The ‘Pleb’ Paradox

The ‘Pleb’ Paradox REFLECTION Prof Richard Kim bell, Goldsm iths, University of London Over the last few m onths we have all been battered ( bored) to death with the controversy surrounding the resignation of Andrew Mitchell, the form er Chief Whip of the Conservative party, for allegedly calling a policem an a ‘pleb’. I recently had cause to re-exam ine this incident through a different set of spectacles… and – quite unexpectedly – they brought into sharp focus for m e a quite different, and form erly inexplicable, aspect of governm ent activity. The new National Curriculum for England [including of course that for design & technology] has been published – in draft form – for ‘consultation’. I do not intend to launch into any detailed discussion of those draft proposals – except in one respect. The National Curriculum was launched in 19 9 0 and prior to that ( for at least three years) , all sorts of draft docum ents were circulating about what it m ight be like. And in the 25 years since the start of the debates about our D&T NC there is absolutely no doubt that the recent draft that is now out for consultation is – by a country m ile – the least thoughtful, the least articulate, and the least appropriate as a guide for curriculum -building. It is not at all surprising that the draft has been greeted with such a torrent of irritation, disbelief and associated abuse that only a very brave few in the Departm ent of Education are willing to put their heads above the parapet to represent the ‘party-line’. The Departm ent’s hom e in London is in Sanctuary Buildings; and it m ust seem to the officials that never was a governm ent office m ore appropriately nam ed. It rem ains to be seen whether the Departm ent will listen to the howls of outrage from the consultation. I hear m ixed m essages about that. Som e say that they realise ( belatedly) that they have dropped a serious clanger and m ust radically reconsider and re-draft. Others say that they think it is essentially right but needs better presentation. My own suspicion is that, if there is to be a serious rewrite, the engineering com m unity will be deeply involved. We’ll see. But whatever the Departm ent’s second thoughts m ight be, it’s interesting to reflect on how such a dreadfully am ateurish draft got circulated in the first place. One would have to say that they have brought it upon them selves. There is no shortage of good-will out there to help draft a really good curriculum . And equally there are m any agencies with real expertise that have been striving for m onths on the task to putting together som ething that the governm ent m ight use for its draft. The Engineering Council, the D&T Association, the Design Council – and m any m ore – have offered inform ed views on the m atter. 6 Design and Technology Education: An International Journal 18 .2 I have been involved in one of these ventures E4E ( Engineering for Education) : New Principles for Design & Technology in the National Curriculum . And within the wider reaches of governm ent there are m yriad other agencies ( e.g. Ofsted) where som e kinds of expertise on this m atter m ight be expected to reside. But the really astonishing thing about this draft curriculum is that no-one will adm it to authoring it. There is no group of wise persons – no com m ittee – no body of advisers – no expert panel. It appears to be an entirely internal, Dept of Education construction. Mr Gove ( or was it Ms Truss?) in the potting shed with a handful of Civil Service acolytes dream ing up interesting wheezes for our new curriculum . The conundrum for m e in all this is Mr Gove’s m otivation. Assum ing that he is neither entirely crazy nor utterly stupid ( and there are som e who would not be so generous) , why would a senior m em ber of the Governm ent – who has no doubt survived all sorts of m achinations in his political life – place him self and his Ministry in such an exposed position? The point of advisers and expert panels is that they “take the tem perature” for you – they test out the ground with their networks and m em berships. So when the docum ent is released it gets a ‘fair wind’ and we are off to a good start. Mr Gove has deliberately not done this. More than that, he has deliberately ignored all the expert advice that was available. How are we to explain such reckless behaviour? A good friend of m ine has a ‘chaos’ explanation, asserting that Mr Gove’s real agenda is to create such havoc within the education service that nothing resem bling a coherent national service rem ains intact. The fracturing that is the inevitable result of such chaos leaves behind sm aller, bitesized, bits of the service available for acquisition by private