I'm a celebrity, let me fix education
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 11:23AM Can Jamie Oliver and Joanna Lumley fix our schools or has celebrity culture gone too far?
In 2009, LWF invited the artist and agent provocateur, Malcolm McLaren, to present a keynote talk about learning. What pray-tell could this “célébrité terrible” tell us about learning and education?
This was the last public speech that Malcolm gave before he passed away early in 2010 and he used this opportunity not to tell us what he thought was wrong with education, he admitted upfront that he was not qualified to do so, but to tell us what was wrong with the culture of celebrity.
Prescient as ever, Malcolm lamented the challenge of schools forced to operate in a culture of stupidity driven by the rise of the talent show and popular culture.
He summed it up simply in his opening statement “all popular culture today from Hollywood, television and media, even politics, accepts and goes to great lengths to promote the idea that it’s cool to be stupid and for that it’s a huge problem whatever anybody says about education in the Western world”.
Yet as if celebrity culture knows no bounds we now have Jamie Oliver and friends, Joanna Lumley too, all pronouncing their views on the ill’s of modern education and how they would “fix” it. They are celebrities so surely they must know.
Can Jamie & Joanna save education?Now don’t misunderstand me, I think it’s about time that the priesthood of the education profession opens up and engages with the general public in a full and frank dialogue. The consumers and clients of learning should rightly be informed and be participants in the discussion about what should be taught in our schools and how our schools might function.
But having been relentlessly fed a media diet of celebrity trivia, karaoke talent shows and a general decline in editorial quality across the board is it a surprise that the gullible public would be suckered into this latest wave of celebrity punditry?
Actually this isn’t a particularly recent phenomenon. Our politicians and royals have always been enamoured by the glitz of shiny celebrity. No sooner does a new UK Prime Minister enter No.10 than a series of parties and gatherings are hosted to show the starlets of past and present entering the hallowed doorway for a photo opportunity with our leaders. Make the right noises and a mention in the Queen’s Birthday or New Years Honours list is a certainty after all.
Some have suggested that this is an “upper middle class” conspiracy. But I would posit another suggestion. What we have is the emergence of the “Editorial Classes”. Predominantly based in London this chattering, self-reverential group are determining the popular agenda and rather than informing the public they seek to influence opinion or as Noam Chomsky would have it, “manufacture consent”.
At the risk of losing future invitations to attend swanky dinner parties, or “supper” as we call it in polite society, I must point out that regardless of which newspaper or media channel the members of the editorial class represent they all dine at the same tables, sharing anecdotes and reveling in their moral high-ground for the benefit of our poor learners and the decline of Western society.
I propose that a new association is formed for these willing actors and celebrities who are clearly on the way to rescue us from our wicked ways. Perhaps they could call this society “Actors Really Supporting Education” and then use the #arse hashtag on Twitter so we know where they are speaking from.
Seriously though, I believe that the public should be engaged in an informed, accessible debate about the future of learning that takes us beyond the soundbite nonsense that you typically hear in the back of a London taxi or the mouth of a celebrity selling a book or TV show. Educational supplements in the Guardian, tradeshows open only to education professionals, the TES, etc are understandably targeted at a specific audience whereas learning is the ultimate consumer product. So how does the consumer make an informed choice?
How can, to quote Stephen Heppell, the “stellar” examples of radically improved learning that are happening up and down the country cross-over into the mainstream media and engage the public with something other than the dangerous stereotypes that are being presented in todays popular press?
Some of the fault lies at the feet of the education profession itself. It is an insular profession that appears unwilling to enter into discussion in public forum with those who it believes do not merit response. Like many professions it uses an impenetrable language that woe betide you should you get it wrong. Those in the profession that speak out are quickly shouted down. Yet it’s the public who are doing the voting and the media who are influencing the public whilst all the time our editorial and political classes perform their courtship rituals.
My guess is that this won’t bring about the reforms for education that our learners need and we don’t have the benefit of time. The smart suppliers of learning are already looking at new models of supply and this is likely to happen outside of the classroom. Perhaps this is the disruption that Lord Puttnam was alluding to at the last LWF.
#arse, Jamie Oliver, Joanna Lumley, celebrity, education, learning, media in broadcasting, learning, policy 
Reader Comments (8)
Thank you. Having thought these things myself for some time, it is validating to see this argument in print with the supporting commentary from the video links. Thank you. Now for the job in hand - infulencing the 'editiorial classess'.
Sarah Younie
Good thoughts Graham. The first point that the Foreward to the PISA 2009 reports make are totally apposite:
First, while most nations declare their commitment to education, the test comes when these commitments are weighed against others. How do they pay teachers compared to the way they pay other highly-skilled workers? How are education credentials weighed against other qualifications when people are being considered for jobs? Would you want your child to be a teacher? How much attention do the media pay to schools and schooling? Which matters more, a community’s standing in the sports leagues or its standing in the student academic achievement league tables? Are parents more likely to encourage their children to study longer and harder or to spend more time with their friends or in sports activities?
