Why do private schools still attract the most memorable teachers?

It's not surprising that Alan Bennett's The History Boys is Britain's most popular play. The unfairness within our education system endures

• 
• • Martin Kettle
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 11 December 2013 20.30 GMT

Dominic Cooper and Richard Griffiths as Hector in The History Boys, a film of the play by Alan Bennett. Photograph: Allstar/BBC/Sportsphoto Ltd

There are obvious pitfalls in reading too much into the news that Alan Bennett's The History Boys has just been voted the nation's favourite play. After all, Bennett's 2004 play had a long run in London, toured extensively over many years and has been made into a successful movie. So the simple fact is that a lot of people have seen and enjoyed it. This familiarity means The History Boys was therefore in an ace position to win the contest organised by the English Touring Theatre.

Conversely, the limits of access surely also explain why Bennett's play did not top the poll in London and the south-east of England, where the palm for favourite play went instead to Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem. There's no way that Jerusalem, with its life-enhancing celebration of anti-authoritarianism and the spirit of William Blake, would bomb outside London. On the contrary. It's just that theatre-goers in the rest of Britain have had much less chance so far to see Butterworth's wonderful 2009 play than Londoners have.

Other geographical differences also counsel against over-interpretation. It may be tempting to suppose that Ulster's recent history has something to do with Hamlet, not the Bennett play, topping the poll in Northern Ireland. All those ghosts of the past, those dead bodies, those unavenged murders, that instability at the heart of the state; maybe it all adds up. But Hamlet is also the favourite in south-west England, where ancestral internecine conflict and grievance is generally – though I may be wrong – less pronounced. So the easy explanation seems to fall short.

So what does explain the slightly curious fact that a play about a group of northern state school sixth-form boys preparing for Oxbridge in the 1980s touches such a modern national chord? Availability of and access to performances is obviously important. The sociology of theatregoers probably matters too. The play's wit, character and pace give it further advantages – there's no denying that we British like a laugh in our plays. Bennett's much-loved status, as he approaches his 80th birthday next year, undoubtedly helps as well.

But the deeper answer to the status of The History Boys also lies somewhere in the synergy between two other things. The first is hinted at by the fact that Bennett's play topped the poll in north-west England, north-east England, eastern England and the Midlands. Bennett writes about – and also for – the neglected half of Britain that is neither bathed in the glow of London's excitement and prosperity, nor culturally distinct enough to be governed by devolved institutions. In his quirky way Bennett is the playwright, rather as JB Priestley once was, of the post-industrial England of which so many in the south are both ignorant and disdainful.

The second factor, which overlaps the first in some ways, is that The History Boys is not in the end just a comedy about school and growing up – though of course it is both these things too. It is also an angry lament for the passing of a state school education system of which Bennett himself is such a flowering.

In spite of what you may read in Private Eye, there are one or two of us Guardian columnists who are wholly state educated and proud to have sent our own children to state schools too. As someone who not only went to a state grammar school in the north of England – like the one in The History Boys – but also to the very school in Leeds that Bennett (whose father was our local butcher when I was a boy) attended himself, there is nothing quaint or exotic to me about the world of his play. My school was like that.

Moreover, like Bennett, I am a history boy. My generation falls halfway between Bennett's own and the one he depicts in his play. Nevertheless, the school he describes in his introduction to The History Boys is in every way one that I recognise, with its excitements, its insecurities, its snobberies and its occasional very real cruelties. I can never forget the long-haired boy who was called into the headmaster's study and physically restrained while another teacher attempted to cut off his hair. The boy broke free, ran screaming from the school, and rightly never came back.

But I also recognise the pride and the civic benevolence. As Bennett says in that introduction, if you got into Oxbridge, as he did and I did, you got your photo in the local paper and your education was paid for. Bennett's wholly correct assertion that there was genuine civic pride in such achievements was brought home to me when, as an undergraduate, I applied for an extra year of grant from Leeds education department. Back came a letter, handwritten by the chief education officer, Mr Taylor, agreeing to the application on the grounds that he was confident I would continue to bring distinction upon Leeds in the years ahead. A letter like that seals a deal with a place for life, I can tell you.

We live in a different country today, of course. Good secondary and higher education and training for all – and not just for some, as in the 1960s – are expensive. Good teachers don't grow on trees and are not cheap to train or retain. As Ofsted said only this week, access to the best teaching is often down to good luck as much as to socioeconomic status.

But this unfairness is not equally shared. Nearly 60 years ago, the undergraduate Bennett was struck by the unfairness that memorable teachers – like the unforgettable Hector he placed in a state school in The History Boys – seemed to be concentrated in the private schools. That unfairness is still with us today. The price Britain pays for the privileges bought by the few for their children is still far too high – and we all know it.

The History Boys is "about" lots of things. A large part of it, though, is about the fact that the chance to thrill to, and benefit from, great teaching is neither a high enough public priority nor shared out fairly.

