Meeja studies. In need of CPR.

I don't have a qualification in Media Studies. None whatsoever.

I have however read a bit of Chomsky and watched Screenwipe so I've as good as got an A-level. Lol! ROFLCOPTER. LOLOCAUST.

Top banter for the media staff there. Subject denigrated in the first two lines. Dodgy internet joke. This is SURE TO GO VIRAL!

But stay with me. Stay with me in this newly chill freshly minted autumn night as I keep you warm by rekindling the flame of Media Studies. I've actually taught it. A few times, when there's been no one else to do it and I've been struck by the potential of the subject. Really quite taken with what it could be. Let's be honest, teaching sitcoms, soaps and scanning a few newspapers is a bit shit. ('Oh, here he goes again' shout the Meeja staff... yeah, like I did anything different!) but oh my word, what a subject it could be...

Here's why I think the current strategy of sidelining it in favour of hardcore grammar and forced daily sessions at the cemetery gates is wrong.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all in favour of studying dead poets. Or even Roger McGough or Russell Brand if you absolutely must but in the 21st century literacy is far more than this. It has an important place. A very important place but c'mon. People. How can kids leave school without being able to read an image? How can they not decode an advert or understand how focus groups work? How can they go through life without a really clear understanding of lifestyle marketing or hegemony? (Hegemony isn't difficult, I've understood it and my head spins at yr6 grammar tests.) How can they avoid exploitation, debt and misery without understanding how basic needs are cynically targeted everyday? 

We need to study Shakespeare because it's our culture, our heritage and says something about our emotions and essential human nature. I'll accept that. I've been to the Globe. I've seen Mark Rylance act conjuring magic from the ether with only his cadence, a tilt of the head, caressing primal meaning from the Bard's ghostly words. I'm not going to argue against it. But if Shakespeare is 'our' culture, so is Brighthouse. So is Britain First. So is an unquestioned torrent of commercialism which drowns out any hope of meaningful discourse. So are so many things which insidiously exploit and manipulate. We write people off for being 'thick' for falling victim to stuff we don't even discuss because we are tied up trying to ensure they have something to say about love sonnets for the examiner. 

Literacy is visual, digital, and often violently capitalistic (and thus often racist, sexist and divisive) and it is crucial to recognise this if we aren't to produce a production line of victims who sit with arms and mouths wide open waiting for the next faux need or moral panic to sweep the nation. 

Children who truly understand how images are produced and consumed might have more of a chance of resisting the bizarre and dangerous tide of eating disorder and general dysmorphic attitude which seems to afflict otherwise sane people.

Children who know how to produce images and communicate might mean a society without a) newsletters printed in comic sans using clip art and b) young people equipped for life in a sector which is growing where others decline.

Children who understand how an advertising agency works can not only work in one, but can form one themselves and put across their own ideas.

Children who know you can communicate an idea without writing a novel could be downright dangerous.

Move on. Quick...

Think of the discussions. (discussion is vital to developing genuine literacy as it happens...)
In the 1960s influential theatre guru Peter Brook wrote engagingly about the way theatre needed to become more visual and visceral in response to the image culture of the everyday world. He said (more or less) that traditional literature, presented in a traditional way was actually less dramatic than the spectacle of the everyday.

This was the 1960s. This was before your average 14 yr old* was sexting, accessing images of beheadings, constantly monitoring and curating their own media image via multiple social networks and viewing 300+ channels of always on TV as 'so yesterday.'

*I have taken some tabloid style liberties with this sentence.

Think of the discussions... Think. We don't teach this shit because we don't understand it. It scare us. It seems too big. It's hard work to get our heads round. It doesn't fit easily onto a worksheet. It changes. Man alive, it changes all the time. How can you teach that?

We box up media as a kind of irrelevancy when really if we were serious about teaching the 21st century we'd be dissecting the very soul of the subject and wondering if there's actually 3 or 4 vital subjects hiding in the elbow patched corpse of someone who was 'quite with it' in the 90s (hello) propped up in the corner of the staff room.

We might find at least some answers (beyond the obvious one of testing the crap out kids and austerity) to the mental health crisis. We might equip kids with the tools they need to deal with the reality of the year 2016 and beyond.

Are we not big enough to do this? Are we not big enough to teach the world around us? Are we forever doomed to founder on the rocks of 'how do you test what the examiner doesn't understand?'

I will return to this subject another time. I'd welcome thoughts.

Meanwhile, here's one for the kids. Liberals will love it.

Digital Lobotomy. Bearded tits and the exam system.

