What some children are buying into when they buy into mainstream brands

One of the things I like most about setting kids on-line research tasks, other than it feeling a bit more relevant to their future lives, is that I get an insight into how they interact naturally with the outside world. We are all aware of the evolving ways in which producers market their products at children, but here I get a daily focus group of consumers, and I get to watch their responses.

That morning I had been listening to Mark Kermode rant against the latest Fast and Furious offering. Why are people still going to watch this? He couldn't understand. What these films seemed to offer was nothing remotely original, interesting, high quality, or in any other way worthy of merit or consideration. Each iteration of the franchise was just another pre-packaged, formulaic identikit version of the one before. Within a few seconds of starting the research work I had set for him, a lengthy trailer for the film had popped up on Sean's monitor. He knew he wasn't in trouble, he was on a web-site that I had suggested he go on, but it had started playing automatically and he wasn't able to skip it for about another 20 seconds. "I am definitely seeing that." "Me too," echoed his neighbour, without missing a beat.

Kermode, in his defence, can't be expected to understand what the film does offer them. But I have some ideas.

It's helpful to look at a counter-example of someone who doesn't buy into the franchise. Another student, Jay, can't stand these films. At 13, he is about the same age as Sean, but his tastes have gone in a very different direction. Once he scratched 'My Chemical Romance' on the back of his hand in blue biro. Jay, like Sean, is bright. But they have quite different backgrounds. In short, Jay comes from a stable and reliable home environment. I was impressed when I met his father who, after he had finished work one afternoon, had sought me out at the school's parent's evening. Jay's father was interested, articulate and, crucially, there.

Sean's father has been in and out of prison a few times, and the last time he was meant to 'engage' more with Sean's life, it didn't go very well. Sean's school file is littered with letters from well meaning but infuriatingly transient professionals that flesh out the familiar litany of concerns - missed appointments, drugs, domestic violence. Sean used to look up to his Father. Sean was apparently playing XBox with his father when he was last arrested. Saw him being taken away, but didn't see him again for a year. Sean's behaviour has declined drastically in the years since.

What Sean was buying, when he decided he would be getting tickets to see the latest Fast and Furious, was not the excitement of the story (he knows at the start how it is going to end, and also doesn't, I'm afraid, have the attention span to follow the plot all that well). What Sean was buying was two hours sitting with everyone else in his social group. Two hours of what the psychologist Henri Tafjel called 'in-group identification'... constructing "a sense of belonging to the social world." Two hours with all the millions of boys his age who were also seeing it that week-end. Two hours wearing the clothes they were all wearing, eating the same food, using the same phone, drinking the same drinks. Two days afterwards all talking about the same film. Sean is adding bricks the second and third strata of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: safety, and belonging.

I will never be able to fully appreciate the security that something like this brings to someone like Sean. Essentially, those will be the safest two hours in his week. In that group he cannot be touched. He doesn't have to answer any questions. He doesn't have to consider his responses. As long as he follows this crowd there is no risk of failure, there is no risk of humiliation, there is no risk of isolation. I cannot fully appreciate the security that he feels in this situation because I never have, and hopefully never will really experience the insecurity he feels in his daily life both at school and at home. Places where that terrifying triad of risks - failure, humiliation, isolation - are ever-present.

And it is precisely because the film is so mainstream that is its strength. Strength in numbers. It doesn't matter if the hero is the most cliched, wooden and unrealistic fantasy, when you look at who the real "heroes" are in Sean's life. The more Sean has been exposed to the weaknesses, the frailties and the defeat of his own male role model, the more it makes sense when he seeks out the opposite extremes in those on the screen. Kermode gleefully mocks Vin Diesel's clunky dialogue, but here's what he doesn't mention. Vin Diesel's character does what he needs to do. He achieves his goals. He is still there at the end.

Jay, unlike Sean, has had real life heroes who have (at least in part) taken on this role for him. Only then does it make sense that Vin Diesel's character will appear to Jay as fake, wooden. Because a hero will only appear fake if you are able to call up a genuine image of a real-life flesh and blood alternative. He won't, if you can't.