The crucial line in the play is the last one. Hector says simply: "Pass it on." What is to be passed on is partly the love of knowledge, of ideas, thinking and talking, of education. But there is also a more indignant political message about passing on the unfinished business of educational unfairness. You can't look at Britain today and not see how unfinished that work is. That is surely part of the explanation of why Bennett's play connects so powerfully with so many.

Universities should ditch the talk of investing in the future

Instead of research academics need to focus on giving students what they want for their money: that is, a well-rounded education

• 
• • Simon Jenkins
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 23 October 2013

Illustration by Belle Mellor

Money talks. After two years of tuition fees at £7,000-£9,000 universities are apparently rolling in cash, and their students are demanding value for it. Universities are expected to deliver not just education but jobs. Courses are being tailored to "employability". Research is concentrated in the elite Russell institutions. Now the universities minister, David Willetts, is calling for a "cultural change" to reverse the trend of too much time going on scholarship and not enough on teaching. Is this a new dawn in higher education, or a new darkness?

Willetts has celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Robbins report with a pamphlet questioning one aspect of the expansion it stimulated. Pre-Robbins, British universities devoted 60% of their time to teaching and 40% to research. Now those percentages are reversed, so that universities are "lopsided away from teaching". Only in the former polytechnics does teaching predominate.

Today's students may not realise how far this has gone, but their graduate parents might. Contact time has declined. Essay writing has halved. Fifty years ago two-thirds of students received oral (as well as written) feedback, now two-thirds get none. Willetts wonders how this was ever allowed to happen.

The answer is easy. Willetts and his Whitehall predecessors made it happen. Universities have become creatures of government, paid to do what government says. Ever since Thatcher abolished the arms-length university grants committee and eventually"nationalised" higher education in 1988, universities have followed the money.

Many academics prefer research, writing and conferencing to the hard tutorial grind. I know, as I was briefly one myself. But the price was to allow government to "assess" their work and demand ever more. They sweated over papers, often of staggering obscurity. Civil servants totted up pages and citations, and tested for "impact and translational value". Willetts may complain that students suffered, but whose fault is that?

The surge in student fees has led universities to a new accountability, not to government but to their customers. For the first time they have had to look out to their market place rather than back to their founders and traditions or up to their government. In this change in accountability research is bound to take a knock. The student market cares little about it. Students want an education that stimulates them for three years and gets them a job. Universities such as Bath are popular because they emphasise job-finding. With 40% of new graduates going into "non-graduate" initial careers, the league tables that matter are those indicating successful job placements.

To outsiders, universities remain extraordinarily conservative enclaves. They stick to the medieval three-term, three-year courses. Specialism is almost obligatory: a Briton wanting to study arts and science together had better go abroad. People at the peak of their vigour are thought unable to absorb teaching for more than six months a year, and are still sent home to help with the harvest each summer. Any business run with so little concern for new techniques of operating or delivering a service would collapse.

When research was the activity of an autonomous minority of scholars it could look after itself. Today it costs the taxpayer millions of pounds and is spread over three dozen Russell and 1994 Group institutions. Such spending has to be justified. And here universities sold the pass. In the years following Robbins, the economists Mark Blaug and John Vaizey debated whether higher education was a consumer service or an investment. Blaug advocated the former and won the argument – but he lost the war. Academics loved to think of themselves as "investing in the nation's future". But in claiming so, they conceded the field to the Treasury. If universities were an investment, where was the return?

The argument continued. Even as new undergraduates rushed to arts subjects, government became obsessed with "the nation's manpower needs" and believed this meant driving universities towards science and technology. Still today the science budget remains "ringfenced", as if it were a branch of national security – and despite decades of market evidence that Britain's prosperity was demanding more financiers, lawyers and designers.

The return from teaching that universities most often cite is graduate lifetime earnings. But this is personal rather than collective. Besides, such a validation has consequences. Three years ago 600 Bristol students staged a revolt over receiving too little teaching, fearing it would jeopardise their careers. When Surrey revealed (improbably) that all its drama graduates had jobs, it was inundated with 50 applicants per drama place.

The Institute for Public Policy Research recently advocated a return of the polytechnics as specialised vocational academies. University College London is introducing a "liberal arts" course that marries arts and science. Where universities appear to be ailing, Willetts is talking of sub-contracting them to private companies, bringing the free-school principle to state higher education. In America this mercantilist approach went to extremes when some graduates sued their old law school for training too many of them, and thus wrecking the jobs market.

There is a backlash to all this. Conservatives such as Cambridge's Stefan Collini inveigh against rate-of-return education, suggesting it means death to the humanities and reduces academics to "door-to-door salesmen for vulgarised versions of their market-oriented product". The vice-chancellor of Reading, Sir David Bell, warns against having to "put a premium on employability … on preparing students for what is to follow", as if that were some sort of betrayal. When a student has £30,000 in prospective debt round his or her neck, employability is bound to apply.

If I were an academic I would stop pretending I was "investing in the nation's future". I would stop using such language. I would try to give students what they want for their money, usually a well-rounded education and a mild sense of obligation to society, and tuck my research into my spare time. That would be my "rate of return". As long as universities play the investment game, they will find students and taxpayers alike asking to scrutinise their accounts.