So, you get asked to do a presentation on something. Anything really. It could be the pollution of the seas by plastic, a history of theatrical stage design or an evaluation of the branding possibilities of paralympic sportspeople. Whatevs (as young people said a few years ago)

You go (or at least I do and reckon you probably do too) for the internet.

You start to research, looking for zippy phrases, interesting reading, nuggets of useful information, particularly striking photographs, maybe a whole series of youtube documentaries or even, if you are feeling particularly researchy and need hard serious sources quickly, an ebook.

You don't think twice. You're not cheating, you're living, you're planning, you're constructing something from the ether, the collective thought, surfing the wave of knowledge so to speak.

You're not cheating. Lets be very, very clear. You are not cheating. Perhaps, you could, if you wanted wait till you have a free Saturday, go down to your local library, order some books, wait another 2 weeks for them to arrive and then spend hours reading no doubt fascinating information, sifting the information for the salient points.

You'd probably be a wiser person, but I doubt your presentation would be ready on time.

The internet is basically brilliant. I can find out anything I want. Look, I'll go and find something new out now. t's 20:54. I'll be back in a minute...

20:56: There's such a bird as a bearded reedling. You can see them on the Norfolk coast. This is news to me

A Bearded Reedling (probably unaware of it's place at the heart of this polemic)

20:57: I wonder if Bearded Reedlings are rare? 

20:59: I'm not entirely sure how rare they are, but I do know now they are also found in Belarus and Azerbaijan

21:00: Still not sure how rare they are, but I've discovered they are sexually dimorphic. I've connected this to other things, like mallards and pheasants as it means difference in character/appearance beyond the sexual organs. This is a phrase I've either never heard of or have erased along with almost all of my GCSE biology. Exploring further and using my brain I've realised many things are sexually dimorphic and that sea mammals tend to display the biggest size differences between gender. I'm on a roll. 

21:03: I'm pretty certain they are what is also known as the Bearded Tit (insert hilarity here) and there's between 1/4 and 1/2 a million pairs of them in Europe. 

21:06: Ok, controversy hunters. It seems the reedling is a tit, but not a tit. It seems it was placed with the tit family before then being catagorised as a parrot bill but then (get this!) it wasn't one of those either and it was placed in it's own category entirely... called 'Panuridae'

21:08: Further research suggests that the 'Panuridae' family is an umbrella term which includes Parrotbills and the bearded tit. 

I could go on. I really could. But this blog started as a process of self reflection and a chance to air my thoughts in the hope somebody would respond and subject them to lavish praise and promote me to shadow education minister , critical rigour. I'm not sure further delving into the world of small birds will hasten this process. 

The point is, I can turn raw information into knowledge. I can research and find things at the drop of a hat. So can young people. It's quite a feature of my job role at work as I'm sure it is in yours. I've found it's had an effect on things like my short term memory. Who really needs one of those eh? I've learnt new ways to improvise round this. Google Keep is a godsend. Alarms on my phone. 

Sometimes I even wonder if I'd like to put the genie back in the bottle. It doesn't fit though. The genie got fat and used to living a free range live and me and the genie just need to learn to co-exist. 

The young people need to learn to live with him too. He's a scary genie sometimes. He can grant wishes and not all wishes are good. Some of the wishes are though. Some of the wishes are amazing. Some of the wishes could change the entire face of life and learning. 

Yet we send them into rows of drafty, echoing halls, year after year, armed with a pen and a piece of paper and then wonder why they are disconnected from education. We wonder why they roll their eyes and sigh at endless 'technique' classes and being drilled to remember stuff half of which is going to be outdated by the time they have picked up the exam certificate. 

We tell them 'it proves you can learn' or 'it's what employers want' as if the only reason to get an education is for someone else. It's not about teasing threads of enquiry or following a trail of curiosity. It's so 'you can get a sticker which proves you can learn' 

We chastise them for 'being bored' then rush to the staffroom to check social media and I think we're threatened. We're threatened by a world that doesn't need us to learn things. 

It does need us to learn to learn things though. We could do a such an incredible job if outside the idea of the 'connected classroom' we also had 'connected exams.' 

Lets start by introducing a new GCSE - we'll call it GCSE Information Synthesis. 

It's going be a 3 hour long exam. The question paper will be as follows: 

"Take a topic of your choice (or choose one from the list below) and present your learning on that topic in the form of an engaging presentation which demonstrates knowledge of the subject and of any debates or arguments surrounding it 

- You should use your own words and clearly cite the sources of any quotes you use in support of your argument or explanations

- You may link to webpages to support your work, alternative you may choose to screenshot any data, images or statistics you wish to use" 

We'll make the mark scheme up another day. I'm bored of writing the paper now. You get the idea though. You get a U for trying to hack into a VPN so you can look at porn. That much I've decided.  

