The education league tables are out. Everyone panics.

On the radio, a nice, intelligent, articulate man says: ‘I have worked with thirteen ministers of education and none of them has done much good.’ He is not making a party political point. He is making a why the children are not learning point. The international league tables are out and poor old Blighty languishes in the doldrums. The gnashing of teeth can be heard from three fields away.

The shadow education secretary was on the Today programme this morning, and all he could offer was his worry that teachers are not qualified enough. He had no explanation for why all the money and attention spent on education through the Labour years seemed to have so little effect. People got terribly cross with Tony Blair about many things, but I remember my real rage being that the children still could not read. I was one of those who was all fired up about New Labour. I believed Blair when he said education, education, education. I was ready to be delighted, and then the great leap forward never came.

The good news is that the rankings themselves are not completely reliable. Statisticians are casting doubts. Perhaps Britain is not doomed after all. But at the same time, there does not seem to be the shining city on the hill that one hoped might be built, full of bright-eyed pupils in shiny classrooms, their teachers gleaming with enthusiasm and devotion.

All governments of all political kidneys have had a crack at it. Neither the left nor the right has any stranglehold on cleverness or correctness. My excessively unfashionable opinion is that most politicians and ministers are people of goodwill who want the best for the next generation. They study excellent models elsewhere; they get advice from brilliant experts in the field. They do not go into Whitehall in the morning thinking bugger it, who cares whether the children can read?

If it is not as simple as hopeless politicos or failed ideologies, I wonder whether it might be a more profound cultural problem. Britain is sharply contradictory when it comes to education and cleverness. On one hand, it is rightly proud of having Oxford and Cambridge, two of the best universities in the world, setting gold standards since the middle ages. On the other hand, there is little an Ordinary Decent Briton hates more than someone who is too clever for their own good. There are rumblings about elitism, which has become a dirty word; newspapers regularly run pieces about how the country is run by Oxbridge elites, who, apparently by definition, can know nothing of the Real World.

When I was a little girl, I was a swot. Even at the age of nine, I was keenly aware that this would make me hated. I compensated by becoming a jester. If I could make the class laugh, then I would not be persecuted for all that prep I did. On a wider scale, the British have always been intensely suspicious of intellectuals. We are not like France, say the old guard, laughing scornfully. Very few national treasures are beloved for their academic brilliance. I suspect that Britain would much rather win the World Cup than a Nobel Prize in physics. Cleverness generally should be covered up, hedged about with self-deprecation, masked by jokes or eccentricity.

And there is a broader argument still, about different forms of intelligence. Thoughtful people rightly make the point that empathy and emotional intelligence and creativity are as important to the good life as knowing what Einstein said or when the Battle of Hastings was fought. When these annual league tables come out, and hares are set running all over the shop, someone always comes up with the hoary old chestnut about this entrepreneur dropping out of school, or that brilliant musician never passing an exam. And then the whole thing falls into a mess of he said she said and no useful conclusions are drawn.

I am not certain I have any useful conclusions myself. I wish that dear old Britain was not floundering below Liechtenstein and Estonia and Slovenia. I do think there are severe problems in education here, and I believe in education as an article of faith. Yet America, which has more Nobel laureates than the next ten countries put together, is in an even more lowly position, nine full places below us. This makes me wonder whether a single test can really rank entire nations in any satisfactory sense. Perhaps the criteria are too narrow; perhaps the whole idea of grading in such a way is reductive and misleading.

What about the other things which make life worth living, like songs and novels and manners and the countryside and a sense of humour? If there were a league table for bands or comedians, Britain would be surely higher than South Korea, which beats us hollow in maths and science. Even those of us who believe passionately in learning must admit that learning is not the only thing which counts.
On that awful Friday night in Glasgow, ordinary citizens ran into the scene of the helicopter crash, to help their fellow humans without thought for their own safety. A sense of community, which the doomier commentators say is now confined to a mythical golden age, still coheres. People are kind and generous and good in this country. I believe this to be true on anecdotal evidence and personal experience, but there are objective proofs. Britons are the second most generous people in the entire world, with 76% giving money to charity. That good news never made headlines, but it is a keen reminder that competence in maths is not the only mark of a good life or a civilised society.

I do not have a nice, neat final sentence for this. I have no definitive conclusion. I think the children must read. But I also suspect that perhaps the picture is less bleak than it is being painted. I am channelling Dad’s Army, and saying quietly to myself: ‘Don’t panic.’
 
