Telling

Not driving

At 17 I refused to learn to drive.  I cannot remember a single other person in my class at school who took the same decision.  Even now people express surprise on learning that I can’t drive and a lot of people still ask when I am going to learn.  I will never learn, not now.  I thought at one stage I might give in, as everyone seemed to think I would.  I was even offered a car as part of a job once.  But I still never learned and now I am pleased and surprised by my own steadfastness. 

Where I grew up in affluent rural Cheshire, driving was considered essential in order to gain any kind of independence and freedom.  Parents regarded teaching their children to drive as one of their final duties.  It was perhaps one they approached with more enthusiasm than the others because it made them feel like experts and it released them from the taxiing role they had played for so long.  So integral was driving to the idea of freedom that one of my friends intended to steal the family Volvo as soon as he passed his test and drive it to Russia, where he had a female pen pal, and then return it by boat once he was firmly ensconced.  My Dad offered me lessons but I never took a lesson, I never took the test and I found my freedom in other ways.

I had a number of reasons for not learning to drive but environmental concern was the main one.  Even a child can see how the car makes neighbours strangers to one another, causes noise and danger and stifles nature with great long ribbons of grey tarmac.  The smell and the smoke coming out of car exhausts made my childish but not wholly inaccurate mind worry about the end of the world.

My family was also a reason for me not to drive.  Although Dad offered to teach me and pay for some lessons I did not really feel like taking him up on the offer.  I had had enough of Dad’s amateur mathematics tutoring to put me off the idea of him ever teaching me anything again.  When I heard about how much lessons cost I thought it seemed like an incredible waste of money.  In fact my penny pinching streak has played more of a part in many of my environmental decisions than I might care to admit.

The final straw was watching my elder sister go through the process of learning.  The tortuousness of her lessons with Dad and the battles she fought once she had passed it, mainly over when she could have the car, what for, and whether she could drive it out of the narrow garage by herself.  My sister has unknowingly fought and won many battles on my behalf.  The one for which I am most grateful is not having to wear an ‘A’ line skirt to school because S fought furiously, and finally successfully, against it for herself to the point where our mother didn’t even try to make me wear one.  But the battles over her learning to drive were so awful and were so close to the point of us leaving home that I decided not to even enter the fray.

On having made the decision not to drive, I watched my contemporaries, one by one, learn and take the test.  Amongst my peers there was a huge amount of rivalry over who could pass first and with the fewest number of lessons.  Gradually I began to sit as a passenger in my friends’ cars, a habit of freeloading that continues to this day.  One of the good things about never learning to drive is that I am blissfully unaware of how good or bad particular drivers are so I am never able to fear for my life, even when there is cause to. 

One thing I did become painfully aware of is how being behind the wheel turned my friends into people I did not know.  Whilst Mr Toad was amusing and loveable in his glee over his ‘poop-pooping’ motor car, my friends were loutish and frightening.  Even my gentlest friend M can swear like a Tourettes sufferer behind the wheel.  Not only that they became terrific motoring bores.  My sister, like me, married a man she had met and got to know as a young teenager.  As 17 years old this was the most thrilling and romantic time in their relationship yet what seemed to animate them more than anything else was in-car conversations about three point turns and other such mysteries. 

The sixth form common room was full of similar conversations.  One girl seemed genuinely traumatised that she had failed her test for the third time after driving through a large puddle.  Despite living through all these tedious technical conversations my lack of knowledge about cars and motoring is so complete that it is actually a little debilitating in adult life.  My mother, who is partially deaf, often adopts a safely neutral expression when pretending to have heard something that she hasn’t.  I use the same tactic when people use motorways and junction numbers to describe geographic locations.  I have no idea where any of the ‘M’s’ are no matter how often they might be mentioned in everyday life.  I have no idea how much cars cost.  No even roughly.  There seem to be a bewildering number of car brands and makers on the market and I can’t tell the difference between any of them.  I couldn’t tell you the make or indeed the colour of any of my friends cars, even if they’ve been driving the same car for years, and I certainly couldn’t locate the car in a car park, even if I’ve got out of it five minutes before.  I don’t know what the clutch is or the difference between a handbrake and a footbrake and the only reason I know what a gear is is because bikes have them too.  The only thing I know about cars is that if someone has got one I think them less of a person for it which makes me unhappily superior to the rest of the population.