My best citizenship lesson: faking news and sparking riots for digital natives

Teacher Emma Chandler shares her tips on how to make reactionary students question what they read in the media

Using a fabricated news story based on the 2011 London riots sparked debate and action among Emma Chandler's citizenship pupils. Photograph: William Bloomfield/Rex Feature

Branding our young people as "digital natives" is as dangerous a label as any other in the classroom. Not only can it lead to assumptions that they have a natural talent to extract and interpret information simply because it arrives in a format they find engaging, but it can also foster a general acceptance of the idea that we need not plan as rigorously, that the students will teach us. This is just one argument for digital citizenship being the next priority in curriculum development.

Digital citizenship should equip students with the skills to question what they read and hear across the media. They should be taught to make informed choices and take positive actions for themselves. At a time when trending can be conflated with truth, this is a role that citizenship education must fill.

This lesson, from a scheme of work that focuses on campaigns, aims to help students understand the role of the media in forming opinions both personally and across society. When I share this lesson with colleagues it starts with the sentence, "I once let a class start a riot".

The class in question was a year 9 tutor group who had two lessons a week – Thursday and Friday. It's important to point out that this was a very reactionary class: they used Twitter to keep up to date with events in the world but never questioned their sources, frequently believing one celebrity or another had died or that well-known brands that were currently free were soon to start charging. They were constantly in uproar about something. This went locally too; they would often come into class claiming that a teacher was leaving or that they were about to be put in shirts and ties. As their citizenship teacher, I was constantly at pains to make them question before leaping into action.

So this lesson began with a fabricated news story. In this instance, it was a post-riots moral panic article that suggested that Oyster cards were to blame for the London riots as they enabled rioters to mobilise so quickly.

The story can be anything – in the past I have used stories claiming to ban mobile phones or the introduction of a curfew. The main thing is that the idea behind the story stands up to some initial scrutiny – it needs to have some basis in reality otherwise students will see straight through it.

In this particular lesson, students arrived to see the news story on the interactive whiteboard (IWB) and were asked to respond in pairs with a simple agree or disagree statement. During this discussion, I gave some students a reaction quote from David Cameron. Most of these actually went unread for the first five minutes of discussion because the class were so outraged about the blaming of the free travel for the riots.

Views were collected on post-its and placed on the board, arranged in an order going from agree to disagree. The question at this stage was simply how much we agreed with the story. When students showed a deeper questioning, I gave them a different coloured post-it and asked them to write down their question and stick it on another board.

Once it was established that very few students agreed with what they were seeing, I asked them to gather into groups to ask the 5 Ws:

• Who does this effect?
• What do we want to do next?
• Why is this important?
• Where can we find more information?
• When did the event occur?

During this phase, I put the reaction quote and a picture of David Cameron on the IWB. The quote outlined that the prime minister would be keen to restrict the use of the free Oyster cards to only during school hours as a way to reduce anti-social behaviour in our capital city.

The 5 Ws were revisited very quickly but this time they didn't get past the 'what'. What did they want to do about it? They were incensed at the idea that they would feel the effects of a policy designed to stop a problem that, for them, had long since ceased to be an issue. They wanted to take action and they wanted to do it now. We had previously used Twitter to share our work and they demanded now that we tell the prime minister they would riot if he tried to take their travel away – they would take him to theEuropean Court of Human Rights.

They very quickly made links to the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child and demanded I enable them. It was my responsibility they said: "You're our wellbeing teacher, how can you let them do this?" So I asked them, "what next?" "We want to riot," they said.

Every citizenship teacher knows the feeling of dread when informed and responsible action disappears from the minds of their students only to be replaced with words taken from the Human Rights Act. For this reason I always have a very large poster of Spider-man reminding us what comes with great power.

So there we were. In the middle of democracy in action. The class had voted on what they wanted to do next and they wanted to riot. They designed banners and logos, wrote chants and stood up for what they believed in. Except no one had asked that question "are we sure?" yet.

I took the different coloured post-its that students had stuck on the separate whiteboard and gently suggested to those who had come up with the idea that they might want to bring these up with their group. The results were mixed: one group listened but quickly realised that they wouldn't be able to take action or get angry if things weren't as they seemed; other groups just shouted down the idea or ignored it.

I was very careful to ensure that these students were aware I was listening and thought their questions valid and interesting. In a rights-respecting classroom it is vital that every child is heard, but this is even more important when you take a risk such as this. It would be very easy for students to learn the lesson of not speaking out again. When the lesson was over those pupils who had questioned the others were rewarded for their bravery as the single voice of reason or opposition with extra positive points for the whole class.

I find a positive to negative points recorder works really well in lessons like these to signpost what I think is working and what I think could be improved on. For this lesson, the mood was very positive – even when students weren't being listened to they were being heard and respected so it was easy to award positive points. I recall only having to record two negatives, both relating to running out of time.