Today’s pictures:

Too gloomy for the camera today. Here are some snaps from the archive:




This one looks as if I have put it into black and white. In fact, those were the actual colours that day:












Can you believe I wrote an entire blog post without mentioning Red the Mare? Goes against all muscle memory. She was glorious this morning, before the rain came, doing her dowager duchess canter up the hill. She was happy too, deep in one of her Zen calm moods, the ones which make me love her more than almost anything else:


 


Although I say Don’t Panic, I am of course in a small panic of my own. The panic is always that when I write a serious piece on a subject such as education, I may include a most uneducated grammatical error or typing mistake. And then people shall laugh and point. I squint at the text, desperately searching for howlers. I know I will have missed one. Ah well, I think – I must publish now and risk it for a biscuit.

The news smashes through my window and takes my television

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I wrote yesterday that the news seemed very far away. The weekend had been taken up with gentle domestic things: getting ready for the young cousins, making soda bread, taking the dog to the vet to have her nails clipped. On Saturday, when it all first kicked off, I was actually watching large men in kilts and singlets hurl cabers the size of telegraph poles across a grassy arena, to polite Scottish applause.

Then, yesterday, at tea-time, I tuned in properly. I was finishing work, and I thought I’d just check BBC News 24 on my computer. Suddenly it was no more watching the swallows, remembering my darling old dead canine, and yearning a bit for her, my heart aching in my chest. The news was jumping out of my screen; it was scrolling past on Twitter so fast I could not keep up with it. I felt shock, disbelief, rage, fear, and a terrible empathy. They were burning people out of their houses.

As I watched, half of Croydon seemed to go up in flames. Clapham was next, then Ealing. The city that I had lived in for twenty years, that I still know and love, that is still stitched into my heart even though I am now six hundred miles north, seemed at war.

Twitter was the most extraordinary. The BBC anchors, in an odd, old news way, kept trying to blame it for the chaos. In fact, it seems the looters and burners were being directed by Blackberry messages. The Twitterers were rising up to help. Bulletins went out to avoid London Fields, where people were being dragged off bicycles and having their telephones stolen. People were helpfully advising on which bits of Camden were closed, and which danger zones to stay away from. There was a retweeting of a message to check in on elderly neighbours.

Three particularly brave reporters I found were sending out tweets from the heart of the action. Kaya Burgess was in Portobello (boys with machetes marching up Westbourne Grove), Paul Lewis was in Hackney, and then Ealing, Mark Stone, who became a bit of an instant Twitter hero, seemed to be everywhere.

I flipped back and forth between the news and the Twitter feed. I could not sleep. I really don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. I felt a sudden wash of shame for my poor old country. I have always rather avoided national pride, it seems so illogical. Nonetheless, I do feel it. It is a little bit of magical thinking I cannot quite rid myself of. I love dear old Blighty, and her people. Even though it is nothing to do with me, a mere accident of birth, I feel happy and blessed that I come from the land of Shakespeare and Milton.

So, last night, there was an equally illogical shame. What will the world think? I wondered. What price Shakespeare and Milton now? (There was a terrible moment of gallows humour when reports came in that while shoe shops and telephone shops were trashed and raided, the bookshops were left quite alone. Ha, shouted the Twitterers; proof the rioters are illiterate.)

But then, the Good started. A video began circulating of a woman bravely berating the looters, shouting furiously at them, asking them what they were thinking. A new Twitter handle sprang up called Riotcleanup. They encouraged people to gather in the morning to help tidy the mess. The next day, reports started coming of hordes of people pouring off the underground at Clapham and Ealing and Croydon with brushes and dustbin bags. The Ordinary Decent Britons were fighting back with brooms.

This amazing picture starting being passed back and forth:

One young man was interviewed in Liverpool. He was about seventeen or eighteen and he had come to help. The BBC reporter seemed slightly baffled to find a clean young person, who was not wearing a hoodie and looting shoes.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, quite nonplussed.

‘Well,’ said the good young fellow. ‘It’s my city too. You wouldn’t leave your bedroom in a mess like this, would you? So I just came to see what I could do to make it better.’

There will be an awful lot of shouting, over the next few days, over what this was all about. Was it fear and loathing, deprivation and despair, an entire generation somehow dispossessed? The left will say government neglect; the right will shout family breakdown, sense of entitlement. One Labour MP is even blaming the bankers, for setting a bad example, in the smash and grab business. Ken Livingstone spent the night on television, scoring cheap political points. ‘Being Mayor is not just about opening fetes,’ he said at one point, quite inexplicably.

I don’t think there is any easy answer. I cannot tell you why some of the young people are like the decent boy in Liverpool, and some are saying, as Paul Lewis heard last night, ‘Hampstead, bruv. Let’s go rob Hampstead.’

