On being the worst
If you cannot succeed in a school environment you might want to make a virtue of necessity and make "getting more detentions than anyone else" or "doing as little work as poss" or "being bottom of the class" your aim in life.

The constant testing, practising for tests, rehearsing tests....in short the things the government think education is all about....could be a factor here.

Pupils who are working together (for example on a media studies project) often seem less interested in "being the worst" because that would mean letting the other members of the group down.

In claiming that "townies" are the only people opposed to hunting, the Countryside Alliance seem a little two faced. I live in a small town in West Sussex. When the Countryside Alliance have support in the town they say this is because they are "country folk" and when they have opponents it is because they are "townies".
Whatever your views on hunting, if you live in the country you see the Countryside Alliance at close quarters and hear their views on racial minorities, asylum-seekers, trade unionists and various other people they would cheerfully set the dogs on.

Hunt supporters clash with police
As I write this Channel 4 news is reporting thuggish behaviour by pro hunt supporters. These are the two-faced people who complain of the lawless behaviour of animal rights protestors. Personally I am not an animal rights activist...I stroke the cat occasionally but that is about it....but this is a turn up for the book.

OFS***
Now Playing: Nothing is good enough
OFSTED has a habit of making damaging and superficial observations on teachers' lessons.
"Nothing is good enough for people like you
Have to have someone take the fall.
Something to sabotage
Determined to lose it all" (aimee Mann)
This is because of the structure of lesson observation. Anyone who observes a lesson has a little form invented by a Whitehall mandarin which insists that "points for improvement" must be included...so nothing is ever good enough.

Do not forget that OFSTED inspectors can be asked to teach a demonstration lesson to show teachers what they ought to be doing. I suggest you choose the class with care and videotape the results for staff training purposes .....or the Christmas party depending on the outcome.

One adviser in West Sussex has had the courage to do this and rose in my estimation and the estimation of the other teachers who were there to observe. Don't tell me how to be a better teacher. Show me

Poetry Corner
I have heard of the poetry corner
But your poems
Your poems just won't stay in the corner
They are out on the rooftops shouting
Singing in your heart
Crying in the darkness
Getting under my skin
It is that kind of poetry
It just won't behave
Just won't go stand in the corner

Debate on TES website
There has been a lovely debate on the TES website following my previous posting on animal rights and human rights. What follows is my one-sided summary but the whole debate is avalable on the TES website..

1) It is OK for the government to take away our liberty because this will defeat the terrorists. If you put it that way nobody would agree because it is simply factually incorrect. There is plenty of terrorism in Iraq, Russia, Saudi Arabia - but not much in the way of civil liberties. In fact the absence of civil liberties means that acts described as terrorism may be the only way people can make a point.

2) In the past drugs were tested on animals (with varying degrees of accuracy - Arsenic tends to be harmless to cats!) so therefore nobody should seek alternatives to animal testing now - anybody who does is an extremist.

and 3) There are very real threats against people who experiment on animals and therefore anybody who opposes experiments on animals is a terrorist. That is not such a logical argument is it?


As I said to start with I am not an animal rights activist of any kind but I do believe that the government will use laws against "extremists" to act against legitimate protest. This plays into the hands of the "extremists" however you define them.

The government has already used anti terrorist legislation against peace protestors and anti-capitalist protestors....rather than against terrorists.

FYI most terrorists do not have terrorist tattooed on their foreheads! (This last point refers to a photograph used to "prove" animal rights activists are all terrorists by showing one girl who had the word terrorist written on her forehead)

A likely story?
Mood:  don't ask
An inherently implausible story in the Observer today contains the following: "As hundreds of extremists from across the world gathered at a training camp in Kent today to learn direct-action tactics, the ultra-hardline wing of the movement warned the UK to brace itself for a sharp escalation in violent activity. "

An extremist training camp? In Kent? To which they invited the Sunday newspapers? Who does Mark Townsend (mark.townsend@observer.co.uk) think he is fooling?
His article then goes on to talk about "breaking windows" and "daubing graffiti on cars". With the wildest imagination in the world this is neither violence nor terrorism. They are hardly things which I would do myself or condone but has everybody lost their sense of proportion in the climate of fear caused by the "war on terrorism"?

In later paragraphs - reading between the lines - this is clearly a legitimate meeting of ordinary animal rights activists which inevitably attract the tiny handful of nutters who want to recruit. Mark Townsend says "sceptics are concerned those attending are being taught how to handle police interviews and life in jail." Thus he does not make the statement himself but attributes it to unnamed "sceptics" and in any case if teaching people about their rights is evidence of TERRORISM then Amnesty International and Liberty must be the biggest TERRORISTS out :)
I am not an animal rights activist of any kind - violent or otherwise...well I do stoke the cat occasionally but that is about it... but there is no excuse for this kind of second-rate sensational journalism.

Of course Blunkett will use the threat of "animal rights terrorism" against legitimate protest. He has already used the Prevention of Terrorism Act against peace protestors and anti-capitalist protestors....

He takes his cue from Bush whose administration used the Patriot Act against groups of peace activists and even one guy who got into a discussion with friends at the gym and was skeptical about the official version of the Twin Towers attack...shown in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

People like Mark Townsend (mark.townsend@observer.co.uk) are creating an atmosphere of fear in which the rights of ordinary citizens can be taken away under the pretext of a crackdown on "extremists." Blunkett is the worst possible guardian of our rights - he thinks it is necessary to destroy liberty in order to save it.