In the most successful education systems, the political and social leaders have persuaded their citizens to make the choices needed to show that they value education more than other things. But placing a high value on education will get a country only so far if the teachers, parents and citizens of that country believe that only some subset of the nation’s children can or need to achieve world class standards. This report shows clearly that education systems built around the belief that students have different pre-ordained professional destinies to be met with different expectations in different school types tend to be fraught with large social disparities. In contrast, the best-performing education systems embrace the diversity in students’ capacities, interests and social background with individualised approaches to learning.
Exactly so. Will watch Oliver's attempt on TV tonight to solve the crisis in education by having the likes of such great role models as Alistair Campbell teaching. If I want kids to learn how to lie, spin and behave in a disgraceful way as well as treat fellow humans with contempt, then Campbell is the guy....
What Jamie's programme on education demonstrates is that we need to return to traditional values. As a teacher in the private sector I find much of what is taught in State education a waste of time for most of the students attending. The children in the programme were clearly never going to achieve academically and should have been streamed into work-related subjects more appropriate to their level.
Your attack on the upper middle class is somewhat surprising as this is the very class you belong to and I have found that it is the parents of the middle classes that wish their children to succeed and push their children to our elite establishments such as Oxford and Cambridge.
The failure of the state sector is that it fails to instill a sense of competition in the pupils , the free market instills competition in industry and the free school policies outlined by this government will help those with limited backgrounds experience this beneficial force and allow them to attempt to better themselves. I would strongly advise you to try returning to the classroom and stop spreading left wing nonsense.
Confusingly I am now having a conversation on a mailing list about this as well, but here goes:
The teachers I work with are wiling to take risks, to question their practice and so on. It’s not quite the insular profession that Graham describes in his post (though I agree with pretty much everything else in there and I like the idea of the “editorial classes”).
As for the programme itself, well, Jamie discovered that it’s much harder than you think (doh!), Gove’s History champion, Starkey, was shown in his true colours, Rolf Harris felt sad and wished for a class size of about ten, Prof Winston tried hard with shock tactics (sawing a pig in half anyone?), Simon Callow photocopied a picture of Shakespeare and made people read out loud (I expected more from him somehow) and only Ellen MacArthur (class size of 4) managed the students with any respect as she engaged them with real activity (Sailing for the first time) and collaborative problem solving. The headteacher brought in to advise Jamie was the only one in the show with real skill, humanity and respect for the learners and Jamie just looked a bit lost (why did he not teach them some cooking? A colleague has just suggested; that’s what he is really good at - although then the programme would have been harder to market as a separate product from his other shows). I hope that people see this as an opportunity to develop a new respect for teachers and the complexities of being one in 2011. In the state sector where most people go to school. Meanwhile, yes, the curriculum on offer, that needs a bit of work eh? And that's where I would refer readers to other discussions on this excellent site and others...
Hi, I'm one of the people working on Jamie's Dream School. A big part of the project is to try to inspire debate and to get real teachers involved in that debate, so it's great to see that it is being talked about here. However, one tie-in with the project is a competition for real teachers, which seems to have gone somewhat unnoticed; its called Britain's Dream Teachers, a collaboration between Jamie Oliver and You Tube, it seeks to gather inspiring lessons from real-life teachers. You can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/dreamteachers Thoughts?
As someone who spent many years learning to teach inclusively at Lewisham College I would say that it takes years to learn how to motivate the disillusioned and alienated who are failed by the education system, but who feel it is their fault and so express anger (and shame) at their predicament. Teaching is a craft and not a parachute. This is how I summed it up recently in The Craft of Teaching 2011;
http://www.slideshare.net/fredgarnett/the-craft-of-teaching-2011
Jamie, God bless him, seems to buy in to the 'facts' agenda of Mr Gove and works on the basis, with Mr Starkey, Blingo RIngo to his friends, that if facts are good, more facts are even better. The mistake he is making is that more pedagogy means more learning, smarter people will spontaneously engender learning. Talking Heads had a sharper take on 'facts' in Crosseyed and Painless.;
Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don't stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape
I was on the panel for Social Enterprise London that explored the idea of schools as social enterprises. There was one point of agreement of most of us on the panel. I was arguing for community run schools as co-operatives, but under state ownership and within the local authority. And co-ops of those who are true stakeholders, the teachers and the children. I gave examples of Summerhill School, St Georges in the East. Robert Owen's school in New Lanark, and Korczak's Warsaw orphanage among many others around the world.
The point of agreement, even that of the Director of SERCO, was that a good school was one that involved a good headteacher, a great staff and finally an involved community of children. The picture of Jamie with his 'heroes' on the billboard posters shows the lack of importance of the children in defining an ideal school. The only way we can get brilliant schools in which learning is for life, with creativity, caring and leadership is to have our children as active citizens in their schools.
Summerhill School a model outside the state system is 90 years old this year. Like Robert Owen's school in 1817, it works, it is recognised as working, it has visitors from around the world, and yet people are still struggling with ideas of 'innovation' and 'breaking the mould'. Let's stop selling our ideas and actually learn from the practical and historical and living models that exist, and have done so for many years.