As ever, this post started life as a Facebook status, and if someone hadn’t gone “Huh? What you blethering about?” it would probably have remained as one. Facebook is bad for my writing, it really is. Anyway.

Today, I watched High Society for the umpteenth time. The film is essentially a remake of the pre-war classic The Philadelphia Story, which is a better film, but doesn’t have the songs. Much of the script is lifted, word for word, but it loses some of the depth, in order to fit in Frank, Bing and Louis Armstrong displaying their jazz wares.

In both movies, we have the rich, beautiful, uncompromising Tracy; the ex-husband and neighbour from her brief first marriage, Dexter; George, the fiancé whom she plans to marry the following day; Seth Lord, Tracy’s father, who has lately separated from his wife to pursue a liaison with a dancer in the city; and the two society reporters, Mike Connor, a cynical Angry Young Man with a chip on his shoulder, relating largely to being too poor write serious literature, and his long-time girlfriend, Liz, who has not yet married him because he “still has a lot to learn. I don’t want to get in his way for a while.”

At the beginning Tracy is angry – angry at Dexter for the failure of her marriage to him, angry at her father for running away with the dancer. She is criticised by both for her unfeeling, uncompromising expectations, both of herself, and of those around her. Indeed, her father subjects her to a speech in which he blames her lack of affectionate understanding of him for his affair. George, on the other hand, is enthusiastic about how “untouched” she is by her previous experiences, and sees her as unblemished and worthy of his adoration.

During the course of the film, and on the eve of her wedding, Tracy gets extremely drunk, and pretty much throws herself at Mike, the reporter, who has, in turn, become somewhat infatuated with her. She resents George’s attempts to cover for her inebriation as intrusive and fun-less, so sneaks out of the party with Mike, back to the house, where they talk passionately, kiss, and go swimming, before she passes out, and he brings her back to the house.

Waiting at the house are Dexter and George. Dexter has guessed enough of the developments to seek to shield Tracy from being discovered by her fiancé, knowing that she would be unlikely to remember events in the morning, in any case. George is mystified, and a little worried, by Tracy’s disappearance from the party, and is looking to reassure himself of her safety. Discovering her in a dressing gown, being carried back to the house by Mike, scandalises him, and he is unable to reconcile himself to her apparent indiscretion.

The following morning, Tracy remembers nothing of what happened, but finds enough clues to suggest to her that she might have (must have?) indulged in a one-night-stand with Mike. George, when he arrives, clearly believes the same thing, and is very angry. After a while, Mike proffers the information that nothing happened, save for a kiss and a swim – Tracy, still smarting from earlier criticisms, asks if she was too cold and unattractive for him, but he insists he was very attracted, and was instead prevented by a sense of honour, in recognition of the fact that she was drunk.

George, at this point, sees Tracy’s honour as restored, but she points out that her sustained chastity is due to Mike’s honour, not hers, and as such offers her no credit. That George accepts her because he sees her as still unspoilt, she says, is worth much less than his willingness to accept her as spoilt would have been. She assures him that she is not good enough for him, since she now realises that she cannot live up to his standards for her, any more than she could live up to her own. George leaves, and Dexter steps into the breach, again demonstrating his willingness to both accept her in her fallen state, and to work to help her in that state. She remarries Dexter, promising to be more understanding and accepting of the human weaknesses of both of them.

So, that’s the story. It took longer to summarise than I anticipated, but never mind. The thought that struck me, as I watched it, was that the ultimate lesson of the film appears to be that people are fallible, and should be held to low standards. The scene between Tracy and her father particularly irritates me – how dare he suggest that SHE is to blame for HIS infidelity? It’s not even that he blames his wife, in the classic “My wife doesn’t understand me” mold – he blames his adult daughter for failing to pander to his vanity, his inner need to be thought wonderful by a pretty young girl. It’s all a bit icky, when you think about it, to say nothing of entirely unfair. But ultimately, Tracy comes around to this point of view, and marries the man whom she considers fallible, but who loves her in her own fallibility.

