Last night, Joe McElderry won X Factor 2009. He’s perfect for it – he can sing, he’s nice, he’s pretty, he’s humble, he’s working-class (I think) and he’ll look good branded over posters, calendars and pencil cases marketed for 10 year old girls. More than that though, he’s now a role model for the teen generation. It isn’t so much the winners as the journey which provides the inspiration to the programme’s devotees; just look at the titles of the songs that become the winners’ first singles - ‘The Climb’, ‘Hallelujah’, ‘When You Believe’, ‘A Moment Like This’… The general theme of this is the triumph over adversity, the virtue of self-belief and the persistence of hope. Despite their shitty normal little towns, despite setbacks, the average normal kid with a great voice has done well in the end.
This is heart-warming and entertaining, but it is also fucking bollocks.
Most aspiring pop stars who have intently watched X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent etc, can’t sing, can’t dance and are wasting their time believing. Better advice would be to buy a lottery ticket – at least with the National Lottery everyone stands an equal chance. It might seem that I’m being the Spirit of Christmas Cock here, but most teenagers would be better off uncrossing their fingers, putting a pen between them, and trying to learn. This might not secure them the instant gratification of a £100,000 pay off and crooning alongside George Michael or a psychologically regressed Robbie Williams, but it will better equip them for what is most likely to happen – normality, mediocrity, reality.
The X Factor is so successful and popular because it leeches onto that age-old sentiment that you can cheat the system, ‘surely there’s an easier way?’. X Factor can be seen as a cheat-code for life. Why take the effort to do GCSEs, to try for A Levels and University when you could, from one audition, secure fame, wealth and esteem from the masses? The system still has its effects though, even if people choose to ignore it – if kids aren’t interested in their education, they will be less likely to succeed and less likely to get a decent job. This is the truth – it doesn’t inspire 16 million people to tune in on a Saturday night, it won’t make you and all your friends change your facebook status, but the fact is, there’s a pretty hefty likelihood that if you devote yourself to the hunt for celebrity, you’ll fail.
Meritocracy is so seductive. Pierre Bourdieu emphasised the necessity for a few, a tiny few, working class pupils to excel and to climb the greasy pole of academic success, in order to present the image of a meritocracy. If one scummy little jack the lad from the estates managed to make good of his situation, the others could have done so too – this is the thinking. By letting a few working-class kids do well, the mass failure of the rest of them to gain success is made legitimate. The X Factor winners are an epitome of this meritorious victory – Leona, Alexandra and now Joe can now provide hope for all of those working class kids turned off by their education, by their lives, and now these kids can devote themselves to fostering their X Factor. And these working class kids, most of them, will NOT have the X Factor.
Credit to Joe McElderry, he’s got talent – he could have got a record contract based on his merits, but the X Factor made it a lot easier. But let’s not peddle the idea that this is attainable for all – it just isn’t. ‘Talent Show’ could become as valid a career path to the psyche of the teens as vocational education or A Levels, and who could blame them. They have the myth of meritocracy slapped in their face throughout the year thanks especially to ITV – it needs to stop because whilst all this goes on, the kids who don’t focus upon these dreams are filling up all the ‘legitimate’ paths to success.
The real winners of X Factor – the middle classes who turn their nose up at it.
Sir Terry Leahy, the Chief Executive of Tesco, has criticised the standards of education in Britain as being "woefully low", and complains that businesses like his are left to pick up the pieces.
The Times writes 'Tesco is unhappy that it spends time training recruits in basic numeracy and “communications” skills, which includes writing, because workers are ill-equipped when they leave school.' Tesco seems distinctly less unhappy to pay their low-skilled workers close very close to the minimum wage. Tesco's complaint isn't about the educational system at all, which, incidentally, he is in no position to comment on - his complaint is that his business is loosing revenue from having to train up some of the 40,000 under-19s it employs. If they are keen to have 'better educated' employees they could maybe try offering a fairer wage. But no, that's the last thing they'll want to do - Leahy needs to take a step back and realise you can't have your cake and eat it. For want of a better metaphor, if you offer to pay people in peanuts, your only applicants are going to be monkeys.
His main gripe is that bureaucracy is stifling the educational process as teachers struggle to find their whiteboard pens amongst the red tape that is draped across their classrooms. How innovative, he's quite the bluesky thinker. Leahy thinks that school standards are too low - too low for whom? He's certainly not commenting here for the benefit of Britain's illiterate yoof - he is looking to gain from the better education of his students. I'd pity the students who manage to put in the extra effort, to grasp the basics of literacy and numeracy that are wanted by Tesco, only to end up employed in Tesco, where they will be underpaid, overworked and where they face little prospect of job mobility. If the children were 'better educated', you'd hope their newfound skills would take them away from the unskilled service sector.
