How to fix Brexit.

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It’s obvious to all but a small minority of hardcore Brexiteers that Brexit is going badly. The UK has made lots of concessions, whereas the only concession the EU has made is over the length of time the ECJ can protect EU citizens’ rights in the UK for. Discussions about trade haven’t started yet, and won’t start until March at the earliest. The Irish border issue has been fudged; the government has yet to demonstrate how Britain can leave the Single Market and Customs Union while not having a hard border. It has become obvious there will be close regulatory alignment between the EU and the UK after Brexit, defeating the notion of ‘taking back control.’ Meanwhile, the UK’s economy has gone from the fastest growing of the major developed countries to the slowest. Inflation has increased, driving down living standards. This is in the context of a high-performing global economy and relatively strong growth in the Eurozone contrary to the Brexiteers’ predictions.

The fact is, the UK cannot make a true success of the Article 50 process, which is designed by the EU to favour it above any country that decides to leave. The UK has a severely short period of time in which to negotiate a good deal; it will probably make more concessions due to time pressure. To make matters worse, the Conservative Party and the country are divided as to what they want out of Brexit, if it should even be happening at all. The EU are united as to what they want- Brexit did even feature in a lengthy debate between Angela Merkel and Martin Schultz in the most recent German election. There was no need for it to feature, both of them agreed.

The solution is to cancel the Article 50 process and apply for EEA membership, otherwise known as the Norway model. This has the advantage of respecting the referendum result, while not getting an unfavourable deal that hurts the economy. If the UK economy crashes as a result of a bad deal or no deal at all, it is the Brexiteers who will be blamed, and we may end up back inside the EU but without the financial rebate. In contrast, EEA membership would be alright- much of the damage from a soft Brexit has already happened in the form of lower growth and a devalued pound. More importantly, it would buy the country the time it needs to find out what it wants and then negotiate it. If we wanted to leave the Single Market and Customs Union, we could negotiate a free trade deal better than the one negotiated under Article 50, since there would be no time limit. If we wanted to stay in the Single Market and Customs Union, we would simply stick with the status quo rather than be ravaged by the uncertainty facing the country right now. And crucially, if Britain decided it wanted to stay in the EU after all, it could rejoin far more easily.

The problem is that the Conservative Party won’t do this, because Conservative Brexiteers see the EEA as equivalent to EU membership, and so won’t consider it, even as a temporary measure. They think being outside the EU will make Britain better off, regardless of the unlikelihood of a good deal. To me, that view is absolutely deranged. The Conservative Brexiteers are consumed by delusional paranoia, accusing anyone wanting parliamentary sovereignty over the Brexit process or a softer Brexit of treachery, betrayal and disloyalty. However, their views may come back to haunt them. If Britain gets a bad deal or no deal at all, and the economy tanks, the Conservatives will probably lose the next election. The most right wing people in the country will have been responsible for veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister. I’m very critical of a lot of what Corbyn believes, but I can’t deny the hilarious irony of that situation.

Trying to fix American education

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Two dozen state lawmakers and legislative staffers spent 18-months studying some of the world’s top-performing school systems, including those in Finland, Hong Kong, Japan, Ontario, Poland, Shanghai, Singapore and Taiwan. They concluded as follows:

1: More help is needed for the youngest learners!
In the U.S, poverty is a powerful drag on the youngest learners, with too many children showing up to kindergarten both hungry and lacking important cognitive and noncognitive skills. Research suggests that preschool, when done well, can have a profound impact on children’s lives, but too often in the U.S. it’s done badly or not at all. Of the top performers the group studied, all of them invest in early education. Ontario, for example, offers free, full-day kindergarten not only to 5-year-olds but to 4-year-olds too.

The differences continue once America’s disadvantaged students reach first grade. There, they’re often in poorer schools with low-performing teachers. Not so elsewhere. In many of the world’s top school systems, according to the report, “providing additional resources to schools serving disadvantaged, struggling students is a priority. More teachers are typically allocated to such schools, with the best teachers serving in the most challenged ones.”

