This Post is a post script to the last. I must not forget special educational needs, and the very important role that teaching music has here.

From the Prologue

Music is good for the soul. Whether playing or just listening, it is something you should learn at school. As Anthony Storr illustrated in his book Music and the Mind it can have a special value for children with learning difficulties. I am indebted to my music teacher who played records to us with, as I recall it, fibre tipped needles. Once learned at school, it will last a lifetime. It has for me. With great Music like great Art you can touch eternity. These are moments that will last for ever.

***

Today classrooms are populated by far too many bully boys and girls.Teachers may have too little time and sometimes too little training as well. Supply teachers are here today and gone tomorrow. Teaching assistants don’t always know how to stretch children in the way that trained teachers do and, in many cases, do not improve attainment. Ironically they can create a sense of exclusion in an inclusive environment, stigmatising pupils in the process. Teachers are not always trained to relate to them.

My underlining here

From Notes & Quotes

David could not tie his shoe-laces

Anthony Storr writes “David, a six-year-old autistic boy, suffered from chronic anxiety and poor visual-motor co-ordination. For nine months, efforts had been made to teach him to tie his shoe-laces without avail. However, it was discovered that his audio motor co-ordination was excellent. He could beat quite complex rhythms on a drum, and was clearly musically gifted. When a student therapist put the process of tying his shoe-laces into a song, David succeeded at the second attempt.”

QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM

By the way, my own music teacher was called Mr. Kirk. I gladly dedicate Act One Scene 4 to his memory.

I never intended to write these Posts every day. There is, however, good reason why I should write this one. In the words of Oliver Cromwell, “Strike while the iron is hot but make it hot by striking.”

Last night, as luck would have it, and this was real luck, Channel 4 again entered my life, this time at the Sage, Gateshead. This is the wonderful concert hall that Norman Foster designed for all those fortunate enough to be able to enjoy its presence on the bank of the river Tyne. Gateshead Local Authority had the vision to provide it. I may criticise bureaucracy in my writing. I must also give fulsome praise where praise is certainly due.

The Concert created by RDF Television for Channel 4

Let me get back to my theme. Once again I was confronted by children who were “born to be different.” This time they were “musical prodigies”: Alexander Prior, born in London to a Russian mother and a British father and, at the advanced age of 16, a composer of no less than 40 works and a conductor, and now a third year student at the St.Petersburg Conservatory; Zhang Xiaoming, all of 10 years old from Shanghai China, and already a concert pianist; Michael Province, 13, already studying the violin for eight years, and a student at Lynn University; Simone Porter, age 12, from Seattle playing the violin with the kind of sensitivity you normally expect from someone much, much older; and Nathan Chan, Cello, age 15, who made his first public appearance at the age of three with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra,and is due to perform later this year with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

I have seen the future, and this bit of it, unlike much else today, is truly beautiful. What a responsibility the world has to ensure it continues to exist.

It will have to rid itself of some of its termites, and kill a few holy cows to do so.

Last night I listened to the music played by these exceptional soloists – supported by the Northern Sinfonia who must share their glow, as must Channel 4, their sponsors *- to Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Haydn, Dvorak and the World Premier of the Concerto for Piano, 2 Violins, Cello and Orchestra ‘Velesslavitsa’, composed and conducted by Alexander Prior himself.

Standing ovations are a rare thing at the Sage Gateshead. This performance received one.

‘Velesslavitsa’ by the way translates to ‘Glory to Veles’ the God of Music, a synthesis of pagan and Christian tradition.

Now let me get back to my book, and share with you the end of a music lesson.

Act One Scene 4

Emma Kirk, the music teacher, is discussing the spiritual side of music with her pupils.

EMMA KIRK Gossip. Some people have nothing better to do than wag their tongues. There’s a job going, and I’ve put in for it. I don’t think I’ll get it. I’ve got a life sentence here bringing music to you kids, a life sentence with hard labour. Now what was I saying before I was rudely interrupted? I pray for this School, and I pray for all schools. Music’s gone missing from many of them these days.

TRACY Maybe they didn’t have anyone like you to teach them when they were at school.

EMMA KIRK Yes that must be it. Seriously the more our political wonder kids assert the national curriculum, targets and league tables, the more music loses out. Now, let’s get back to the spiritual side of music, music that’s the same the world over, like people are. Folk music, the same rhythms you’ll find in every little village wedding over centuries of time. It’s not clever to give up on those weddings, you know. Anyway, folk music’s now in the soul. Now I remember my Daddyo recounting how he heard the great Black American singer Paul Robeson deliver that same message in Peekskill, a little town in New York State, at a big open air concert. Now, not everyone likes being told that they are all God’s children. There’s always some that don’t. And on that day those folk came out in force with their clubs, their rocks and their stones, and they rained them down on those peaceful concert goers, on little children too, as they made their way home.

TRACY No. Why did they do a terrible thing like that?

EMMA KIRK Well, some people just don’t believe in a universal creator. They believe in their own tribal God. That’s always making for trouble and suffering. Anyway, that’s all half a century ago. I’m sure times have changed in Westchester County. But what Paul Robeson said about folk music fifty years ago is just as true today. Let’s get back to it. You see, one of the earliest gifts God gave to mankind was music.

TERRY Was it a Christmas present Miss?

EMMA KIRK Oh for heaven’s sake, Terry, it was a gift to Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, and to non-believer from that day to this; no-one any different. It was a gift then, and it’s a gift today to every new born child, even before it’s born, when it’s still in the womb.

TRACY Can they hear it?

EMMA KIRK Yes they sure can. And when they grow up, they’ll sing it, they’ll dance to it and maybe they’ll play it. Have you heard of the Israeli Violinist Yitzhak Perlman? He plays in concerts all round the world. Do you know something? He goes on to every stage he plays on, on crutches. He got polio as a child. Didn’t stop him playing. Just listen to this, from Eastern Europe. Some say that its origins go way back to Bible times. It’s called Klezmer – Honga Encore. I’d love it if you played a musical instrument. You’d love it. In an ideal world you’d even get free tuition. They say they are concerned about “the have nots.” They should call them “the never haves.” And never will have, the way things are going.

TERRY I think that people should have a right to learn music at school.

EMMA KIRK People talk a lot about human rights these days. But you never hear them talk about the right to music. It is as important as any.

TRACY What if you are deaf?

EMMA KIRK Haven’t you heard of Evelyn Glennie? She can’t hear a thing she plays, not a single note. And yet she plays the marimba in concerts all over the world, sometimes with an orchestra. She feels the vibrations in her feet. Just listen to this. I’ve got a great CD here if I can find it. Don’t you underestimate the power of the human spirit. Just listen to how she greets the Millennium. Now remember she cannot hear a thing she is playing. Just listen to her rendering of Rag of Colts from the Sugar Factory. I just don’t know whether Evelyn Glennie has a faith or not, but there’s a place reserved for her at God’s table.

TERRY Make a change from those Heavenly voices, Miss.

EMMA KIRK I’ll ignore that. But you’re right, Tracy, for most people hard of hearing, the loss of music is probably the most awful, awful thing. Then you’ve got to try and find something else to take its place. Maybe you can enjoy Art even more than those who can see and hear. You have got to nurture the senses that God’s given you. And if you try real hard, God will help you along the way. There’s folks that have got ears to hear with and eyes to see with, but they have never heard of Johan Sebastian Bach, and they’ve never seen a Botticelli. They are the ones that are really deprived.

TRACY Do you think music makes for a better world, because it’s holy?

EMMA KIRK It’s better for the people who listen to it and enjoy it, but they won’t necessarily be better people. But I firmly believe that it does help to make a country that’s good to be in. Now let’s round this lesson off with two pieces of fine spiritual music. It’s appropriate that one comes from my part of the world, the other from yours. The voices you’ll hear carry the spirit of God in them or, if you want, simply the human spirit. Take your pick. Either way enjoy, enjoy. First my childhood hero, Paul Robeson, singing that famous spiritual Deep River .
And to finish, just listen to this: Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah.