I concentrate on the small acts of kindness. People are setting up drop-in centres, for those burned out of their homes. They are donating bedding and kitchen equipment for those who lost everything. One blogger is taking donations for a 90-something barber in Tottenham, whose barber’s shop had been there for forty years, and was smashed on Saturday. In the heat of the battle, householders in Hackney and Camden were making tea for the police, who had been working 24-hour shifts. The riot clean-up squad is already talking about making their impromptu community action a permanent thing. The good people have their brooms at the ready. I may be a cock-eyed optimist, but that is the Britain in which I choose to believe.

 

Tea for the police, presented on a riot shield:

(Photograph by Joel Goodman.)

 

Meanwhile, here, in the far north, everything is very quiet. A little evening sun has broken through the cloud. The wind whispers and shivers in the trees. The jackdaws are quarrelling in the silver birches. I have the outrageous good fortune to go outside and see, not burnt buildings and smashed windows, but this:

Something lovely, at least, on which to rest your poor, seared eyes.

Last night, one tweeter, exhausted by the bad news, sent out an ironical plea for pictures of kittens. I cannot quite do kittens, but I can do the next best thing, which is the enduring beauty that is The Pigeon:

And above it all, imperturbable and unchanging, is the hill:

I hope that you are safe, wherever you are.

Out of step

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

WARNING FOR LENGTH, RANTING, POLITICS OVERLOAD, AND CONTRARINESS.

Years ago, London’s glittering West End put on a show called The Play Wot I Wrote. (Or something similar; too tired to Google.) It was a huge, whacking, roaring, screeching success. People fought in the streets for tickets. Hardened critics sobbed with joy.

I ruthlessly sold my grandmother and got tickets. I took my lovely Man of Letters and his Beloved, as a very, very special treat.

The theatre was packed to the gunnels. (I am sure that will go soon onto John Rentoul’s banned list, so I am using it while I can.) Almost from the moment the actors came on stage, people started to bark with laughter. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I checked my funny bone. No tickling yet. Never mind, it would surely come.

It never did. For two excruciating hours, I sat, with a face like stone, whilst the rest of the audience rocked and wept with hilarity. At one point, the waves of laughter were so corporeal it felt like being on board ship in a high swell.

I did not dare look at the MOL. I did not hear him laughing, but perhaps he was shrieking on the inside. As we filed out of the theatre, the three of us looked at each other, a little island of solemnity amidst the happy crowds.

‘Awful,’ we all said in unison. ‘AGONY.’

There was a tremendous, streaming comfort in knowing that at least we had each other. But we spent most of dinner discussing what was wrong with us. We could not work out why we were so utterly out of step with the taste of the great British public, the chattering classes, and the theatrical establishment. Sometimes it’s rather a lovely idea, being a contrarian; sometimes it just makes you feel slightly peculiar.

I had that over the MPs’ expenses. I could see it was bad and regrettable and wrong, but I did not see that it was the most scandalous scandal that had ever hit British politics. I remember thinking at the time that it was nothing like as bad as the scandal of the billions of pounds wasted on IT projects that did not work, or the fact the soldiers in Afghanistan did not have boots, or the practice of extraordinary rendition, and no one made a huge fuss about those for week after week.

I start to feel the same about the hacking scandal, and its political ramifications. It’s a fascinating story; it’s a shocking crossing of journalistic lines; it should absolutely be remedied. But it’s being treated as if it is the only news just now. Is it really as important as the fact that the entire Euro Zone is teetering on the brink? If the Euro goes smash, on account of Greece defaulting and God knows what happening in Italy, Portugal and Spain, then the banking crisis will look like the Teddy Bears’ picnic.

At the very same time, even if President Obama finally gets a deal on the debt ceiling, the ratings agencies are threatening to downgrade America’s credit rating. This sounds very dry and geekish, but it will have unintended consequences as far as the eye can see. (One clever person I know speculates it could even spell the collapse of NATO.)

Gold is shooting through the roof, always a sure sign that the people who know are panicking. I am starting to consider getting goats and planting carrots and going self-sufficient.

As all this outrage rages, it is quietly reported, by a journalist who should know, that the head of one electricity company took delivery, last week, of a large home generator. Old coal-fired plants are reaching the end of their lives; there has been no coherent policy announcement about what to do to replace them. The CEO clearly knows something we do not: there is a real danger that the lights will start to go out. Along with the keeping of goats and the growing of root vegetables, I may have to start collecting firewood and stockpiling candles.

