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.