To get to the final stage, I set them a research task. I gave the students one laptop per group to find out more about the story. Using the 5 Ws once again, each group set about exploring what others thought about the proposed ban of free travel for all under 18s in the UK.

It only took a few minutes for the story to unravel. They could only find the first story by using specific search terms and of course no one could find the quote from the David Cameron. A small but determined group kept digging but nothing came up. Eventually I had to reveal that tomorrow a Google search would only show everything that had happened in class today. And that's when the light bulb went off: it was a completely organic moment involving all 25 students who realised they had been duped.

The lesson was tailored for a class that I had teased and reprimanded in equal measure for months over their complete acceptance of everything they read online – and it worked. It makes it into my, albeit small, best lesson catalogue purely for the outcome alone – there are 25 students in south east London that now have a healthy distrust of all primary sources until they can be proven trustworthy. That's 25 young people that question and demand answers from anyone suggesting change that affects the way we live or, better yet, reporting that this is the case. They openly question those sources and share this knowledge with others.

As with all good lessons, they taught me something too. I hadn't planned the section with the different coloured post-its; I remember at the time wanting to tactically ignore the questions lest they bring down my house of cards. But I am glad I didn't. During my lesson reflection, many students expressed regret at not having listened to their group member who had written what we were calling the hang-on-a-minute questions. As far as unexpected outcomes go, increasing empathy and understanding for those with views different to your own is about as good as it gets.

The man who was concrete

Jon Hotten in Cricinfo

Tavaré uncharacteristically animated for Kent against Middlesex in 1988  © Getty Images

Enlarge

There are some names that, as a young cricketer, you do not want, because they come loaded with a heavy freight. They are almost always familial. Imagine the task of clambering clear of the moniker of Botham or Richards as Liam and Mali once had to do. The Don's son briefly changed his, so distorting was its effect on his life. They are names that do not stand simply for cricketers of note, but for something bigger: a way of playing the game itself.

Imagine then, that you are William Tavaré, who has signed a contract to play professional cricket for Gloucestershire. Because as surely as Botham, Richards or Bradman are names that come laden with meaning, then so is Tavaré. William is the nephew of perhaps the most extraordinary batsman to appear for England in the last 30 years, the motionless phenomenon that was CJ Tavaré. 

No one who saw Chris Tavaré bat will forget it in a hurry, even if the detail is blurred by its endless repetition. If David Steele was the bank clerk who went to war, Tavaré was the conscientious objector who took arms. Tall, angular and splayfooted, a thin moustache sketched on his top lip, he would walk to the crease like a stork approaching a watering hole full of crocs.

Once there, he began not to bat but to set, concrete drying under the sun. His principal movement was between the stumps and square leg, to where he would walk, gingerly, after every ball. If John Le Mesurier had played Test cricket, he would have played it like Chris Tavaré. His innings spread themselves across games, eroding the will of the opposition and the spectator alike, smoothing off the edges as if they were pebbles in a stream.

The portents came early. In his third Test innings, against West Indies at Lord's in 1980, he fussed for more than four hours over 42. In his next game, his 69 and 78 combined to occupy just under 12 hours of playing time.

Then came the innings that cemented (almost literally) his legend. His four-hour-plus fifty against Pakistan in 1982 was the second-slowest half-century in the history of the game, and yet even that paled in comparison to the five-and-a-half hour 35 against India in Madras, a knock that assumed the dimensions of a siege for all involved.

In a team that contained Botham, Gatting, Lamb and Gower, Tavaré truly stood out. The mighty ballast that he provided against the Australians in '81 (179 runs at 44.75) played a part in that famous win, albeit one that never quite makes the highlights reels.

His only Ashes tour in 1982-83 left its scars on the local psyche, too. As Matthew Engel slyly noted, "he was the antithesis of the Australians' idea of a cricketer". In Perth, he treated them to an eight-hour 89, 60 minutes of which were entirely scoreless. Gideon Haigh fell into a trance-like state while watching it on television, and later discovered that Tavaré (a uxorious gent, of course) had been troubled all tour by his wife's fear of flying, a mental trauma that nailed him ever more firmly to the crease.

Like a lot of slow players, stories abounded that he was a wolf in sheep's clothing, capable of pillaging county attacks on quiet Canterbury afternoons. If it happened, no one remembers it now. Instead, his high point as a man of action must remain the classic fourth Test, in Melbourne, that began, on Boxing Day of 1982, with Tav making 89 in just 247 minutes at a strike rate north of three an over, an innings that contained 15 boundaries in an era when the distant reaches of the MCG were marked only by the pickets. It was his anomalous masterpiece, and England won by three runs.

Rather marvellously, Chris Tavaré is now a biology teacher, and his pupils are surely rigorously but gently schooled. Into a cricketing world that he would not recognise steps William, whose first-class record to date is respectable (nine innings at 32.75, with a best of 61), but even if he turns out to be the next Chris Gayle, the Tavaré name will plod after him - slowly and from a distance of course. Good luck, my friend.

