest the superiority of western values, ingenuity being implied for what is in fact uncouthness. I consider the advertisement to be offensive, and likely to appeal most to Little Englanders, assuming they were willing to eat sushi. I doubt that I am of the demographic at which the advertisers (and the product) are aiming.

To conclude: I dislike uncouthness, and in contrast with some facets of the culture currently prevailing in the UK and Australia, I refuse to celebrate them.

Quaker Meeting

I attended the Quaker Meeting today, as I sometimes do. I don't wear special clothes, in fact, my shoes and trousers were muddy from the riverbank walk into Durham. Neither do I attend with especially lofty thoughts. I just take my ordinary, everyday self. The room in which the meeting is held is quite unremarkable: a small hall in a rather shabby, somewhat run-down community centre. The meeting begins even as people, Friends, are still arriving. I wait. I wait in the light. Attentive, I vigil. In the presence of each other, a presence becomes discernable. Not the presence of a person, although some would say that it is. Not the presence of something supernatural, although others would say that it is. Some would say that it is a divine presence, but I don't really know what that means. The presence is an awareness of space, of volume, a potential that wasn't there before.

Plea of sanity?

The trial verdict and sentencing of Anders Breivik in Oslo recently was a matter of some interest to me, not because of the harrowing testimonies given by survivors, nor was I motivated by a desire to know that a racist, xenophobic, right-wing, Nazi sympathiser would be removed from pubic society, but because his behaviour raises questions about attitudes to mental health. The suspect’s guilt was never in question: he freely admitted the killings he had perpetrated. Indeed, in his final words addressed to the court Breivik expressed regret for not having killed more people. There was, however, uncertainty about the trial verdict regarding his state of mind. I guess that one of the first questions that will have been asked was whether Breivik was fit to stand trial, that is, whether he would be capable of following and understanding the legal proceedings. It must have been decided that he was indeed fit to stand trial, and from the way in which the trial was subsequently conducted there is no reason to consider this to have been a poor decision. As the trial progressed, the judges were then required to decide whether, at the time he carried out the killings, Breivik was in a state of mind in which he was able to take responsibility for his actions. Occasionally this has been expressed in more lurid terms: speaking of Breivik as a madman, and suggesting that he may be mad, with the difficult freight of meanings and nuances carried by those two terms. The BBC presented this more politely as a decision regarding his sanity: if considered to be sane then he would be criminally responsible for killing 77 people, for which he would be imprisoned; if considered to be insane then he would be incarcerated in a secure psychiatric ward and assessed for treatment. Perhaps ironically, according to the BBC news reports, the address of incarceration would be the same regardless of the verdict. During an interview, a spokesperson from the Norwegian penal service told the BBC that while in remand Breivik had not been permitted contact with other prisoners, for his own safety as well as theirs, and that this regime would continue. There is commentator observation that, regardless of the verdict, he would be incarcerated for the rest of his life. It seems clear, therefore, that, other than access to treatment, little will change in Breivik’s circumstances whether he is held to be sane or insane. According to BBC commentators an overwhelming majority of people in Norway wanted the judges to decide that Breivik should be considered sane. My understanding of this is that they wanted Breivik to be punished for his wicked actions. The same commentators reported that Breivik also wished to be considered sane, his reasoning being that he wished his actions to be seen as having been carried out for a reason instead of dismissed as the behaviour of a person unable to behave rationally. The verdict of the five judges was unanimous: they considered Breivik to be sane, and sentenced him to 21 years imprisonment. The situation appears a little more complex to me. I understand that the psychiatrists who assessed Breivik’s mental health did not arrive at a unanimous agreement about his sanity. It seems obvious to me that this is because there neither is, nor can there be, a binary distinction between sanity and insanity. The lay and legal concepts of sanity are a convenience, verbal and conceptual. The mental health of a person may be compromised as a result of illness or injury, or because of who they have become. In attempting to determine the sanity of a person whose mental health is compromised, it is arbitrary where the line of distinction between sanity and insanity is drawn. No doubt Norwegian psychiatrists and/or psychologists subjected Breivik to a battery of tests in order to help them place him one or other side of a line. The results of those tests, however, were interpreted differently by the several people who made the assessment. When a person has some kind of mental disorder, the medical model attempts to distinguish between illness, which is treatable, and personality disorder, which is not treatable. There is a huge medical classificatory system of mental illness and personality disorders. There is also a long history of people being diagnosed differently by different medical staff. Indeed, in a famous 1960s expose, a number of medical students were diagnosed with schizophrenia simply because they were in a psychiatric hospital to which they had admitted themselves in order to carry out research on diagnosis. Equally, failure to agree on a diagnosis does not equate to there being nothing wrong, merely an inability to ascribe, or to agree on, a classification. However, if no broad medical agreement could be reached about a diagnosis of illness or personality disorder then it would be difficult to hold Breivik to be be insane. My perspective differs from the medical model. It seems obvious to me that individually murdering scores of strangers is evidence enough that there is something seriously awry with Breivik, Empathy and compassion are important components of what it is to be fully and healthily human. The desire to kill anyone, including oneself, is unhealthy. There may be antecedent circumstances in which sense may be made of the desire to kill someone, but killing is never a healthy response. It seems from the reports that Breivik showed neither empathy nor compassion when killing people, nor did he subsequently show remorse. Breivik’s actions were far from healthy. Reading on-line a few paragraphs of Breivik’s own writing, Breivik showed that he feels no connection to people. He expressed no warmth. He stated clearly that he expected to be ‘misunderstood’ and vilified for his actions. This suggests a tension between a sense of being the persecuted outsider, and a sense of being set apart, of superiority, perhaps even mildly messianic. It seems equally obvious to me, therefore, that Breivik is in considerable need of therapeutic help: to learn to empathise, to learn to feel compassion, to learn to relate to people, and to learn about the ordinary miracle of being fully human. Perhaps he is incapable of learning these things, but instead of simply locking him up as a criminal, it might have been more imaginative and hopeful had he been offered long-term therapy. Whilst prison may not be the optimum environment in which to help someone such as Breivik, the way in which he carried out the killings, and the way he conducted himself during the trial, point to him remaining an on-going threat to the safety of others, from whom the public should reasonably expect to be protected. However, the public were always going to be protected whether Breivik was considered sane or insane. The desire to define him as a criminally-responsible has denied Breivik the opportunity to receive the help that could have contributed to him becoming a more socially-responsible person. I have written this posting with reference only to news reports, mostly on the radio. There is a useful and detailed Wikipedia page about Breivik at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_breivik