TRACY Wow

EMMA KIRK You guys will never be alone in life when you have found music.

Let me also remind you of some other children, El Sistema, the youth orchestra from Venezuela and its conductor Gustavo Dudamel. I have already mentioned them in post 9. These children were not born to be different, but have become so. Let me quote Ed Vulliami in the Observer on 29th July 2007.

This is more than the story of one prodigy, himself from a poor family on the outskirts of Barquisimeto in the Venezuelan interior. This is about what Dudamel calls ‘music as social saviour’. He and his orchestra are but the apex of a unique enterprise; the zenith of something deeply rooted in Venezuela, formally entitled the National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela, but known simply as El Sistema.

Inspired and founded in 1975 under the slogan ‘Play and fight!’ by the extraordinary social crusader Jose Antonio Abreu, El Sistema flourished with a simple dictum: that in the poorest slums of the world, where the pitfalls of drug addiction, crime and despair are many, life can be changed and fulfilled if children can be brought into an orchestra to play the overwhelmingly European classical repertoire.

And that is what happened. The road taken by Dudamel and his orchestra is one along which some 270,000 young Venezuelans are now registered to aspire, playing music across a land seeded with 220 youth orchestras from the Andes to the Caribbean. Rattle, music director of the mighty Berlin Philharmonic, describes El Sistema as ‘nothing less than a miracle… From here, I see the future of music for the whole world.’ But, adds Sir Simon, ‘I see this programme not only as a question of art, but deep down as a social initiative. It has saved many lives, and will continue to save them.’

Across Venezuela, young barrio-dwellers now spend their afternoons practising Beethoven and Brahms. They learn the ‘Trauermarsch‘ from Mahler’s fifth symphony while their peers learn to steal and shoot. They are teenagers like Renee Arias, practising Bizet’s Carmen Suite at a home for abandoned and abused children, who when asked what he would be doing if he had not taken up the French horn, replies straightforwardly: ‘I’d be where I was, only further down the line – either dead or still living on the streets smoking crack, like when I was eight.‘ Or children like Aluisa Patino, 11, who states plainly that she learns the viola ‘to get myself and my mother out of the barrio. It’s got to the point around here,‘ she chirps as she leads us through a maze of alleyways to her humble home, ‘where it’s much cooler to like Strauss than salsa.’

So, music is not just for the gifted, nor just for the affluent. It is music for everyone from childhood onwards. It is where Inclusion really works; but it comes up from the ground, it is not imposed; and it sits alongside a quest for excellence and an acceptance of discipline. That was the message that Gustavo Dudamel and Jose Antonio Abreu delivered in a recent Symposium at South Bank after their orchestra’s trail blazing and quite spectacular performance there.

What are my conclusions from all this?

When you talk about equality of opportunity think more about fairness than equality. It respects individual difference, and it is much more appropriate. When you think about opportunity, think more about deprivation than disability. Deprivation provides an even greater need. And, when you think about universal human rights, spare a thought for a right to music. In the words of the song by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, “Music has no boundaries.”

Next time I shall deal with the pursuit of excellence, and again I shall argue for fairness not equality in the quest for it.

* Channel 4 will be broadcasting this concert on Monday, 8 June 2009. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-worlds-greatest-musical-prodigies

This is how the programme is described:

Filmed over seven years, Born to Be Different is a frank and unsentimental portrait of the joy and heartache of life with a disabled child. Six families have allowed exceptionally intimate access to their lives following the birth of a disabled baby. The series charts everything from the initial shock of diagnosis and day-to-day practicalities, to the tough decisions and long-term reality of living with disability.

Over time, the parents’ hope and fears change as they deal with medical problems, operations and the good and bad news about their child’s condition – all this while trying to maintain a normal family life.

Some families face prejudice, while others fall apart under the strain. But there are flashes of humour and the typical pleasures of childhood too. And as the children grow up, and the differences between them and their friends become more apparent, they start to articulate their own feelings.

I watched the programme last night. It told me what the head teacher of a special school told me many years ago, and that is that there are few more caring parents than parents of children with special educational needs, as they fight to do their best for their children.

It also showed how difficult, sad, joyful life could be for everyone.

The title, of course, underlined the fact that children with special educational needs were “different”, and that it was simplistic to a degree to think that that you could treat them all the same way and as other children.

That, of course, is what Death of a Nightingale is about.

It is about something else. Life is as difficult, as challenging as it is, without also having to cope with seeing children bullied, and without having to deal with an unsympathetic bureaucracy working to a political agenda.

Last time I introduced you to “Alice in Blunderland”, a parody I wrote a number of years ago to poke fun at officialdom. Those who have had to confront that officialdom will understand it better than those who haven’t. Every line was born of some unhappy experience.

Here are just a few to illustrate that:

“The Mad Hatter was in the Chair. “Order, Order” he cried, and Disorder clumped noisily out of the room.

“The Minutes of the last meeting” he said imperiously.

The White Knight asked which Minutes he wanted. “The Minutes that go on for days and days, the Minutes that go on for hours, or the Minutes that go on only for seconds?”

In my experience the minutes of a meeting should be read, corrected and agreed at the next following meeting. Not so when I was a governor. With more than just termly meetings all the minutes of many meetings were collected together, read, corrected and agreed at the termly meeting. On one occasion this was used as a delaying tactic, and the whole process went on and on and on and on until one Governor could wait no longer, and had to leave.

I break my own rule here by harking back to my own time as a governor – history book stuff for me – but I do so to drive home the message that very often the sort of parents we saw last evening will have found that what they wanted for their children was being blocked by those who operated the system.

Act One Scene 3

Margaret Williamson, the Head teacher and Joan Errington, the English teacher lament the problem.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON …. If only our lords and masters would listen a bit more. The trouble with civil servants is they are not street wise, clever maybe, but not streetwise. They’re cocooned from reality.

JOAN ERRINGTON They’re Cuckoo, you mean.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON No, I wouldn’t say that. Many of them are trapped like we are trapped by the system.

JOAN ERRINGTON I think they are led by the wrong people, misled. There’s either far too much passion, or far too much reason, but not enough of both together. Did you ever read Khalil Gibran’s ‘The Prophet’? Do you remember he wrote “Reason alone is a force confining; and passion unattended is a flame that burns to its own destruction.”

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Yes, that’s a beautiful way of putting it. You know in Education there is actually unreason.

JOAN ERRINGTON I read an article recently by one of our clever, clever wise guys – far too many of them in education, and too clever by half for our own good, if you ask me. He said – children with special needs come in tens, scores, even hundreds, not one by one. He said you’ve got to give up the individualised approach. Would you believe it?

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Yes, I know. And I am afraid that some academics just don’t understand, and of course they go on to teach their students the error of their ways No doubt they then get their students to repeat those errors to pass their exams. Ugh.

I hope this programme helps to show people what I have tried to say in my book, and which they may not understand and appreciate.

The Author’s Note

There are very many of these disabilities. They include cerebral palsy, spina bifida with hydrocephalus, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, rheumatoid arthritis, heart conditions,Osteoagenesis imperfecta, Crohn’s disease, epilepsy and neurological disorders. There are also victims of road traffic and other accidents. This is the world of burns and fractures.

There are sub-divisions of each disability.

But there are also many other quite different needs and other special schools cater for them, some with a national name and a national reputation. There are children with profound and multiple learning difficulties PMLD, emotional and behavioural difficulties EBD, with hearing problems, speech or sight impairment, sometimes total. There is also dyslexia, dyspraxia and autism. In other words, think of a fruit shop. There are apples, pears, peaches, grapes, bananas and so on. With apples alone, there are coxes, bramleys, and golden delicious et cetera. It’s the same thing with SEN.