The best thing that not driving gave me was cycling, a habit initiated by my cycling proficiency test aged 11.  There are few childhood memories as wholesome as cycling on my brown shopper to St. Lukes church to sing at choir practice with our charismatic vicar and our cheery and rotund choir mistress.  Being able to do something so dangerous by myself gave me a thrilling sense of space but also centredness.  I was once stopped by the police for cycling without lights whilst coming back home in the evening time.  I developed a habit of cycling on the pavement which I’m afraid I still do.

By the age of 17 cycling was already such a habit that I didn’t consider the independence offered by driving as that important because I was already free.  This freedom was partly about the ability to get from A to B under my own steam, but it was also about cycling fast down steep hills.  I love the feel of my body falling whilst freewheeling a downward plummet.  Cycling was such a large part of my early life that walking still feels like travel at the wrong speed.

How have I managed without driving?  In the early years it was cycling.  Later at Durham it was the train.  Train to see M at York, train to St. Andrews to see D and S, train home to Manchester, platform 13, or Crewe, platform 1.  Not once did my parents drop me off or collect me from University.  I do not say this as a statement of resentment, but as one of curiosity as it was unusual then and probably even more so now.  I arrived and left Durham with what I could carry and consequently acquired very little during my time there, or indeed afterwards.  This is an example of one environmental good deed leading to another.  I arrived as a young graduate in London with a single suitcase and immediately was no longer an oddity because no one else drove either.

A secret of my car free status is that I am a happy accepter of lifts.  There is a certain type of older gentleman who will always give a lift to a younger lady rather than see her walk.  Another one of my guilty secrets is taxis.  I love to sit in the back of a plush London cab.  Without a seatbelt, slipping a bit on the smooth seats, watching the scenes of picture postcards and history books appear like a movie through the windows.  During my ten years there I never tired of this and I now tip with more confidence and panache than anyone I know. 

Taxis are of course expensive.  I travel a lot through my work as a researcher and it wouldn’t be unheard of for me to pay £40 for a single journey.  I spent a fortune on taxis whilst pregnant.  My mother in law would balk at such extravagance but in my experience the people who are least shocked by the suggestion of a taxi and indeed who would know the number and book one for you, are those people who don’t have much money and fully appreciate how expensive it is to own and run a car.

Public transport is uncomfortable but easy in London and I use it elsewhere as well.  Even the most remote and improbable places have train and bus services, tourist information boards, taxi offices and friendly people to show you the way.  You could drop me anywhere in the country and I would get home safely.

As I’ve got older I’ve begun to worry less about the environmental apocalypse that I fear is coming, and started instead to look forward to the time when other people live more like me.  I am hoping that after decades of increasing car use and ownership the trend will reverse during my lifetime.  Sometimes I look forward to this promised land where I will be old but my ideas will be as fresh as paint on a new, quieter world. 

There would be some cars in this world, but all those smaller unnecessary trips will have been wiped out.  Hitchhiking will have become popular and acceptable, even for small distances, even for the school run.  Parents will ride trikes, with ingenious child seats and space for shopping.  Neighbours and work colleagues will be able to take part in hi-tech car pools where tracking devices show where cars are going and whether a friendly lift is on offer.  I think people’s social lives will change too.  It will become more acceptable to cull friends who live far away, rather than carrying out dutiful long journeys to maintain the relationship.  People will base themselves more permanently in their locality, live their lives on solid ground, live in the moment.  Where longer journeys are necessary, people will use budget car hires trading in second hand cars and bargain insurance deals.  The cars that are on the roads will be smaller and less polluting and a modern interpretation of the Robin Reliant is on the market.  Professional walkers accompany school children to school and help older people get to the shops. 