Soldiers as teachers why not as doctors?

by Archie Bland in The Independent

In its wisdom, the Government has decided to give members of the Armed Forces a fast-track route into teaching. The plan, long in the making, will give former troops the chance to teach even if they don’t hold a university degree, and I'm all for it, but I don’t think the Government is going far enough. Yes, we need a military ethos in our schools. But what about our hospitals?

Think about it. Schools will benefit from the military values of leadership, discipline, motivation and teamwork, as David Laws and Michael Govehave argued, but you know where else those values would be useful? The chaotic world of hospitals! OK, so not all soldiers have an education in medicine. But they have the right values. And the right values are much more important than the right qualifications.

The image of infantrymen moving from the military’s theatres of operations to the hospitals’ operating theatres is not the only one available to demonstrate how absurd this proposal is, how insulting to teachers and children, and how profoundly anti-intellectual, with its contempt for the idea that knowing about things might be a necessary prerequisite for teaching them. And these other modest proposals make still clearer the rationale for the Government’s pursuit of this particular wheeze. Imagine, for instance, that teachers were to be fast-tracked into combat units because of their capacities to work hard, manage people and deal with stressful situations. Or try to picture charity workers getting teaching jobs without a degree because a philanthropic ethos might be just as worth instilling in our children as a military one. Any such suggestion would be greeted, rightly, with puzzlement.

And yet with the military it’s different. This plan is based on an American example – with the difference that in America, 99 per cent of participants already had a degree – and in recent years we’ve been edging closer to the American model of unthinking glorification of our Armed Forces. When soldiers and sailors behave well, their exploits are used as evidence of military nobility. When they behave badly, they are seen as bad apples, and we rarely ask whether their wrongdoing might in fact be the product of a poisoned culture.

I suppose this squeamishness is understandable: ever since the invasion of Afghanistan, we’ve been engaged in brutal conflicts that cost most of us very little, and a few of us a great deal. We owe those few. But squeamishness, and a heavy debt, are not a sensible basis for policy making. So, although it feels frankly treacherous to say so, here goes: a military culture is appropriate for the front line, but not for the classroom, where independent thinking should be considered essential. Soldiers might be brave, and well-disciplined, but if they aren’t well qualified that probably won’t be enough to make them good educators. Teachers are doing something really difficult. And children? Children are not the enemy.

The Enlightenment Business: Wisdom For Sale

by Harsh K Luthar

Religion and spirituality today are a big business. Generally the spiritual teachers, preachers, and the so called enlightened masters of the day are really motivational speakers and self styled self-help expert who are engaged in entrepreneurial ventures aimed at financial and commercial success.  Every year people spend billions of dollars buying the books, CDs, and self-help programs offered by such teachers.

The commodity that the spiritual teachers in the new age sell in the free market is called “Enlightenment”. Enlightenment is intangible and not well defined as a product. The cost of production and storage costs of “Enlightenment”  are very low, and so there is always plenty in the inventory to sell!  Of course, there is the cost of marketing “Enlightenment”. Still even with that expense, the profit margins for this product or service have the potential to be very large for the established experts or the spiritual teachers.

In a very real and substantive sense, the so called modern teachers of “enlightenment” are far removed from the sages of old who cared nothing for money and financial gains and adopted a life of humility, poverty, and service. Some of the well known saints of India such as Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Ramana did not even touch money with their hands. Generally, in almost all the pictures, Sri Ramana is shown wearing one simple cloth piece called Kaupina, which is equivalent to an Indian underwear. These sages were venerated by their followers because they demonstrated in their life what true enlightenment embodies.

Many of the spiritual entrepreneurs of the day appear to seek the adoration and veneration from their followers without much inclination towards demonstrating behavior or conduct befitting a sage. Although it seems self-evident to most objective observers, it is not always obvious to many disciples and students of yogis, spiritual teachers, and cult leaders that their gurus are simply human beings and therefore limited and sometimes deeply flawed.

Just like the students, the so called “gurus”, “masters”, and “spiritual teachers” are susceptible to all the weaknesses of the body and the mind. I have observed that the humanity of spiritual teachers or leaders is very difficult for many of their followers to accept. The mentoring relationship between a spiritual guru and his/her disciples can be very complex. When the students realize that their spiritual leader, despite claims to moral superiority and being divine, etc., is just like them, it can come as a shock, a rude awakening. For many followers this can be a very traumatic event.

Many people continue to view their guru or their spiritual leader as being infallible even when overwhelming evidence points in the exact opposite direction.  To avoid facing the painful reality, some followers interpret the facts of their leaders conduct in creative ways to explain them away somehow. It happens. One has to only read the newspapers and the Internet sites to discover all the information there.  Spirituality and selling of wisdom is a huge business. The behavior of spiritual leaders can be analyzed from that perspective for a more complete understanding of the business of enlightenment.

Of course, we need to understand each others’ humanity and even forgive friends, teachers, and gurus when they have made mistakes in judgement. I am not criticizing the whole spiritual arena but simply pointing out the importance of objectively and rationally assessing situations involving marketing of wisdom by the spiritual leaders of the day, whoever they may be and in whatever religious or spiritual tradition.