There are about 400,000 children with learning difficulties of one sort or another. The Department of Health White Paper Valuing People envisages an annual increase of around one per cent of children with severe learning difficulties.

…

A DfES publication Removing Barriers to Achievement – The Government’s Strategy for SEN reported in the pupil level census in 2003 that there were nearly 94,000 children attending special schools.

For their part, Judges have ruled that children with special educational needs must receive education appropriate to those needs. All of this gives them legal protection and their legal rights – if they can exercise them. About 100 Special Schools have been closed since 1997. Parental choice? Legal rights? Tell that to the fairies.

As I write in the book “You cannot turn the clock back”. But even with the “credit crunch” you can do something about it.

If you want to know what really drives Death of a Nightingale, read what follows. As I put it in the Prologue “I am interested in the microcosm, and I am interested in the whole which the microcosm reflects.”

Yes, Inclusion and Special Educational Needs are very important, especially to those involved in them. Even more important is the overall state of things.I am afraid, Helena, that you were wasting your time with the “Power Report.” All your work, and you haven’t made the slightest difference. Things are as bad as ever, perhaps somewhat worse.

From the Prologue

The recent Power Report pointed to “the weakening of effective dialogue between governed and governors” and “the rise of quiet authoritarianism within government.” If I can remove the wrapping paper, it is saying that our democracy is often just a sham, and that the problem is not so much spin as twist. It is a serious criticism of those who wield power – the subtle and not so subtle pressures they exercise – the patronage they use to get their way.

It should be no surprise that lawyers, accountants, academics and others, from time to time compromise strict standards of professional behaviour and play word games instead. I have seen it happen. If the System does look itself in the mirror, it needs to recognise that the mirror itself is a distorting one. Will it do even that? Sad to say, the report has already been allowed to gather dust as reports of this kind invariably do, and everything goes on as before.

From Notes & Quotes

10 The Power Inquiry

This Inquiry was set up by the Joseph Rowntree Trust in 2004 to mark its centenary.It established a Commission under the chair of Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, to investigate why the decline in popular participation and involvement in formal politics has occurred, to provide concrete and innovative proposals to reverse the trend and to explore how public participation and involvement can be increased and deepened.

Its work was based on the primary belief that a healthy democracy requires the active participation of its citizens. It is completely independent of any political party or organisation. It works across the political spectrum and, most importantly, with people who feel that the political parties do not represent them anymore. The Commission published its final report, Power to the People, in February 2006. The report outlined 30 recommendations for change, but most importantly it argues that there is a need for a re-balancing of power between the Executive and Parliament, between Central and Local Government and between the Citizen and the State.

As I said in Blog 1 the “credit crunch” is only one slice of a wormy apple. The system needs a complete detox to remove the toxins from the body politic.

Let me try a different route to make the same point, a piece of political satire that I wrote a few years ago. It says it all, another way.

From Alice in Blunderland

The Mad Hatter’s Committee Meeting

The Mad Hatter was in the Chair. “Order, Order” he cried, and Disorder clumped noisily out of the room.

“The Minutes of the last meeting” he said imperiously.

The White Knight asked which Minutes he wanted. “The Minutes that go on for days and days, the Minutes that go on for hours, or the Minutes that go on only for seconds?”

“That’s a difficult one” said the Mad Hatter. “Shall we take the Minutes as read?”

“I can’t read.” said Doormouse.

“Pretend to.” said the Mad Hatter.

“How do you pretend to?” said Doormouse still reluctant to agree.

“Like you always do.” said the Mad Hatter, getting just a little bit irritated.

Alice looked around the table. It was a well attended meeting. The White Knight and the Knave of Hearts were the professionals present. The Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit, the White Queen, the March Hare, Caterpillar, Tweedledum and Tweedledee were all in their place. Doormouse was under his. They were the lay members.

The two professional members looked down on the lay members. Their chairs were six inches higher. Accordingly the lay members looked up to the professionals.

And a very small black fly had settled on the wall behind the Mad Hatter’s Chair.

“The Minutes are agreed.” said the Mad Hatter.

“Apologies for absence?” asked the Mad Hatter. “Humpty Dumpty” said the White Knight. “He had a serious accident since we last met.”

“Any correspondence?” asked the Mad Hatter.

“Yes, two matters.” replied the White Knight. “We have just had a brand new Plan from the Ogre Queen. It’s on the table. It is an all singing and dancing Plan.”

Alice noticed that an attractive book on the table suddenly started dancing a highland jig and at the same time sang the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah.

“What’s in the Plan?” asked the Cheshire Cat.

“There’s meetings”. “Great.” said the Cheshire Cat. “New partnerships.” “Wonderful.” said Caterpillar. “And there’s much more delusion.” said the Mad Hatter. “Don’t you mean Inclusion?” said the White Knight. “A Freudian slip” said the Mad Hatter with a wry smile. “More Inclusion at a rate of 20 per cent per anum.”

“Don’t you mean per annum?” Interjected the March Hare. “Well it definitely says per anum” replied the Mad Hatter.

“It’s a bit of an enema” said Tweedledum. “Enigma” said Tweedledee.

“Either way I move we buy it” said the Mad Hatter with some finality.

“Can we afford it?” asked Doormouse suddenly waking up.

“We get paid to buy it, twice the actual cost” said the White Knight helpfully.

“I am still not sure we can afford it” said Doormouse.

“Go back to sleep” said the Mad Hatter. And Doormouse did as he was told.

“Then that’s agreed?” Nods all round, including Doormouse who was nodding away with the rest of them.

“We don’t need to consult anyone do we?” Asked the Cheshire Cat, almost rhetorically.

“Roundabout midnight any day next week would be suitable” replied the White Knight. “I just don’t understand” said Alice, looking very bemused by all this.

The Mad Hatter turned to the Knave of Hearts “Would you explain to Alice our consultative procedures?”

The Knave of Hearts was something of a magician. One of his favourite tricks was to make people completely vanish. Another was to make people appear who didn’t exist at all. He quite liked to don his pointy wizard’s hat on these occasions.

This time however he conjured from thin air a mortar board and a somewhat tattered black gown. There was no limit to the things that he could conjure out of thin air. Most usually it was facts, figures and concept papers that bore no great relation to reality Ever since he came across the Latin tag De minimis non curat Lex, he had called these his tiny mini mice. He much preferred this to his small porkies.

The Knave of Hearts, in a somewhat didactic mode, then conducted a short tutorial. “To understand our consultative procedures you must understand the meaning of consultation. The word consultation derives from the two words ‘con’ and ‘salutation’. I am sure you know the meaning of both. All you have to do is to put the two together.”

“We have actually written to the Ogre Queen respectfully suggesting that Christmas Day should be designated an Annual Consultation Day when all the year’s consultation can take place. Is there another day in the calendar with more salutations than that one?”

Alice felt that she had to agree. “No there isn’t” she said. “And it is a day of goodwill” chipped in the March Hare “and we need as much of that as we can get.”

“But we have not reached that eminently sensible state of affairs.” continued the Knave of Hearts,” So the next best time is when people say goodnight to each other. I suggest that we consult next Sunday night.”

“Agreed” said the Mad Hatter. “Now what’s the other letter?”

“We are going to be inspected by the two blind mice.” said White Knight.

“My God” said the March Hare. “No, by two blind mice” said the White Knight.

“I thought there were three of them” said Caterpillar, suddenly getting a word in edgeways.

“One of them has just had a successful cataract operation” said the White Knight. “Why isn’t he here then?” asked Caterpillar. “He’s back in hospital with post traumatic shock … seeing things for the first time knocked him gaga.”

Alice noticed that that the visit from the two blind mice caused no great concern. “Aren’t you worried?” She asked.

“We’ve just bought the Plan” said the Mad Hatter.