Will I ever live in this world I wonder?  The world moves fast but not as fast as our imaginations.  Perhaps my world is merely a fantasy recreation of the 1950s England for which I have great fondness but never experienced.  Perhaps by the time the traffic slows down and begins to fade away there’ll be bigger problems to contend with, like extreme weather, panic migration, and financial collapse. Perhaps I’ll die early and I’ll never know.  In the meantime I walk down the street taking my revenge in small ways, like glaring at drivers as they speed round corners and pressing the pelican crossing button even when I don’t want to cross.

Doing research differently

I am currently reading Doing Research Differently by Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson.  It is really good and so far seems to endorse my own research style which is nice!  The authors are qualitative researchers looking at fear of crime.  They criticise traditional quantitative questions used to measure fear of crime such as "how safe do you feel walking alone in this area after dark" as too suggestive of particular types of crime and evoking fears which might not relate to crime at all (Why might you be "walking alone" in the first place?  Is this not the stuff of nightmares and films rather than everyday experience?)  They point to alternative qualitative approaches and in particular the "non-inventionist free narrative".  This approach does not expect the interviewee to understand completely their own actions, motivations or feelings and looks for clues within stories for psycho-social explanations for why they feel the way they do about crime.  Story telling has the advantage of having 'indexicality' in that they contain certain facts or signficances beyond the tellers intentions.

One problem with the free narrative is that whilst I'm sure it can work excellently in a one to one conversation about crime, which is after all a whole literary genre, I'm not sure it works nearly so well in group situations addressing less colourful subjects, say dishwashers or pensions.  In addition, one of my problems with facilitation can be overindulging  the keen story tellers at the expense of the other participants' boredom levels.  My rescue is the facilitator 'box of tricks' which has to be prepared well in advance.  This contains small exercises such as point allocation games, completion tasks or role play to get out of the groove of well rehearsed stories and into new and surprising terrain.

Nappy natter

It's hard to imagine being in nappies oneself.  But it must have happened once.  My first contact with the reality of nappies was realising as a teenager that the cloths used in the washroom for general cleaning and mopping up spillages were in fact ex-nappies and undoubtably once used for me.  Urgh!  I never changed a nappy until I changed my own baby's in hospital. 

Of course I use washable nappies for my baby.  Washable nappies are so almost-back-in-fashion that they have not yet settled on a permanent name for themselves.  They are variously known as 'washable', 'non disposable', 'real', 'cloth' and also by their oh-so-cute brand names TotsBots, Fluffles, Kissaluvs, Motherease, Sam-I-am and so on.

The Women's Environmental Network and the manufacturing associations have been at war for some time over the environmental credentials, of lack thereof, of the two different nappy choices.  Clearly disposables are bad for landfill, but it is equally clear that washables are bad for water and energy use.  My understanding is that the science is hazy and it is inherently difficult to compare a paper/plastic/silicon/waste system with a cloth/energy/water system and come out with a definite answer.

So if the science is hazy, why do I use washable nappies?  Well, I believe that new, better scientific research will show more conclusively that washable nappies are indeed better for the environment.  Common sense just says so.  It is also easier to cope with the guilt of using the washing machine a lot (electricity is invisible after all) than the guilt of generating massive multiple stinking sacks of rubbish for other people to clear up and send in barges down the Thames.

I also like to support the underdog so I view myself and my baby as sort of pioneers of cloth nappies in a smug sort of way. The odds are really stacked against us.  They are expensive because they are not mainstream.  Clothes are not cut to fit over the wider bottoms of cloth nappied babies.  Mothers no longer have the knowledge of how to deal with real nappies.  It's a lot easier to throw something in the bin than work out what temperature to wash them at, how full to fill the nappy bucket with water, what to soak them in etc. etc.  Nursery staff are not keen on washable nappies and some don't know how to use them.  Some nurseries even provide pampers as part of the nursery fee.

There are also other beneficial side effects.  By my calculations there is a cost benefit which becomes a lot more significant if the nappies are used for more than one child.  There's also an instant camarardarie between mothers of cloth-bottomed babies which is a real delight.

