It is time for me to return to Death of a Nightingale and to the pivotal issue in the Play. I outline it in the Prologue. I illustrate it in the play.

In the UK and beyond, where does control stop and participation begin? This is one of the most important questions that Western democracy has to confront.

The Prologue

There are all those working in the public service who feel obliged to do some things they know they shouldn’t be doing, or not do things that they should.

There are school governors, and people like them, who are doing valuable voluntary work within the community, but who are deliberately denied the tools to do it properly by those who prefer to do it themselves, but want to make it look otherwise. It is the System that needs looking at, the con in consultation, the charade of partnership, the make-believe, and as a result, the mess of much of it.

I am only saying here what more and more people are saying. Lying has become endemic from the top downwards. But, when proven lying is a heinous crime in our society. the denial and the cover-up necessarily follow, and compound the initial problem. The checks and balances that I always thought were an integral part of a democratic society have been disabled.

………….

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.

These extracts show how it works out in the play. You should read and “freeze frame” each scene in its entirety. That is one reason why it is “a play written to be read.”

Act One, Scene 2

James Harrington, the Mandarin from the Department for Education and Skills, is discussing with David Harding, the Director of Education in Wexborough, how the policy of Inclusion can be driven forward through the closure of Brighouse School.

JAMES HARRINGTON The key is to get the Head teacher on side. You really must try to do that.

DAVID HARDING To get the egg to accept the frying pan. You’re right. The parents have got a lot of time for her. They trust her. If she argues the case for closure it will be much, much better than if we do. And the staff will go along with it too. There should be no problem getting the School Organisation Committee to go along with the closure after that.

JAMES HARRINGTON She must know that virtue has its reward but definitely not otherwise. She will need another school when the School is closed. You do write her references, after all.

DAVID HARDING Yes, we do. But that’s a trade secret. Governors might do it more knowledgeably, maybe more honestly. We do it more …er purposefully.

Act One, Scene 5

David Harding, the Director of Education in Wexborough and Gerry Thompson, SEN Controller persuade Margaret Williamson, the head teacher of Brighouse School, to argue for its closure.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON I thought OFSTED was interested in standards and wouldn’t like what you are suggesting.

DAVID HARDING You misread it. They’ll turn a blind eye to it. They won’t put a black mark against you or your school while this is going on. And when they inspect us they’re only interested in whether we are delivering government policy and meeting government targets. That’s the way that things get done.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON And people get done.

GERRY THOMPSON Margaret, just look two years ahead. Fewer kids. Less money. Fewer staff. Do you think you personally, never mind the School, can face an OFSTED inspection.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON I’ll have to if that’s what the parents want.

DAVID HARDING Look, we’re all in the same boat. Can’t you see that? If you lose half your school, do you really think that you can deliver the national curriculum to the rest?

MARGARET WILLIAMSON It wouldn’t be easy.

DAVID HARDING It wouldn’t be possible. And meanwhile you’ll have a battle royal on your hands. The parents will be on your back and on ours, and don’t think you can escape the backwash. You’ll still need another job sometime. You must see that you will have queered your own pitch. People will be looking for reasons not to appoint you. You must see the danger of that.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON I haven’t much alternative then?

DAVID HARDING None.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Tell me, am I a mouse in a trap or a rat leaving a sinking ship?

DAVID HARDING Neither, you’re just doing the job you’re paid to do, like everyone else. When you are employed by the State you’re not paid to ask questions. In particular, you’re not paid to ask yourself any questions. That’s not part of your job description, and it’s incompatible with Health and Safety Regulations.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON When you’re employed by the State, you don’t have to be brain dead but it helps. Of course this is how the Germans and the Russians learnt how to survive their little dictatorships. Can I have a glass of water please?

Act One Scene 6

Margaret Williamson, head teacher of Brighouse School is explaining to her friend Joan Errington, its English teacher, how she has been pressurised to argue to parents the case for the closure of her school.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON They gave me no choice. They really didn’t. The Government wants schools like ours closed. They think it’ll save money which it won’t. They pass the buck to the local authorities to do their dirty work for them and the local authority passes the buck to me. God, what a lousy world.

JOAN ERRINGTON I can see what’s going on. They don’t want another losing confrontation with parents at all costs.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON You know what I feel like? I feel like a lump of plasticine, a little lump of plasticine that they have twisted in to a shape of their own choosing…. (Pause)…. Give me a hug, Joan.