And then we have another prize twat from the supermarket sector who considers himself this generations Giddens in terms of his depth of social knowledge - Andy Clarke, Asda’s chief operating officer, announced "No one can deny that Britain has spawned a generation of young people who struggle to read, write or do simple maths. That’s why we’re finding packs of nappies discarded in the booze aisle, as the last few pounds are spent on alcohol rather than childcare."
You'll have to pardon my partiality on this one, but what the fuck gives the manager of Asda the right to decry the failings of state education? Not least to perpetuate sweeping false generalisations about the inability of the poor in society to look after their children.
Sure, everyone knows that we have an education system which filters out students at various points - those who fail GCSEs end up working at the bottom rung, those who finish A-Levels start a little higher, many graduates can look at managerial salaries from the offset and so on. So yes, maybe Tesco and Asda are likely to end up 'purchasing' the lowest performing students from the state system; however, that gives them no right to oversee, to comment on, and infuriatingly, to have influence over the state system.
In terms of Tesco, I am very likely over the next couple of days to visit one of their stores to buy some apple juice. I, however, have no plans to gather a crowd outside of the store and bemoan the low quality of the apples. If I don't like the shit juice, I either don't buy it, or I offer up some more money to buy something of a higher quality. I don't stand out in the cold shouting off about how my cheap apple juice tastes cheap - you get what you pay for, and Tesco and Asda have absolutely no authority, as businesses, to issue comment on the perceived failings of the state education system.
In 1996, at the Labour Party Conference, Tony Blair famously stated that his top three priorities on coming to office were 'education, education, education'. In 2009, as the New Labour project drifts inexorably towards its terminus, Ed Balls, now the Minister for Education, has set out to cut £2bn from schools funding, which is 5%.
Throughout the duration of the New Labour administration, there has been tolerance of, followed by flirtation with, followed by an opened armed welcome to, market forces. New Labour continued in much the same vein as Thatcher - favouring deregulation and free trade, neo-liberal policies and privatisation. Despite their spin in the run on to 1997, Labour were evidently not the new modest socialism that the country voted for. In fact, the gap between rich and poor has grown under Labour - as can be seen here.
And now the shit has well and truly hit the fan. Banks are collapsing, big businesses such as Woolworths have disappeared from the highstreet, small vendors are being forced to close their shops, the nation is in huge personal debt, our industry is being outsourced to countries with a less expensive labour force and there are close to 2.5m unemployed. And who is going to foot the bill?
Of course. It is us.
The government plans to make its biggest cuts in public services - in health, education, housing, justice, culture... And the first minister to declare the cuts in his department is Ed Balls (ever willing to please the Prime Minister). The plan is to reduce the number of headteachers and senior management - federations of schools will develop meaning a management team can run numerous schools simultaneously to save money. This comes only months after the very same department welcomed the need for greater personalisation of educational provision, in the form of personal tutors and so on. Balls seems to be of the opinion that headteachers are little other than bureaucrats - commodities - that can be disposed and dispensed at will. Balls, in his wisdom, feels this will not affect the quality of teaching.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Balls said “If we are going to keep teachers and teaching assistants on the front line, that means we are going to have to be disciplined on public sector pay, including in education.” How fucking generous of him. It's nice that he is showing the courtesy to those working in education by not getting rid of their jobs to plug a deficit caused by his party's wanton liberalism, it's nice that he is only going to curb their pay. He is quite the altruist. Similarly, after asserting he hopes that comprehensives may come together into federations with a single headteacher and a number of deputies, he adds "But we are not going to have larger class sizes." Again, very generous, despite the fact that class sizes are already too large, are having a detrimental effect on learning and are affecting those of lowest ability the most.
Schools will also be expected to cut back on their purchasing of books, teaching equipment and computers and individual schools are expected to make 10% spending cuts.
My God. Education is Labour's pride and joy, along with the NHS. If this is what the government is doing to Education, I dread to think what will be cut in other public services. The issue is that school children and teachers should not be punished for the laissez-faire capitalism of City bankers and the governments selective myopia. I don't know how Ed Ball dares state that he is doing something good by the teachers by not kicking them out of their jobs to save money.