Climate clinic

I am planning to go to the 'climate clinic' today at Labour Party conference.  It is so well branded, sounds so cool.  But of course it is just a hotel.  Organisations are fond of rebranding hotels for the period of conference.  I remember IPPR's 'illuminations' at Blackpool a few years ago and there is the 'inclusion hotel' in Manchester this year (Novotel).

The Worst Journey in the World

I've just finished reading this book by Apsley Cherry-Garrard.  It really is magnificent and goes once again to show that it is only worthwhile reading books recommended by my mother.  I've had a lot of disappointing fiction reads recently (you know who you are Donna Tartt et al) and I think I'll stick to the world of fact for a while.  There's enough in the annals of Antarctic exploration to keep me going for some years I feel.

The book is two inches thick and heavy going at times.  I don't understand how large, wooden sailing ships work and much of the detail in the account of the sail from New Zealand to the Antarctic is lost on me.  But if you can tolerate being a little baffled by the scientific description and concentrate on the heart of the book, which is about friendship, tragedy, great risks, scientific discovery and an awe of nature, this is one of the most rewarding reads you can ever imagine.

At the end of the book I was left feeling intensely sympathic towards the author who writes with a clarity and honesty which rises above the ideals of the day.  The men on Scotts expedition were heroic, patriotic and patriarchic in a way which seems misplaced now. Cherry-Garrard himself was all of these things yet was also full of doubts about them.  A young man desperate to prove himself (he paid to go on the expedition) he paid the price for his three years in the South with a lifelong overdraft and a series of nervous breakdowns.

One reason for his distress is widely supposed to be his preoccupation about the five men who died on their way home from the Pole.  He and another companion made up the last support party which laid depots for the returning Polar party.  He could never have known about it at the time, but Scott and his men died in a blizzard only eleven miles from the last depot Cherry laid.  It is a fruitless thought but what might have been different if Cherry had gone eleven miles further and laid even just a small amount of food and fuel under a cairn and a flag?  One of the fascinations with the story of Scott's Last Expedition is the 'if onlys' about how the men could have survived.  In fact the real wonder is why more men did not perish in the support party and the additional scientific expeditions - all of which took huge risks.

In his foreword to the book, Paul Theroux suggests that in contrast to the Antarctic "one of the reasons we are still ignorant of what space travel or lunar exploration is like: no astronaut has shown any ability to convey the experience in writing".  I certainly feel that this observation is true.  I sometimes feel I have even been to the Antarctic, whereas I never feel the same about outer space!  I have noticed further parallels in my recent work with Demos on the future of space travel.  One dilemma that The European Space Agency and others face is whether to focus their resources on one grand gesture - such as a manned mission to the moon - or whether to focus on a wider range of scientific probes which may be of practical help to life on earth. 

They may take some inspiration from history.  The goal of Scott's expedition was twofold.  To reach the pole and to carry out scientific observations and experiments on unknown terrain.  In contrast Amundsen's expedition had only one goal: to reach the pole for the glory of Norway.  Scott's expedition was a failure in its first goal but it captured the public imagination for its heroicism in a way that Amundsen's never could.

Pay as you throw

Microchips in wheely bins, compostable supermarket food packaging (as announced today by Sainsburys).  Sounds like the waste debate in the UK is moving in the right direction.  But what about flytipping?  Tightening up the existing laws don't seem to be tackling this endemic problem.

A recent article from the IPPR states that "fly-tipping must be made as socially unacceptable as drink-driving and smoking around babies".  But the fact is that flytipping IS already socially unacceptable, the problem is policing it.  Enforcement officers currently search through rubbish bags for giveaway address labels, but now the flytippers are getting wise to it and don't include old letters in their rubbish.  The incentives to flytip are high for some people (e.g. cost and lack of local knowledge) and these issues need to be dealt with.  But penalties are crucial.