In case you have still to read the play I need to explain to you who is the Nightingale in “Death of a Nightingale.” It is not Margaret Williamson, the head teacher, who tries to take her own life when she is asked to betray her school. It is Brighouse School itself … or it can be anything else you value that is under threat if you do nothing about it.

It is, of course, not only those working in the public service who feel obliged to do some things they know they shouldn’t be doing, or not do things that they should. It can happen in the private sector as well, and in the professions too. Sadly there are far too many examples of this, and too many very unfortunate consequences. I refer to one here.

Act 2 Scene 7

Joan Errington, the English Teacher, Margaret Willamson the head teacher and Eileen Winterton the chair of governors watch the bulldozer at work demolishing their school.

JUDITH ERRINGTON … You know, all they do is play games with people’s lives – you kids are just little pawns in a gigantic game of chess.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Sacrificial pawns, Judith. And for everyone else it’s “Snakes and Ladders”, with more snakes than ladders.

EILEEN WINTERTON In Enron there was another name for it. They called it “rank or yank”. You were “ranked” if you played ball with them, “yanked”, sacked, if you didn’t. Well, no-one blew the whistle, and people lost billions of dollars and their jobs..

I flag up this issue in Death of a Nightingale, using the drama of the human dilemma. When you are presented with it, do you keep your head below the parapet … or do you jump off it? What would you do?

And what should Society do?

I shall consider this in my next Post.

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<And the Importance of being Holistic.

Those who can think only in terms of “Outcomes”, and not in meeting the individual needs of children and their families, (Revisit Post 3) may as well delete this without reading it.

Each of these Posts can be read on its own, but they inter-relate; they can be read forwards or backwards or you can pick one with a pin. They explain the thinking behind Death of a Nightingale. This comes partly from my involvement in Special Educational needs as Chair of Governors of a special school for over ten years. It comes partly from a range of quite different experiences. (Revisit Post 10) In due course they will be added to the third edition of Death of a Nightingale.

I would not be writing this particular Post had I not been involved in special educational needs over many years and had I not, a few years ago, also been a Director of the Community Foundation for Tyne, Wear & Northumberland, an organisation that owes its success to matching the cause of an individual donor to a need nearest to it.

In this Post I invite you to think about the role of the private benefactor.

There are some on the Left who see the State as the great provider and they marginalise as intruders those individuals who try to make a contribution. Meanwhile, some on the Right satisfy their consciences when they leave it to the State to look after those less fortunate than themselves.

In the UK, when we can anticipate a leaner, meaner State, with £175 billion of debt to support, it is worth asking whether either of these attitudes makes sense. In the United States they are less common.

A very generous donation of £1,000 to “Death of a Nightingale Fund” in the Community Foundation serving Tyne, Wear and Northumberland gives me the opportunity to consider the question here.

This brings me to Annabelle, to her mother and to her younger sister. The donation, made up to £1,500 from the Fund, has enabled the whole family with Annabelle’s helper afford a holiday in London.

The interesting fact here is that the State generally has been very supportive of the family. It is life itself that has been unfair, as it can be for some people.

Annabelle’s mum has been the heroine. If she hadn’t been, she and her family would have gone under. Both she and her sister had cancer early in their lives; she was diagnosed at the age of 19, her sister at the age of 25. Her sister died of it in 1997, leaving a young child.

She had the agony of deciding whether to have both or one of her ovaries removed, and has now lost both. Before that, in April 1998, she gave birth to Annabelle only to discover after a while that she was severely disabled. Meanwhile in July 1999 she gave birth to Elizabeth. Shortly after this her partner left her to fend for herself withdrawing his financial support, sadly a not unusual occurrence in this kind of situation.

There is no complaint here against the NHS, only gratitude. Social Services provide a carer for a couple of hours a week to help her to be more inclusive in the community and to spend quality time with Elizabeth. Bullying is not, as I understand it, an issue as it is unfortunately with many children and their parents, nor has there been the misplaced insensitivity of hard hearted officialdom. Life itself has been its own taskmaster, and a few battles to tap into scarce resources.

When I was Chair of Governors of a special school I met many mums like Annabelle’s and some dads too. When they had children with special educational needs – sometimes more than one – and sometimes without special needs, they could share their love for them equally, but not their time. Here fairness was the only measure, and not always easy to come by: there is a moral in that. (Revisit Posts 4 and 5) These were the kind of people I was pleased to be able to help save their school from closure.

