Monday 17th August 2020
Seven of us were present. Five gave apologies for not attending.
Participants today had the option to attend an outdoor face to face meeting or a Zoom meeting, but the Zoom meeting was cancelled due to low attendance.
A discussion of the fiasco surrounding A level results was wide ranging. The algorithm used to arrive at the Ofsted grades was seen as an example of Surveillance Capitalism. Exams were, in any case, considered to be a poor way of assessing education (testing achievement rather than potential) and University Entry in UK contrasted with continental approaches where students have less difficulty obtaining a place, but are more likely to fail to complete. The Ofsted process and algorithm was based upon a general assumption that teachers’ judgements are not to be trusted. This assumption underlies much of curriculum and assessment. We see the same lack of trust applied to NHS workers.
Lack of trust by government (and lack of trust in government) is part of a lack of democracy. How is this to change, we wondered. Schools can be changed by pressure from parents and through teacher education, but teachers (like NHS workers an others) are compelled to practice in ways which conflict with their values.
We considered the potential for local groups (such as HVCA) as well as national extra parliamentary groups (change.org, 38degrees, Global Justice, etc etc). But parliament tis not interested. As a consequence, as Tony Benn observed, politics appears more outside parliament than within it. Power appears to lie with those who control of social media and internet, beyond the reach of democracy.
But are things really so negative? Many studies have shown that people (even national leaders) tend to have a views about society that are much more negative than the reality. An extreme example was a research into the Labour Party and antisemitism which showed groups of people guessing that anything from 10 to 40 per cent of LP members has been accused of antisemitism, whereas in actual fact the figure was less that 0.5 per cent. Environmental changes and attitudes to the environment are much more progressive than many acknowledge. The periodical Positive News provides a counterbalancing narrative to the mainstream media by focussing on positive rather than negative stories.
Feelings about the lack of power in formal political structures accompanied a loss of faith in the LP by some of us. We considered that abrupt UTurns that Johnson has made (regarding A levels being announced as we spoke) as instances of change.
We hoped to meet in a similar way on 21st September. There may also be a Zoom alternative.