One solution is to involve communities more in finding out who is behind the mess.  OK i t's a bit stasi-state but surely more worthwhile than the 'shop a smoker' hotline currently being planned by the government.  A residents association I've visited in Stockton on Tees have seen great reductions in domestic flytipping since they began weekly volunteer walks to monitor where the flytipping is coming from and informing the council about it. 

Do solar panels make financial sense in the long term?

Yes, in the long term, according to an analysis by Midsummer Energy, a firm selling solar panels designed for anything from a garden shed to a yacht.  As energy prices continue to increase, the pay back time is getting shorter but can still run into decades.  Interestingly, my research into the subject has found that many people investing in renewables for the first time are retired or even elderly people who may not see their investment pay off themselves.  But many of them told us that the feel good factor was more important to them than any financial benefit.  I suppose it is just the equivalent of buying a new motorbike or going on a cruise for green minded retirees!

New baby boy

Rufus Edward Simpson born 20th April 2006.  Sadly none of the names below could be used!

The Laughter of Stafford Girls High

How good is this poem, reviewed here?!  In my eternal search for the perfect baby's name (see previous post) i thought i might find a name here, read out on Radio 4 by Joanna Lumley.  The poem describes the infectious laughter of a school of girls and the effect this has on the teachers.  It is a very long poem and it bubbles with names, always in dual form and always using the same rhythm.

Carolann Clare
Emily Jane
Rosemary Beth
Jennifer Kay
Marjorie May
Jessica Kate
Geraldine Ruth
Angela Joy
Caroline Joan
Ursula Fleur
Josephine June
Emmeline Belle
Diana Kim
Gillian Tess
Anthea Meg
Melanie Hope
Andrea Lyn
Francesca Eve
Nigella Dawn

I don't think I'd actually use any of the names (less of a hypothetical issue these days) but I might begin to pretend that my middle name is Tess in honour of the poem.

Seeing the light: the impact of microgeneration on the way we use energy

That's the not so catchy title of my latest report for the Sustainable Consumption Roundtable on energy efficiency in domestic homes.  It was fascinating going round to households who have decided to generate their own electricity.  Quite a challenge getting hold of the respondents, and they often seemed to be in out of the way places, but it was really worth the effort to meet some of the characters involved.

The interesting thing about energy efficiency is that it is so invisible, even to people who are very keen to be "environmentally friendly".  I notice this in myself.  I am eagle eyed in the supermarket for spotting food miles and unwanted packaging, yet I'll very rarely notice how high the heating is turned up, or whether appliances are left on standby (though I have reformed as a result of the project!).  People who have microgeneration installed typically have an existing interest in environmentalism and had often taken some measures to save energy already.  But once they got microgeneration they often experienced a process of gradually becoming more and more alert to all the little ways in which they could be much more conscious of saving energy, even when they thought they had been doing this before.

Read the report here.

Your health, your care, your say

Talk about a working weekend.  On Saturday I facilitated a session for the Department of Health's huge consultation event in Birmingham.  A thousand members of the public attended - brought in on buses from all over England.  I had 10 people in my group ranging from 21 to 83 years of age with a whole catalogue of health issues!  It was much more fun than it sounds!  Particularly enjoyable was the voting which was done periodically throughout the day on individual key pads.  The results could be seen instantly on screen.  It complemented the qualitative aspect quite well as people explained their reasoning in the group discussions. 

To keep energy levels high we had a 10 minute session of aerobics led by a specialist instructor from Birmingham City Council.  The 83 year old joined in with gusto, but the men all went to queue for the loo!  On that note we ended up having an interesting discussion about men's attitudes to health overall and I notice today that all three leaders of the main political parties are joining forces to promote prostate cancer awareness. 

The whole event was modelled on American style town meetings pioneered by America Speaks but I feel it transferred fairly well to a British setting.  The day got quite a lot of press interest and was featured on quite a few news channels.  I was grateful not to be one of my colleagues who was in the 'studio room' and her group had to be webcast live across the Department of Health's website. 