If Balls is looking to make some saving cuts for his department, he should look a little closer to home. The DCSF which Balls heads most probably has more than its fair share of policy wonks - certainly enough to be able to churn out contradictory policy findings and agree with both, before deciding they haven't the money for either. Or maybe Labour should cancel its commitment to ID cards, or to Trident, or call back the troops - all which are far less necesssary and financially gumptious.
This does not bode well. Cuts may well be necessary, but certainly not in education.
Being a Time Lord is very helpful, or so say the primary school children surveyed by the National College for the Leadership of Schools and Children's Services, as Dr Who came out to be the 'Dream Headteacher'. Leaving Alan Sugar, Jamie Oliver and Lewis Hamilton feeling painfully inferior, the Doctor (in his David Tennant carnation)also managed to pip Barack Obama, JK Rowling and Cheryl Cole into second place. And funnily enough, when the same options were offered to the adult readers of the Education Guardian page, Doctor Who was the adults' Dream Head too, although my choice of Michelle Obama looks set to come in in 2nd place.
Asked why they had chosen their particularly dream teacher, nearly half of the children did so because they were 'fun'. Also important was whether they could look up to this headteacher and their intelligence.
This helps to see what children seek in a headteacher, a role that can be of huge significance to their education and development - fun, intelligent and a good role model. Children themselves clearly place high value on their headteachers too - 75% of children surveyed said that their headteacher made them happy to be in school, and a similar percentage stated that their headteacher was fair and understood right from wrong.
The role of a headteacher then is quite different from that of a teacher. Although the head is not as much of a frontline character in the classroom as the teachers, they nonetheless play a large role for the pupils themselves. In a primary school in which I've volunteered, I overheard Year 6 children talking about the previous headteacher, who had left over 3 years ago. The position itself, ignoring the individual personalities, is something quite mythical in the childhood imagination - 'the Headteacher' is the character children read about in many books, see on children's TV. 'The Head' is where you get sent if you misbehave. 'The Head' is a place as much as a person and is a by-word for authority.
The tricky position of being a good teacher demamds that you are the figurehead of the school, that you command authority, that you are intelligent, that you are fun and that you can discipline. This is quite a difficult combination and one, for those that can master it, warrants a very healthy salary.
An earlier one of my blogposts was on the subject of Teaching Assistants, relating to an Institute of Education study which states that they are detrimental to a child's learning. The given reason for this is that the pupils are not spending enough time with their teacher. A better conclusion than getting rid of Teaching Assistants would be to have smaller classrooms.
Some of Professor Blatchford's previous research would support this. Perhaps the most consistent finding concerning class sizes effects on classroom processes is that reduced class size is related to individualisation of teaching. At a time when the government is promoting individualised learning and personal tutoring, a cut in class sizes would have an instant effect. His 2005 research with Basset and Brown also stated that children in large primary classes were more likely to engage in passive behaviour, listening to the teacher, while in smaller classes pupils were more likely to interact in an active, sustained way with teachers. These quotations are taken from Blatchford, Basset & Brown 2008
Smaller classes lead to more pupils being 'on task', which is of considerable importance, as this means a greater number of pupils are not having their learning disrupted by other pupils.
Blatchord, Basset & Brown 2008
If the reason for needing teaching assistants is because in large classes there are more disruptions, a reduction in class size would lead, you'd expect, to better behaviour and less need for teaching assistants. Teaching assistants would then be able to have a more focused role; supporting individual pupils with particular difficulties for example. A reduction of class size to 20 children per class in primary schools would need considerably more teachers but the investment would pay dividends. A cut such as this would lead to more individualised learning, reduce the need for personal tutoring which the government has suggested bringing in (at great cost), and is also very well-timed as the government is rebuilding schools at great pace.
Today holds a special significance if you were educated in the UK. If today is your birthday, that means you were the certainly oldest pupil in your class, and that you have had this status from when you first entered the nursery school.
The significance of this is huge, and is even greater, the earlier the school year you choose to examine. If you consider Reception-age children, the child born on September 1st (5 years old) has been alive for 20% longer, than her classmate, born on August 31st of the year after. The developmental, cognitive and physical capacities of a 5 year old are far superior to those of a 4 year old. And of a 6 year old compared to a 5 year old. Of a 7 to a 6... The pattern goes on to this day, as a second year undergraduate.