Have a nice day.

Cyberspace - the final frontier
Andrea Chester at RMIT is doing research into the psychology of blogging: http://weblearn.rmit.edu.au/surveys/blog/

There is a very good psychological questionnaire and a number of questions about blogging. As a neophyte blogger I felt a bit over-awed. I think it is something I could encourage pupils to take part in but it is restricted to over 18s.

There is a glitch in the questionnaire which prevented me from citing my educational level as postgraduate and it automatically ticked high school. The standard psych personality test followed...if I say I am 2 for untidy must I say I am 4 for neat?.....and then some questions about why people write blogs. In my case it was mainly a matter of organising things I write and keeping them online where I can find them.

Overall it looks as though it will be a fascinating piece of research. Andrea asked me who I had in mind when writing. This is an interesting question because in writing a diary one is essentially writing to oneself. I always tell my students to have a specific person in mind, for example a stranger they have met for the first time. I suspect that all too often the only audience they have in mind is me and they wonder what sort of mark they think I'll give it and whether they have written enough to get away with it :)

Siege of elementary school in Southern Russia
99% of the media indignation against terrorism is synthetic.
It feeds off the very real sympathy which parents feel when they imagine their own children being the victims.
A similar percentage of the hysteria in the United States (and to a lesser extent in the UK) is intended to create an atmosphere of fear in which civil liberty can be destroyed. "It is necessary to destroy liberty in order to save it."
It consciously creates fear in the population so that torture by the state and imprisonment without trial will be accepted.
You might like to think about how torturing people until they confess to terrorism, imprisoning people as a consequence of such confessions or declaring war on states which are demonstrably not concerned with the terrorist attacks could possibly possibly prevent such outrages from taking place.....they haven't worked so far.

The Media in Question

The Media in Question

Robert Ferguson

ISBN 0-340-74078-7

Media Studies appears on the curriculum in your child's school but a popular front stretching from Polly Toynbee in the Guardian to Chris Woodhead in the Telegraph denigrate it as a "soft option" and suggest that anyone who studies or researches it is wasting their time. They would much prefer it, for example, if their prose were read without any analysis. Not only does Robert Ferguson champion this much-maligned subject but he also adopts a heretical view on teaching it. For him it is not a subject which casts the teacher in the role of a sheepdog directing pupils to pre-determined answers but one in which students and researchers work together both on the skills of media production and on the analysis of media texts.

The TV or movies are often seen as realistic because "the camera cannot lie." However, for example, the people taking the decisions on how to represent a war can decide whether to focus on faithfully showing "the action on the front line" or (like Michael Moore) also pay attention to the grieving mothers, the recruitment of disadvantaged youngsters into the army and to the big business interests which profit from warfare. As Ferguson puts it:

"realism, while dependent partly upon verisimilitude¹, is also dependent on creating, sustaining or challenging the audience's understanding of the world being represented. It is not necessary to agree with what a text offers in terms of dialogue, acting and so on, in order to accept it as realist. The irony is that realism is often most persuasive when any superficial criteria ('that looks like a battlefield') are transcended by thosewhich are more complex ('after the film, you knew more about the nature of warfare and those in whose interets it is pursued.') and are not dependent upon surface appearance."

If "Media Studies" is divorced from ideology it is reduced to issues of technique in a vacuum. Understanding the "how" without tackling the "why" is sterile. Studying the media also involves studying the society which produces media images. Questioning is central to Robert Ferguson's approach and time and again he causes the reader to go beyond simplistic analyses.

For example when dealing with 'race' in the media, he invites the reader to go beyond the basic semiotic² analysis and look at the contradictions and tensions within media messages. Media messages draw on what he terms a "discursive reserve". This is a set of ideas which the media both "feeds" and reinforces. A media text will not have a single meaning for a single audience, it will have *meanings* for *audiences* and an analysis of how these "work" is more fruitful than seeking the one meaning of the text.

He also draws attention to the very real consequences of racism beyond the media.

"On the one hand it is clear that much of the construction of otherness, the exotic and issues of 'race' is accomplished through complex modes of discourse and representation. On the other it is apparent to all but the most solipsistic that people's lived existence, and their deaths, cannot be reduced to the discursive. We have to face the contradictions and dilemmas thrown up at the interface of the discursive and the material. We must also recognise that, as media students and researchers, our relationship to our field of study cannot be that of a 'free floating' intellectual, questioner or researcher."

Postmodernism sheds light and casts shadows in roughly equal measure. The book evaluates the contribution of postmodernism whilst dealing ruthlessly with its shortcomings.

"The main challenge offered by the concept of postmodernism for the media studies student and researcher is that it invites a debate to which there is no easy or final conclusion. Postmodern media texts open the door for the celebration of consumerism and liberation from the constraints of some forms of totalitarianism. At the same time, postmodernity is a period of intense insecurity. In its denial of totalizing theory, it is prone to a new totalitarianism which is insistent upon fragmentation and difference. Political solidarity does not sit happily beside the postmodern."

The book intentionally raises more questions than it answers but anyone who really wants to know what media studies is about and why it is important for socialists could do a lot worse than start with this book.