“Off with our heads if we hadn’t” observed the March Hare.

Alice saw that everyone was laughing hilariously.

“Let’s get down to the main business of the meeting” said the Mad Hatter. “There is a resolution on the table, moved by the Knave of Hearts and seconded by the March Hare. – ‘The Moon is made of cheese’ – Knave of Hearts over to you.”

“I like cheese and I can’t do without it” started the Knave of Hearts.

“Not totally relevant” said Caterpillar. “Not relevant maybe, but very important to all of us” replied the Knave of Hearts, just a trifle aggressively.

“Anyway” he continued, “you can see for yourself it’s made of cheese. It’s round.” He said this with great authority. He combined a certain je ne sais quoi with a real sense of je ne sais pas du tout.

At this point the March Hare intervened. “I second the motion.” he said firmly. “I have the evidence. I’ve been given a piece.”

“Where is it then?” asked Alice unable to contain her curiosity.

“I’ve swallowed it” replied the March Hare. “And I’ve swallowed the hook, the line and the sinker that came with it.”

Alice’s curiosity turned to incredulity. “You swallowed the sinker? Wasn’t it a bit indigestible?”

“It was, the very first time I swallowed it” replied the March Hare, “but you get used to it. It is now a regular part of my diet.”

Tweedledum interposed “That’s my experience too.” And Tweedledee agreed. “Me too” he said.

“Well” said the Mad Hatter “two people have said that the Moon is made of cheese, one has actually eaten some. Can there be any reasonable doubt here? I frankly will go further. I think that the Moon is made of the best English Cheddar.”

“An amendment” intervened Caterpillar. “I believe it’s Wensleydale.”

“Cheddar” replied the Mad Hatter firmly, and Caterpillar crawled under a leaf on the table.

Alice was still unconvinced. “What about the moon-rock brought back from the moon landing.?” She asked.

“American propaganda against the Russians” replied the Knave of Hearts. “The landing was filmed in the Nevada desert and that’s where the rock came from.”

“Well I’ll eat my hat” said the Mad Hatter and promptly did so.

There was a respectful silence while this was going on.

When he finished, he asked whether the motion was agreed. “Nemine contradicente” said the White Knight. And with nobody quite knowing what that meant, they all nodded their heads including Doormouse who was still nodding away quietly under his seat.

At this point a very strange thing happened. The small black fly on the wall behind the Mad Hatter’s chair suddenly took off, whizzed three times round the room at great speed,. buzzing all the way.

Doormouse opened his eyes. The White Rabbit sat upright with a jolt. The White Rabbit, by the way, is known affectionately as “the politician”. His political affiliations are however unknown. Alice thought he belonged to the Lib Dems. He had taken no part in the proceedings. He had not been asleep like Doormouse, nor had he been fully awake. He had been lost in his daydreams. The sudden buzzing of the fly disturbed his reverie.

“Where am I?” he asked, gazing around. No-one answered. No-one even heard.

For at that very moment the small black fly suddenly turned into a wasp, and stung the Mad Hatter right on the tip of his nose.

The meeting was then adjourned.

With credit to Lewis Carroll

This was born out of bitter experience, the same bitter experience that provoked me to write Death of a Nightingale. I also had the realisation that that experience could happen anywhere, any time in the UK.

It is why I begin the Prologue with the following:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

TS Elliot, Four Quartets, Little Gidding 1942

However, way back in the halcyon days when I was a card-carrying member of Jo Grimond’s Liberal Party, as naïve at the time as everyone else, I recall Jeremy Thorpe appealing for funds at the Party Assembly. In a deep Cornish accent, he said “It be milking time, it be.”

Well, it’s “milking time” here. In blog 14 I explained where your contribution will go – to help children with special needs get a holiday in London that they would not otherwise be able to afford. Yesterday the charity could afford to pay for four of them. Today it is five. There are still six to go.

This is the payment that I ask for services rendered – if you have enjoyed reading what I have written, and if you share my concern.

So, please go to Make a Donation on this website, and make one.

I am sure that if I stood at the check-out of your supermarket with a bucket you would put in a £. I am sure that if you saw Death of a Nightingale on the stage and, at the end of the performance, you were asked for a small contribution, you would make one.

This is not very different, when you go to the Donation page on this website.

Why do I ask at this moment?

I have just received the following letter from the Community Foundation serving Tyne & Wear and Northumberland

“We have received 11 applications (for a holiday in London for children with special needs) and must say that it is very difficult to decide which are the most deserving…. There is a balance of £6,551 in the Fund and ought to make a 10% charge for administration. In other words £6,000 in round figures. We advertised help of up to £2,500 for holidays so it would be possible to make 4 grants of £1,500 or thereabouts.”

I will give you three extracts from letters forwarded to me:

My daughter is 11 years old. She has global learning difficulties and medical problems. In May 2004 she underwent a bone marrow transplant. She needed this as she had a very rare illness called chronic aplastic anaemia. Thankfully she is now well. Unfortunately with all the treatment she has lost the equivalent of 2 years schooling…. She is not allowed out on her own as she is very immature for her age and very gullible and thinks everyone is her friend. …. She got her bone marrow from the Anthony Nolan Trust. We are led to belief that the gentleman was from the London area. It is her wish to meet the donor and to thank him personally, for if he didn’t donate she would not be here.”

***

“My son is 12 years old and autistic. My daughter is 9 and acts as a carer for both her brother and her mother who is profoundly deaf. Over the last 5 years my son has developed a real interest in abstract art. It has helped him in numerous ways both educationally and helping him cope with the challenges he faces. He has even sold a number of them to family and visitors to the house. One of his favourite artists is Richard Serra a world renowned artist and sculptor ….

***

“My daughter has cerebral palsy and microcephaly and these give her severe learning disability… Her favourite things are animals and football. …. In London we would be able to take her to a zoo, to an aquarium and on the London Eye.”

I also have a letter from someone I knew when I was a governor. Her daughter has Worster-Drought Syndrome, an uncommon version of cerebral palsy, which affects her speech and her feeding greatly. She would love to take her daughter to London to see her Great-Grandfather. She would also like to visit Buckingham Palace “she is hoping to meet the Queen!”

These children cannot go on holidays on their own. There has to be a carer, too. That means every holiday costs more. Please join me in giving them the treat of a visit to London. I would love it if I didn’t have to choose between the 11 applicants.

GO TO “MAKE A DONATION PAGE” ON THIS WEBSITE NOW

The increasing numbers visiting this website must mean that you are copying it to those you think will be interested to read it – many more since I introduced this Blog – so warmest thanks. Mind you I still sense that there are some in the media who are reluctant to eat their own words, and academia is still very reluctant to engage in cannibalism.

Never mind, they will have to. I am encouraged to blog more frequently than I intended, and I am continuing to sharpen my needles.

This is the moment for me to invite you to scroll back to the beginning and see what it all adds up to.

I have accepted – others may not – Lady Warnock’s current view on Inclusion. I draw it from the public record that I include in Notes & Quotes:

A change of policy?
Extracts from House of Commons Education and Skills Committee – Third Report March 2007

A confused message
65. It is widely presumed that the Government has a policy of inclusion or an inclusion agenda. Indeed, Baroness Warnock in her recent article-which many described as a u-turn in her position on inclusion -concluded that “possibly the most disastrous legacy of the 1978 report, was the concept of inclusion.” She argued in the article that inclusion could be taken “too far” and that this was resulting in the closure of special schools to the detriment of children with SEN. (my underlining)

Given that Lady Warnock was one of the policy’s guiding spirits, this change of view will not have been made lightly.

I do not however accept the next paragraph in that report as an accurate statement:

66. The Government has, in written and oral evidence to this Committee, repeatedly stated that “it is not Government policy to close special schools” and that “Government plays no role in relation to local authority [...] decisions to close schools.”