The mission statement for the school was “Whole School – Whole Child”. I always thought it was a very good one. But as you read the story of Annabelle you may think that the mission statement for a special needs policy should be “Whole Child – Whole family”, not social “Outcomes”.

This is what I am getting at when I write in Death of a Nightingale

The Prologue

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?

It is in that context that I have already suggested that deprivation should be of greater concern than disability. (Revisit Post 27) With the aid of time, patience and professional help, and you need all three, you can work your way around a disability, and learn to live with it. I make this point more than once in the Prologue.

In many cases these children need time and patience which can sometimes be a scarce resource. And they need dedicated teachers, carers, school nurses, physio’s, speech and language therapists and others who have the expertise to give them the one chance that they have to find their place in the world. This is what a good special school can provide, if a mainstream school finds it difficult. Hence the importance of choice.

Deprivation is another matter.

A holiday, even in the UK, for a family with a disabled youngster is always going to be more difficult to plan, more expensive too. It is a real loss if it is out of reach especially when everyone else is taking theirs, and afterwards showing off their holiday snapshots.

It is most unlikely that the State is going to help here. Hence the opportunity for you to get some real satisfaction that comes from personally lending a helping hand or, more precisely, a helping £ or two.

Some moralists bemoan the selfish gene. They are wasting their breath. Most people will always have their own agenda. But a proper agenda will always have an item A.O.B.- any other business.

I suggest that this should be for the world outside oneself.

I hope that I have made out a case to you for this small little bit of it.

Please go to the MAKE A DONATION page on this website, and help another family with a disabled child get a holiday in London.

AND COPY THIS WEBSITE TO YOUR FRIENDS SO THAT THEY CAN DO THE SAME

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Death of a Nightingale reveals the whole of it, as do these Posts if you browse them. This is yet another example of the law of unexpected consequences and as you will see, it is hot from the press.

But first let me remind you how I introduce the play.

The Prologue

Therefore I present Death of a Nightingale. In the play the head teacher, Margaret Williamson, comments “Your social engineer has put square pegs into round holes … with epoxy glue.” He does so whenever he goes against the grain of man’s natural instincts, and because his focus is on outcomes, and not on meeting individual needs. He does not always know what those needs are, nor does he feel any need to know. He combines myopia with tunnel vision. Society then has to cope with the consequences.

Here is one of them, reported on the BBC yesterday. It echoes the main theme of the play, the pressure the State brings to bear on people to implement its policies.

Concern over school medical care

BBC 16 June 2009

Schools are putting teaching assistants under increasing pressure to carry out medical procedures without appropriate training, a union warns.
Unison says most support staff only hold a basic first aid certificate.
But some are being asked to carry out procedures such as administering drugs for heart problems, changing colostomy bags and testing blood sugar levels.

“Imagine the pressure of being told that a child could not go on a trip unless you would change their colostomy bag” Christina McAnea Unison.

Government guidelines say staff must be properly trained before carrying out any medical procedure.

And they stress that it is the responsibility of schools to make sure that is happening.

Unison is calling for the introduction of new, tougher guidelines setting out what support staff should and should not be asked to do.

The survey found 85% of the 334 respondents were expected to provide medical support, and 70% to administer medicines as part of their job – even though these are voluntary duties.

Michelle McKenna, a school support worker, “it is only a matter of time before something terrible happens”.

Lack of competence

One in four respondents did not feel competent and comfortable with the responsibility of administering medicines or providing medical support.
And one in three said they were not familiar with school policy on how to do it.

I know from my role as chair of a Care Home for the Elderly just what a scandal this is. It is even worse than Unison says.

Put very simply, carers are not nurses, and in a Care Home as against a Nursing Home, only qualified district nurses can legally undertake nursing procedures. I can’t believe that the same should not apply in our schools. Care assistants have their rights too.

Local Authorities have a duty of care laid down in a case in the highest Court in the land, the House of Lords, when four of them tried unsuccessfully to disown it.(Revisit Post 27)

I quote here an extract from Death of a Nightingale that heralded this precise situation .

Act One Scene 3

Margaret Williamson, head teacher, Joan Errington, English teacher, and Wendy Robinson a non-teaching care assistant worry about the consequences of Inclusion for children with physical disabilities

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?