Why should being older have an effect? One would think it beneficial to be born younger in the year, as the pupil will be in school earlier in their life than the older child, thus receiving more education. In fact, there is much to be said for gaining the reputation of being the brightest in the class. Consider once more the Reception class of mixed 4 and 5 year old children. A September born five year old is going to be much better able to retain knowledge, to pay attention for longer time spans and so on. This child be rewarded for these abilities - this reward is likely to reinforce their behavior. Over time, the child comes to internalise the identity of being intelligent, and of doing well in school. And it all goes on from there. What the teacher believes, the pupils achieves.
This may seem a little far-fetched as an idea - surely factors such as type of education, 'natural intelligence', parental support and parental education all influence academic performance. Undoubtedly they do, but I did a little study myself to test it, using everyone favourite timewasting tool, Facebook.
Using only my Facebook friends educated in the UK, who are currently studying with me at University of Cambridge, I can infer that all of my sample attained at least AAA at A Level - this seems a suitable enough measure of academic ability, if not that elusive entity, real intelligence. I have a sample, then, of 111 students. Taking membership at Cambridge as an indicator of academic performance through education, you'd expect more of my friends/fellow students to be born in September than any other month. Then October, then Nov and so on until we reach the youngest in the annual cohort, the August borns. Here is the result.
As is quite clear, the theory holds true. September has the highest number, with 16 or the 111 being born in the first month of the academic year. The lowest number is the group born in July (the sample in which I am one of the 5 members). There are fluctuations, notably in January and June. These can be explained by my small sample.
As for the proliferation of June births specfically, it is worth remembering that this is not a random sample but is a sample made up of my friends. Being a July baby myself, I am statistically more likely to have similar educational experiences to those pupils born in June, July and August. This mutual experience could be a meeting point for friendships - if one's educational identity has, as I suspect, an influence on one's personality, it is perfectly logical that people naturally seek out those similar to themselves. This could explain why I have more friends born in June than would be expected by the theory.
So if you were born in September, congratulations, it will undoubtedly have served you well through your education. And if you were born in the summer holidays, keep up the effort.
Anne Fine's view that childrens books today are too pessimistic and realistic hascaused considerable dispute amongst writers and educators. Speaking at Edinburgh Book Festival, Fine asserted that realism 'may have gone too far in children's literature', and worries about the effect that reading so many books without happy endings will have on children. She questions what effect these books will have on their young readers' aspirations.
The Guardian today reports that her remarks have caused 'a rash of sneering from the literati' who have denigrated Fine in the way childrens authors know best - by comparing her to Enid Blyton.
The question then is whether it is idealism and escapism which is best for children, or whether they are better reading books that ground them in reality. My main objection to the escapism/realism opposition is that it is seen as synonymous with creativity/dull. My own view is that the best books for children to read are those that are both creative and realistic - my prime example would be John Boyne's 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas'; it is by no means uplifting but there is a lot of positive to be found in it - a lot like life, you could say. Other books that I read in my late childhood that combined the creative with the real is Jostein Gaarder's 'Sophie's World', which dazzling combines a narrative about 14 year old Sophie, and about the history of continental philosophy. It is too easy to connote realism with pessimism and negativity; to do so is misleading, and overlooks a lot of fantastic fiction. Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird' is another example.
And the same goes for fiction for younger children. Alistair McCall Smith, writer of the No1 Ladies Detective Agency Series, has aired a passionate defence of "nasty" books, like the ones he read in his childhood. "Children like to see gruesome events in stories and some characters come to really nasty ends in Dahl's books. I don't think children should be sheltered from these stories." Roald Dahl is a favourite of mine, and although his stories cannot be called wholly 'realistic' - The Witches, Giant Peaches, Oompa Lumpas - they aren't wholly fantastical either. Their child protagonists often have very real lives, live in very real families and face very real troubles - consider Matilda and the lack of affection her parents have for her, the poverty of Charlie Bucket - and the fantasy is framed within this reality.
Michael Morpurgo makes an important point that it is better for children to be reading any book, rather than none at all.
It says a lot about our society that the terms 'bleak' and 'realistic' are almost interchangeable, but childrens fiction is one of the most acccessible and entertaining ways to explain it all to children. There is something worth preserving in the unwavering optimism of escapist childrens writing - such as Enid Blyton and Beatrix Potter - but the fact remains that children enjoy grim realism - Goosebumps, Horrible Histories, A Series of Unfortunate Events. And as Morpurgo says, whatever gets children reading should be encouraged.