And besides, Jay, unlike Sean, explicitly doesn't want to watch the same films as everyone else. Nor does he want to wear the same clothes, drink the same drinks, buy the same phone. Here's the ccrux of the matter. Opting out of the mainstream is a luxury for those who know that they will return to homes where they have all the physical, emotional and economic safety that they need. And when you realise this thenthe motivations of Jay and all those who will follow 'alternative' lifestyles starts to make even more sense, because when you have all of these safeties, then you want to break away from the 'nests' of mainstream culture, lest they become suffocating. When you have secured all of Maslow's lower tiers of need, the last one remaining is self-actualisation. Achieving this is not only helped by distancing yourself from mainstream culture, but indeed it necessitates forging your own path. Going alone. Travelling off the beaten track. Look at the people who take gap years when they finish school. Look who applies to Universities in different cities. It won't be Sean. And not because he isn't smart enough, he is. But Sean is not interested in self-actualisation. He just wants to feel safe. And for this, today, all he needs to know is what to wear, what phone to buy, what film to see.

So I decided to wait until the whole ridiculous 60 second trailer had finished. And then I told him that the film looked rubbish. And that was also what he needed to hear.

Four Types of Silence

Start a campaign? Asks the public campaign web-site 38 degrees. It's tempting, I must admit. I've never started a campaign before. I marched once against the closure of school libraries, and have signed some petitions, but that's about it. Sometimes, if I'm in a shop with my wife, and I want to make it more interesting, I play the game "if you were forced at gun-point to buy one thing right now what would you buy?" On a couple of occasions I've ended up buying it. The point is, when I was signing up to someone else's campaign for... I forget what exactly, I asked myself, if, at gunpoint, I had to start any campaign, what would it be?

I've been in teaching in comprehensive schools for about eight years now. I went to a private school, my wife, to a grammar school. Teachers, as any non-teacher will tell you, are not shy of talking about their work. However, the fact that we are operating within a system that divides children at a very young age into those who attend selective and those who attend non-selective schools, and the merits and failings of having such a system, represents, what I would call, something of an elephant in the room. I haven't heard anyone, not a single person, talk seriously about actually doing something to address the pitfalls of having such a system. Why not? If I could start only one conversation, this would be it.

A quick search on 38degrees.com for "selective schooling" brings up one local campaign, targeted at the Bexley school admissions team, from an understandably embittered father whose son narrowly missed out on a place at the successful local grammar school, and will instead have to attend the apparently less successful comprehensive. I genuinely feel for him, it sounds like a very difficult situation to accept. But quietly, in my head, I am thinking two questions: 1) would he have started this campaign if his son had been accepted? and 2) surely this points to a widespread national problem... why is there not already a nation-wide campaign underway? Why is there so much silence around this issue?

The fact is, there are different reasons why people do not want to talk about this issue. Imagine you were to divide people into four types:

Type 1: Went to a selective school, prospered.
Type 2: Went to a selective school, failed.
Type 3: Went to a comprehensive school, prospered.
Type 4: Went to a comprehensive school, failed.

Those '1's who have prospered, and indeed continue to benefit from the selective school system in this country, are evidently not predisposed to fight against it. The '2's who went to a selective school but failed, are not generally in a position to blame the system for their failings, a system which, to all extents and purposes, has given them the necessary tools and opportunities for success. Then there are those who attended a comprehensive school. They may have been successful (Type 3). These are inclined, and I can only speak for those I have met and spoken to, to feel, fairly enough, that they have earned this success through hard work, and despite the disadvantages they grew up with. Crucially, they are inclined to feel that their peers perhaps could have done so as well had they exerted the same level of effort. They are quite likely to be right of centre, politically. Michael Gove, of course, went to a state school. In fact, everyone in a position of power, who went to a state school, finds themselves in this category by definition. They are unlikely to campaign against the selective schools system in this country not least because it has manifestly not failed them. If anything, these are the people from whom I've heard the most passionate defence of selective schools, as they seek to translate their hard work into giving their children the social advantage that they were not themselves given.

