Mike Jenkins - Welsh Poet & Author
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WELSH EDUCATION NEEDS A REVOLUTION!

2/24/2015

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   As an ex-teacher I'm often asked whether I miss the classroom and my reply is unequivocally 'No way!'
   Of course , I sometimes do return to classrooms to give creative writing workshops and I  relish this opportunity. Though, given the severe effects of the Cuts, this has become less frequent. 
   Like music, drama and foreign languages, it seems that creative writing has been pushed to the periphery, as schools are forced to focus on literacy and numeracy to the exclusion of so much else.
   Talking to friends and relatives who are teachers only reinforces my feelings about the current education system in Cymru, only marginally better than England's Govian nightmare.
   As I've previously blogged our testing culture is, in many instances, worse than the SATs and in Primaries in particular, we are managing to brand thousands of pupils as inadequate failures in a re-run of what happened with 11 +.
   What teachers tell me is appalling.
  They describe how even the Core subjects are taught regularly by non-specialists.
   How, as a result of the new Welsh Assembly Gov. colour code, GCSE counts for everything and 'A' Level is absurdly ignored.
   How parents in an Amber rated school increasingly pressurise staff during Parents' Evenings, despite the fact that these colour codings are ridiculous.
   How meetings take place after school,often twice weekly, without proper agendas and often for more than an hour.Together with endless form-filling and target-setting, all this makes it virtually impossible to produce resources, let alone mark work properly.
   How morale has reached its lowest point ever, even for young staff, so that many consider leaving.  
 
   The colour code system was set up under present education Minister Huw Lewis (an ex-teacher) to replace the totally discredited banding.
   It places all schools into categories from Green to Red, and the latter can ultimately be threatened with closure. 
  Four traffic lights to add to the confusion!
  The real power behind Lewis is WAG's Senior Advisor Prof. David Reynolds of Southampton University( who has never taught in a school in his whole career).
   When I taught in Merthyr, Reynolds came to the Comp. to deliver a lecture on 'Time Management'. He was three quarters of an hour late and delivered a garbled message which I'd place in the Red category.
   The criteria for coding schools are seriously flawed.
   One Comp. in Cardiff achieves some of the best 'A' Level results in the country, yet is an Amber school because its GCSE results have gone down slightly.
   As well as data set against self-evaluation, the coding is also heavily dependent on the judgement of Challenge Advisors.
   I know one of these who was renowned as a callous bully when a Head , forcing staff he didn't like to leave or go on sick as he targeted them. Now he goes into schools and deploys those bullying tactics against whole establishments.
   Cronyism and not any merits has ensured that these bullies rise to the top and they rule through fear everywhere.
   Advisors need to be as inspirational as they once were.
   I recall the former English Advisor for Mid. Glamorgan David John as one who lead by example, pushing creative writing and Welsh writing to the fore and  pioneering 100% coursework in both Language and Literature.
   Advisors could, once again, become hands-on : helping teachers, taking lessons and producing resources. They could, if they were actually successful teachers themselves!
   These Challenge Advisors are marked only by their desire to get out of the classroom,by their blatant careerism.
   Even more ludicrous is the system whereby the Green schools profit from coding.
   Teachers who are deemed to need improving are sent to these schools at considerable cost, to observe 'good practice'.
   The reality is very different and I know of several from Primaries who had to attend a Cardiff Comp.  over six weeks, only to find that teaching standards didn't warrant that Green at all. 
   (Apparently, the results at GCSE are as much due to home tutoring).