The media is rejoicing at the news that boys have, for the first time in over a decade, recorded better scores in Maths than girls. Richard Garner, in The Independent, writes - Much research shows that girls do better than boys in coursework. Boys come into their own at the end in the end of year tests. It’s like performing in the Ashes rather than Bangladesh in cricket. Sorry girls! This attitude is skewed, false and, judging from the title of his article 'Onward march of the boys will continue apace', is redolent of jealous sexism. The fact that coursework is submitted before the exam is sat does not mean they have an unequal weighting. Notably, nobody is questioning how the 'bingethinking' culture of exams that encourages cramming might be detrimental to girls' performance...
This nonstory is making the headlines on most of the broadsheets' education sections and the way I would describe the reception of this news is fervour. The Times leads their story with 'Boys have moved ahead of girls in GCSE maths for the first time since Labour came to power, after coursework was abolished in the subject. '. Clearly the view here is that now Labour has ran out of energy and looks set for electoral defeat, the government's sporadic, often fruitless, attempts at creating gender equality can now be scrapped. And finally, as we move into a new Conservative epoch, men will do well at mannish things, and women will return back to doing things fit for a lady.
The success of the boys over the girls this year in GCSE Maths is attributed to the coursework element being scrapped. Mike Cresswell, the head of AQA, asserts that 'It's well established that girls outperform boys at coursework'. Oh! Well, this clearly explains the terrible anomaly of girls getting better grades than boys in most subjects - in getting rid of coursework, the exam boards and the government have found the answer to the pressing issue of male underachievement: female overachievement! It should come as no surprise then, that coursework elements will be dropped from nearly all GCSEs from next year.
The given reason for the curtailing of coursework is plagiarism - this is undoubtedly an issue (my Maths teacher at GCSE helped me to understand the coursework using a show-and-tell technique; he showed me a more competent student's already completed coursework and told me to copy it. I got an A), but it seems as though a certain set of skills are being blacklisted, that happen to be those that are present more often in female students, and which are integral to arts subjects. To be good at coursework, a student needs greater conscientiousness, organisation and planning. How can these skills be denigrated? Maybe because they can't be applied using a calculator or a pipette.
Dylan William, from the Institute of Education, notes that the removal of coursework from GCSEs will disadvantage girls, and reflects an indifference to the skills of planning, organisation and presentation. I would go further, and suggest that the removal of coursework is reaction to the sentiment that males are being left behind, and that the way to prevent this is to put greater hurdles in the tracks of female students. Worryingly, this idea of mine is backed up by the trends in take-up of subjects. There has been an increase in the take-up of maths and the sciences, at the time that the government is effectively malestreaming its course specification. By denigrating the skills that ultimately create skilled arts students - in languages, creative arts, humanities and social sciences - the government and exam bodies are creating a two-tier hierarchy that marks gender as its dividing line. Coursework, if it is as essential to the skillset of the female student as educational experts are saying, will remain in the feminine armoury - hence they will be more inclined to take subjects deemed as 'soft'.
In one sweep, the achievements of female students are being curbed and their skills devalued, and all this with government backing - whilst at the same time, science and mathematics are being prioritised, leading to further sneering at Arts subjects. This affects not only the scapegoat du jour, Media Studies, but English Literature and Language, History, Sociology, and other essay-based disciplines. The motives behind the eradication of coursework are suspect to say the least.
Tomorrow is GCSE Results Day and Ed Balls plans to mark this occasion with a 'scathing attack' on the Conservative plans for education under the shadow schools secretary Michael Gove.
The Labour Schools Secretary will attack the Tories plans to create a two-tier system, in which academic qualifications are held in much greater esteem than vocational qualifications - this will effectively force schools to push unsuitable students into academic disciplines in order to keep up in the insane league tables game.
Before looking at the Tory proposals which Balls is attacking, let's make sure we're not making a good guy/ bad guy scenario. The last 12 years of educational policy under Labour have hardly been in the spirit of equality and cohesion. Labour have encouraged private businesses and dubious entrepreneurs to buy failing schools and do as they want with them. Under Labour, the gap between rich and poor has expanded, with obvious repurcussions on education. Although I'm tending towards agreement with what Balls will say tomorrow, it's more out of opposition to the Tories than out of loyalty to NuLab's education ideas.
