Talking about a Revolution

Listening last night to some of my former students speak about the damage which can be caused when words are taken away and voices hushed has made me reflect a great deal on this idea; made more poignant through the sad loss of Nelson Mandela during the evening. 

Attending a play at my old school last night, I was moved by the sentiments expressed. Characters expressing the power to change the outcome of your life; of not imprisoning thoughts behind a fear to speak, was a poignant message indeed and considered the damaging impact of having a voice silenced and a message hushed. The play, The Love of the Nightingale, involved (amidst the array of strong ensemble acting) the gruesome mutilation and extraction of a young girl’s tongue – a bit grim for a school play you might say, but it was a play based on one of Ovid’s myths and he was always a fan of the macabre (always easy to justify anything a little x-rated  in schools when it is a text written BC!); the grotesque action serving as a physical metaphor for the ramifications within a society when someone is silenced.

To leave the theatre and find the news of Madiba’s passing struck me as rather poignant. After all, he lived as a man renowned for not allowing himself to be silenced; for speaking his heart and his beliefs and, more significantly, for living by them.  The internet is littered this morning with people posting up maxims and idioms from Mandela’s past; on equality, 

on education, 

on global and environmental harmony.

Mandela has been, and forever will be, a symbol of wisdom and triumph; made strong I feel because he actually practised what he preached. There are so many echoes of Mandela’s sentiments being splashed across the internet in a mass statement of support, of mourning and of confirmation of inspiration today, and yet I wonder, when the immediate mourning fades, how many of us will continue to live by these morals that we hold so dear to us today? After all, these maxims and idioms preached by Mandela that we are all embracing so truly today existed yesterday, and will do so tomorrow. Yet they are not just truths to be admired in a fine graphic art form (e.g. the lovely pictorial image and rhetoric on a Facebook page) and forgotten once the mourning of Mandela's passing moves on.

If we feel so strongly about the sentiments that Mandela preached, why do we not all feel strongly enough to live by them every day?  Art is merely a reflection of truth, of the reality that we exist in. And  whether art is a painting, or poetry, a play or images of Mandela’s rhetoric splashed across Facebook this morning, it is all a reflection of what we aspire to be or echoes of who we are; it shouldn’t be separated from reality but should simply be a part of how we live. We should, if we mean it, surely practise what we preach and believe what we say (or believe what we “like” others saying). After all, the good man himself said:

It becomes so easy nowadays to splash pictures up on profile images; to “like” sentiments that others express and to hold temporary beliefs for as long as they are seen on someone else’s computer screen. But often the vacuous nature of the fleeting “liking” of these beliefs discredits their meaning. Just imagine what could be if everyone today who has expressed a sentiment of mourning for the loss of one of our world’s greatest activists actually embraced his maxims into the way they lived from here on in. Here today is the opportunity to move ourselves forward, to not just talk a good talk, or think a good thought but to do and be the people we would like to be.

I am often criticised for being an idealist and for trying to evoke an ideal world around me. After all, being an idealist (and not, as many people would call themselves, a realist), I am choosing always to look on the bright side, believe in people, in the power to change and I always have my cup half full, even if the juice doesn’t taste that good sometimes.  When I see such energy of hope that comes from people, as we are all witnessing across the globe today, that idealistic nature burns that little bit brighter. After all, hope is the power to fuel change, is it not?

Talking of change, I will soon be packing my bag once again and changing pace once more. I have booked my flights out to Tanzania, heading off in the first week of January for three and a half months, with the sole aim to write, write and write some more. I am already brimming with excitement at the thought of going back to a country that is so utterly inspiring to me. Before then, there is still much to do and much being done. Life has been rather jam-packed over the past month. From working in schools from Devon to Dorset to London; to working on writing new programmes for Bright Green, to endless hospital trips and tests, medical pokings and proddings (merrily all clear, phew), to reading like the clappers, I’ve sadly not had that much time to actually write, which is the main focus of what I’m trying to achieve at the minute (which is another reason I look forward to the gift of time in the first few months of the new year).  Education remains the focus of my reading and writing; with my recent missives to Mr Gove moving along, albeit at a snail’s pace of progress. I replied to the reply – see blog post below – and await the next step with bated (tinged with mild cynicism) breath. Meanwhile, other ideas are bubbling for action; more on those later.