The need to remain loyal to our own intelligence and common sense when analyzing facts and situations, even when it comes to spiritual teachers, is important. To put another human being on a constant pedestal, even if that person is a guru or a spiritual teacher, is not fair to either that person or our own self.

Who is the ultimate Guru, other than our own Heart? This is the sacred Truth that we should grasp firmly and make it our own.

I don’t like to be overly critical of spiritual teachers in any religion or spiritual tradition. Certainly, they bring many benefits to people and parts of humanity.  But it seems to me that that many of the so called “gurus” and “spiritual masters” are plainly lacking in anything but the most superficial insight and knowledge.

Many of these self-help and self-proclaimed gurus struggle with serious emotional and psychological issues and need to be constantly on a power trip and thrive only when dominating their students and disciples. Some of these so called “spiritual teachers” even appear to lack proper mental balance, suffer from low self-esteem, and need to carefully reflect on their actions and behaviors before they go around advising others on how live properly.

It is no wonder that traditional religious and yogic orthodoxy in India  responded so negatively to the attacks of  Jiddu Krishnamurti and later Rajneesh (Osho). Despite the serious personal limitations and weaknesses of these two critics of  the existing orthodoxy, they were powerful voices in pointing out the hypocrisy of  gurus and masters in spiritual traditions who “sell” Universal Truths, and make disciples dependent upon them.

Ironically, both J. Krishnamurthy and Rajneesh (Osho) fell into the same mental and spiritual traps that they accused other teachers of being in. It happens. This is all part of the human condition. Everyone, including the so called gurus and teachers and the enlightened ones are struggling to find their place and path in this world. As long as “Enlightenment” is viewed as a commodity that can be sold and bought, there will be sellers and buyers. This is simply how the free market works!

I don’t know if it is completely up to us to decide what our part in the spiritual circus is. We should not be overly judgemental but simply use our rational intelligence in evaluating the spiritual scene. Despite the force of circumstances, if we stay aware and devoted to the Heart, the True inner Guru, I feel we will be OK.

Love and Namaste to all — Harsh K. Luthar

In teachers they trust

BY

NG JING YNG

Asked how he assesses his teachers, Mr Matti Koivusalo shrugs matter-of-factly that he has “no means” to do so. “There is no evaluation whatsoever for teachers. Everything is based on trust,” says the Principal of Haaga Comprehensive School in Helsinki.

Indeed, the “open” school culture means any feedback quickly reaches his ears, says Mr Koivusalo, who looks after 50 teachers and 600 pupils in grades one through nine (the equivalent of Primary 1 to Secondary 3 in Singapore).

It is easy to see how: Along the school’s hallway, pupils look up from their mobile phones and greet him as he walks past; some engage him in friendly banter. At the school cafeteria where free lunches are served daily — an established practice at all Finnish schools — teachers join him for lunch and chat about how their day has gone.

Said Mr Koivusalo: “If something bad happens, I’ll hear about it in five minutes … The atmosphere is such that (students and teachers) can come and talk about it freely without being afraid.”

Even so, sackings are rare in Finnish schools, say educators. Mr Vesa Valkila, one of the principals at Turku University teacher training school, tried to explain: “Finnish teachers have a lot of freedom and are trusted … that really motivates a lot of them to do their best.”

LEFT TO TEACH

In Finland, a small country of 5.4 million people, its education system operates on this singular principle of trust.

The country’s model shot to global attention after Finnish pupils repeatedly excelled in international tests such as the Programme for International Student Assessment — despite having practically no mandated standardised exams, rankings or competition.

Schools take in students of all varying abilities, including those with learning disabilities, under one roof. The curious result is that, the differences between its weakest and strongest students are the smallest in the world, according to a Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) survey.

School leaders across Finland tell TODAY the same thing: “We trust our teachers”.

There are no national examinations in the first nine years of Finnish formal schooling, and schools and teachers are pretty much left on their own to educate their charges.

As Ms Armi Mikkola, counsellor of education at the Ministry of Education and Culture put it: “The administration is for support and not for inspection … Trust is part of Finnish society, it is a culture.”

Nevertheless, “with trust, there are some risks”, admitted Professor Jouni Valijarvi, Director of the Finnish Institute for Educational Research.

To mitigate risks of having underperforming teachers in schools, a stringent teacher selection process and rigorous teacher training is integral to the system, he said. “It is very important that we can say all schools are good schools,” added Prof Valijarvi. “Because in every school, we’ve highly-trained and qualified teachers”.

SELECTING THE VERY BEST

Yearly, 7,000 teaching aspirants apply to be class teachers (teaching the equivalent of Primary 1 to 6). Typically, there are just 800 spots available.

To teach secondary and upper secondary students (Secondary 1 to Junior College equivalent), 6,000 vie for 1,500 subject teacher positions yearly. Universities cherry-pick from this large pool of applicants, with two different selection processes for each category.

For class teachers, to prepare applicants for an entrance test, authorities will release study materials online on education-related topics such as pedagogical research studies. During the four-hour test, applicants answer about 100 multiple-choice questions. Even so, acing the entrance test does not guarantee a spot in one of the 11 universities offering teacher education.

