Ancient Rant of Punch

Having kids avg age 3, one has the same brain capacity. Therefore the Punch and Judy Festival is ideal. Farts, bangs, silly hidings and seekings are an easy hit. The stories are incoherently bizarre and the techniques are trite at times (thought the slapstick is always great), but there are two things that save the experience. One is the script's aside references to whatever is topical or lampoonable. The stories are so inane that you can add whatever you like in and no one will worry. The other genius is that tiny space. The universe boiled down to so little. Then, everything is possible.

They say Punch has been going strong since 1662 which means he must be very versatile to survive so long

Rationing of basic learning

DIUS (Dept of Innovation Universities and Skills) published its "new approach" to the teaching of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). See it here

As you'd expect, not one single reference to the practices and people involved in ESOL teaching. It treats ESOL as a process industry with a delivery structure that you tweak to optimize it, like insurance claims processing for example. There seems to be no acknowledgement that giving people language skills is a matter of contact, time, inspiration and good materials used well in good environments. Such a Taylorist approach may well be “new” but can it be effective ?

Also, something troubles me in the underlying assumption that “need” for language learning is a variable function of a deprivation index. Yes it is right to argue that the most excluded should be offered most attention. But No, it surely is wrong to sign up to any political economy with sliding scales of access to a fundamental entitlement like social participation through communication. Those access criteria are going to be set by political processes which may be (already are ?) venal, arbitrary, penny-pinching or hostage to interest-groups. I haven’t completely worked out what the problem is in this approach, but instinctively I’d say, “slippery”. I can’t think of any other kinds of basic education that are meted out on a socially-indexed “need” scale.

Now I expect tomorrow's DIUS proposals will be for restricting English lessons at primary school to only half of the children. And of course the Government will expect praise for setting enlightened access criteria around exclusion.

So what is it about ESOL speakers that makes them suitable for this rationing of opportunity ? Please reassure me that it’s nothing to do with their foreign origins.

Macbeth - hairs rising

Revising Macbeth with son for end of term exams. The first time we have looked at Shakespeare together. His first Shakespeare text at school too.

Every commonplace or summary about this text fails and shrivels, beside the electric shock of the original language and the sheer baldness of watching a character self-destruct with his own evil. 14 year olds "get" quite little of the vocabulary and yet the effect is still to compell them to attention and study.

I think that coming to texts of this power is a rite of transmission. I remember my mother reading the Tragedies with me around the same age. It's not an initiation that I would want to give outside the warm security of the family.

RIP

Elderly parishioner Joyce, 89, passed away last week leaving empty pew and a hole that only the very elderly and lived-in of us can fill. In that church for half of the century since its building. A sweet seller in the shop opposite the school, and sweetened to the core by it. The kids and I had visited her lately after church, and even the small and bouncy Eryk was somehow stilled and conjured by the spell of her great age and kindness. He kept on asking to make repeat visits. No more. Although I can't say I knew her well, I will be at the funeral of this person who lived a happy life, with my own happy feeling - sometimes the dutiful respect for an elder is in itself a really satisfying and fulfilling emotion. Traditional societies know this; for modern individualists hooked on personal affinities, closeness and connections it's a more suspect kind of feeling

Sound of Africa

Called to Banjul, Gambia, to book hotel for me and Remy there later this month. Had selected "Ferry Guesthouse" which is opposite the boat terminal on the river, and meant to be bustly and a bit of a dive but with a spectator seat on the tide of humanity. The noise in the background of horns, buses, radios, conversations was full of immense promise of vibrant colourful places. 600 Dalassis a night - God only knows what that is