The Department for Education and Skills has used the services of OFSTED in their inspections of Local Education Authorities to drive that policy. OFSTED’s job, put very simply, has been and still is to make sure that the steam-roller is in good working order, and it then awards badges excellence to those LEAs that meet their targets for reducing the number of children with statements and increasing the number of children with special needs in mainstream schools… but not otherwise.

That is not to say that there are not also those who working for LEAs that share the missionary zeal of their political masters, and thrive on it. But if you happen to get caught under the steam-roller that is another matter. That is what Death of a Nightingale is all about.

This policy has led to the closure of 100 special schools in the last ten years as the number of pupils in special schools has gone down and they became less and less able to provide the National Curriculum.

Act One Scene 2

David Harding is the Director of Education, Gerry Thompson Special Needs Co-ordinator.

DAVID HARDING It’ll actually run itself down, as we admit fewer kids to it. Some redundancies will be unavoidable and they won’t be able to deliver the national curriculum.

GERRY THOMPSON The bird’s already beginning to look a bit sick. Their roll came down last year by nine pupils.

From earlier in the same scene:

DAVID HARDING You’re dead right, but our political masters say that we have to consult. They just don’t realise how wasteful of time this is when parents take the offer seriously. Not just hours, days and days, nights and fucking nights. That’s how long it took three people to go through their written objections. And then we had to respond to them all.

JAMES HARRINGTON That’s one of the things that the Department is worried about.We just don’t want it to catch on. This is the second time it’s happened. It’s getting to be a habit, and one we can do without. We’ve now taken the Minister out of the firing line here and set up School Organisation Committees to deal with school closures and take the flak.

DAVID HARDING That was a clever move, a gesture to local democracy but making it much easier for us to deal with.

I share Lady Warnock’s view. It was right for more children with special needs to be included in mainstream schools, but others are being seriously “wronged” there. That must be what she means. They are being bullied. They are being denied the continuity of specialist education by dedicated and trained teachers and carers and the time that they were able to give.

This is not something that time and money will cure. Time will never be there. Money has already been provided in some abundance, not least with a new army of classroom assistants. However dedicated and caring, they can never be the same as fully trained teachers.
I think that the following dialogue between James Harrington, the mandarin and David Harding the Director of Education is only too accurate:

Act one Scene 2

DAVID HARDING Between these four walls I don’t think Inclusion is going to be a cheap option.

JAMES HARRINGTON Well leading accountants advised us that we could make some real savings simply by reducing the number of Statements LEAs have to write for children with special needs. Get that down by a third, reduce special school places by the same, and then hey presto you don’t need all those special schools. And writing Statements is a real headache. We’ll have to keep some schools for kids with profound difficulties or very complex behavioural problems, but most can go.

DAVID HARDING Hm. Accountants. Some are just calculating machines on legs. They play with figures and talk about outcomes. They leave us to deal with people and try to meet their needs. They’re just not street wise. They manage us when we should be managing them. The savings won’t be there if we do our job. Mark my words.

JAMES HARRINGTON You may well be right, especially to begin with. The Treasury has agreed to cough up millions to adapt mainstream schools and we will obviously have to commit ourselves to training. We are currently trying to work out the actual cost now. It’s not easy though. There’s a major study just started.

DAVID HARDING Good luck to it. I look forward to seeing the results. I just hope you haven’t provided them.

JAMES HARRINGTON You’re a cynic. Anyway, just you keep your doubts to yourself. Money is where money needs to be is my motto. We can’t go back now.

With one hundred special schools closed, that is now where we have to start. Eileen Winterton, chair of governors, says in the play: “you can’t turn the clock back. Those people shouldn’t be looking for an old clock. They should be looking for a new compass.”

Where should this new compass point? Not back where it came from; not to asserting Equality, treating all children with special needs as the same as each other or the same as everyone else; but with fair play trying to meet their individual needs, giving them the best chance that they have to be included in society as adults.

That, I suggest, should be the guiding principle. I will give you one more based on the old adage that castor oil doesn’t cure bunions. Civil servants cannot cure them either. They are, put very simply, the wrong people to decide which schools children with special needs should attend, and I include here educational psychologists employed by local authorities with a political agenda.

Act One Scene 1

Terry is a pupil, Margaret Williamson, head teacher and Judith Fawzi a parent.

TERRY I’ve got Crohn’s. It’s not very nice, but the physio’s help here whenever I need it. It’s great. The stupid local authority said there was nothing wrong with me.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Don’t say stupid, Terry. But it is what happens when an official of the Council decides these things. There really should be a multi-disciplinary team making these decisions. The Council doesn’t want the medical people in on the actual decision taking at all. They actually don’t want them to say anything at all to parents. They think it’ll cost them money.

JUDITH FAWZI Well you know I am a nurse. Nurses are not allowed to suggest a suitable school to parents. Would you believe that?

MARGARET WILLIAMSON I would. Health and Education are two separate worlds. We’ve got NHS people here, but they are, and they aren’t, part of our team.

JUDITH FAWZI Yes and those local authority officials don’t really know anything about either of these worlds, if you ask me. They should remember that the very first thing a parent asks when their child is born is whether it’s okay. They should remember that.

I will tell you here one other lesson I learnt the hard way in the economic crisis of the early 1970′s. I was making heavy weather of my retail business. One of my suppliers said to me “You need a manager.” I replied that I was the manager. To that he said:”No, you are not. You are the owner.” I found a manager who was street wise, and knew the world I was trading in much better than I did. The business then took off, and ultimately became a Plc. The moral of the story is this. Local Authorities “own” the responsibility for special educational needs, but they should not themselves try to manage it. They simply need to find the people who can, and provide the framework and the funds to enable them to do the job

I will give you one more relevant quotation from Death of a Nightingale:

The Prologue

This is another reason why well-intentioned plans have failed. Compassion can never be part of the job description of civil servants. Even empathy may be too much to ask. Central government is too remote, and local government is too parsimonious. Neither is best structured to deal with something that would better be handled by authorities that are regional and accountable. Airports are managed in this way. Just how sensitive is the system today to individual needs that are far more numerous and varied than most people realise? Does it even begin to think in terms of a holistic approach to learning difficulties? I pose these questions.

So all you people out there who are behaving like termites, defending your nests, use your human brain, and move on.

Make a start by putting Death of a Nightingale on your bookshelf … and reading it. It is good brain fodder.

About one hundred special schools have been closed in the past ten years. Brighouse School, the setting for Death of a Nightingale, would have been one of them.

Contemporary evidence suggests that if it had been, and if its pupils had been relocated in a mainstream school, many would have been bullied (blog 11) and their education would have suffered. Alternatively they would have ended up in another special school not designed to meet their particular needs. Follow the postscripts at the foot of the first page of this website, and you will see some of the evidence. Can you add to it?

How did all this come about?

Some people pursuing the policy of Inclusion thought that there were savings to be made. Others thought it was a matter of Equality and human rights. Many probably projected what they felt in their gut that they would want for themselves for everyone else. Earlier blogs show the danger of that.

Also, many of those who pursued a policy of Inclusion probably had no idea what a good special school was like and what it offered, and did not even know the range of special needs covered by the term special educational needs.

Death of a Nightingale fills the gaps in understanding.

It shows very clearly how diverse those special needs are. It also tries to give you a feel for a good special school, and what it is like. In particular it details why some children have a special need in the first place. Can you afford not to know these things?

As chair of governors of a special school – very good at the time – for over twelve years, I am well placed to reflect that to you.

It is far more digestible than some dry-as-dust, jargon-laden, academic dissertation shot full with “outcomes.” (See blog 3)More importantly, it is much nearer to the real world.

I urge you to read it.

From the Author’s Note

All of this may be easier to understand if SEN was called Special very different Needs.