In phase two, depending on the applicant’s university of choice (they are given up to three picks), there could be a psychometric test along with an interview, or an observed group activity. Some universities also select based on an applicant’s matriculation exam results — the only national examinations taken by Finnish pupils, at the age of 18.

Ms Anna Vaatainen, a student teacher at the University of Turku, is one who succeeded on her second try.

In her first attempt, she was invited by the University of Jyvaskyla for an interview but did not make it through. She went on to obtain a social work degree, and worked in an orphanage for four months, before deciding to give teacher education another go.

This time, after “studying very hard” for the entrance test again, she and three other applicants were tasked by the University of Turku to plan an imaginary school’s sports day. “I am better around people so this group activity might have worked for me,” she said.

Those hoping to be a subject teacher undergo a similar selection process, having to first pass an entrance test set by their subject faculty of choice. They will then apply to the faculty of education, which may require an aptitude test and interview.

The result is that you ensure true commitment to the job. Mr Jari Kouvalainen, a student teacher at the University of Eastern Finland, said: “Because we have to get through this really hard test, you have to be really motivated. With another five years of study, you’re really committed to this career”.

RESEARCH-BASED TRAINING

In the ’70s, Finnish officials moved teacher training under the universities, subsequently implementing a five-year master’s degree programme for all who want to become teachers. A combination of theory, practice and research was key to teacher education, they decided.

Class teachers major in the educational sciences and teach most subjects including Mathematics and Science at the primary levels. Teacher educators say that teaching younger children requires strong pedagogical skills to motivate and excite learners, and not just the transfer of academic knowledge at this stage.

By contrast, subject teachers major in their teaching subjects, while also having to complete pedagogical modules and teaching practicums. In-depth knowledge in their teaching areas is crucial, to give them the confidence to explain complex theories and tackle difficult questions.

Ms Anneli Rautiainen, head of professional development of teachers at the Finnish National Board of Education, thinks that research-based teacher education accounts for the high quality of teaching in Finnish schools today.

“The fact that we have a Master’s degree for teacher initial education is very important. As research-based teachers, they can analyse learning situations and know how to support their students better,” she said.

Student teacher Ms Tuula Hurtig agrees that conducting research has honed her critical thinking abilities and improved her teaching methods. Graduating as a history and civics teacher this year, her thesis involved research into how historical pictures impacted her students’ learning.

GETTING FIELD EXPERIENCE

Head of teacher education at University of Helsinki, Professor Jari Lavonen, calls research-based teacher education vital — it combines with field practice to keep student-teachers in touch with classroom realities and “thinking about their teaching methods”, he said.

All student teachers undergo multiple teaching practicums as part of their five-year programme. Each one lasts between two weeks and a year.

Guided by teacher mentors, student teachers are attached to teacher-training schools set up by the universities, where they plan, teach and observe lessons. These 12 teacher training schools across Finland function as normal schools, with pupils coming from nearby homes. These schools also partner regularly with universities to produce the latest research in education.

Final-year student teacher Mikko Honkamaki, from the University of Jyvaskyla, worked with different mentors during each of his four practicuums — which broadened his perspective on various teaching styles — and got advice before and after each lesson. He also got to observe and critique fellow student-teachers, and vice-versa.

“Watching my peers forced me to focus on my own way of giving instructions ... Receiving and giving feedback has also been crucial to my growth as a professional,” he said.

LEEWAY TO DECIDE

It was a cold winter’s morning when TODAY visited Maininki School in Espoo city, half an hour outside Helsinki, and Ms Rose-Marie Mod-Sandberg was conducting an English Language lesson with her eight-graders (Secondary 2 equivalent).

The classroom was quiet as some students had fallen ill; it was a smaller than usual group. Ms Mod-Sandberg, 55, decided to get her pupils to share about their favourite American cities and imagine what they would do if they got there. As the mood lightened, she gave out worksheets which each student completed on their own.

She has the leeway to tailor her lessons according to her students’ abilities or interests on that very day itself, she told us. For instance, if the children were keen on a topic that was meant only for next year, she could dive into it. And if they seemed more tired than usual — such as after a strenuous Physical Education lesson — she could choose to do something less demanding, and pick things up later.

“If I want to teach a topic, I can teach it anyway and anytime I like,” she said. “Finnish teachers undergo a long training, so (school leaders) can trust us to be professional and to act in the pupils’ interest”.

MORE THAN MONEY’S WORTH

In Finnish schools, teachers typically teach from 8am to 2pm before heading off to plan lessons or attend to parents’ queries. They are not required to take charge of after-school activities such as arts or sports clubs — usually run by private community organisations — and those who do so, are remunerated accordingly.

Schools leaders also said that a layer of stress is removed for teachers as there is no evaluation process linked to their salaries. In fact, the pay structure is relatively flat where pay increases with years of experience and teaching hours.