   Teachers need the freedom to teach what enthuses them and their pupils.
   In my Welsh class a few weeks ago I gave a short talk on Prof Gwyn Alf Williams and referred to the Merthyr Rising.
   There are three young people in the group, all educated in the area and still living here.
   None had heard of Gwyn Alf and only one had scant knowledge of the Rising.   
   In History alone we need a revolution in the classroom : local and Welsh History must be at the core of study.
   Pupils need freedom to research and discover from an early age, through their families, local libraries and museums ( those that remain!).
   Huw Lewis and his puppet-master Reynolds are obsessed with data and Wales's position in international PISA tests.
   They have forgotten (if they ever knew) that education is all about the excitement of exploring new ideas and using the imagination.
   However, a revolution in our schools cannot be achieved without one in society.
   No reformist party is going to make things anew.
  Teachers and pupils need to relish their time in schools and not merely learn tricks to pass tests, yet another trait of that old and sordid exam , the 11 plus.






                        NOBODY TRUSTS THE TEACHERS


Nobody trusts the teachers :
the Redtops blurt tales
of disgrace and sexual antics.


Politicians repeat about failures
and send in the trouble-shooters ;
Councils threatened with Commissioners.


Teams of Inspectors invade schools
and deliver their damning judgments.
Heads ambush their lessons


armed with forms and tick-boards.
Parents e-mail to complain
about behaviour, results and testing.


Even the pupils....yes, even them,
after they've heard their parents moaning
as they read newspapers, watch television.


So the teachers don't trust themselves
to ponder, plan, encourage and inspire,
with all that spying vision.




    
2 Comments

PIJIN'S  BATTLE BUS

2/12/2015

0 Comments

 
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  Al-Wings Jones, my Campaign Manager, must take credit for it.

   -  I ad this vision see,  he told me. I wuz meditatin on tha new parabola bridge, when it come t me!......a nest on wheels! An then, wha bloody appens?
  -   Wha's tha, Al?
  -   The cackin One Nation Labour Party on'y gazump me, tha's wha.
  -   Eh?
  -   It's all over-a chip papers Wayne-O, don' tell me yew int seen it?...They got this pinko bus on the road to appeal t female voters.
  -   Oh, I got it!
  -   Aye....I reckon them CCTVs cun take pictures of yewer friggin visions an all. Well, we could still go a'ead if yew wan'.
  -   Orright, Al, wha's yewer plan?
  -   Jest an ewge nest on wheels goin from place t place.....we might even make it t Rhymney, never know.
  -   Andin out free pasties?
  -   Freebies yeah....providin we cun get Greggs t sponsor us. We get voters inta the nest an then Coo them inta submission. They'll be flyin by-a time they've sucked on a few of ower specially long chips!

   So, Al-Wings had devised a plan and Incredibly Pinko Labour had stolen it.
   However, we were not deterred by this.
   We knew UKIP would have a purple horse-drawn carriage touring Merthyr and that they'd flog a few donkeys in public to exact revenge.
   We knew the Lib Dems would launch a yellow Bananamobile in Dic Penderyn Square as a desperate publicity stunt.
   We also knew that even the Tories would be out and about, floating over town in a blue hot air balloon and dropping leaflets from afar.
   We were expecting Plaid Cymru to take to the road in a giant Cabbagemobile in homage to their leader's love of allotments (that party being something of a personality cult).
   And the Greens were apparently planning a  futuristic capsule powered only by pigeons' droppings. A novel idea I thought, though Al-Wings Jones summed it up as 'A load of shit!'

   However, our nest would ensure us the support of the youth, as stray college students would gravitate towards the free lunch.
   As to the bird world, even fancy jays couldn't help but be impressed by our resourcefulness.

( For this poem, I came over all Shakespeare..........



                               OUR  WHEELED  NEST




All hail our pigeon battle bus,
all hail our wheeled nest!




Bring forth citizens, O martyred place,
we shall co-co-co-    discuss.




Let guano from the skies
descend on all who foul mouth




our avian dreams and schemes,
be they two-legged or winged ones.




All hail to the future,
to the citadel of Greggs!