Then I started thinking about the Church. Historically, the Church has fallen into two main theological camps – the “evangelicals” and the “liberals”. Traditional evangelicalism has tended (gross generalisation coming up, bear with me) to value “righteousness”, or sinlessness, very highly, and to tend towards an intolerance of sin, and consequently of the sinner. It’s a stereotypical image, isn’t it, of the stern Free Churchman, preaching against the evils of cinemas, and alcohol, and of playing football on a Sunday? The liberal end of the church, upon which the evangelical wing has been inclined to look with disdain, have more of a history of acceptance of such things (catholic churches are likely to own bars, rather than condemn them), and therefore of people who indulge in them. It comes down to balance. The bible advocates a need for righteousness, for the renunciation of sin, but it also advocates a need for love, for compassion, for forgiveness. Every Christian has, at some point, to work out how to manage the tension between those two essentially contradictory positions. It’s fairly safe to say that in 2000 years of Christianity, no-one has quite got the balance completely right – everyone leans slightly too far in one direction or the other.

So how is that the 1956 musical romantic comedy is playing out these eternal tensions? And, ultimately, the film comes down on the side of 1 Corinthians 13 – “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” Love is a word of complex connotation, in Hollywood, but they use words like “compassion” and “understanding” instead, and they mean the same things. They mean the acceptance of people for who they are, not for who you think they ought to be.

Which makes the film a good deal deeper than I’ve previously given it credit for.

The Guardian article that Kevin shared yesterday fascinated me.  The link doesn’t work, for some reason, but the article is here. The summary is that, by means of fast moving, punchy, 20 minute presentations, repeated three times, with a ten minute break between each for some physical activity (juggling, apparently), they can cover an entire GCSE syllabus in three days.  And cover it well enough for pupils to then pass the exam.  The results weren’t quite as high as  by traditional methods, but the trade off between that, and the astonishingly small amount of time it took is probably acceptable by the standards of most business models, for example.  And if you fail, you can always do it again – the following week, if you like!

The article is full of excitement over the amount of time that is wasted in schools, and how much more efficient this system seems to be, and thereby stands the problem.  The education system that we’ve evolved is, as we’ve discussed, in large part about childcare.  It’s concerned with keeping children out of the way of their economically productive adults, so they don’t prevent the economic productivity from going on.  Within that structure, there is no advantage in making education efficient.  Which is odd, because the text of the education act makes parents responsible for ensuring that their children receive an education that is both efficient and full-time (either by attendance at school or otherwise).  And I’m starting to wonder if an efficent education, is, by definition, not full-time at all.

It’s all reminscent of the days when we (well, not me, I wasn’t born) were told that technology would give us all free time.  We’d all be working three day weeks, or less, because the technology would get the necessary work done in a fraction the time, and we’d all be wondering how to fill our new leisure time.  Except it didn’t happen, did it?  For a while we had some people working as hard as ever, whilst the others couldn’t find jobs at all, and lived in poverty.  Then we had economic boom, in which we successfully invented work for everyone to do, most of which is completely unnecessary. We created call centres, and all forms of bureaucracy, essentially to keep us all busy.  And of course, the childcare industry, which is built on the need to cover all the time we spend doing non-work.  Heaven forfend that we could earn a living wage in three days, and take the rest of the time off.

If I’m ever in a position to do so, I shall run a three-days-a-week business.  One where part time work is the norm, and where people can go home when they’ve finished what they were asked to do.  In the war, when people were asked to contribute to the war effort by working seven days a week, productivity actually went down.  And in the seventies, when the power went out, and businesses went to three day weeks, it didn’t. We’re all working far too hard.  It’s not necessary.  But for as long as you’re all doing it, it is necessary, because the the amount of time you work, and the amount of money you earn doing it, is what sets the cost of all the things I need to live – house prices, and food, and petrol, and clothes, and all the rest of it, are set based on how much money you have to spend on them.  The harder we work, collectively, the more expensive things get.  We don’t get any advantage from it.  So, I’m saying, let’s stop.  It’s not necessary, and if we all stop together, we don’t have to starve to bring about the change.