The two Thomas Crown Affair movies

There are two Thomas Crown Affair movies: the original released in 1968 with Steve McQueen in the title role; and a re-make released in 1999, with Pierce Brosnan in the title role. Faye Dunnaway plays Catherine Banning in the 1968 release, and plays a psychotherapist in the 1999 relaease.Rene Russo plays Catherine Banning in the re-make.

Together the two releases make an excellent pair, to be watched back to back. Both have a strong, similar though slightly different, storyline: the premise of the 1968 movie is a bank robbery, whereas that of the 1999 movie is an art heist. The effect of this difference is to make the 1968 robbery more believable, but the 1999 heist less morally challenging. If, as is proposed, Thomas Crown has everything, has done everything, and is bored, then the 1999 remake allows us to accept this, whereas in the 1968 movie, the line "What would someone who already has $4 million want with $2 million more" misfocuses our attention on a motive of greed. Both movies pose at least two ethical questions: a) considering what he does for a living, how great is Thomas Crown's sin in organising the heist? b) should Catherine Banning be true to her feelings or true to her job?

In both movies Thomas Crown becomes besotted with Catherine Banning, the insurance investigator, although the apparent chemistry between Brosnan and Rene Russo is mesmeric.The chess scene in the original is bursting with sexual tension, echoed by the tango dance scene in the re-maike.

Style figures in both movies, for example in Catherine Banning's costumes, in the locations (such as expensive houses), in the activities (such as gliding, and playing chess). The 1968 moviie was consciously stylish in its impressionistic use of multiple images, whereas the 1999 movie feels a little more formulaic.

In the original, music is used to occupy space where there is no dialogue, whereas in the re-make music is used to set mood, to great effect. The song, Windmills of Your Mind, was made famous by the original movie, during the gliding scene. In the re-make, the gliding scene is given music that is more upbeat, and the song Windmills of Your Mind is covered during the credits. The stand-out song in the 1999 re-make is Sinnerman.

The 1968 movie has a bittersweet ending, whereas the 1999 movie has a feel-good ending.

On merit

I was born into the socially-hopeful 1950s. Post-war austerity was giving way to the New Look; rock'n'roll was arriving with new sounds, and bringing with it new ways of relating, new attitudes to authority, and new expectations about how life should be. Technological development was heating up.with the invention of the transistor, the basic building block of all electronics. The first programmable computers were being built and put to work. Rocket programmes in the Soviet Union, the United States and in the United Kingdom promised satellites, space travel and the possibility of exploring other worlds. Jet engines began to be used for commercial, not just military, travel. Watson, Crick and Franklin had discovered the double-helix structure of DNA. Nuclear power stations were being built to replace the use of dirty fossil fuels.

In the UK the first motorways were being planned; public broadcast television had just expanded to a second channel; the National Health Service, still in its infancy, required doctors and nurses; aerospace required engineers; pharmaceutical companies required biochemists. These and many other industries required cognitively-able personnel. In response, the Conservative government set up the Robbins Committee that first met in 1961 which recommended in 1963 that the university system be expanded considerably. The report also concluded that university places "should be available to all who were qualified for them by ability and attainment".