Brighouse School caters for children who have physical disabilities and learning difficulties associated with them. There are very many of these disabilities. They include cerebral palsy, spina bifida with hydrocephalus, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, rheumatoid arthritis, heart conditions, osteoagenesis imperfecta, Crohn’s disease, epilepsy and neurological disorders. There are also victims of road traffic and other accidents. This is the world of burns and fractures. There are sub-divisions of each disability.

But there are also many other quite different needs and other special schools cater for them, some with a national name and a national reputation. There are children with profound and multiple learning difficulties PMLD, emotional and behavioural difficulties EBD, with hearing problems, speech or sight impairment, sometimes total. There is also dyslexia, dyspraxia and autism. In other words, think of a fruit shop. There are apples, pears, peaches, grapes, bananas and so on. With apples alone, there are coxes, bramleys, and golden delicious et cetera. It’s the same thing with SEN. There are about 400,000 children with learning difficulties of one sort or another.

I will wager that many parents, children and staff of schools closed in the last ten years did not want it to happen. As they watch their school being demolished, this dialogue between pupils Tracy, Philippa, Johnny and Terry, the head teacher Margaret Williamson, Emma Kirk the music teacher and Anwar Fawzi, a parent, will probably sum up what many must have thought and mouthed when the school they were associated with was closed.

Act 2 Scene 7

TRACY It’s a crime

PHILIPPA It’s a waste.

JOHNNY I think it’s obscene.

TERRY They’re all shit.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Terry, you shouldn’t use that word in polite company.

TERRY Very sorry miss. It’s those new pills I am taking. They don’t always work.

ANWAR FAWZI I hate them. Kids have just one chance, and they spoil it for them with their big ideas. And I hate them for something else. They try to make us feel guilty doin’ the best for our kids, givin’ good schools like this a bad name as a reason for pulling them down. I hate them
.
EMMA KIRK They don’t understand. Schools like this have the gift of healing, and they engage the spirit. That’s what’s so good about them. They just don’t understand.

Did those who draw up and administer educational policies begin to understand this? Did they feel any need to understand it? Phil Willis is a good example of a well meaning chap, but did he understand?

Notes & Quotes

Phil Wills MP, former Lib Dem spokesman for Education, said in the Commons on 20 March 2001: “Working in Chapeltown in the late 1960′s convinced me that unless we could educate the whole community together – wherever they came from and whatever their needs and disabilities – frankly we would breed dysfunctional communities. It is a point of principle to me and my colleagues that inclusive education goes to the heart of the education system.”

Visit a lesson in the school to begin to understand that meeting the needs of children should be at the heart of an educational system, not some dream from Never Never land.

Understand what a head teacher once said to me, and the head teacher in Brighouse School echoes: “The one thing that we can give to our kids is time”?

Act One Scene 1

Margaret Williamson is head teacher, Emma Kirk is the music teacher, Anwar Fawzi is a parent and Tracy, Johnny and Philippa are pupils.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON This is Tracy. She knows more about the school than I do. Been here since she was four. You know there’s a popular view that kids with special needs get on fine in primary schools but the difficulties may come later when they face a different world in the comp. But we are a real alternative even at the primary stage. We’ve got a highly skilled team here – carers as well as teachers. They put in the groundwork. It bears fruit in later years. Look at Tracy’s progress, and you’ll see what I mean. She is doing really well.

EMMA KIRK That’s very true. The older kids benefit as well for the same reason, and then they all go into the outside world. That’s where Inclusion really matters, isn’t it? And another thing. Those young kids are helped all along the way, seeing what the older ones can do, being encouraged by them. Saying things we can’t.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON You see it happening in the playground, or when they help wheel each other around.

ANWAR FAWZI You’re dead right. I’ve seen it on the school run.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON My philosophy is that there’s nothing our kids can’t do that mainstream kids can. We had some out abseiling just last week.

EMMA KIRK They can see for themselves just what’s possible with their lives, not what seems impossible. They see our kids leaving this school, getting jobs or going to university. This really gets the young ones trying to do just the self same thing.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON This School is certainly no dead end and there’s precious little bullying either. That’s a huge blessing.

EMMA KIRK Some people have described it as a ghetto.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON A ghetto – those people don’t know what a ghetto is – and they don’t know this School. We’re a great big family. That’s what we are. A great big happy family. I must tell you about Tracy’s great claim to fame. At one of our Presentation evenings – you know we have lots of fun and entertainment as well as prize giving on these great occasions – well, she caught my predecessor full in the face with a custard pie… she was supposed to miss.

TRACY He was supposed to duck. I paid the price the following year. I was asked to be Jack in the Box. I was inside that box for ages. He said he forgot I was there. Do you believe that?

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Do you believe anything in this world Tracy? That’s one of the lessons we teach you.

JOHNNY (voice from liberator) I was locked in a cupboard in my old school. Some classmates they were. The cleaners let me out. It was awful. They called me old crackers box.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Johnny had a hard time. His mum took him away from school. It was so bad. Finally came here. You wouldn’t believe it. He wants to be a journalist. He runs the school newspaper, and the local paper has had him in the newsroom. In this school we believe that kids are capable of anything.

ANWAR FAWZI I can believe that. Have you heard of Fred Raffle? He’s a blind man who plays cricket with dried peas inside the ball so you can hear it, and a suitcase as the wicket. He learnt the game at a school for the blind. And my goodness, he now commentates on international cricket. You know, I heard him commentate when India played England. There’s guts for you.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Fantastic. That’s exactly what we find here, and what we encourage. I hope mainstream schools find the time to do the same. The trouble is I don’t think they always do, and certainly their staff are not always trained to stretch kids. But that’s by the way. Here’s our athletic hero, Philippa. Tell Mr. and Mrs. Fawzi what you did last year.

PHILIPPA Competed in the Athens Para Olympics, the wheelchair 800 metres.

TRACY And won a Silver medal.

PHILIPPA Gordon won a Gold in the 4 x 400 relay.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON We had a team of three out there. Gordon Davis did fantastically well.

Fred Raffle is a real person by the way.

I will give you one other quotation from the book to illustrate what I am saying:

Act One Scene 3

Joan Errington, the English Teacher, Margaret Williamson, the head teacher, and Wendy Robinson a care assistant in the staff room.

JOAN ERRINGTON Read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies to understand. It’s the dark side of some kids …and some grown ups too. I’m afraid it’s the beast in them, and it’s always going to be there. Putting our kids into mainstream schools simply gives them more kids to bully. That’s why the problem, if anything, is getting worse.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON It’s not surprising some kids truant, is it? And their mums and dads are taken to court.

JOAN ERRINGTON And if they don’t truant they will have to manage with supply teachers who don’t know them, teachers who haven’t enough time for them, haven’t been fully trained for them, and teaching assistants who don’t know how to stretch them.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON And at what cost? They don’t come cheap.
WENDY ROBINSON And what about training? Will all the staff know how to lift and carry? And what about health? You don’t find a school nurse in every school, now do you? I can just see teachers wanting to give valium anally as nurse does here. And of course the physio isn’t full time. Will she be there when you want her?

JOAN ERRINGTON Yes, the great thing here is that our kids can get some stretching exercises between lessons, and when they want them.

WENDY ROBINSON Just how much time do physio’s waste just travelling from school to school? There’s not so many of them. And I’ll tell you another thing. There’ll be no-one like Mary Turnbull to show them how to bake tarts. No domestic science in the national curriculum. That’s the sort of education our kids need – how to manage when you leave school. That’s what our kids need, isn’t it?

MARGARET WILLIAMSON I share all your fears, I do, I really do, and I am afraid you’re right about those that go to another special school. They will end up in schools with PMLD kids, you know the ones with very low IQ, or with emotionally disturbed kids, and it just won’t be the right school for them. Oh yes, there’ll be some success stories, some great anecdotes, they’ll parade them like Lotto winners, but in today’s world no-one will want to talk about the ones that have gone wrong, will they? Now will they?