enterprises. I’m not convinced about this drastic interpretation of events – and m ainly because I think there is a sim pler explanation readily available. The Conservative party has traditionally been suspicious of experts and equally they have argued for sm aller governm ent. Less spending; less quango’s; less regulation; generally less of everything at the centre. In radical Thatcher days this am ounted to selling off the State – so we could all buy a bit of the gas/ electricity/ telephone/ water em pires that had form erly been extensions of governm ent. But in the process of selling off those assets, the governm ent also elim inated the centres of expertise that existed at the core of those old nationalised industries. The current governm ent has a som ewhat less confrontational but still recognisably devolving, anti-centreist instinct. We are helping people to com e together to im prove their own lives. The Big Society is about putting m ore power in people's hands - a m assive transfer of power from Whitehall to local com m unities. We want to see people encouraged and enabled to play a m ore active role in society. http:/ / www.conservatives.com / Policy/ Where_we_stand/ Big_Society.aspx As just one exam ple, Planning departm ents in Local Councils are told that they have to accept plans put forward by local people to develop their own hom es. You m ight have/ be experts in Town Planning – but in future we can do without you. Worryingly, I fear that this anti-expert instinct is, broadly, popular and is working with the grain of popular culture. I am a devoted listener to radio – particularly BBC 4 and 5 – but when I hear that we are now about to have another live phone-in program m e about this or that… it goes off. I really don’t care what Jane or Thom as from Belfast or Billericay think about the topic. I would far rather listen to a panel of inform ed experts exploring the issues. But I m ust be in a bum bling m inority, because the public voice – twittering away – has never been so all encom passing. So, m y interpretation of Gove’s thinking is that we have a curriculum written by non-experts because it is aim ed at non-experts… parents. Many years ago the Dean of Education at Goldsm iths – Vic Kelly – warned m e of this trend. “If you want to unleash a really conservative force on schools, let the parents loose.” The draft curriculum is not written for us in the education business. It’s written for those parents who want their children to know how to cook a square m eal and m end their bicycles. We can do without all that intellectual nonsense about m etacognition. What’s that m ean anyway? And who cares? REFLECTION The ‘Pleb’ Paradox Which brings m e full circle back to Mr Mitchell and his bicycle ( I wonder if he can m end it?) and the infam ous ‘pleb’ story – which turns out to be a bit of a paradox. If I am correct in the above analysis of Mr Gove’s m otivation, then he is banking on a non-expert, com m on-sense, laypersons, [sm all c] conservative view about the curriculum . The m an-in-the-street; the wom an-on-the-Clapham om nibus. Those are his guides and his ‘experts’ – not the universities, or the teacher-trainers, or the professional societies. Mr Gove is relying on the very ‘plebs’ of whom Mr Mitchell is, allegedly, so contem ptuous. ( Wikipedia: “Pleb” the general body of free, land-owning Rom an citizens… consisting of freed people, shopkeepers, crafts people, skilled or unskilled workers, and farm ers) r.kim bell@gold.ac.uk In case you doubt m y populist argum ent, think about your own reaction to the bankers. Would we not all believe in, and want, a com m on-sense bankers charter that stuffs those self-interested buggers. Every tim e they com e on the radio peddling their over-blown, hedge-fund, econom ic clap-trap I want to shout at them … ”It’s not rocket science… just stop gam bling with m y m oney”. There is a bit of all of us that believes that others’ expertise is just a sham … or a cover… or a cover-up. And I suspect that there is another strand of the governm ent’s distrust of expertise. They ( m inisters; backbenchers; the lot of them ; from all parties) are am ateurs. Ministers don’t need any expertise in the concerns of their Ministry, and anyway they m ight be running agriculture next… or health… or prisons. There is no expertise in politics beyond survival, and – having survived and acquired power – I am not going to be told what to do by those unelected upstarts who think they know m ore about things than I do. On the other hand, the ‘public voice’ is one that any parliam entarian definitely would listen to, if only because they need the public with them at the next election. Design and Technology Education: An International Journal 18 .2 7