When I wrote this I knew how many classroom assistants it had been found necessary to engage at considerable cost to try to make Inclusion acceptable in mainstream schools. I also knew that although these assistants had been given some training, it didn’t always work out. I did not anticipate they would be expected to act as school nurses as well.

In case you feel comfortable with the policy in other respects, let me take you to some other extracts from Death of a Nightingale.

Notes & Quotes

7 Extracts from Education Policy Partnership,December 2003 Review – The impact of paid adult support on the participation and learning of pupils in mainstream schools

A recent government consultation paper on the role of school support staff DfES, 2002 indicated that there were over 100,000 working in schools – an increase of over 50 percent since 1997.

• Paid adult support staff can sometimes be seen as stigmatising the pupils they support. Paid adult support staff can sometimes thwart inclusion by working in relative isolation with the pupils they are supporting and by not helping their pupils, other pupils in the class and the classroom teacher to interact with each other.

• Paid adult support shows no consistent or clear overall effect on class attainment scores. Paid adult support may have an impact on individual but not class test scores.

• Most significantly, there is evidence from several studies of a tension between paid adult support behaviour that contributes to short-term changes in pupils, and those which are associated with the longer-term developments of pupils as learners. Paid adult support strategies associated with on-task behaviour in the short term do not necessarily help pupils to construct their own identity as learners, and some studies in this cluster suggest that in such strategies can actively hinder this process.

• Paid adult support staff can positively affect on-task behaviour of students through their close proximity. Continuous close proximity of paid adult support can have unintended, negative effects on longer-term aspects of pupil participation and teacher engagement. Less engaged teachers can be associated with the isolation of both students with disabilities and their support staff, insular relationships between paid adult support staff and students, and stigmatisation of pupils who come to reject the close proximity of paid adult support.

• Given current interest in involving users in planning, carrying out and evaluating research, it is surprising that so few studies actually focus on the pupils’ views.

This is every bit as damning as the BBC Report.

And here are a couple of extracts from a piece of research from the Research Unit of Newcastle University. They explain absolutely everything, even though it may not be what its authors intended. Please note the date. The policy was well under way by then.

8 Extracts from Costs and Outcomes for Pupils with Moderate Learning Difficulties in Special and Mainstream Schools 1999

p 14 We have some generalised findings on outcomes from our literature survey and these are highly suggestive – but they do not make it possible to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the schools in our study,…..For many, inclusion is a fundamental human right – not simply one form of SEN provision amongst many, to be evaluated on the balance of advantage it confers on children. It is important to be clear, therefore, that an analysis of costs and outcomes cannot properly be used to determine questions of rights.

P71 The state of our knowledge about outcomes for pupils with MLD is not good, and our understanding of the relationship between costs and outcomes is even worse.

For those who imagine that the policy of Inclusion saves taxpayers’ money please note that one classroom assistant costs more than the entire cost of a pupil’s education in a special school.

Read the rest of the quotation in Death of a Nightingale. The Department for Education and Skills should have referred back this Report. It did not, perhaps because it mirrored back the conclusions that its paymasters were looking for, and to that extent fulfilled its purpose.

In conclusion let me remind you what I write on the opening page of this website.

… there is work to be done. As Eileen Winterton, the chair of governors, says in the play, “You cannot turn the clock back. You are not looking for an old clock. You are looking for a new compass.” and “You can care too much. You can you know, if that blinds you to uncomfortable reality”.

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This Post begins with a health warning for “Termites”. It may seriously damage their equilibrium. They would be advised to delete it without reading, as is their custom.

Revisit Post 1 to understand what I mean by “Termites”.

Essentially they are the people who defend their nests and cannot move on. The rest of us are humans, and we know that we have to move on.

Unfortunately termites are everywhere. They populate Parliament, Local and Central Government, the learned professions, Academia, the Unions, Banking and Commerce. They are united by one simple adage “You watch my back, and I’ll watch yours.”

This is not the world of the brown envelope so much as the buff one.

In a word, they form the System.

I title this post “ Like Hitting a Rolled-up Sock” because this is what it is like when you try to fight the System. A golfing friend of mine uses these words to describe a bad golf shot where the ball doesn’t travel very far. If you have tried to fight the System, I am sure you know what I am getting at.

Death of a Nightingale is all about special educational needs, But as I write at the beginning of the Prologue, it “provides me with a vehicle in which to travel the world.”

In my Post “Lessons from Living” (Revisit Post 11), I said that experience could be a better teacher than the classroom. I have had plenty. So I write this with feeling.