In my next blog I will explore where Death of a Nightingale points the way forward.

This blog is written in cold anger, not for myself but for the thousands of children with special educational needs who day after day and month after month are bullied in mainstream schools. This is not an argument against mainstream education for children with special educational needs. It is an argument for special schools as an approved alternative; and there are many more reasons which I shall record in my next blog.

David Aaronovitch, a normally well-informed columnist ,wrote in the Times on 17 March 2009 that bullying had been “defeated.” I refer him and you to the following that I quote in Notes & Quotes in Death of a Nightingale:

6 The Bullying of Children with Learning Disabilities- ENABLE Scotland 2007

Our work with our Young People’s Self Advocacy Groups has revealed that bullying is also an important issue for children and young people with learning disabilities. We joined forces with Mencap to undertake UK wide research to find out the scale and nature of the problem and most importantly to tell us more about how to stop it. We knew that bullying of children with learning disabilities existed. We knew that it is widespread and has a significant effect on children’slives. However, we were shocked by the results that the survey revealed. We could not have predicted the scale of the problem.

The sheer numbers of children who were bullied. The persistence of bullying throughout childhood. The failure of adults to stop bullying when it is reported. The range of places where bullying takes place The effects bullying has on the emotional state of children. The social exclusion faced by children who are afraid to go out. Bullying is not just a part of growing up. ENABLE Scotland believes that no child should have to put up with bullying and that we all have a responsibility to speak up to ensure that this stops.

Report Summary – Headline Results
93% of children with learning disabilities have been bullied
46% of children with learning disabilities have been physically assaulted
Half have been bullied persistently for more than two years

“Western Culture and the Christian Gospel” published by Marantha (www.maranthacommunity.org.uk) records that 19,0000 10-18 year olds attempt suicide every year. Daily Mail 8.6.99. And one in four of all deaths in the 15-24 age group is by suicide. 48% of children who call Childline contemplating suicide cited bullying as the main cause. 50,000 pupils play truant every day. Could bullying have some part in that?

The first time I realised the link between disability and bullying had nothing to do with SEN. It had to do with my cousin Grace Rein. She must have had a difficult childhood. She was born without one ear and with a facial deformity. Her father was killed in the first world war. Despite all of this, and in what was then very much a man’s world, she qualified as a pharmacist and together with her husband ran a small chemist shop in the Pallion district of Sunderland, one of its poorer districts. She was loved by her customers. In my eyes she was a true heroine. But she was terribly bullied at school, and in her own eyes until her dying days she never saw her true worth. Tough she must have been, but she never lost her feeling of insecurity. She never quite found happiness outside the comfort zone of her own home and the kinship she and her husband shared with Lake-land hikers. Her life was blighted by bullies right to its very end.

When I became a governor of a special school and heard parents and pupils describe bullying as something that they had to contend with I began to realise the scale of the blight on children’s lives that it brought about. I saw children whose lives were rescued in a special school after they had been bullied in a mainstream school. I will give you a few separate quotes from my play to give you the feel of this:

MARGARET Harry’s had real bad luck. You have only to look at his bones and they break. He had just mended his leg – broke it when a bully tripped him up on the stairs – and now he’s broken his arm, just moving from one lesson to another with a crowd of kids, and he slipped on some chewing gum. He’s an accident waiting to happen. Kids tease him like mad. Say he’s always “plastered.”

***

JOHNNY (voice from liberator) I was locked in a cupboard in my old school. Some classmates they were. The cleaners let me out. It was awful. They called me old crackers box.

***

PHILIPPA’S LETTER TO THE PM I first went to a primary school but I was called “old wheelie bin” there and that was not very pleasant. Some friends of mine were called “spackers.”

Words can be very cruel, and now we have cyber bullying too. It doesn’t have to be physical. One parent said to me that she would gladly let an LEA official look after her son for a week so he could see what it was like, dealing with its consequences.

All of this may help you to understand why I wrote the following in the Prologue to the Play

Social reformers have not always grasped this. I suspect that many have looked at this simplistically, seeing it as essentially society’s difficulty not an individual’s and, with the very best of intentions, projecting what they felt in their gut they would want for themselves for everyone else, a not uncommon mistake. Even disability organisations that have done so much to help the disabled may have fallen into the same trap. That is why they may not always have seen the quite different and varying needs that some children and their parents actually have, and a not always pleasant reality they have to deal with every single day. Very simply, some do not want an open door. What they want is a helping hand and the comfort zone of their own company. For them change is a worry and a threat.

Inclusion is a concept that is absolutely wonderful in the libraries of the mind. It is not always quite so wonderful in the classrooms of the real world, especially if vulnerable children are excluded when they are supposed to be included, made to feel unwanted and, at its worst, shoehorned into a hostile environment. Today classrooms are populated by far too many bully boys and girls….

It also explains why I suggest that you can care too much if it blinds you to uncomfortable reality. You do not see. You do not feel. Therefore you do not understand.

If you haven’t read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, I urge you to do so. Bullying starts in the nursery, and I am not sure that it ever stops.

We are told that the authorities know about it in schools and that they are dealing with it. They have appointed a Bullying Czar. There are school “buddies.” And it is a learning experience kids all have got to go through. “It is not a good reason for preferring a special school.”

If that is what you think, bully for you.

A short blog this time. I do invite you to read “Death of a Nightingale” in its entirety. Your world will not look the same afterwards. And you may think after you have read this that if someone applies to you for a job, their age may be a bonus.

Prologue

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

TS Elliot, Four Quartets, Little Gidding 1942

One advantage of a full and active life – sampling the Law, dabbling in politics, earning my living in retailing with some voluntary activity alongside – is that they provide learning experiences that cannot possibly be replicated in the classroom. Painful experiences can be the very best teachers.

When, for example, I point to social reformers seeing special educational needs “simplistically … projecting what they felt in their gut they would want for themselves for everyone else” I learnt this myself the hard way in the 1970′s. It is arrogant, egotistical or self indulgent take your pick. My business life never looked back once I started to serve my customers’ needs, and not just my own.

When I was involved in politics many years ago, and forwarding earnestly moved, unanimously agreed and gratefully received resolutions to the appropriate minister I ultimately realised that this was not much more than a dialogue between filing cabinets. I realised that all too often politics was played out by everyone as a game, and not as the power game that democracy is. This little dialogue between the mandarin James Harrington and the director of education David Harding reflects that:

JAMES HARRINGTON … We don’t mind petition signatures. There can be millions of them so far as we are concerned. Ultimately we just shred them and recycle the paper. It’s a great safety valve for the disgruntled. Objections with reasons – that’s another matter. Each one of them is shred resistant.

DAVID HARDING You’re dead right, but our political masters say that we have to consult. They just don’t realise how wasteful of time this is when parents take the offer seriously. Not just hours, days and days, nights and fucking nights. That’s how long it took three people to go through their written objections. And then we had to respond to them all.

When John Lavers, a school governor says “There’s only one thing you need to understand about their bookkeeping and that is that you are not supposed to understand it.” it is because I know that LEA budgeting is far more obscure than it needs to be, and does not measure up against good business practice. It then becomes a means of controlling and limiting the powers of school governors.

When the head teacher says: “Then the ‘phone rang. I had a really distraught mum complaining about the LEA. She’s wanted her son admitted to this School for ages. The LEA will admit him to almost any other one. You wouldn’t believe what her son’s been doing – smearing his business all over the walls of the house. Sheer frustration if you ask me. I am sure we could do something for that boy. And that poor lady is having to deal with this all on her own.” This of course was one of the more upsetting things that happened to me, one I have never forgotten.