Disproportion is always a worry, in any story. I still can’t get over George Monbiot saying ‘this is our Berlin Wall moment’, when Mr Murdoch’s bid for BSkyB was withdrawn. Now, people are starting to say: Worse than Watergate. Twitter is alive with reports that William Hill has the odds of David Cameron resigning at 8-1.

As I write, the House of Commons is baying at the Prime Minister over the matter of Andy Coulson. Apparently, according to the Leader of the Opposition, this is the most important matter of the day. Over the last two weeks, he has repeatedly said that he is acting on behalf of the People of Britain. ‘The People think,’ he says. ‘The People want to know.’ When the BSkyB bid failed, he actually said: ‘This is a victory for the People.’ A poll out yesterday revealed that six percent of The People put the hacking scandal in their top ten concerns. SIX PERCENT.

It’s a very easy thought experiment. Imagine you have just lost your job. Is your number one worry that the Prime Minister hired Andy Coulson? Or would you not want to know what his policy is for employment, economic growth, and the welfare state? Would you consider it a resigning matter that his erstwhile Director of Communications once edited The News of the World, or would you hold your fire until you see what he will do when Greece defaults?

It’s not that political leaders and newspaper tycoons should not be held accountable for their decisions, but that there should be a sense of proportion. But I suppose that does not make for a sexy headline.

It’s not that I am not interested. I’m slightly embarrassingly interested. It’s geek heaven. But it’s not the most important thing in the world, and I worry that it is being treated as if it were.

And one more thing, since I am ranting. I feel embarrassed and ashamed that all this newspaper dodginess happened on the watch of a Labour Party for which I voted. I voted for them proudly, until Gordon Brown lost me. There is something slightly odd about the current tone of self-righteousness coming from the Left, when it was Mr Blair and Mr Brown who were all over Mr Murdoch, with tea parties and weekends and flying visits and wedding trips and the horridly named ‘slumber parties’. Where was the outrage then? And how does the outrage now actually help in the running of a very complicated country? I’m just asking.

I suppose I should at least be grateful that all these questions are taking my mind off my bashed old heart. Perhaps I should stop being cross and write all those shouty outragers a nice thank you letter.

And, to reward you for your patience, here are some diverting pictures of the garden and the trees and the sheep and the DOG:




































Look at old Posy Posington, all ready for her close-up. At least she knows what is important. To whit: biscuits, and rabbits. Oh, and The Love, of course. Perhaps she should be running the country.

Really must stop now, before I am entirely overcome by whimsy.

In which I discover what a perfect monster I am

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Warning for intemperance, occasional incoherence, reckless use of heavy sarcasm, and a stupid amount of capital letters.

I was thinking: oh, it's Friday, it's a time for gentle diversion. I was going to give you butterflies and bluebirds and lovely undemanding good news stories, to take your mind off the national debt and what is happening in Syria and Yemen. I wondered if there were any Portuguese or Irish readers who might need cheering up. (Not that things are very much better in dear old Blighty, hanging on to some kind of fiscal sanity by our fingertips.)

Then I discovered that a huge feminist row has erupted. I used to love a good old fight about feminism. Now I am older and more tired, it just makes me feel rather melancholy. Yes, yes, we are all man-hating bitches who are to blame for every social ill from single motherhood to yob culture. We spend our spare time going around emasculating gentlemen, for fun. We are all secret lesbians, and most of us have facial hair, which of course makes us bitter, and therefore EVEN MORE FEMINIST.

If you open a door for us, we are more likely to assault you than thank you, because who ever heard of a feminist with manners? We are always moaning about the patriarchal conspiracy, because we have no other topic of conversation. We insist on calling history herstory. If you do not refer to us as Ms we will report you to the European Court of Human Rights.

Yes, yes; tell me something I do not know.

Then, David Willetts did. He told me that I am directly responsible for the lack of social mobility in this country. It took me a moment to understand. Not only am I a castrating harridan, but I am an ELITIST harridan.

Here is how the argument goes, apparently. When middle-class women were allowed out of the kitchen and into jobs and universities, we deprived working-class men of any opportunity to get on in life. I have read it twice, and this really seems to be what Mr Willetts is saying. Of course, a moment's reflection will bear out the good sense of his thesis, because if there is one thing we feminists hate more than men, it's bloody working-class men. Of course we ran around literally taking the bread out of their mouths. That will teach them to read Page Three of The Sun. We are amazed that no one noticed until now. Fair dos, Signor Two Brains, we are SO busted.

It is not for nothing that David Willetts has a reputation for being the most intellectual member of the Conservative Party. Anyone who can say this is of a mind so dazzling that I run out of adjectives:

'“Feminism trumped egalitarianism,” he said, adding that women who would otherwise have been housewives had taken university places and well-paid jobs that could have gone to ambitious working-class men.'