So, yes, let kids study GCSEs in three days.  If that’s how long it actually takes, then let them do that, and then stop.  Have fun. Spend time with their families. Learn things that they want to learn, from a position of having the time and energy to do it. But the idea of a generation of children with time on their hands is a terrifying prospect to the powers that be, and I’m guessing they will strain every nerve to avoid it happening.  Look out, Monkseaton High School.  This isn’t a revolution that you’re going to be allowed to start.

I’ve alluded to this in the past, but never quite gotten around to fleshing out my argument on this one.

What is the purpose of school? Erm – I don’t think anyone really knows, which makes it awfully difficult to make a judgement over whether it’s working or not. The possible purposes are wide and varied, and the reality is likely to involve a combination of these factors, or, even more likely, to be different things to different people, resulting in conflicts of opinion about just how the school system is doing.

What is education?

The most obvious answer to the original question is “Why, to educate children, of course!” accompanied by a look of mystification at the idea that such a question was ever asked. But what is education, how do you know if you’re achieving it, what are we educating our children towards (or, I suppose, away from), and is school the best way to go about it anyway?

Most children don’t really know what they want from their education – not because they’re incapable of forming opinions on the subject, but because no-one ever gives their opinion much weight or credence, so it’s not really worth their trouble in thrashing an opinion out for themselves. The closest they get is to come up with an answer to the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I suspect that in lots of cases, that answer stems more from a desire to give an answer – any answer – and gain adult approval, than a real opinion on the subject.

Most parents, from what I can gather, want school to equip their children to make money. Some parents want their children equipped to make as much money as is humanly possible – others are content with enough money to maintain a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle. But really, that’s the point. It’s about the treadmill of SATs, and GCSEs, and A Levels, and University, and a job at the end of it all. I find that terribly depressing (hence my use of the not-loaded-at-all term, “treadmill”). It makes me feel like an inanimate object, being churned out of a machine in a factory. Not a new metaphor, I know, but there it is. The older I get, the more I find myself rebelling against the idea that adult life is about work – that work is boring and tedious, takes up most of your waking life, has to be paid for to count as work at all, and is relentlessly, mind-numbingly, non-negotiably present until the day you die – unless you’re lucky enough to live to 106, and be allowed to actually retire. Surely, there is more to life than that? Surely, there’s something more fulfilling, more purposeful than generating income, to pay for the food, clothes and rent that it takes to enable you to go to work?

Of course, the people whose opinions really count, on the subject of school, are those who pay for it. Ultimately, that’s me and you, the tax-payers, but we are severely separated from state-sponsored education by the fact that our money goes through a middle-man. And what Government thinks is the purpose of school, is really not at all clear.

School as childcare

From what I can tell, the first and primary role of school, to the government, is to provide universal childcare. Now, it seems to me, that that isn’t an educational purpose at all. It’s an economic exigency. School professionalises childcare to the point that one or two adults can take care of a group of thirty children at a time, thereby freeing the parents of those children to get into the workforce and start being economically productive. And economic productivity is the number one concern of governments. They are only casually interested in education, health care, defense, social services, law and order, speed limits, and the host of other things that they witter about on a daily basis. What they actually care about is money. They care that the economy continues to grow, that people feel rich, that taxes get paid, that consumers consume, creating more jobs, and more taxes, and so on, and so on, ad infinitum.

There are one or two problems with this.

Firstly, nothing can grow indefinitely. The constant growth is fuelled, ultimately, by the ransacking of the planet’s resources. The oil is running out. The rainforests are shrinking. We can’t carry on treating the planet as in indefatigable resource. And with that reality comes the further truth that constantly buying New Stuff is not sustainable, either ecologically, or economically. The system saturates. The bottom drops out of the market, we get recession, and poverty. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It’s inescapable. Anyone who tells you it’s not is selling something. “Gone are the days of boom and bust economics”? I think not.

