Is the English Baccalaureate a Sign of Sinister Things to Come?

 

The arts foster creativity, innovation and autonomy; higher level ‘deep’ learning skills

Katie Beswick (@ElfinKate) offers her opinion on the English Baccalaureate debate

Like just about everybody I know*, I’m horrified by the government’s decision regarding the English Baccalaureate which, as has been widely reported, omits arts subjects; effectively relegating the arts to a second-class, non-academic realm of learning. Artists in this model are like those dense kids at school who were ‘good at sport’, but bunked off science to smoke fags behind the big grey bins. We are the non-academics. The arts are the subjects you take if you’re not quite clever enough to excel at long division, or recall from memory the names of the British monarchy of the last half millennia.

Much of the liberal media’s reporting on the subject has focused on the shortsightedness of the approach. What I’ve gleaned, reading between the many lines, is that the decision not to include arts in the Bacc comes from Minister for Education Michael Gove’s ironic educational ignorance. The ability to problem solve, to think laterally as well as logically, to question established norms, to create; these are the skills that the truly brilliant possess. They are also some of the skills that an artistic education, as part of a full academic experience, foster. Gove is the kind of bloke, I have surmised from numerous reports, who gets ‘surface learning’ (being able to remember facts), mixed up with ‘deep learning’ (being able to understand facts, apply knowledge, innovate). Gove is woefully under read, we might believe, in contemporary scholarship on teaching and learning that suggests creativity is at the top of the triangle of intelligence.

I’m not sure I believe that our Minister for Education is under-informed about progress in educational scholarship and practice since the 1970s. Nor do I believe that he is so woefully egotistical that he believes his own theories about education are more reliable than those of the teachers, scholars and high-profile artists who are shouting in very loud voices that omitting arts from the Bacc is a DISASTROUS MISTAKE.

More sinister interpretations of the current approach to education focus on the inequality that the Bacc may produce. Private schools will be able to afford to provide subjects that underfunded state schools are already cutting in order to jump through government hoops; the elite benefit from the arts as the rest of us are left behind. According to the Independent the number of children taking arts based subjects has dropped since the introduction of the Bacc. The Department for Education’s own report into the Bacc noted that arts subjects were dropping off the cirrculum of many schools. Nearly a quarter of schools who had dropped subjects withdrew drama, while 17% withdrew art, and 14% withdrew design and technology.

That a government where the most powerful are part of an elite forum of millionaires should neglect to think about who’ll be left behind isn’t a massive surprise. If you’re into conspiracy, you might even see it as a deliberate attempt by the powerful to ensure that their children are powerful too. I mean, you can see what they might be thinking: ‘I’m not sure about all this social mobility. If it works, our children might have serious competition from the children of those plebs. We must do something! Yes, let’s fiddle with education so that the pleb-children can do long division and work in accountancy, but won’t have the cultural education necessary to secure their place in cabinet by holding forth on the merits of Kandinsky verses Mondrian at a Parliamentary drinks party.’

But the Bacc bothers me for another reason. Historically, attacks on the arts have been aligned with attacks on freedom. Almost every oppressive regime has sought to control, censor, or limit artistic expression. In Soviet Russia, the powers that were demanded that artists engaged in ‘social realism’ that chimed with Communist values, and dismissed experiments with form as ‘bourgeois individualism’; Nazi Germany similarly dismissed art of the period as ‘degenerate’. Right now, the imprisonment of the women involved in the Pussy Riots, and the recent murder of Somali poet Warsame Shire Awale, who dared to criticise the militant Islamic group al-Shabab, demonstrate that the capacity art has to contest dominant power is frightening to those who hold, or seek to hold that power.

Do I think that our government similarly wishes to silence and oppress its people? I bloody hope not, but in a climate where citizens are jailed for posting bad taste jokes online and our every move is monitored by CCTV cameras hidden, like spies, in unlikely nooks of our towns and cities, I can’t be sure. I’d be more convinced that the Coalition were committed to freedom, creativity, and the progress of the people if they’d stop flaunting half-arsed, reactionary policies, and start listening to the grass-roots workers – the teachers, lecturers, artists and experts – who tell them that what they’re doing is a DISASTROUS MISTAKE. I really hope they do. I have better things to occupy myself with than organising the revolution.

*bias disclaimer: almost everybody I know works or teaches in the arts and humanaties except my eldest brother, who got a first in economics and is training to be a maths teacher. But we try not to mention him.