Balls proposes that Gove's policies will expand and entrench the 'academic'/vocational divide. The fundamental problem with exacerbating this divide is that it inevitably dichotomises into good/bad. Achievements in mathematics, sciences and languages are held in particularly high esteem by the Tories - it may not only be vocational education that is put at risk, but also those A Levels that are often derided - Media Studies, Psychology, Sociology. These A Levels have a higher take-up rate in comprehsive schools, and I see it as no coincidence that it is these subjects that are looked down upon by the Conservatives. In the case of Sociology and Media Studies, maybe the dislike is something to do with the fact that these two subjects open students eyes to the workings of our modern society and our modern political sphere. Sociology equips students with a working knowledge of inequality, so it is no surprise that Gove and co favour 'hard' subjects. Physics won't expose the flaws in their policies.
Gove's recent statement of intention to 'overhaul' the league tables by according different weighting to 'harder' subjects is laying the groundworks for further divisions to be introduced. A better overhaul of league tables would be to scrap them.
What is blazingly apparent is that the Conservatives are offering nothing new - merely their old policies repackaged, with Cameron tying a ribbon of lexical obscurity around it. The Tory's plans to split and divide academic from vocational learning flies in the face of Labour's attempts to bridge the two through the Diploma scheme. The plans also suggest a move towards a tripartite system for the 21st century. I've heard the virtues of grammar schools being expounded with increasing frequency recently. This is all well and good for those 11 year olds who pass the 11+ - less so for the 80% who failed and were effectively abandoned in the underfunded secondary moderns. Think Billy Casper.
Although Balls is by no means the flagbearer for a perfect education system, I am more concerned with the encroaching Jolly Roger of Gove and his retro-conservative band of picaroons.
Schools play a fundamental role as a stepping stone to social mobility - an individual who is successful in education is more likely to secure employment with a higher wage, higher status and higher class position. Educators tend usually to come from the middle classes, so in the majority of state schools, the teachers are from a higher social class background than their pupils. To belong to a social class is not merely a statistical grouping - compare the different language codes, cultural tastes and interests of the working and middle classes for example. The problem of social mobility can be found in the teacher-pupil relationship, and whether the teacher should bring the interaction down to the lower status levels of their pupils or 'maintain standards' by demonstrating their own codes. The former may ensure that more children understand some concepts, whereas the latter is more likely to profoundly assist the most able students to learn to a higher proficiency.
The question of class codes, here meaning both classroom and social class, is one of dominance and subordination. If the middle class educator interacts using his own class-cultural system, this behaviour can be adapted, learned and appropriated by those students from lower background who are able to understand and react to it. In a society that remains as socially divided as ours, an understanding of the workings of middle-class mores is pivotal in the process of social mobility. If a working class pupil develops an interest in Shakespeare, her English teacher will be more inclined to dedicate time to teaching Shakespeare to this individual. By keeping schools as a middle-class, typically authoritative/authoritarian, institution, teachers can provide a route for social mobility for a minority of their pupils.
The key problem with teaching through the cultural and linguistic frameworks of this 'dominant' group, is that students who do not share this culture are unable to grasp it. It presents itself as alien, and far-removed from their daily life.
The alternative is to adapt the curriculum and teaching style to make it more like that of the students' own social group. This will enable more students to learn things that are undoubtedly 'of use' to them, but which stray away from representations of the dominant culture. But students and parents are not cultural dupes: they understand the benefits of learning the dominant culture, and they value the importance of learning the culture of their social superiors. 'Coming down' to the level of their pupils can be conceived of as denying the pupils the required tools for social mobility.
Which cultural code to use when teaching is a difficult choice to make, but either way, those students who are the most distant from the cultures of the dominant classes are likely to fail. If teachers educate at the level of their 'socially inferior' pupils, they are still likely to demand an active interest in education from their pupils, and very often it is amongst the most deprived that anti-school sentiments ferment. And of course, if teachers educate using the cultural codes of their own social class, they will do little but mystify and alienate the students of the lowest status, who haven't the abilty to decipher the teachers message. The two alternatives create different educational successes, but both create the same failures.
This is an essay that I wrote whilst doing my Sociology A Level, titled 'The Sociology of Billy Casper's Failure'. The film 'Kes' has been a favourite since before I came to appreciate its message - this essay is the one I sent in with my application to University too, so Billy Casper, and his real world counterparts, have come to play a big role in my life. It's quite poorly written, but I'll leave it as it was originally.
Billy Casper is the epitome of a late 1960’s Northern education, an era in which failure is practically assured for people like him. He is deprived in every sense of the word; deprived of love, education, material possession and hope. Billy is not an isolated case but is representative of the huge numbers of children who were (and are still) let down and neglected by their society. The educational failure of Billy cannot be attributed to his own faults and mistakes, but is a consequence of the many social controls and inequalities thrust upon him by an iniquitous society. The cinematic representation ‘Kes’, is certain to cause a knowing smile upon the faces of Marxists.