Further, the pace of technological change left the UK Civil Service significantly under-resourced for the requirements of the time. Harold Wilson's new Britain was being forged in what would become 'the white heat of a technological revolution' that required more technocrats and fewer mandarins to adminster goverment, and he asked John Fulton to chair a committee to consider the needs of the civil service. The so-called mandarins were classically-educated generalists: between 1948 and 1963 only 3% of the recruits to the administrative class came from the working classes, and in 1966 more than half of the administrators at under-secretary level and above had been privately educated. Wilson and Fulton wanted the old Britain that had run along class lines to give way to a new Britain in which ability was ascendant.

In 1943 the Norwood Committee reported on ideas for a major revision of the system of secondary eduation in the UK. They proposed a new tripartite system of state-funded secondary education: grammar, technical and 'modern' schools. The report proposed the use of several factors to determine which kind of secondary school a pupil should attend, foremost of which was the recommendation of the primary school teacher, and taking into account the wishes of the child's parents. The use of testing was also mooted. There are many interesting features of the Norwood Report, the overall effect of which was to throw a free secondary education open to giirls and to the working class, funded by local authorities. However, it was not proposed that independent (much of it fee-paying) secondary education should be abolished. Instead, independent grammar schools were permitted to receive direct payments from the government for the price of offering a number of free places to pupils whose parents were unable to afford the fees. These were the Direct Grant Grammar Schools. The subsequent 1944 Education Act enacted the recommendations of the Norwood Committee, with a number of changes, the most notable of which was the method by which pupils were allocated to the appropriate school: the use of an examination called the Eleven Plus. Had another feature of the Norwood Report been put into practice the use of what became the dreaded Eleven Plus would have been less divisive: Norwood made it clear that during the lower years of secondary education, there should be a flow of pupils between the different types of school, so that by the time the pupil reached the upper years, it would be clear that they were in the most appropriate type of school. However, in practice, this flow of pupils barely ever happened. Instead, the Eleven Plus examination became the crossroads at which pupils were almost irrevocably sorted into the 'modern' (secondary modern), grammar and independent (public - fee-paying) schools. Norwood proposed, and the 1944 Education Act permitted the formation of secondary technical schools, but in reality very few were ever built, partly because they were considered inferior to grammar schools, and partly because the kind of technical vocational education they were supposed to offer was seen by many as the domain of apprenticeships. (My first secondary teaching practice was at a former secondary technical school in Ferryhill, County Durham, UK.)

Despite the socially progressive issue of the extension of secondary education to all, and not simply the preserve of those whose parents could afford to pay, the system that was created also entrenched class divisions. Wealthy parents, who could easily afford to send their child to a fee-paying school continued to do so. Not so wealthy parents whose son or daughter was academically less-able could still pay for a private education; but now the more academically-able offspring were able to attend the state-funded grammar school. Parents with little money could not afford to pay school fees, and so their offspring went either to the grammar school (if they could pass the Eleven Plus) or to the secondary modern school. However, access to the grammar school, whilst theoretically class-blind, was far from equal, and the resulting socio-economic demographic of the school was at some considerable variance from that of the communities in which the schools were based: grammar schools had a significant middle-class component, or were even substantially middle-class, whereas secondary modern schools were overwhelmingly working class. It is not hard to see why. Middle-class families were able to provide their children with books and magazines, a wealth of cultural experiences and opportunities (visits to art galleries, the theatre, the ballet, and holidays), and perhaps most importantly an expectation of academic success. In contrast, working class families typically had little if any reading material at home; economic poverty delivered few cultural opportunities; and again perhaps most importantly, poverty of aspiration meant that blue-collar, shop-floor work was inevitable - eloquently explored in Barry Hines' novel  A Kestrel for a Knave, and brought to public attenntion by the movie Kes, directed by Ken Loach.

Notes to self:
1. The 1943 Norwood Report is seriously interesting to read.

2. The 1944 Education Act raised the minimum school leaving age from 14 to 15. Norwood specifically considered that the school leaving age should be raised from 15 to 16. This process was not started until 1964, suffered four years to of delay, and was finally put into practice on 1 September 1972. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_school_leaving_age_in_England_and_Wales

3. " Differentiation of pupils for the kind of secondary education appropriate to them should be made upon the basis of (a) the judgement of the teachers of the primary school, supplemented if desired by (b) 'intelligence' and 'performance' and other tests. Due consideration should be given to the choice of the parent and the pupil"

4. Norwood allowed for the creation of comprehensive schools.

5. With the proposed raising of the school leaving age from 16 to 18 in 2013, and the relatively high proportion of 18 year old moving on to university, it seems clear that the dismantling of the tripartitte system has simply delayed segregation from 11 to 18.


... to be continued