And when I say “keep as far away from lawyers as possible. I have found that a few can best be described as little more than gas meters constantly demanding to be fed.” sadly it is what I have found. Best you are warned to take care, and not assume the advice you get is the best.

And along the way I picked up pieces of wise advice that I have never forgotten, such as that when you point an accusing finger at someone else, you should look where the other three fingers are pointing. This has some relevance at this time.

Very recently I had cataracts removed from my eyes. An amazing operation. Within a few hours the whole world is suddenly not just clearer but more sharply defined. No, not any better, but much clearer and … different. So everyone does have their own agenda. Let’s live with that.

I hope that you find that reading my book will have a similar effect, and I am curious to know which parts of it remove the scales from your eyes.

I will devote my next blog to bullying, and the remarkable statement I read recently by David Aaronovitch in the Times on 17 March that it had been “defeated.” I really don’t know where he got that from.

We have looked at Inclusion in the context of Education. What about Inclusion in the context of faith? I want to look at the word “Spirituality” in the context of music and faith given that they have been bedfellows since the dawn of civilisation. This is a sub plot in my book that you will find it in the Prologue, in Act One Scene 4: The Music Lesson, and in the Notes & Quotes at the end.

I ask a number of questions. Mustn’t we allow God some discretion as to whom he admits into his presence, not just one faith? Why do people come together in prayer only when they mourn their dead in war – and not always even then? Need religion be quite so divisive? Can we afford it to be today? Do we not now have to move on?

Can we find an answer to these questions in Music?

From the Prologue

……And so I pose a question. With arrival on our shores of many representatives of the world’s faiths, in what is a largely secular society, how are we all to live peaceably together on our small and crowded island? Why, in all humility, cannot mankind derive inspiration from the Prophets draw comfort not contention from the sacred word, and agree on the Laws of Noah?

The question starts in our schools. Emma Kirk, the music teacher in the play is simply happy in her faith. Why can’t everyone else be happy in theirs? Can she talk about it in the classroom? As one teacher put it to me when I asked her how she dealt with the very many faiths that are represented in her school in Leeds, she said “We celebrate everything”. Many other teachers probably do the same. That must be much better than not celebrating anything, and much more likely to lead to social cohesion. And, why not some healthy scepticism too? All of this should not worry those who have true faith or real doubt.

Sometimes political correctness may just occasionally not be correct. A number of years ago I heard the following proposition which I endorse here. If there is one God, it shouldn’t be outrageous to suggest that for the billions of people on this planet there are many paths to him or to her, just different routes up the same mountain, and that each one is equally valid and each one blessed. The Matterhorn above Zermatt in Switzerland looks quite unlike Monte Cervino in Italy, but it is the same mountain.

The strength of individual belief underpins the validity of one – it does not undermine the validity of another. It also underpins its integrity. No single way is exclusive, although Judaism, Christianity and Islam all find words to suggest that theirs is. If they have that belief, isn’t it time for them to shed it? A compassionate God, or Allah the All-Merciful, in his wisdom must be allowed some continuing discretion as to whom he admits into his divine presence – now mustn’t he?

Act One, Scene 4

Emma Kirk is the music teacher, Tracy a pupil.

EMMA KIRK Now let’s round this lesson off with two pieces of fine spiritual music. It’s appropriate that one comes from my part of the world, the other from yours. The voices you’ll hear carry the spirit of God in them or, if you want, simply the human spirit. Take your pick. Either way enjoy, enjoy. First my childhood hero, Paul Robeson, singing that famous spiritual Deep River. And to finish, just listen to this: Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah.

TRACY Wow

EMMA KIRK You guys will never be alone in life when you have found music.

From Notes & Quotes

The Dignity of Difference by Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks

God is God of all humanity, but between Babel and the end of days no single faith is the faith of all humanity. Such a narrative would lead us to respect the search for God in people of other faiths and reconcile the particularity of cultures with the universality of the human condition.

The Alexandria Declaration January 2002

“In the name of God who is Almighty, Merciful and Compassionate, we, who have gathered as religious leaders from the Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities, pray for true peace in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, and declare our commitment to ending the violence and bloodshed that denies the right of life and dignity.” (Read the list of signatories in my book.)

When I talk of “infidels” I am not just talking about the label that Moslems attach to people of other faiths or no faiths. It is the label that some Christians attach to other Christians and some Jews attach to other Jews. Does it really need to be?

I shall begin with my own faith, but you can address these questions through your own faith or with no faith.

I have posed the question why people come together in prayer only when they mourn their dead in war; everyone still preserving their own mode of address.

I am afraid that we do not. I have great admiration for AJEX and for the thousands of Jewish Ex-servicemen who served and died in the British armed services. I could not be one of them. In my ‘teens I caught TB playing chess with a young boy from the Kindertransport called Moshe Feld; the cure, an early contribution by the medical profession to my well-being. Isn’t it time that AJEX started marching with all other servicemen and women they served alongside on Remembrance Day and not the following Sunday? I know why they chose not to, but isn’t it time they did? As age begins to take its toll of their numbers they may have to.

I shall say one other thing about my own faith. I have a lot of time for the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks. I like what he preaches. I quote what he says. But when some are too exclusive, more in our community should promote what he preaches. Yes, here I am very, very inclusive.

What I am saying here is very simple. Moslems, Christians and Jews and others believe that God is One and that there is a Universal Creator. I hope that you can identify with these words of Emma Kirk, the music teacher in my play:

“I’m talking about the thing that separates the human race from the animal kingdom. And, even more important, it’s where all people can come together. I call it the spiritual side of music. The spirit of God is in this music, or the human spirit. Call it either. In my book they are the same thing. It’s the music itself, or it’s the people who perform it, like you do. It’s the music that some people sing to God. It’s also the music they play for each other. It’s the music of joy and the music of sadness. You will sense triumph over adversity and yes discord as well as harmony. It’s the music that carries the beat of life itself. We are going to start with harmony. You see the great thing about music is that it has no boundaries.”

One dramatic illustration of this is El Sistema, the all-conquering Youth Orchestra out of the back streets of Venezuela, with its charismatic conductor, Gustavo Dudamel . This is a socially inclusive concept that really works. Its 16 year old violinist Angelica Olivos said this:

“Playing music with other people is as close to God as you can get. Seeing all these thousands of little children learning what can be achieved by working together makes one believe that social conditions in Venezuela will get better and better.”

There is hope here for those who are seeking to find it, whether you believe or you don’t.

Things can change for the worse … or for the better, in the blink of the eye of time.

I was born on 29 January 1933. On January 30 Adolph Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Very recently I visited Berlin. I had lunch in a restaurant, but not any restaurant. It was attached to the Reichstag, a building now restored by the English architect, Norman Foster. Are you getting the message? On this visit I went to a concert in the Philharmonie. I heard a Palestinian pianist. He played one piece of music leaning over the piano keys, plucking the strings of his piano. The sounds came up from Judean hills. I don’t remember his name or the name of the music, but I would love to include this in Act One Scene 4.It was a spiritual experience. He would have a rightful place alongside Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Tibetan monks, Yitzhak Perlman, Evelyn Glennie and Paul Robeson in the music lesson.

Religious bigots – “termites” if you remember my first blog – will not share my enthusiasm here. Let them forget their bigotry and turn to their faith.

Get real

All of this is not just a stray thought. If I am right here, while religious wars are good or evil depending on your point of view, today they are idiotic. The real battle is to save our planet. This is much more important than getting the man on the moon ever was. Of course maybe you do not want to miss Armageddon in your lifetime, or you have your private dream of Paradise. In that case I have nothing to say to you, other than to suggest that you at least spare a thought for your neighbour’s grand children.

It may upset some people on both sides of the great divide in the Middle East to say this, but this dwarfs the question who owns what where in that region, or whether your way is better than mine to find God in your life.

It is one thing to live out God’s creation. It is quite another to see our bit of it destroyed.

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