In industrial Barnsley in 1969, Billy immediately has obstacles put in front of him. His family is desperately poor, and this is succinctly shown by the fact that Billy must share a single bed with his older brother Jud. Howard (2001) investigated the correlation of poverty and educational under-achievement and noted several contributory factors. Billy’s small house being in the industrial slums of Barnsley, means he is prone to overcrowding (Billy and Jud share a bed). At home Billy has no space to do educational activities or do homework. His sharing a bed is likely to mean he is inadequately energized for school also. Billy’s diet is very poor due to the lack of parental influence, and he is forced to steal confectionary from the paper shop where he works. His mother often leaves him money for ‘pop and sweets’ rather than provide home cooked food. This is likely to give him poor nutrition and a higher risk of illness. The issue of how Billy’s lack of money affects his education is provided by Bull (1980), who tells of how children from poor families have to do without equipment and experiences that would enhance their education. The costs of uniform, books and equipment etc are too expensive for many working class families and this includes Billy’s. Billy not having a change of clothes for PE for all of the 4 years Mr Sugden has taught him, demonstrates this. His lack of kit means he is singled out by both peers and the teacher, as an outcast, and made to feel inferior to his peers due to his lack of money. As well as the financial price, in Billy’s home environment, his attempts to read are greatly ridiculed by his bullying brother Jud. Billy also has to have a part time job, not to aid his education but to contribute to the household, and this often means he is late for school. This notion of Finn (1984) ‘s, is a study on how working class teenagers often have to work to support their studies. If Billy had been introduced more to books and had a natural flair, on monetary grounds alone he would still be unlikely to proceed in education simply due to it’s expense.
Billy is deprived of any culture that would be accommodating to his education. Culture is first in the form of acquired knowledge through the nurture of family, but Billy lacked adequate primary socialisation. His father is not apparent or contributing to the income and his mother works a low paid, W/C job. His older brother Jud works in the pits. From what we see, his older brother is a bully (though Jud himself will have gone through the same problems and closed gateways through his educational career), who inhibits every attempt that Billy makes to create and happiness. Judd sabotages Billy’s book on falconry and eventually kills Kes. Kes is symbolic for the freedom and hope that Billy both deserves and desires. The educational system has cast him as a failure through processes beyond his control and his kestrel is his release from the hardships of his life. The final act in which Jud kills Kes, is symbolic for the hope and aspirations of Billy but also all other W/C pupils. Jud is 1960’s education, who takes down anything that gives the idea of success. The culture Billy has grown to accept and resent means that he will have great difficulty in doing anything worthwhile.
The lack of adequate primary socialisation Billy had, meant he had an inferior academic intellectuality to that of M/C children, as his mother wouldn’t have read to him or encouraged thought provoking or creative activities. Language is another factor that goes against Billy’s favour. The area of language in relation to educational success is explored by Bernstein (1975). He identifies two codes of language. The elaborated code is used commonly by the middle classes, and has wide vocabulary and complex sentences; this is the code used by teachers in education often. The W/C pupils such as Billy however, speak in a ‘restricted code’, of short simple sentences and a small limited vocabulary. The differences between these codes mean that W/C students are often immediately alienated to the ways of school and hence do not reach the pinnacles of their ability. The strong colloquialism of Billy’s accent and the negative stereotype that comes with it mean that it would be unlikely that he would succeed outside of South Yorkshire. Luckily for the bourgeoisie, he has been ideologically controlled enough to have no aspirations to travel, and is set to perform an unskilled manual role in society.
Billy is not motivated to do well in school or progress into further education, in contrast the emphasis is placed more upon which low paid job he plans to do after he has failed. Douglas (1964) focused his studies on the impact of primary socialisation on intellectual prowess. He showed that working class parents were less likely to support their children’s intellectual development and in general, would place less value on education, were less ambitious, provided less encouragement and took less interest in their children than middle class parents. Consequentially, the children are less motivated and less successful in education. Billy is clearly a victim of this neglect. We never see any of Billy’s family pay any interest into anything that he does, and Billy attends his important careers interview alone. His parent’s indifference has been accepted, and now he manifests this same fault himself. This shows a small scale external version of the self fulfilling prophecy. Once he gains the indifference his parents showed to him, he cannot help but not do well in school.