Bring forth your votes in bundles and stacks
and we will ne'er target your pates. 
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KATE TEMPEST : MAKING IT HOWL

2/3/2015

0 Comments

 
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   I'm not exactly a fan of rap.
   It's not so much the predictability, the preponderance of strained couplets and that I actually prefer singing....it's more to do with its association with gangsta lifestyles and the glorification of violence.
   Often, more pose than poetry.
   However, when I look back there are exceptions.
   There is Gil Scott-heron for one, the so-called 'Godfather of rap', who was nothing like much of what followed.
   He drew primarily on jazz roots, attacked gun culture in the States and had an idealistic, internationalist vision.
   'B Movie' and 'The Revolution will not be televised' were two of his classics which challenged authority and the right-wing establishment of that time, represented by Reagan.
   Similarly, I also relished Welsh language rappers Tystion, though my limited knowledge of the language at the time meant that I only grasped an inkling.
   Like Scott-Heron they had a wider agenda and vision where the Welsh language and our people's liberation were central.
   Of a very different kind, I liked Newport's Goldie Lookin' Chain, often scorned by ardent rap fans.
   There's was parody, but one which was often hilarious, with a humour which could be crude and satirical.
   Generally though - even with the likes of Dizzee Rascal, whose qualities I could see - rap left me totally unmoved.
   So it was with trepidation that I decided to download 'Everybody Down' by Kate Tempest.
   I think I did so finally because I've become tired of the total lack of lyrical prowess by so much of the music scene.
   I'd read articles eulogising this poet, playwright and rapper from London, another product of the Brit school.
   Even the fact that she'd won the Ted Hughes Award for her book of poetry ' Brand New Ancients' didn't allay my suspicions of hype.
   Tempest (her pseudonym) resembles an innocent 16 year-old with scant knowledge of the world.
   I was blown away by 'Everybody Down'.
   Like early Cooper-Clarke every backing track perfectly matched her delivery.
   Belying her appearance she's street-wise and politically passionate, yet never rants or preaches.
   Like The Streets the essence of her album is the narrative and 'Everybody Down' is a rap novella, only the rhyming is never arbitrary and the imagery often that of a fine poet.
   It's yet another great concept album of this century, following Tom Russell's 'Hotwalker', Gruff Rhys's 'American Interior' and Robb Johnson's 'Gentle Men'.
   Each track's like a chapter unfolding the tale of Becky and her relationship with Harry ; every bit as tragic as Romeo and Juliet, but with a heartening optimism as well.
   Drugs and prostitution play a vital role , but are never sensationalised soap opera style. The humdrum stands alongside the fight for survival which inevitably steps over into the criminal underground.
   Tempest uses dialogue as naturally as she rhymes, and what impresses especially is her persistent humour and concern for the development of her two main characters, whose perspectives are alternated.
   Lines like 'posers giving blow-jobs to mic stands' and ' one man's flash of lightning ripping through, is another's passing glare hardly there' show how she can be both earthy and philosophical.
  The music is predominantly electronic and drum 'n' bass and never impedes  the delivery which , judging by her performance on Jools Holland, must be captivating live.
   Politically, her life was altered forever by the mass protests against the war in Iraq, but she's never pushy with her undoubted left-wing zeal.
   Will I read her poetry?
   It's hard to say.
   I much preferred to listen to the records of Linton Kwesi Johnson and Attila the Stockbroker, though both were more agitprop.
   She lives up to her name - taken, surely, from the Shakespeare play - by ripping through the streets of London with a word-storm and taking the dog out of doggerel to make it howl.


                             THE   FIGHTIN  SEASON


Black Friday, Black Saturday, the fightin season.
An always comin inta Merthyr vale station
it begins real serious an crazee.


Drunken drongos or piss'ead footie fans,
yew jest know it's gunna kick off
before Securitee cun move in.


Or, there's no uniforms, an this woman
gets between em, so one calls er 'Slag!'
She's braver than any man.


There's fuckin this an fuckin tha
an bloody bastard shittin,
there's fists an feet an gobbin.


Like-a train's bin eld t ransom
an us kidnapped on-a platform.
An-a p'lice? They miss ev'rythin!   
        
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