Secondly, modern industrial and post-industrial economics are anti-family. Whether they are consciously, or unconsciously so rather depends on how prone you are to conspiracy theories. My own opinion fluctuates according to how I feel, so I’m not able to make a clear statement on the subject. However, intentionally or otherwise, the effect of modern economics is the split up family units. 300 years ago we were all living and working together as families, in farms and cottage industries, passing the skills and resources down through the family group, and spending stacks of time together, building close bonds, trust, and proper relationships (and dying of plague, admittedly, but that’s a different discussion). Now, we are expected to run our family life between 6pm and 8.30pm at night, between collecting the children from the childcare, and putting them to bed in time to get up for school the next day, whilst simultaneously making sure they get some food and do their homework. Is it any wonder that people worry about children and teens being uncontrollable? I mean, I’m sure there’s a massive amount of paranoia going on there, too, but in amongst it is a generation of children who aren’t being brought up by their parents, but by a series of childcare solutions. Children need love, not “quality, affordable childcare”. All the economic growth in the world won’t replace that, and actually, without it, achieving economic growth itself gets tricky – mental health issues, a lack of social stability and belonging – these things make it very difficult to hold down a job anyway.

Training the workers of the future

The other governmental purpose for school, and this is quite a long way down the priority list, is the creation of the next generation’s economic growth.  When they start talking about what children should actually do in school all day, they get terribly tied up with phrases like “preparing for the world of work” and “keyskills” and “a suitable workforce for employers”, and it makes me want to scream.  That isn’t education.  If the role of school is to churn out young adults perfectly primed to do some job or other, to enable them to continue the never-ending push for economic growth, then that’s not education – it’s training, at best, and training is something you can do to a monkey.

Education is about thought, about analysis, about taking other people’s ideas and turning them into something new, something that’s uniquely yours.  It’s about advancing the extent of human understanding, about stretching your intelligence, about intellectual challenge for it’s own sake.  If, during that process, you stumble across something that turns out to be useful, then hurrah and huzzah, congratulations!  If not, then it doesn’t matter, because that was never the point. Only funding “useful” research is to destroy our capacity to think, and without that, we’ll never achieve anything, economically or in any other sense.

Most people have a requirement for money.  Food and rent need to be paid for, regardless. But the economic model currently being pushed by the powers that be is fundamentally flawed.  It involves far too much working for someone else, being paid for your time rather than your productivity, and being pushed into the belief that you can never actually have enough money.  It involves being party to a system of constantly pushing up the price of the things you need, so that it takes more and more work to pay for it.  And surely, surely there’s a point where you can rest.  Surely there’s a time when you are fed and clothed, and can stop the grind.

This morning, when I had barely surfaced, Daisy asked me “Why does Trug go places when Bits and Bobs don’t want to, or aren’t expecting it?”

Trug, for the uninitiated, is a renegade toy who escaped from his factory assembly line to enter into a life of wandering about finding Stuff, then taking the Stuff to a place where it can be used. He is joined on this endeavour by two balls of fluff, Bits and Bobs, who live inside him, and who make wildly inaccurate guesses as to the identity of the Stuff, and it’s possible purpose. That’s pretty much the whole show.

I considered for a moment, and said, “Because Trug has free will.”

“What’s free will?”

“It’s the thing that means you are in charge of what you do.  Whether you push Henry over, or don’t push Henry over is your choice, because you have free will.  I can try to influence your decision, by saying “If you push Henry over I will put you in time out,”  but you still decide for yourself whether you will do it or not.”

She seemed satisfied with that.  Thankfully, we didn’t get from there to predestination – not this time, anyway.  Still, it was all a bit deep for so early in the morning, if you ask me!