Photo courtesy of janoon 028, freedigitalphotos.net

11 comments

  1. Well said! Completely agree – especially on the importance of lateral thinking. Gove, i agree, has shown a huge lack of knowledge and sense in this area.
    Am sending this to my sister the english/drama teacher for the last 17 years who will wholeheartedly agree with you on this one! Zoe Parker ( @zoe_parker)

  2. I think it’s a shame that the arts have not been included in the new E-Bacc from the start, along with the rest of the humanities. But it’s possible they will be included in future. Under the current proposals, from 2015 English, maths and sciences will be included in the E-Bacc. This will be extended later to history, geography and languages – with the suggestion being that Ofqual should look at how this template might be used for a wider range of subjects. So we need to see what happens before accusing them of a ‘sinister’ and ‘oppressive’ agenda.

    I also fail to see how the Bacc may produce inequality. An exam can’t create inequality (or equality) in education. Rather, it is the job of the state to provide a first class education and even-out any differences between private and state schools. But, while no lover of the current shower in charge, I think any ‘sinister interpretation of the current approach’ as designed to benefit the kids of the rich is just purile ‘bash the Tories’ nonsense. Remember, while the dumbing-down in state education has been going on under all governments since Callaghan’s 1978 speech, it was under New Labour that state school children were increasingly fobbed off with a dumbed-down academic curriculum and thousands of useless ‘vocational’ qualifications – which the current government have at least cut back on while, at least rhetorically, are putting greater emphasis on improving academic standards for all.

    And while I agree both that, historically, attacks on the arts have gone hand-in-hand with attacks on freedom in general, and with your concerns about increasing attacks on freedom of speech and government surveillance, etc, I don’t see how the initial omission of the arts from the Bacc amounts either to ‘an attack on the arts’, or an attempt to ‘oppress the people’.

  3. Thanks for your comments.

    In terms of equality, yes you are right, an exam in itself can’t produce equality or inequality. What can though is schools opting, because of government policy rather than good teaching practice, to cut subjects that form an important part of a broad education. As I pointed out above, the government’s own report into the E-Bacc (introduced in 2010 as a performance measure) demonstrates that schools are already cutting arts subjects. Hopefully they will introduce the reuqirement for at least one arts subject into the E-Bacc at some point, but as the governments website points out they are not currently considering changing the E-bacc subject requirements. Which is the main reason why I wrote this post.

    I am afraid that I have to disagree that vocational qualifications were in all cases a ‘dumbing down’ of so called ‘academic standards’. Where are these measures as to what an ‘academic standard’ is coming from? It is not from recent educational scholarship that shows that learning styles differ between students; that different approaches to teaching and learning are necessary if we are to have a truly inclusive educational system. There is no such thing as improved academic standards for ‘all’ in a one-measure system. I am concerned that the very students that vocational qualifications were introduced to help will fall out of the education system, or leave without qualifications because they are unable to achieve the required standards in one testing measure. There should be multiple ways of measuring achievement and enabling students to participate usefully in the world, which is what education, as far as I am concerned, should really be about.

    I hope that my comments about the possible sinister undertones turn out to be paranoia. However, I think it is important for people to be aware that the agendas of any powerful group are demonstrated by their policies, that historically the arts are often first to be attacked when freedoms are threatened. I cannot help but be concerned in a global landscape where governments are clamping down on the freedoms of their people. And that includes our own system where in the last twelve months there have been two high profile cases of young men being jailed for making offensive jokes on twitter.

  4. Sorry – to just address your last point a bit more clearly. I see the omission of arts from the Bacc as an ‘attack’ because it seems to me part of an agenda which seeks to relegate particular subjects to the ‘non academic’ realm, and thus to discredit both the subjects themselves and those who practice them. Dismissing and discrediting artists has, as I mention in regard to Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, been one way of attacking the arts in historical examples.

  5. I think you’re conflating two different things – the fact that art has not been included at the start into the E-Bacc, and increasing attacks on, and criminalisation of, freedom of speech. I don’t see how the undermining of freedom of speech in this country – through section 5 of the Pubic Order Act, the Terrorism Act, the Communications Act (under which the tweeters you mentioned were arrested), and Race and Religious Hatred legislation – has any link whatsoever to any down-grading of the arts in education, or vice versa.

    The only link between the two that I can see is that both the attack on freedom of speech and the dumbing down in education stem from the same diminished view of vast majority of ordinary people – as in need of protection from hurtful words and not up to an academic education. Hence, in part influenced by the biological determinist concept of ‘learning styles’, the “pleb-children” you refer to were encouraged into the over 3000 ‘vocational’ qualifications created under New Labour. Or perhaps they were just ‘kinaesthetic learners’ and that’s their lot in life.