The main question on everyone's lips is "was it worth the money?".  I think what my participants appreciated the most was their hotel visit.  One of my participants had not spent a night away from home in 40 years!

Your health, Your say

Moderating at this event in a couple of weeks. It's a public health deliberative event in Birmingham run by Opinion Leader Research and supported by Patricia Hewitt.   It's going to be quite extraordinary.  Not only are there going to be about a 1000 people attending, all the feedback from the breakout groups will be fed into an electronic system in real time so that some of the ideas and results can be shared at the event.  Yes, that's typing and moderating at the same time!

Middle class revival?

I was in the Sunday Times last Sunday commenting on a "middle class revival". An advertising agency have produced a report pointing to an increase in the popularity of etiquette guides and tea shops (!) I thought it highly tenuous in terms of the evidence and came across like just another opportunity for chav bating (see previous post). My contribution states that people are still embarrassed to be described as middle class.

Bog problems

As a loyal user of public transport I have always held the belief that the people who complain the most about public transport are those who don’t use it. I never learned to drive and consequently all my fieldwork is conducted by rail, bus, taxi and walking. I’ve usually found this to be surprisingly efficient. Next week I plan to visit Finchley, Newbury, Eastleigh, Winchester, Croydon, Leatherhead and Stoke and I’m fairly optimistic about arriving everywhere on time.

So, it’s not like me to complain about public transport, but I did recently have the most odious experience on a GNER train back from Birmingham. I don’t want to go into too many details but almost all of the toilets were out of order and there was the most heinous smell permeating through the train. I was disgusted enough to complain to head office and received a £5 rail voucher for my trouble. I had forgotten about the matter, but I was horrified to discover via this blog that toilet trouble on trains has been chronic throughout the summer and is particularly bad on the new rolling stock. Those new Pendolino trains really are awful. The booking systems never work, the seats are uncomfortable and the serve yourself shop is confusing. I also finally found out what the highly annoying repetitive “beep beep beep” noise is on the trains. There is an emergency button in the toilets which looks very like the “lock door” button and some unsuspecting toilet-goers press it trying to lock the door. I strongly suspect the train companies didn’t do any consumer research whilst designing these trains.

Search the cemetery (dot com)

What is the value of the environment around us? Many green spaces have suffered from being undervalued, or simply not valued at all, because they are dismissed as externalities in economic calculations. Some environmentalists feel that green and wild space is priceless and should be cordoned off from mankind, whilst others increasingly believe that green space must demonstrate value in order to be conserved. The concept of value is creating some interest in policy circles, with "public value" proving a way of discussing how different kinds of value – aesthetic, educational, economic and community – can be measured and taken more explicitly into account in decision making.

So a key technique for environmentalists should be to taken different kinds of hidden value and make them more visible. My latest ploy is create a new form of educational value around my local (disused) cemetery which also acts as a mini-nature reserve in an urban area. I plan to create a website with each headstone linked to the census record of that individual whilst they were still alive. Spooky, but it would create a new kind of educational value around the green space, particularly as the cemetery is right by the school. Organisations like the Heritage Lottery Fund are increasingly demanding evidence of educational value in distribution of funds to small projects like this one.  Possibly doesn't have the same scope as say, err Friends Reunited, but could break new ground in the small world of cemetery enthusiasts...

Greenery begins at home

Interesting article in the Economist August 6th 2005 “Greenery begins at home” about micro-generation. Rooftop solar panels for domestic homes which can generate electricity or hot water have been available for decades but the uptake has risen sharply, particularly following the introduction of government grants which can provide up to £5000 off the cost of installation. However, the grants are being discontinued in their current form and it is not yet clear what, if anything will replace them. Windmills are more cheaper than solar panels, but British Gas still admits it might be a decade before their first few customers break even. That’s better than the 120 years cited by some government sources for the pay back time for solar panels! Can micro-renewables, such as solar and wind technologies, survive without government grants? Yes, if the economist are correct in saying that “some customers see micro windmills as a lifestyle item that will let them flaunt their green credentials”

The White Working Class

Am currently reading the book “The Likes of Us: a biography of the white working class” by Michael Collins.  I could probably add this to my list of embarrassing tube reading as a couple of people have queried the inclusion of ‘white’ in the title. Why not just ‘working class’?

