The Tail by Paul Marshall
| The Tail by Paul Marshall | |
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| Category: Politics and Society | |
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Reviewer: Margaret Young
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| Summary: A disconcerting view of new government's educational agenda in which school children become a commodity to which value can be added in the production ( education) stage, but with no regard for the health and well being of this commodity beyond its future economic output. | |
| Buy? No | Borrow? Maybe |
| Pages: 224 | Date: February 2013 |
| Publisher: Profile Books | |
| ISBN: 978-1781251676 | |
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I as a former youth work I have seen far too many young lives blighted by lack of basic skills in numeracy and literacy. These children have almost no hope of decent employment, but beyond that, the personal costs to these children are huge as well. Can you imagine not being able to read well enough to read your child a bedtime story? Can you imagine not being able to write well enough to fill in admissions form in casualty if your child is hurt? If you can not read, you can not access the Internet, read the directions on medication, or a recipe to cook a meal. The number of children slipping through cracks is simply unacceptable. As some one absolutely passionate about children's literacy issues, I eagerly looked forward to this book, hoping it might shed some new light on this issue, or at least help focus attention on the terrible truth that we are failing all too many of our children.
The Tail is edited by Paul Marshall, but is actually a collection of essays by different writers who all share a common vision. The transition from one writer to another is not noticeable. I have never read a book with so many authors before which had no differences in opinion. This literally has 19 voices which speak as one, each one reiterating a very strong political and economic vision. The uniformity does make for easy reading, but there is something terrifying about it as well. I am reminded of a children's classic ""A Wrinkle in Time""in which all humans are controlled by a single entity demanding conformity.
The Tail is term used to refer to the bottom 20% of England's students. These are the children who will leave school lacking basic skills in literacy and numeracy, without any good GCSE's and with very few employment prospects. The book spends a fair amount of time using statistics and graphs to convince that this is bad for the economy. I liked the fact that this book does draw attention to this issue. The books compares UK achievement with other developed countries and I was surprised to learn we rank far below the USA in literacy, with roughly twice as many children failing to achieve basic standards of education in the UK as in other well developed countries. I agree with the authors wholeheartedly that this can not be allowed to continue, and that the effects on the economy are serious as well. I also agree with the author on SEN inflation, but I won't go as far as the author has to blame many parents for intentionally disabling their children to get a DLA check. I do agree with him on the over use of medication though, and the overuse of labels to justify low achievement. These children deserve better. But that is as far as my agreement goes. I have only once in my life read a book I found so deeply troubling. Thankfully the author of the previous book had been dead since 1945 and his political vision with him. I do not intend to insinuate the authors or editors share the political vision of the first book, but rarely have I seen an writer call for so much government control of family life, and sadly, with the best of intentions, deep rooted class prejudices have obviously seeped through into this tome. The fact that the editor is a philanthropist and only wants what he believes is best for the lower classes does not make this any less true.
The editor of this book is a former hedge fund manager. He proposes that we manage schools like hedge funds, with no regard whatsoever for the happiness or emotional well being of children. They are seen simply as economic producers which we can add value to in the education process very much as we could add value to a commercial product in the production line. He suggests a culture of bonuses, much as we saw for the hedge fund managers, based on GCSE and test performance, and sacking 10% of our current teachers. He offers a view of uniformity that may in fact reduce the tail, but I see this as most likely to be achieved, not by raising standards of the lowest performing children, but by lowering those at the top. Author Simon Lack had this to say about hedge fund managers : ""Never in the field of human finance was so much charged by so many for so little."" Marshall seems to be proposing we extend the disaster in the markets to the educational system. But this the cost will not be only financial, it will also be weighed in ruined lives.
There are suggestions that government should have one centralised bureaucracy "" responsible for the health well being and education of our young children"". Time and time again we get references to parents being unwilling or unable to make the best decisions for their children - the solution is to let the government do it for them. The rights of children and the family appear non existent, but one of the authors says we must resist the idea of schools running 16 hours a day and on weekends as well ( I would hope so - do they intend to completely obliterate the family unit?) but he still sees schools as ""the principle source of moral and practical authority"". I would disagree most strongly. The family should be the principle source of moral authority in a child's life. This book offers no respect whatsoever for the sanctity of the family.
There are other solutions offered in this book, but none which show any real promise of improvement. In every case the cure is worse than the disease. There seems to be a concerted attempt to bowl the reader over with statistics, but I would expect a former hedge fund manager to know just how easy it is to lie with statistics. for every statistic he uses to prove his point, I could give several to disprove it. there has been no attempt made to present a balanced pictured here. Instead statistics are only used as they would be in PowerPoint presentation with plenty of hyperbole. Good science requires you to look at other mitigating factors as well, but that clearly is not done in many cases.
The editor here clearly has more knowledge of financial commodities than child development. He fails to see that there is more to education than the bottom line. The increased school hours dictated by his Ark schools leave children with no time to play - something which people with more knowledge of child development than manipulating investors know is critical to raising healthy creative children. His factory style conformity may result in inflated test scores, but the long term losses in creativity, emotional security and mental health have not been calculated. In addition, I believe a case could be made in the Court of Human Rights, that this restricts the universal right of the child to play, especially when commute times are added to school hours and there is no objective evidence that this works.
At one time, American schools taught almost all children basic literacy and numeracy in only a few years. with shorter school days and a shorter school year. Steiner schools still exceed the educational attainment of mainstream schooling without sacrificing the child's emotional and physical development as well. Current practices are not working. We do not need more of the same bad medicine. Study after study has shown us you can teach basic literacy to a child in only a matter of months with one on one tuition. This would be far less costly than the proposed bonus culture, and could easily be done now using the pupil premium as it was meant to. Even better, schools could follow the Montessori tradition and allow teaching to form a strong basis for learning as well. Older children could cement their skills through teaching the youngest. Canada's success is mentioned, but Canada has a school system built on parental choice and the importance of family.The draconian measures suggested here show no promise of improvement. there are so many things that could be done quite easily to improve the educational outcome for all children. Sadly this seems like another money making scheme for which our children will pay the ultimate price.
Despite my complete rejection of everything ths book stands for, I will still recommend borrowing. The scary fact is this book is endorsed by leading politicians. the public should be aware of the opinion these powerful men, and that alone makes this book worth reading. The very thought of that kept me awake many hours after finishing this book. I honestly wish I had never read it. It paints a very bleak picture of the future of this nation if the men in charge can so easily endorse this. My one ray of hope is that they may not have actually read the book, but simply slapped on an endorsement for something that fits meets many political goals, and never misses a chance to sully the Labour Party. This book argues against reducing child poverty as inefective for improving academic performance, and this might win them a few points with the ultra conservatives. This is clearly a political manifesto, and a terribly chilling one.
Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain by George Monbiot
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