In Post 11, I wrote at the outset: If I had to nominate one sentence in my book that expressed what I am about and what the book is about, it would be Joan Errington, the English teacher, saying in the last scene of the second act “I really do wish someone would expose the lousy, stinking, hypocritical charade of those who put it about that they care.”

Termites don’t. It is not in them to.

I am certainly here referring to my experience of dealing with central and local government. But, as I have said, termites are everywhere.

Many years ago I chaired an Action Committee in the UK Furniture and Carpet Industry, representing leading manufacturers and retailers. It was formed in response to Government criticisms of the Industry, in particular its failure to offer the consumer a quality product and quality service. Out of this was born the Qualitas Conciliation Service. But we came up with a bigger package than that. It required all upholstery to be tested for performance. It required a labelling scheme complete with icons to advise the consumer how to select and use their furniture.

When the Government of the day removed the threat of legislative intervention, the termites in the Industry and its Trade Association took over. And nothing came of it. They said they cared. Some did. Most didn’t. And many of them have gone out of business since. They thought the bottom line was one year’s net profit. Short-term termites!

The bottom,bottom line is whether a company meets its customers’ needs.Those who have read earlier Posts will recognise this. It is a familiar theme.

Let me describe another experience, a better one. I chair a Care Home for the Elderly. They are regularly inspected by the Authorities. The staff happen to be very good anyway, legitimately wearing the badge of excellence that they have been awarded. But these inspections keep them on their toes all the time, the unannounced ones especially so. There are no termites in this Care Home as a result.

Now revisit Death of a Nightingale and you will begin to see where this is all leading.

Act One Scene 5

David Harding, the Director of Education in Wexborough and Gerry Thompson, SEN Controller, are leaning on Margaret Williamson, the head teacher of Brighouse School. They wants her to argue the case for closure to parents.

DAVID HARDING Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON You admit that you’re being cruel.

DAVID HARDING But I am trying to be kind. Look, you have said that half your School roll would fit into mainstream.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON Yes, if you can get it right for them.

DAVID HARDING That’s what we have to do.

GERRY THOMPSON That’s our job now.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON But you haven’t really started it.

DAVID HARDING It’s what we have to do. OFSTED will be on our backs if we don’t.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON I thought OFSTED was interested in standards and wouldn’t like what you are suggesting.

DAVID HARDING You misread it. They’ll turn a blind eye to it. They won’t put a black mark against you or your school while this is going on. And when they inspect us they’re only interested in whether we are delivering government policy and meeting government targets. That’s the way that things get done.

MARGARET WILLIAMSON And people get done.

What this Post is about is stopping us getting done.

It really is no use appealing to people’s better nature. You are wasting your time. Termites, for a start, have no better nature. They are just termites.

If a national body is interested in maintaining standards, that should be its remit. OFSTED is a good example. When it inspects Local Education Authorities it should examine all complaints made by the public against those Authorities and then put into the public domain its findings.

The same logic can apply elsewhere. I am sure that NHS hygiene and cuisine would be good candidates for the same treatment, and Government departments another.

Rudy Giuliani, the former Republican Mayor in a Democratic New York, saw the problem and the solution. Read his book “From Leadership”, and you will see how he applied it. I quote the following extract in Death of a Nightingale in relation to Education.

Notes & Quotes

The New York City school system was never really going to improve until its purpose, its core mission, was made clear. What the system should have been about was educating its million children as well as possible. Instead, it existed to provide jobs for the people who worked in it, and to preserve those jobs regardless of performance. That’s not to say that there weren’t committed professionals at every level within the system. There were, and that’s the shame of it.

Those with their hearts in the right place were the ones who suffered most. Until I could get everyone involved to sit together and agree that the system existed to educate children, fixing little bits of it was symbolic at best. Band-Aid solutions can do more harm than good.

The system needed a new philosophy . It needed to say we’re not a job protection system but a system at its core about children’s enrichment. All rewards and risks must flow from the performance of the children. If you took a broken system and repaired just enough so that it could limp along, you lessened the chance that a real and lasting solution could be reached. That’s why I resist partial control over a project. The schools should be made into a mayoral agency—like the Administration for Children’s Services or the Fire Department— so the city can enact real solutions.

So my message to all three political parties is don’t think that passing another Law, giving a few more “rights”, will change anything. The deck chairs on the Titanic are already half submerged.