Billy has no cultural capital that would benefit him in 60’s education. At home, Billy has no access to the knowledge, attitudes, values, language and abilities of the middle class. As these are great aides to education, Billy is more likely to fail without the influence of such things. This is the idea of Bourdieu (1984), who believed that education is not neutral, as it favours and transmits the dominant middle class values. In contrast, he discovered that ‘working-class children find that school devalues and rejects their culture as ‘rough’ and inferior’. In this way, Billy and his peers have an immediate disadvantage in coming from a socially deprived area, of little to no M/C influence.
The noted are only the obstacles in Billy’s educational path before he even sets foot in a school. As well as being deprived of the necessary values to succeed at home, Billy is a victim of poor education within his school. Corporal punishment was still rife and as Billy wisely noted, his teachers cared as little for him as he does for them. The school atmosphere was about control and the transmittance of ideological control. School was a place to be taught conformity, respect and competitiveness, according to Marxists.
Billy is constantly told that he is a failure and is ridiculed. When he daydreamed during the register and uttered ‘ “German Bight” ‘, after a students name, he is ‘jumped upon’ by his teachers and cruelly mocked. The teacher’s intention was not to promote success but to punish failure. Billy is clearly not in a good environment for him within school. From a modern point of view and a more liberated standpoint within education, though we see Billy lacks the academic skills required in the 1960’s, he has a potential gift with animals and under modern situations would be encouraged into veterinary science for example. But, there is no encouragement for Billy and the lack of faith instilled in him by his teachers, means that he has no aspiration of confidence within himself.
Becker (1971) noted the teachers fantasy of an ‘ideal pupil’, who produces good work, conducts themselves well and are of a good appearance. They judge the identity of the pupil by how closely they match this ‘perfect’ pupil. Billy is bordering on illiterate, uses poor vocabulary and has an unkempt and dirty appearance. Not one of these factors is due to him, yet each one means that he is labelled negatively from the beginning. With the exception of Mr Farthing who comes to understand Billy more, all the teachers view Billy as a useless misfit and an idiot. These views are reflected in his own views of himself when asked by the careers advisor of his aspirations, of which he has none. Were Billy given more encouragement and motivation, maybe he could have given himself a better label and had a better start in life. As Rist (1970) stated in his study of teacher labelling, “What teachers believe, their pupils achieve.” Nobody at home or in school believes in Billy, and as a result he fails and has little to show from being in school at all.
Billy is immediately anti-school in his views, though we never see him associate with fellow renegades to form a sub-culture due to his solitary mind and affection for Kes. As with many things in education for Billy, he hasn’t a choice in the matter. On his financial background and appearance alone, he cannot make the requirements of being pro-school and so rejects its views. Rather than not elaborating, Billy observed the mutual indifference the pupils and teachers showed for each other. This is the exact theory put forward by Lacey, “school rejects the boy: boy rejects the school”. It is commonly accepted that joining an anti-school subculture is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy of educational failure. Billy didn’t even have the opportunity to be in a sub culture, as he is singled out by teacher and student alike. He hasn’t even the money to truant and smoke.
School for Billy, rather than help him, simply alienates him further from it, as again he is given the image that he is worthless and will not amount to anything: the same scenario as he experiences when he gets home.
Once we consider all the factors that contributed to how Billy failed academically, we see that it would be somewhat miraculous if he overcame these barriers. Success wasn’t even a consideration for him, as he had accepted all of these inequalities. The worst thing is that Billy is even so ideologically controlled that Bowles & Gintis’ ‘Poor are Dumb’ theory came into place, and he attributed some of his failure to himself rather than society. When Billy shouts to his PE teacher, “you shu’n’t have put me in goal, you know I’m useless”, what we see is the saddening way in which his teacher’s expectation had killed his aspirations. What Billy means is “you’ve said that I am useless, so I must be.”
In the assembly scene, an excerpt from the Bible is read, in which we are given the question of if you have 100 sheep and 1 strays from the group, should you let the one get away and make do with what you have, or go out of your way to save the lost sheep? Billy is the lost sheep that the shepherd forgot, though he is not alone as there were and still are many Billy Caspers who are failed by the system. In the final scene when Jud nonchalantly admits to killing Kes, with the death of the bird, dies Billy’s only source of hope. Given Bernstein’s theories on W/C restricted code, the strongest thing Billy could think to call Jud was ‘fuckin’ bastard’. Kes represented the hope for the W/C pupils like Billy, and Jud; education as it kills away all hopes and aspirations. In this context, Billy’s statement of ‘fuckin’ bastard’ seems pertinent in both the literal and metaphorical sense.
