A Somerset Lad

‘I prefer to concentrate on my own music.’

The occasion of the comment has long disappeared into the realms of forgetfulness, but there came an occasion when what was meant by ´my own music’ was revealed.

It was a charity evening and there was an expectation that we would be impressed by the presence on the bill of the player of  ‘my own music.’

The singer sat a keyboard which seemed more intended to create an impression than to be played. Occasional chords accompanied a thin voice with a limited vocal range.  Most of the sound came from a backing track on an iPad, and it was dull and repetitive.

The audience, who had been asked to be generous in parting with their money, became bored and started to chat among themselves. Out of respect to the performer, they had to be shushed. It was an embarrassment.

We had been told that the singer had a professional contract with a pop promoter and had done interviews for the press (the only one I saw was in a local free newspaper and seemed a work of imagination, for some reason the singer claimed to be Spanish). The singer was presented as an ’emerging star,’ a cynic might have suggested that it must be a star in a remote galaxy.

The singer seemed not overly impressed by the lukwarm response of the audience, but suggested they were too old to appreciate the music.

The singer did not go on to emerge, and, in retrospect, it seems odd that such a future had been seriously expected. There had been no attempt to serve an apprenticeship by touring pubs and clubs, no preparedness to play venues where the crowd might jeer as well as cheer, no attempt to go along to festivals and play on minor stages in the early afternoon. Instead, there was an expectation of instant recognition and success.

An online search reveals the most recent links to the singer are fourteen years old. Presumably the failure to achieve instant stardom prompted a petulant departure from the stage.

Why was there such an easy drift into the realms of self-delusion?

It was at a time when social media were on the rise. Early arrivals could achieve an immediate impact. But, from the outset, the platforms were places where people would not accept any criticism, no matter how mild. Any negative comment meant being blocked.

The confirmation bias in the social media relationships of those early years has strengthened. Any whisper suggesting that someone is less than brilliant is unacceptable.

There are probably numerous artists out there who are similar to the singer in their expectations of fame, but, being blocked, those who would wish to express a balanced opinion will never encounter them.

The test of endurance becomes worse.

Third Year students have sat a two hour mathematics paper for their mock Junior Certificate exam. They then had a twenty minute break before returning to the examination room for ‘study time’.

Study time is meant to be undertaken with a silence as profound as that which pervaded during the exam.

Third Year students in Ireland are the age of Year 10 students in England. Many of them are not academic. Many find the idea of sitting reading school books a very difficult prospect.

Being responsible for supervising a room of thirty-six students for the second hour of the study time, a handful of restive students are not difficult to spot.

The preparation is for the history paper this afternoon. The examination is a common level paper. The writers of the textbooks have been aware of the need to challenge the most able students, and, thus, they have written excellent material, the vocabulary of which is beyond the weaker students in the room.

It is such moments as this that make non-academic students hate school. The one size fits all, mixed attainment approach is not doing a service to anyone.

I would not argue for a return to streaming, but instead an approach far more radical, an education system that is designed to equip the students instead of the administrators who regard grade inflation as a mark of success and who find it difficult to comprehend anyone from outside of their academic mindset.

It was the Conservative politician R.A.  Butler who had a vision for education in England that was focused upon the needs of those who sat in rows in the classrooms. After the Second World War, there was an idea of there being three strands. The secondary grammar, the secondary modern, and the secondary technical.

In Conservative-controlled Somerset, there was an attempt to create the secondary technical strand. There still exists one school where students go for a secondary education that is focused upon agriculture.

It seems odd that with the pervasiveness of technology, the technical schools have not been revived on a systematic basis. Schools that prepare students for particular industries or sectors, schools which students choose to attend.

Some academies have been rebranded as being focused upon particular disciplines, but the reality has been that the labels assumed were more appearance than substance. (The local academy for my village was branded as a ‘science’ college for a while, before returning to being a mainstream academy, and recently being placed in special measures after being judged ‘inadequate’ in an Ofsted inspection).

Anything has to be better than subjecting students to moments that they hate.

Can one have a vicarious sinking feeling? Is it possible that the apprehension felt by others is something that might be fully sensed by oneself?

The Leaving Certificate mock examinations have begun. A room filled with people of seventeen and eighteen years old sits staring at the pages on the desk in front of them. Some write furiously, some stare into the middle distance.

This afternoon it is the first paper of the mathematics exam, the students are a mixture of higher and ordinary level candidates. The candidates’ level can be deduced from the colour of the cover of the examination booklets, pale blue for ordinary level candidates, pale pink for higher level candidates.

Sitting at the front of the room an hour before the end of the exam, it is not hard to see that a number of the ordinary level booklets already lie closed on the desks in front of despondent faces. Finger-tapping by one disengaged candidate necessitates a glare across the room, a hand is raised in apology.

Exams never seemed to make sense,

Being a lazy sort of person, I developed skills in doing just enough to get by. Being reasonably literate, there were exams where I managed to score highly without ever having done the work that might have merited such a mark. It always seemed unfair.

In 2023, do school leavers really need the sort of mathematics that can be measured in the twenty-four pages of an examination booklet?

Undoubtedly, there are aspects of the mathematics in the booklet that are essential to many future qualifications and careers, but does sitting in a room for two and a half hours provide an appropriate means of means of measuring the proficiency of the candidates?

It was from an old episode of BBC television’s QI programme that I discovered that written examinations were a recent phenomenon. The first written exams were at Cambridge University in 1792. Presumably, prior to that date the cost of paper militated against students sitting and spending hours writing answers.

Discussing examinations with my supervisor, who is a professor of education, he pointed out that oral examinations have survived, but at doctoral level. Candidates for doctoral degrees are expected to give an oral defence of their thesis.

If qualifications at the highest level can be awarded on the basis of a process that does not require the lottery of examination rooms, surely it’s not beyond the wit of educators to devise better means of assessment.