You see the cleverness? So blinding brilliant that he thought no one would notice that feminism IS egalitarianism. What we feminists don't like to tell gentlemen, because we are too busy laughing at their penis size, is that really all we want is to be treated equally to men. We know this is a big ask, what with our times of the month and our irrational hysteria and our fear of spiders and our overweening interest in shoes. When we are not busy running off to sperm banks so our children need not have fathers, we dream our ghastly dream of EQUALITY.

(I would like to state for the record that I have always thought David Willetts a very nice and engaging fellow, even if he does labour under the disadvantage of being a despised man, and I am really hoping this is an April Fool, or that he has been kidnapped by space aliens and replaced by a pod.)

Luckily, though, my sister in arms, Christina Odone, was ready to do battle. 'Why David Willetts is wrong about Feminism' said the headline of her piece. I put the carving knife down and paid attention. Then it turned out that she too is one of the pod people:

'Willetts is right that feminists are responsible for the plight of working class men. Feminists have undermined working class men with their philosophy that all males are expendable. Women don’t need men: not as husbands or partners, not as bread-winners, not even as fathers to their children. This man-hatred has not only been taught, it has been rewarded. “Thatta girl! You don’t need him! He’s rubbish!” – this is the refrain that working class men keep overhearing. Little wonder they feel demoralised and useless, and live down to these expectations.'

All right. I put my hands up. I do spend most of my waking hours going up to working-class men and jeering at them about how I do not need their awful rubbishy testosterone-fuelled selves. It is my absolute number one thing in the world, I freely admit. It is quite spooky that Ms Odone knows my daily routine so well.  'Thatta girl', I do indeed yell, to my lady friends; 'You don't need HIM.' It is the famous feminist cry, the one that Mrs Pankhurst started, as she chained herself to the railings outside Number Ten. 

For even more illumination on the subject, there are grateful readers over at The Telegraph, ready to elucidate the point. My favourite by far is one called Long Haul, who judiciously remarks:

'Put it anyway you like Ms Odone, but call a woman a feminist these days and it'll be taken as an insult by the great majority. Most of them have broken relationships in one form or another, and I've yet to see one that could be called physically attractive. Good looking women in sound marriages and relationships are seldom feminists.'

It really is nice to see that the dear old Torygraph, newspaper of the Great and the Good, is still attracting such a high class of reader.

All in all, I feel quite breathlessly lucky that I have nice Mr Willetts and brave Ms Odone and incisive Mr Long Haul to set me straight. I am immediately going to apply to be a housewife, so that a poor deprived working-class gentleman can write my books instead. It's a bit late to revoke my MA in history, but obviously I am VERY VERY SORRY about it, and promise that if only I had known then what I do now, I should never have been so greedy and stupid and illiberal to apply for university in the first place. And now I am going to do some nice crochet, and ponder the frightful error of my ways.

 

[If you too, would like to be put back on the road to righteousness, you can read both pieces here, and here. If not, then I would go out and have a very strong cocktail instead.]

 

And now for pictures. Because it is Friday and there must be loveliness. Yes, yes, there must.

Amazingly, the dear little carnations are still going:

(Warning: the carnation is of course a secret feminist flower. The word carnation is actually code for: CASTRATE, CASTRATE.)

Here is some old eucalyptus, which has dried and looks rather sculptural:

Outside, these lovelies are still in full fig:

It turns out they are irises, as some of you correctly guessed. I was confused, because they are the size of crocuses, so I thought they were some kind of iris-like crocus. Well, you can take a horticulture, but you can't make her think, as the great Dorothy Parker once said.

They are so lovely, I also transposed them into black and white, just because:

 

The heavenly hellebore:

THE ORNAMENTAL JAPANESE CHERRY IS IN FLOWER:

That was in capitals because there was nothing there yesterday. This happened overnight, like magic. When I saw it, I shouted: THE ORNAMENTAL JAPANESE CHERRY IS IN FLOWER, out loud. The dogs seemed slightly surprised. They have a lamentable lack of interest in ornamental cherries. Philistines.

These are mystery bulbs. No idea. Tulips, perhaps? But the green shoots alone are worth the price of admission:

The little apple tree:

I love the acid green rose leaves against the magenta honeysuckle:

The murk:

But the black sky cannot dull the philadelphus:

Or the radiance of the ladyships, for that matter:

The hill, almost lost in the dreich:

Final thought: does anyone actually say 'Thatta girl'? Surely it is 'Atta girl'? Just asking. I really am stopping now. Really, really.

Have a lovely Friday.

t