Which leaves those (Type 4) who went to a comprehensive school and didn't prosper. In the past, these might have formed the core of a working-class protest movement. A brief aside - I was listening to an interview on the radio promoting the film 'Pride' the other day, and I learned that the Coal Miners Union, amongst other activities, sought to provide Union members, both children and adults, with books and classes such that they could be sufficiently educated to be able to recognise, and indeed stand up for their rights. This no longer happens. Today, all that seems evident to me, is a group of people who lack the necessary connections, the power (and, crucially, access to those with power), confidence in their own knowledge, understanding and skills of communication, to believe that they are in any way able to ask for, let alone affect change.

So you have, around this giant elephant in the room, four types of silence. Each of them different, but each of them equally quiet.

In the fourth category are the students, and parents, I generally see in my school. The main difference between the students I see, and those who attend a selective school, is the sense of entitlement. They latter grow up knowing that they will have the ability to follow whatever path in life they want. The children of type 4 parents (who themselves went to a state school and did not prosper) will grow up knowing that their own path will be equally difficult, potentially unsuccessful. It doesn't take much to see that the prophesies can quickly become self-fulfilling.

But we can't just all keep silent about it. Because the system is blatantly unfair, and designed in such a way as to hinder social mobility so profoundly. Put simply, we have a system in this country whereby students who are advantaged (maybe they come from wealthy or highly educated and ambitious families, or who live in a very good area) tend to go to a certain type of highly successful school, where they are surrounded by other children who are also advantaged in some way. They will do well in this environment, naturally. Children who are disadvantaged in some way go to a different type of school, a school where children from wealthy, educated and ambitious families, are markedly absent. These children, statistics and common sense dictate (Burgess, Dickson and MacMillan, 2014), are significantly less likely to be as successful as those who attend the school that has already selected only the 'advantaged' children.

Either way, the system is inevitably established such that the advantaged children will grow up into a position from which they are able to pass this advantage onto their children, and so on.

If we in this country want to pursue the worthy goal of greater social mobility, and if we accept that societies are happiest where social mobility is at its greatest, then this is a ridiculously unfair point from which to start.

I am someone who has benefited hugely from the selective school system. My grandparents were generous enough to fund my place in a successful private school. My wife's parents were educated and ambitious enough to secure for her a place in a very successful selective grammar school. Now here's the difficult bit. Our families have in the past worked incredibly hard to put themselves in a position where they are able to confer this advantage upon their children. They want nothing more than the best for their children, and they were willing to put in long, back-breaking shifts to obtain it. You know what? In their position I would have done the same. But this advantage that we were given, at a young age, has to come at the expense of others.

It shouldn't have to be this way. I would like to start a discussion in which the ultimate goal is a level playing field for all children, regardless of religion, wealth, or social class. An equal opportunities act that recognises that while we are live in a country in which schoolchildren are so clearly segregated into the haves and have nots, children simply do not have equal opportunities. Starting a campaign will be very difficult. As my wife correctly pointed out, there is nothing visible or tangible to campaign for, at the moment. But there are small, tangible goals. Taking away charitable status for private schools. Recognising them, essentially, as a hindrance to social cohesion, and taxing them accordingly. Curtailing their presence somehow, in some way. But at the very least I would like for there not to be this silence.

Some Thoughts on Anti-capitalism

I have been engaged in an on and off discussion at work with a fellow teacher who identifies herself as an anti-capitalist. To her credit, she is very widely read on the subject, writes about it for a left wing magazine, and comes at it from a position of having studied political and economic theory. I haven't. But I've decided that from now on this isn't going to stop me from trying to articulate my views. Also, as this is my blog, she can't answer back. Or at least if she does, I can ignore her.

It is not that I am averse to being labelled; there are several '-ist' labels I will happily apply to myself, and may do so in future. But despite the sympathy I have with the movement, I fear that pinning myself to an anti-capitalist flag risks strangling the more necessarily nuanced debate regarding the ideal relationship between the public and private sectors in modern society. Some labels are useful, but I'm not sure this is one of them. I will try and outline some of this debate here, and in future blogs.