But the inclusion of ‘white’ is crucial because Collin’s slow-build argument centres upon the idea that whilst we romanticise the cockney culture of the past it is still acceptable to ridicule modern white working class culture (white trash, ‘chav’) in a way that would be unacceptable for any other ethnicities.  Collins’ criticism seems to be levied most forcefully at the media classes who balk at the idea of any kind racial stereotyping unless it is of white working class people (they love Gucci and hate the Euro)

Collins’ book centres upon an area of South London of which I am rather fond.  A couple of years ago I took a couple of walking tours from Morley College near Waterloo.  One of the tour guides was a true South London Cockney who insisted on taking us in his car (there were only three of us) with the heating at full blast.  I liked him too much to ask him to turn it down even though it was nearly intolerable.  A friend claims that overheating of homes and cars is a sign of the true working class because outdoor workers value comfort in the same way that middle class people value long bracing walks.

On the 'walk' we saw the sight of the debtors prison where Charles Dickens’ father was imprisoned, numerous quaint Guinness and Octavia Hill almshouses, the necropolis line into London, the sites of old Vaudeville theatres, Charlie Chaplin’s various temporary childhood homes, the ‘stench’ pipes from the sewers and the site of the old Lambeth Walk.  Collins argues that over the last century this area has been pillaged of its architectural, historical and cultural wealth through a mixture of war, neglect, do-gooders and doomed social and architectural projects.  Many of the white working classes have moved away to satellite towns, but some remain. 

Collin’s book is essentially a good read about an important subject but I am getting increasingly irritated with books by journalists.  Another recent read was “a life stripped bare” by Leo Hickman.  I buy books by journalists because they tend to have a good angle, are topical and informative.  The problem is that they are really irritating for a reason I can’t quite put my finger on.  Perhaps it is their self indulgent and self referential style.  Perhaps it is their tendency to drag in places and pun too often.  As a reader I also get a sense they are books that have been compiled rather than created. 

One paradox Collins neglects is the fact that although contempt of the white working class and particularly resettled cockneys is common, it is also true that being working class is more aspirational than it has ever been.  A recent poll showed that 68% of the UK population claimed to be ‘working class and proud of it’ even though conventional social grading criteria would put many of them in a middle class bracket. 

Bad Album Covers

Fieldwork madness

Fieldwork and personal destinations over the next fortnight = Leeds, Birmingham, Fort William, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Crewe  and York.

It's like being a campaigning MP in multiple marginal consitituencies. 

My one discovery = regional accents are not dead.

What is the difference between learning and education?

A thought provoking event on Wednesday at the Institute of Education got me thinking about the above question.  One of the speakers described how education emerged in the 12^th century as a way of ‘conforming literacy for the purposes of social control’.  Education then saw a huge expansion in the 19^th century as an industrialised workforce strove to get better jobs.  The speaker also pointed out that education tends to have the metaphors of trade such as delivery, access and provision. 

Learning, on the other hand, is something different. Of course learning is something that happens within an education context, but it has also gained ground as a stand alone term.  Learning has become fashionable recently and is much used in policy debate, for instance in ‘Lifelong learning’ and ‘personalised learning’.

We might conceive as education as something an individual receives from outside, whereas learning is inner directed and can describe a much wider range of personal circumstances.  This distinction resonates with the overall remit of the ‘wider benefits of learning’ unit at the Institute which is dedicated to understanding the relationship between education and other social outcomes like health, crime and family formation.  This involves studying the major birth cohort studies for previously unseen correlations.

The problem with learning is that it becomes hard to see where learning ends and culture begin?  When do communication skills become street manners?  Once learning is indistinguishable from life the danger is that it can easily take on a moralistic tone about who or who hasn’t learned their lesson.  Education, on the other hand, is more likely to be seen as a right for every individual.