According to the latest OECD data, Finland’s average annual wage is S$59,852 or approximately S$5,000 a month. For those teaching at the primary level, annual salaries start at S$35,883 (about S$ 3,000 a month). After 20 years, their pay reaches a maximum level of S$64, 530 (S$5,400 a month).

Nevertheless, pay is not a main issue for Finnish teachers, said those TODAY spoke to. People are attracted to the career due to the high status that education is accorded in Finland and the autonomy given to teachers.

The government provides free education in the first nine years of a child’s school life, while schools receive funds to invest in slower learners. Teachers also hold a place in Finnish history, often cited as important figures alongside priests and doctors.

“Young people still see working as a teacher as very creative and independent, where teachers can make a difference in their pupils’ lives,” said Mr Olli Maatta, a teacher trainer at Helsinki Normal Lyceum, a regular Finnish school owned by the University of Helsinki for trainee teachers to serve their attachments.

At Haaga Comprehensive School, the school bell rings and children burst out of their classrooms into the snow-filled courtyard, throwing snowballs at one another and sledding down mini snow hills.

Starring out of his window as one of his teachers leads pupils back from a skiing lesson, principal Mr Koivusalo observes: “The role of an educator is very important. If a teacher loves his job, the children know it and they will want to come to school.”

Ng Jing Yng is a senior reporter with TODAY covering the education beat. She spent one and a half weeks visiting schools in three Finnish cities — Helsinki, Jyvaskyla and Turku — ranging from primary through to upper secondary (JC equivalent) levels. She spoke to students, educators, university faculty who train teachers and officials.

The secret of Hugo Chavez

Grace Livingstone in The Independent

When I was a history student, I always wished I could hear one of the great orators of our time, a man or a woman who could sway a crowd and change the course of events with the power of their rhetoric. So I felt lucky to see Hugo Chavez, the revolutionary president of Venezuela, speak many times in Caracas.

What immediately struck you was his wit. His speeches were full of jokes and laughter, often misunderstood and misinterpreted by the foreign, particularly the American, media. He picked people out from the crowd, asking about their families or home towns, recalling a titbit of history about the place. He could switch from homespun banter to soaring rhetoric in an instant. He was learned and well read. US journalists were baffled when Chavez began to refer to George W Bush as "Mr Danger", but his Venezuelan audience picked up the literary allusion to the country's most famous novel, Dona Barbara – Mr Danger being an archetypal imperialist. But, most of all, Chavez was a teacher. I remember him exhorting his illiterate followers to learn to read. "Reading will liberate you," he told them and urged them to take part in his government's literacy drive in the shanty towns. Thousands did learn to read, many going on to become tutors themselves.

Chavez used the language of the street. The elite found him vulgar and shuddered that a lower-middle-class mixed-race soldier held the highest office in the land. But he spoke for tens of thousands of poor Venezuelans who had been overlooked for decades. Some said Chavez's language was inflammatory, but he put the country's poor on to the centre stage and told them: "You are the real Venezuela."

The coalition that supported Chavez included militant trade unionists and left-wing activists, but overwhelmingly it comprised thousands of poor Venezuelans who had never taken part in politics before. Precisely because Chavez was such a charismatic figure, the most startling fact about his Venezuela is usually overlooked – the upsurge of revolutionary grass-roots activism all over the country: hundreds of radio stations set up, popular councils, peasants' co-operatives, literacy circles, committees to bring water to shanty towns, a buzz of activity in place of despondency.

Chavez, of course, had faults. Despite being in office for years, he continued to rage like an opposition revolutionary against the powers that be. The privately owned TV stations in Venezuela were extraordinarily biased, exhorting people to protest against the elected president, misreporting a coup against Chavez and broadcasting cartoons when the coup began to unravel. So Chavez's broadsides against media magnates touched a nerve with many of his supporters, but when he began to berate individual journalists, it looked like bullying.

It was also understandable that Chavez was wary of the US. As a devourer of history books, he knew that the US had undermined and destabilised many left-wing Latin American governments; and, sure enough, the Bush administration embraced the coup against Chavez. But Chavez's desire to build a Third World coalition against the US "empire" led him to embrace many unsavoury leaders, from Gaddafi to Bashar al-Assad – an association that tarnished Venezuela which, in fact, held fair elections and respected human rights.

Perhaps the greatest error was that of his closest supporters who failed to criticise Chavez openly. Their behaviour did not reflect the vigorous debate taking place. Chavez's early death may help the Venezuelan revolution avoid the fate of Cuba – stultifying ossification – because an open debate about the future of the movement will be possible.

In his last few weeks, as Chavez lost his battle against cancer, he could be content that thousands of Venezuelans had learnt to stand up for their rights and that Latin America is now far more united than at any time in its history. He did not face the lonely and disillusioned end of his hero Simon Bolivar, the 19th-century Venezuelan independence leader, who died lamenting: "America is ungovernable. He who has served the revolution has ploughed the sea."

For all his flaws, Chavez will be remembered as one of the towering figures of Latin America history, alongside Salvador Allende, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and, of course, his revered Simon Bolivar.