George Osborne remarked yesterday that business leaders need to "put their heads above the parapet" and make the free-market argument loud and clear, so as to "fight back" against all the "pressure groups, trade unions, charities and the like..." who are making the counter-argument. His assertion is drastically misguided, to say the least. But what I found interesting about the backlash from some of the major charities, is that they did not argue back in support of the anti-business argument, but rather with the claims that their charities are not anti-business in the first place. The importance of enterprise "is vital to tackling poverty around the world" argued Oxfam's head of UK campaigns and policy. "It is not anti-capitalist to say clean water, clean air and sustainable growth are good for everyone" says the executive director of Greenpeace, who are clearly as reluctant as myself to align themselves with the anti-capitalist movement.

Pro-business flag wavers for the centre-right will say things like, it can be useful for dealing with inefficiencies in systems, that it stimulates healthy competition and growth, that it fuels technological advancements that we could all potentially benefit from. That the profits delivered by the private sector can be used to fund welfare. I don't want to associate myself with this right of centre camp of pro-capitalists. But the things is I've now spent 16 years working in both private and public sector organisations, and I can see that the problem everyone on the left needs to deal with, is that they are, in some ways, kind of right.

The central thrust of my colleague's argument appears to be that the capitalist system, by definition, is predicated on the necessary pursuit of unsustainable growth, which can only ultimately lead to some form of destruction (environmental, social etc...). She argues that the only way of creating a sustainable environment, in the broadest sense, is to reject this notion of perpetual growth. But is there a chance that we might be innately wired to pursue progress in some form as a society? (As an aside, it might even make sense, on an evolutionary / biological level. Any species that eschewed societal progress and growth would surely soon be killed off by those that did?).

I don't know whether or not growth is inherently a good or bad thing. But what I can say is that from a purely personal point of view, I've seen enough to be able to say that the lack of growth in the latter can be equally if not more depressing than its pursuit in the former.

Furthermore, I can't help but feel that some people within the anti-capitalist movement may inevitably be in danger of taking for granted the myriad ways in which we have taken control of and shaped the world in which we live in a positive way. Schools and hospitals, for decades now, have been quietly, with almost no public recognition of the fact, getting better and better equipped with new technologies, improved buildings, better facilities. As a result, more children each year are getting a better education than they might otherwise have had (a controversial but in my opinion often overlooked fact to which I will return), and each year people are living longer (a fact which is not overlooked, but which people tend to see just as a problem, rather than the result of amazing advancements in the field of healthcare). Would we really be happy if we stopped this progress? Perhaps, but I doubt it. And could this progress ever really happen in a non-capitalist system? Maybe. I'm waiting for someone to show me somewhere where this has occurred.

It's all part of wanting more. Yes, it's destructive. Yes, we would be happier if this desire didn't exist. But, with the DNA we have, denied the freedom to pursue this want of more, I can't help feel that a wide, fundamental thirst might remain on some level unfulfilled. This is actually why Osborne is wrong to argue for the louder public support of business, in their opposition to "trade unions, pressure groups and charities". Businesses, left to their own devices, will naturally find ways of exploiting the myriad resources available to them in order to grow and thrive. A free market will naturally appeal to our innate desires for (for example) expanded choice and technological progress. The world of business simply does not need this type of public support in order to thrive in our society. Charities, on the other hand, do. Trade unions do. Pressure groups do. Businesses would continue to do just fine without their leaders 'sticking their heads above the parapet'. Charities, and the millions who depend on them, would inexorably suffer.

I believe this argument is important because it is dividing the left at a time when we need to be united. It risks driving an unhelpful wedge between my colleague, and the readers of her essays, and myself (and the millions of readers of this blog), at a time when we would be much better off united. In other words, if we were to accept that we are to live in a society based on capitalism, then what we can do, after that, is devote all our collective left of centre efforts to pursuing the ultimate goal of controlling and regulating as much of it as is feasibly possible, engineering for ourselves a capitalist society that is also one which is fair, non-destructive, and conducive to widespread happiness at every echelon of society. I will continue this later.