What else have I been doing? I’ve done a few assemblies in local schools, spouting passionately about the need to readdress stereotypes of the developing world, and the negativity of adopting a one-size-fits-all education policy; I've caught up with lots of friends and had some great evenings at the theatre; I’ve had a delightful dinner with some of my charming former English students and family (firmly advocating the brilliance of the youth around me and the need to champion power to the young minds of this world). Staying on the theme of championing a nation’s youth, I spent a fascinating day a few weeks ago attending a Ted Talks conference in East London.

Having been a fan of the concept of Ted for many years (those of you not familiar, check out www.ted.com and enjoy) and using the lectures frequently in my teaching, I’ve been holding out for an opportunity to attend a conference in person for a long time. Sadly, the main annual conferences are always in faraway land and cost the price of a small mansion, thus ever elude me, but the recent spout of Ted X Talks (independently run conferences) brings Ted down to the mildly impecunious masses.

Held in The Yard Theatre, Hackney (a quirky independent theatre that would have been the ideal venue had the heating not have been broken and the indoor temperature been on a par with a warm day in the depths of the Arctic Circle), the conference was entitled Fountain of Youth and was an educational based day of speakers. Celebrating Youth Day, the conference was not only broadcast live on the internet, but was one of one hundred different youth conferences taking place that day across the world.  The theme combining this global conference was “The Spark”, and was celebrating the young people all over the world inspiring extraordinary changes in their communities. There was a wide range of speakers; each given just eighteen minutes to pledge their cause, advocate their concern and spread their message from the bounds of the infamous Red Dot.

Several speakers (and content) really stood out for me that day. One man, George Turner, had started his own charity to reduce re-offending and anti-social behaiour by young people and to improve community cohesion. 

He talked about his work for twelve years for a local government in the same role (specialising in gang work, youth justice, family breakdown etc.) and the limitations that the role started to throw up when he realised that he was working to government quota and was being set targets that were impossible to meet whilst also doing an ethically and emotionally sound job. In order to meet targets, George explained that often children or young people would be passed from agency to agency (once one agency’s time-quota ran out) and carer to carer, and thus find themselves having to re-adapt time and time again to a new figure of “someone that cared”. There were two facts that he explained that really struck me:

1. A 23 year old man (whom George has known since he committed his first offence aged 12) has been through a myriad of support systems put in place by the government (prison services, welfare etc.) and individual charities to offer support and has, so far, cost the tax payer £1,012,590 through requiring a myriad of different public support services.

2. The same young man has finally chosen to stick with the only adult who has remained in his life and provided consistent care and stability to him over the past eight years – the local drug dealer...

  

A Headteacher, Shaun Dellenty, spoke about the importance of allowing individuality to be nurtured through education; using the analogy that a child comes into school in the form of an iceburg: what is showing is what they have learned from their early environment, what later develops is what is shaped by the environment of their education. Yet all too often this individuality is melting before it has a chance to emerge.

Entrepreneur, Tokunbo Ajasa-Oluwa, spoke of the work of his charity (and others like it) in supporting children from underprivileged backgrounds achieve their dreams within creative careers; directions that are not supported through the education they are receiving. (He also spoke about the huge gulf of difference that is emerging between a digital persona and a person’s actual persona; thoughts linking back slightly to sentiments I raised earlier in this blog post).

All three of these talks, other people speaking throughout the day,  the range of incredible charities and organisations present; all of these examples of social work and development for change within our society’s children, they all have something fundamental in common. They are all working to provide metaphorical plasters for the problems of a nation. Each of them has to address and treat symptoms of problems experienced by our nation’s youth and all of these symptoms are ailments derived from the same cause: our education system.

It may seem that I keep on harking back to this idea in my writing, but that is because, in essence, it is the foundation for all of my current thinking. If we are not educating our children to effectively survive in the world we have built for them, then we cannot possibly expect them all to cope. We can, instead, expect them to need support (often continuously) from a myriad of outside agencies in order to plaster the gaping wounds within our educational body.  It seems that the voices of those who need help the most are simply not being heard: it is, fundamentally, the youth of this nation that continue to suffer from our inability to provide them a stable start in life and it is time their voices were heard and that we worked to make a difference to inflict change on our systems that are no longer working; it is time to address the cause.

To return to the maxims echoing in the legacy of Mandela, maybe it is poignant to end with his infamous quote championing for change, putting power into the hands of all people prepared to do something beyond preaching to try and make a difference in our world’s future:

 So, who's with me...?