    Rather than paranoia about the current government, I think we need to raise our opinions of what children are capable of and demand, from whatever government, a rigorous and truly liberal education in the arts, humanities, sciences for all.

  6. Well, I suppose I think that art is ABOUT freedom of speech in that it is often political, challenging and makes contentious statements about society. While this country (thank God) may not be persecuting artists for making politically and socially contentious statements, many other countries are (see my examples in blog above), my conflation comes from the concern that limited freedom of speech in one arena will lead to limited freedom of speech in others.

    I don’t think it is biologically determinist (at least not in a sinister, categorising way) to suggest that people learn in different ways and have different skills and preferences – indeed such skills and preferences may be fostered by a broad education. I for example didn’t realise that I preferred learning kinaesthetically until I went to university and had lessons delivered in a more action-focussed style. That’s not to say I didn’t achieve in other areas, or learn via other styles, I just had a preference once there was the option, and my attainment in other areas rose as a result. Education should be about enabling children to succeed in the world, not about achieving whatever government is in power decides is a high ‘academic standard’. Vocational qualifications, from my own experience did assist some students in realising a useful place in the world. A friend of mine for example did a GCSE vocational level qualification in hairdressing and now owns a successful salon.

    We obviously aren’t going to agree about the usefulness or otherwise of vocational training, which is fine, there has to be room for discussion and debate over these things. I don’t see a hierarchy of subjects in terms of academic and non academic (although I do acknowledge that fundamental skills in numeracy and literacy should form a core of compulsory education). For me, arguing that say, history, is an academic subject while drama is not, shows an ignorance of both subjects and of what it means to have ‘intelligence’.

    I agree with your last point, although I think that teaching practitioners are best placed to be at the forefront of a debate about changes to education, and governments from all parties have tended to dismiss their contributions in favour of ideological policies that are tossed aside by the next government meaning that children and teachers who thought they were doing okay are suddenly labelled ‘failures’.

    On a different but related note, any changes to the system also need to acknowledge that while there might not be a biological determinism at play in student’s abilities to achieve, there are certainly social structures, socio-biological factors such as learning difficulties or disabilities, family circumstances and so on which mean that some students DO come to education at a disadvantage, and additional and perhaps alternative methods should be in place to assist them.

  7. I despair of this country’s future, where music and the arts are not taught.
    Are we aiming for a nation of cold robotic philistines ?

  8. I’ve chosen the subject of cuts to arts – in schools and with funding, for one of my briefs at art college so I’ve been reading mountains of stuff about this recently.

    As someone who chose no ‘academic’ subjects at A-level I’m obviously of the opinion that arts are vital to our economy and slowly edging them out of the system is an dangerous move.

    What I personally think should be happening is that instead of ignoring art, we should be paying more attention to it. One of the government’s arguments against it is that it’s a ‘doss’ subject that you take if you’re ‘too thick’ to do anything else. It’s only like that because they’ve made it so. GCSE art should require essays and research, and work related learning, studying the arts sector and looking at funding for artists and galleries, learning how to price work, making a website, advertising etc… instead it’s been neglected to the point where it is just colouring in.

    I actually left sixth form after a year to study a national diploma at art college. Within about 2 weeks I could see what was so wrong with what I’d been doing at school. They don’t push the boundaries, you don’t learn any of the skills that you should be, or have the tools to do so. At college I was doing textiles, etching, lino prints, screen prints, photography, developing my own film, animation, graphics, ceramics, woodwork, you name it. A level art felt like an extended GCSE, all I did was draw a series of pictures (after being advised to use the grid method, cringe) and glue some wikipedia research into a sketchbook… I got an A.

    of course anyone looking for the easy route is going to pick that over history. People need to know that when they chose art they are going to be doing just as much work, and that it’s just as useful. I really can’t imagine that every kid that walks out of secondary school with a geography gcse pursues a career in it.

    Although I’m glad Gove decided that the new EBC was a step too far, the current Ebacc system isn’t so great either. I have a younger sister who wanted to study art and music… she’s doing history and spanish. I’m sure she’ll become a spanish historian or something? which is obviously a much more successful, money making, tourist attracting sector than the arts.

    Also (and perhaps unrelated) why isn’t ICT compulsory.. we live in a society ruled by technology and I’m in a class with people that can’t change the font size on a word document?!

Comments are closed.