Fish Tanks

I went to an aquarium with my wife recently. It's not normally something I would do, but we were in East Tokyo, looking to escape the heat and the rain, and it was there. The small fish seemed to have ample space, and were pleasant to watch. Then came, inevitably, a much larger fish, a grouper I believe, whose presence in a relatively small tank was depressing. I wondered what the ratio was, of fish size / tank size, some threshold ratio beyond which it begins to feel very wrong. Then I saw a small shark in a much larger tank, and it felt more depressing still. It had relatively more space, and yet...

It reminded me of similar feelings I have at aviaries. The smaller aviaries are the most depressing of all, but sometimes, in London zoo for example, you see huge aviaries, populated sparsely with eagles and... other eagle-type things (I'm not an expert). The ratio of bird size to amount of space was surely acceptable. And yet... maybe it's not about the size of the bird, I thought, or the fish. Maybe it has less to do with how much space they occupy, and more to do with how much space they could occupy, given the freedom they would otherwise have in the 'natural' world.

But I don't think it's this either. When I saw the small fish flitting about in their tank, it felt 'natural' that they would be subservient to the imposed restrictions of their immediate environment. It felt as if, in the outside world, they might not necessarily be able to control a much larger space. Whereas the shark, on the other hand, would be expected to 'control' vast swathes of its water, as the eagle might 'control' vast cubits of air.

What feels wrong is not so much their lack of space, as their subservience.

The only way in which humans can be happy with witnessing this level of imposition, is through developing the impression that, like the small fish, it is somehow natural that they would be subservient to the imposed restrictions of their environment. You have to make them appear small, in every sense of the word.

So in fact there is no size ratio that matters. It is the subservience that upsets. Peaceful cohabitation is lost as soon as the glass tank, or net, or concrete barrier, is erected by the more dominant force, with restrictions placed on the free movement of those on the other side. After this, it doesn't matter how big you make the tank, or how clean the water inside.

This is something people often don't seem to fully grasp, and I can't help but feel that it affects a lot of what is going on right now. It is why I have made it my first proper post, and it is something to which I will return. Unlike the Tokyo aquarium, which was very busy and over-priced.

Introduction

I have always resisted blogging because I hate the look of my words in print. Any public declarations I make sound far too definitive given my level of ignorance on most matters. In any case, as soon as they are made, they inevitably sound wrong. I don't like the thought of blogging for the same reason I don't like the thought of getting a tattoo. Within days it will inevitably start to appear both dated and misguided. Also it's hard not to end up looking like a bit of a twat.

And I don't want to be someone who wants to have their voice heard. Many such people are idiots. Not all of them, granted, but most.

So I end up not talking. Which is also not ideal.

Firstly, it leaves the spaces of the internet free to be filled by those people who do want to have their voice heard. Sometimes these people know even less than me, which is alarming.

Also, there are a lot of concerning things happening today that need to be discussed, sensibly. I am not expecting anyone to listen to what I am saying. Many people are saying it much more eloquently and knowledgeably, and, apart from anything else, I have no following to speak of in any medium whatsoever. I am whispering from a distance into a vast, deafening, chaotic morass of voices.

If I am being honest, then the reason I have never written publicly, in any forum, is not that I fear that no-one will read what I have written, but that they might. As long as thoughts remain private, they are safe. Once they become public, they can be critiqued, taken apart, ridiculed.

So I'll call this blog, for want of a better name, Public Sector Thoughts. Firstly, this might help me focus my thoughts around the role of the public sector in today's society, an area in which I have at least some understanding. But the second meaning is also valuable. As thoughts enter a public domain, they have to go through a process of consideration, organisation and articulation. If thoughts become considered, organised, and coherently articulated, then they surely stand a better chance of invoking some form of action, if necessary.

Besides, if, in the future, someone (maybe myself) points accusingly to some of the things that were going on during my lifetime, then at the very least, in theory, I can send them a link to this.

I am going to attempt to publish something at least once a month over the coming year. Despite what I have said above, I remain quite a private person, and so I'm unlikely to publicise any of these posts. I believe it will be automatically posted on my Google+ page, but this is, I suppose, roughly akin to keeping it private.