Techlearning blog

There is nothing like a good rant to get the juices flowing after a long, languid, leisurely summer (if only!). So, I'm delighted to be able to report that I have had quite a few things to rant about recently. So much so, in fact, that I decided to create a rantometer, to illustrate the extent to which my mood was turning --  I was going to say "dangerous", but that connotes either visions of a homicidal maniac or Joe Cocker's "I'm in a dangerous mood". Well anyway, here it is.

I think it needs some work. When I get a bit of time, perhaps I will create several versions, showing different settings. I hope to use this as a sort of warning indicator -- so that you can read the rants and ignore any post that looks like it might be all sweetness and light.

Anyway, rather than dwell on all of the things that have got me "wound up" (which I will deal with gradually in my own time, after a bit more research/investigation) I just want to focus on the following:

Politicians ("Warm" setting)

Politicians

I attended a dinner recently where I shared a table with people from Becta, the QCA and other government-related organisations, including a Member of Parliament. Now, obviously I don't want to mention names, especially as he was extremely personable, good company, and generally very pleasant and interesting to talk to for several hours.

However, a curious thing about most politicians most of the time is that they are like walking party manifestos, and to an extent my dinner companion was no exception. One almost expected a comment such as

"The soup is delicious"

to be greeted by the response,

"Yes, under our governance, the number of people reporting that their soup is delicious has increased by 12%, and our target now is to measure restaurants' capacity to improve soup rather than only the quality of the soup itself."

A few years ago I was at a party given by a friend of my wife's, and one of her friends (ie my wife's friend's friend) was a Member of Parliament -- and she was exactly the same. Pleasant, personable, and a perfect embodiment of The Party.

So, I was thinking about this, and it suddenly dawned on me where I'd come across this sort of thing before. Many moons ago I used to belong to an amateur dramatics society. At the end of my first play, a club veteran told me that I should never go "out front" in costume, because it would spoil the illusion. In fact, he said, you should not go out front at all until the very last member of the audience had left -- for the same reason.

In other words, an actor is "always on", and I suppose it is precisely the same for politicians, only with more at stake. After all, they don't know what will happen if they let their guard down and let slip something that perhaps they shouldn't. How would they know that you won't publicise it in some way? 

So what is it that winds me up? Actually, I'm not sure I can put my finger on it, but I suppose it's this. If you take any particular area of life, whether it's knife crime or the percentage of schools with an internet connection, the politician will almost never deal with the situation as it appears real to you.

For example, you might say something like:

"I know of schools where the so-called internet connection consists of one dial-up modem that is located in the Vice Principal's office and available for use only every other Wednesday afternoon.",

and the response you get will be along the lines of:

"Over the past 5 years the number of schools with a fast broadband internet connection has reached 98%."

We can learn from this, of course, by becoming politicians (with a small "p") ourselves. The next time your Principal says that she is surprised and disappointed that having walked around the school she saw hardly any teachers making use of the educational technology in their classrooms, remind her that since you were appointed the percentage of teachers stating that they feel confident in using educational technology has increased at a far greater rate than at any time in living memory, and now stands at 78%.

(Please remember that anything said in this column does not constitute career advice, and if you get fired as a result of saying anything like that I am not responsible.)

Politicians, on the whole, do not deal with reality in any objective sense. Yes, there are unfortunate facts, but there are fewer than under the previous lot, and they are being diminished at a faster rate than at any other time since the Normans invaded back in 1066, or since the Declaration of Independence.

To be honest, I find this all rather humorous, as you may have gathered from my somewhat tongue-in-cheek attitude. But to be serious for a moment, it seems to me that what we need to be aware of is the full facts and figures as they pertain to our own situation, and to be prepared to challenge things on that basis.

For example, some years ago a school Principal told me that the school's computers were nearly ten years old because they didn't have the money to replace them. I asked him what he had done with the money that had been given to the school each year over the past 5 years specifically for buying computer equipment.

In fact, I think I was universally hated by school Principals in that particular area because each year I sent an email to the Head of ICT or ICT Co-ordinator telling them the exact amount of money that was being given to their school for educational technology, the associated budget code, and the date it would be in the school's account.

In another example, I proved to my head teacher, through a spreadsheet analysis, that the reason I was running out of funds months in advance of everyone else was that the school's English department was using my facilities to make hundreds of full colour printouts each week, because it was cheaper (for them) than paying the school's reprographics department to photocopy them. What I needed was either less money, with each department getting their own slice of the budget, or more money so I could pay for it. What I did not need was to be told that I had been given a fair allocation of the school's finances, because it was not a fair allocation in any real sense.

What each of those cases has in common is that the Principals concerned each had their own version of reality, which I was able to challenge because I had the right facts and figures at my fingertips.

Although I started off this article being somewhat flippant, I do think there are serious points to be made:

1. People at all levels of authority can yield to the temptation to see how things ought to be rather than how they really are. This is, in fact, the inverse of Ambrose Bierce's definition of a cynic:

"A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be."

2. By the same token, there is a huge temptation to use statistics in such a way as to prove something that, by any real measure, is patently untrue. It is surely no accident that Darrell Huff's "How To Lie With Statistics" was such a huge success when it was first published?

3. Not acknowledging that there is a problem is only a short-term measure. Take knife crime in the UK. This is perceived to be something that has arisen fairly recently, and suddenly. In fact, all the signs were there 20 years ago but, as I recall, were not talked about.

Politicians, principals and other people are perfectly entitled to see the world through their own tinted spectacles. But I think that it's incumbent upon educationalists to  be prepared to challenge those perceptions where they conflict with our own experience, and the education of our students.