Remember the old Latin tag “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Loosely translated it means find me a good policeman quick.

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LOOK WHERE YOU LIKE, AND LIKE WHERE YOU LOOK

PLEASE COPY TO ANYONE YOU THINK WILL BE INTERESTED

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<And think of all the other people who have triumphed over their disability, no-one more so than Helen Keller.

Enough for the moment of our sick, sorry for itself society.

There are more serious fault lines in our Parliamentary system than taxpayers’ petty cash funding moats, duck houses and non-existent mortgages. For a start, the oh so hollow televised debates in the Commons with its empty acres of green leather filled only for a weekly Punch and Judy show. And the House of Lords? It looks even worse. These days the Mother of Parliaments shows not just its age, but also its gray decrepitude. No wonder mistakes are made. But I shall return to this theme later.

Let me get back to more wholesome thoughts, I turn back to special educational needs, and in this Post I shall consider the distinction between disability and deprivation. I ask you which should cause greater concern?

One of the most remarkable things about my involvement as Chair of Governors of a special school for physically disabled children over many years was to discover what a moving and inspirational experience it was. It is against that background that I pose that question.

The Prologue

I still have snapshots of the school in my mind from the time I joined it as Governor in 1988. A head teacher with a vision and a mission statement shared with his deputy “Whole School – Whole Child”, warm, dedicated and committed staff, and above all bright eyed, happy purposeful children,enjoying their school days and helping each other along the way. A win,win situation for everyone included in it – parents, teachers, carers and most of all its pupils. Presentation Evenings captured it all. That is where they all came together in one joyous, celebratory event.

They all had the pride of achievement – without being proud.

What I found particularly moving was seeing children learning to accept and overcome the difficulties that their disabilities presented them with, and the ever so patient help they received from their dedicated and highly trained teachers, carers and therapists.

In Death of a Nightingale I take you into its classrooms. It is a work of fiction, but fact is just below the surface and, from time to time, cuts through it.

Act One Scene 1

Anwar Fawzi and his wife Judy bring their young son Harry, a child with brittle bones, to the school for the first time.

ANWAR FAWZI ….. 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 learned 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.

The Cricket Society records:

Fred Raffle is well known in cricketing circles, as is his guide dog, Barney. Fred has followed Glamorgan round the UK and England round the world for decades. The journeys all begin from his home in Sunderland and for the last 10 years Barney has travelled to Glamorgan games with him. During that time Barney has been to 35 grounds and been patted by 14 England captains.

On his travels Fred has worked with BBC and Sky and is well known to their broadcasting teams. When David Lloyd was told of Barney’s 10 years service and impending retirement he suggested a benefit. As luck would have it Matthew Maynard, who is Barney’s favourite cricketer, was travelling to Durham to speak to the Cricket Society on 6th November and this was Barney’s big night. The branch made a donation from the raffle, photographs were taken of the members with the championship trophy and Glamorgan and Durham gave items of cricket memorabilia to auction on Ebay.

Fred Raffle visited my local Rotary Club with Barney to share with us his enthusiasm for the game of cricket, an enthusiasm he gained at a School for the Blind where he and others found a way of playing it with a bag of peas for the ball and a suitcase for the wicket.

The story of Helen Keller is even more astounding.

Act One Scene 3

Joan Errington, the English teacher, and Emma Kirk, the Music teacher, are talking in the staffroom.

JOAN ERRINGTON You’re right There’s real triumph when it comes out of adversity especially if you have to suffer a little first It sets kids up for life. Mollycoddle them, wrap them up in cotton wool, and everyone else will run off with the medals. I think it was Helen Keller who said “Security is an illusion. Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing at all.” She rose to a challenge didn’t she? Blind and deaf from early childhood.

EMMA KIRK Nannies should stay in the nursery, if you ask me. It ain’t no good pretending that life’s easy. The easy option is usually a dead end. For our kids it is.

Health and Safety enthusiasts please note Helen’s words.

Notes and Quotes

Helen Keller

Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880, to parents Captain Arthur H. Keller, a former officer of the Confederate Army, and Kate Adams Keller, cousin of Robert E. Lee.

She was not born blind and deaf; it was not until nineteen months of age that she came down with an illness that did not last for a particularly long time, but it left her deaf and blind. At that time her only communication partner was Martha Washington, the 6-year old daughter of the family cook, who was able to create a sign language with Helen, so that by age seven, she had over sixty different signs to communicate with her family.