There's no earthly reason in my mind that can excuse the failure of the exam system to even acknowledge the 21st century. It makes me angry. It shapes my lessons. That makes me angry. 

We don't even think of giving learners the chance to showcase the kind of skills they'll actually need to possess in the 21st century. 

 

Warm up.

Here goes something. Here goes nothing.

This is designed to be an outlet for my views and frustrations, my hopes and intensely felt ambitions. The stuff that I reach a fever pitch of mania or hit the point of abject misery about. The things that really scare me.

This is really a warm up exercise. A mere flexing of the finger muscles in time to some music. A train of thought, a drive to nowhere in my mind.

Teaching is exhausting. Teaching in a system that seems to actively work against you is exhausting. Hitting your head against the in-built conservatism, the fearful learners, empty vessels, boats becalmed, waiting for you to breath wind in their sails and the saddened sighs of senior leaders who wish it could be different but keep turning the handle, grinding the sausage meat gristle and all.

Teaching is pure. Teaching is corrupt. Teaching is something you master and then realise is like sand through your fingers. It's about what you know works but you never know quite what day what works will work on.

Teaching is outdated but the best teachers always find a way. Always have done always will. It's rhythm and life and it's beige staid, endless hours spent mastering something you don't even know what it's for.

Teaching is outdated, it's a Victorian system in a digital world. It's a system which was built for the factories, which was built for the workhouse, built for masses of urchins in matching clothes not the post century of self individuals who by 13 are curating their own digital media stream like little moguls of self doubt.

Teaching is guessing what's in the exam board's head because that's not a waste of time is it? Teaching is virtually cutting and pasting someone's coursework together because no one can ever fail and no one ever learnt anything from failure. It's innovation with a gun to your head. It's being told your lesson you slaved over and worried about and lived twice and three times over at the cost to your sanity, your family and your physical health wasn't very good because "it lacked sparkle"

It's watching people ascend to management roles in an education institution (note the 'education' part of that statement) on the back of brain-fucking-gym and realising they really do think your brain has buttons. They really do.

It's the magic when the kid who got only got a D tells you that your lessons were life changing and after being quiet for two years speaks with an eloquence and dignity that makes your jaw drop and everyone in the class is quiet and the hairs go up on the back of your neck and you think 'I'll remember this forever.'

It's the fact the kid from another country came shyly to find you and ask you what the girls meant when they said something to him and he wasn't sure if they meant it or were taking the piss.

It's when you get so upset at the fact they think they are failing because you've just given them a B that you go home and cry in an impotent rage, you feel like you want to punch the wall over and over again until your knuckles bleed.

It's the cheeky kid who was really, really, really bright and lasted 3 weeks in your a-level class and you knew he'd gone to work because his mum was on at him about it while the nice neat middle class kids whine about not having enough extra lessons.

It's sitting in the staff room listening to moaning and whining and telling yourself that you'll never ever be that kind of teacher then waking up one day and finding yourself looking out of their eyes and sitting in the chair they sat in.

It's caring enough to check the book, keep your promises, organise the trip, run the club, always smile, always forgive, always be calm, always be there through sickness and misery and never letting on that you'd rather be anywhere else. It's caring enough to lie to yourself that you are really important, it's caring enough to find a reason to like the kids. All of them. Caring enough to not have favourites, caring enough to rewrite things and change the topic and change the exam board and do the new activity and spend the weekend or the evening doing all this stuff that you don't even know makes any difference and will probably be greeted by an indifferent shrug anyway.

It's not caring enough to have a breakdown, not caring enough to be the teacher who stands in front of the whole school and waves a stack of work that nearly killed them and shouts 'everyone do this!' It's not caring enough to think Ofsted can go for a running jump, it's not caring enough to bother about brand and marketing and career development, not caring enough to think you are Mother Teresa, Jesus and that woman who looks through people's shit all rolled into one package of self righteous zeal on a one man operated train ride to fix-the-world's ills through file organisation and seating plans.

It's part of the world yet it sometimes seems hermetically sealed.

It's really quite complicated, enormously complicated, thick books full of theory and psychology complicated and it's beautifully simple all in one.

It is probably better than digging holes. At least better than digging holes with a spade. Endlessly. In the rain. And for that, we should give thanks.

Next!