2: Teachers need to be better
America’s patchwork of teacher-training programs is famously broad and threadbare. The U.S. simply has too many institutions that claim to train teachers, but pay no attention to what a school district wants or needs in the classroom. In many top-performing countries, educators are often trained at a handful of the best, most selective universities. Once these top-flight teachers enter the classroom, they also enter a very different professional reality — one that involves as much training as teaching. In some places, the report says, just “30 percent to 35 percent of a teacher’s time is spent teaching students, while the rest is spent on activities such as working in teams with other teachers to develop and improve lessons, observing and critiquing classes, and working with struggling students.”

What makes good teaching?
Too often in the U.S., teachers work in isolation, cut off from their fellow teachers. In contrast, many high-performing countries have embraced a team-teaching model, where newer teachers are constantly observing veteran teachers and being observed, fine-tuning their skills in real time. Overseas, observation is about improvement — not just accountability.
And then there’s pay. Yes, other nations have higher standards for their teachers, but with those standards come increased respect and pay, on par with engineers and accountants.

3: Fix Career And Technical Education
For the less academic CTE — auto repair, welding, carpentry, etc. is important, but schools have failed to adapt their CTE offerings to fit the needs of the modern economy. CTE also has the same perception problem ss it does in the UK It is considered a second tier for low-performing students. Actually, many schools ignore practical skills and too often students need college in order to be career ready. In top-performing countries like Singapore, the report says, “CTE is not perceived as a route for students lacking strong academic skills, but as another approach to education, skills development and good jobs. CTE is well-funded, academically challenging and aligned with real workforce needs.”

My comment: you will see that arts subjects get not a mention. Otherwise, the issues are rather similar in both the US and the UK. Teacher pay is a crucial matter. If you pay peanuts for doing a truly exhausting and stressful job then you get …you know what. But better pay infers higher taxes, and while true love and care are mainly lavished on the rich, change will never happen.

Swearing and bullying

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“Giles Coren fails to understand that the principal purpose of swearing is as a means of bullying and control. This explains its use by drill sergeants, celebrity chefs, university lecturers and drunken louts on trains.
“Swearing is the lexical equivalent of the shaken fist, used by the more powerful as a means of intimidation against the less powerful. Some journalists condone it under the mistaken impression that it gives force to their views.”
(From Clive Ashwin, Aylsham, Norfolk to The Times)

There is also a mistaken impression among playwrights in particular, but also TV producers, novelists and so on, that swearing, cussing amd foul language is creative, that it adds verisimilitude to a production, and that somehow the old miseries who like clever, well constructed and amusing dialogue are living in some Elizabethan past and ought to get with the scene.

Well, no! Bad language is not clever on the public stage; it simply illustrates how uninspired writers fill out their work with mindless dross. It shows what a poor command of the language they have that, thinking to shock the elderly theatre audience in particular, they drive that audience away and make themselves look small and lacking in talent. We can hear the “f” word for free ten times a day on the street. We don’t need to pay to hear it.

Ten top quotations from Epicurus

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1. The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.

2. Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

3. A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs.

4. Not what we have but what we enjoy constitutes our abundance.

5. Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

6. Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.

7. It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

8. I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know.

9. Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

10. The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

Hope for the day

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So Doug Jones won the Alabama Senatorial seat with 49.9% of votes against Moore’s 48.4%. In his victory speech, Jones declared the campaign had been about “dignity, respect and the rule of law”.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! As a follower of the thoughts of Epicurus I try to avoid in-your-face party politics. You can get those in a thousand venues. But all decent, civilised people who find bare-faced lying and bullying distasteful must be relieved to see a candidate as measured, polite and courteous as Jones. In his victory speech no point scoring, put-downs or sexist or racist. Just when we were despairing of the crudeness and verbal violence that pervades the American public space, at least some faith has been restored. One hopes the present unpleasantness is a passing nightmare and that we will awaken to a return to the more civil and bipartisan behaviour of half a century ago.