In 1886, her mother Kate Keller was inspired by an account in Charles Dickens’ American Notes of the successful education of another deaf blind child, Laura Bridgman, and travelled to a doctor in Baltimore for advice. He put her in touch with local expert Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time.

Bell advised the couple to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind, the school where Bridgman had been educated, which was then located in South Boston, Boston, Massachusetts.

The school delegated teacher and former student, Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired and then only 20 years old, to become Keller’s teacher. It was the beginning of a 49-year-long relationship. Helen’s big breakthrough in communication came one day when she realised that the motions her teacher was making on her palm, while running cool water over her palm from a pump, symbolized the idea of “water;” she then nearly exhausted Sullivan demanding the names of all the other familiar objects in her world including her prized doll. Anne was able to teach Helen to speak using the Tadoma method touching the lips and throat of others as they speak combined with “fingerspelling” alphabetical characters on the palm of Helen’s hand. Later, Keller would also learn to read English, French, German, Greek, and Latin in Braille.

In 1888, Keller attended the Perkins School for the Blind. In 1894, Keller and Sullivan moved to New York City to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf and Horace Mann School for the Deaf.

In 1896 they returned to Massachusetts and Helen entered The Cambridge School for Young Ladies before gaining admittance, in 1900, to Radcliffe College, where Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleton Rogers paid for her education. In 1904 at the age of 24, Keller graduated from Radcliffe magna cum laude, becoming the first deaf and blind person to graduate from a college.

Helen Keller wrote Light in my Darkness, which was published in 1960. In the book, she advocates the teachings of the Swedish scientist and philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg. She also wrote an autobiography called The Story of My Life, which was published in 1903. In total, she wrote twelve books and authored numerous articles.
Extracted from Wikipedia

Read Death of a Nightingale, and you will find many other illustrations of the point I am trying to make. Read the Music Lesson in Act One Scene 4.

Now for a couple of pieces of nonsense.

First consider a case in the House of Lords, the highest Court in the land, reported in the Times Law Reports on 28 July 2000.

The Court ruled that teachers and those working for local education authorities, had a duty of care to children with special needs.

That might seem to be self-evident, but think about it. Four Local Authorities, Hillingdon London Borough Council, Clwyd County Council, Bromley London Borough Council and Hampshire County Council, took four cases to appeal to that Court in order to try to establish that that was not the case!

Never mind the waste of time and money. What about their attitude of mind?

The Local Authorities tried to argue that as Parliament, in establishing the Statementing process to protect children, had not provided this – in fact it had actually rejected an amendment to this effect – it had limited the duty of care to the Statementing process, and that was the end of their responsibility.

Seven Lord Justices decided otherwise – thank Heavens.

They said quite specifically that whether Local Authorities liked it or not, whether teachers liked it or not, whether it produced a rash of claims or not, whether it was difficult to put a figure to the damages caused or not, teachers, education officers, educational psychologists, all those working for Local Authorities had a duty of care, and the Local Authorities had what is called a vicarious liability, that is an indirect but real liability, for any failure on the part of their employees to provide it. That failure is called Negligence.

Local Authorities could not even argue that they had to address only the child’s educational needs. The judges again were explicit. “They have to take reasonable care of their health and safety including the monitoring of their needs and performance.”

I am not at all sure that solicitors always take full note of this case when they represent the parents of children with special needs.

For my second piece of nonsense consider the following. The quotation is a factual one.

Act One Scene 3

Joan Errington, the Music teacher and Margaret Williamson, the head teacher, are talking in the staff room.

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.

Just what would have happened to Fred Raffle and Helen Keller if that “clever, clever wise guy”, in fact a professor committed to Inclusion, had been involved in their education?

What these stories tell you, and many others like them, is that when you focus on “outcomes” and not meeting individual needs, you are going to fail some children. Is that really what you want? (Revisit Post 3)

It isn’t the disability that matters so much as the deprivation that it can bring. Focus on deprivation, and there’s no knowing what miracles can be achieved. If you want another story to make the point of this “needle” think of El Sistema,the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra. (Revisit Post 17)

What politicians of all three political parties need to grasp, and academia too, is that children with special educational needs are all different. I set this out in detail in “The Book” page in this website.

Their needs may overlap, but likewise they are all different. If they are not being met individually then they are deprived, wherever they are being educated.

Those who do not realise this have a serious learning difficulty.

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