What do you know by heart?
I am one of those people who tries to self improve on holiday. I always take a least two worthy books with me. Generally, I do OK for the first couple of days but then the sun, fun and booze take over and I return having read only the first 100 pages of the Brothers Karamazov
This time, in Crete, I decided to learn some poetry. There are lots of thing about which I feel inadequate; not speaking another language, not being able to play a musical instrument, my upper body physique, and – a less conventional inadequacy I realise - not knowing anything much by heart. OK so there are a few songs; ‘I’ve got you under my skin’ and ‘Tracks of my tears’, for example, but nothing very cultured.
So this holiday I have set out to learn some poems. I’ve started with something simple; my favourite poem ‘As I walked out one evening’ by WH Auden. So far I’ve got the first eight verses (not as impressive as it may sound, they are only four lines long and they rhyme).
I could have it all by Sunday but I feel holiday decadence kicking in. I need support and inspiration. Why do I have this idea it’s good to learn things off by heart? Maybe Ben from UCL can tell me how it will help protect my ageing brain, or some of those who criticise my educational progressivism (are you there Joe N?) can make the case for rote learning.
Keep me on track folks. After Auden I want to go for something a bit more challenging. Any one for Yeats?
Why the hard sell is getting me down
I’m on holiday in Crete, so more occasional and shorter posts for a while folks.
We flew over on Easy Jet. No complaints about the basic service; the plane arrived on time and the cabin crew were efficient if a bit bossy.
We had to be a at the airport by 5.00 am so I had hoped to sleep on the flight. But every time I started to snooze I was woken by a voice on the Tannoy encouraging me to spend some money. During the flight we were asked to shell out for:
headphones for the film
snacks (whose modest virtues were described in ludicrous detail)
booze, perfume and cuddly toys
scratch cards
The idea that my flight is an opportunity for the airline to hard-sell at me for three hours was reminiscent of other recent experiences of consumer capitalism’s aggressive pushiness.
Buying a laptop at PC World the saleswomen was incredulous when I turned down the offer of two months free cover as an incentive to sign up for the store’s service and advice cover. I had to say ‘no’ with increasing insistence for about ten minutes before she shook her head and sighed deeply at my sheer bloody mindedness.
Then a few days later a friend was comparing prices from Virgin and BT to have a broadband package in the home. Leaflets came through the door with attractive and strikingly different all-in monthly prices on their cover. It took a couple of hours of ploughing through the small print to work out that the actual cost was two or three times as much and, if everything was included, the prices were virtually identical.
Consumers are being (a bit) more careful with their money and companies increasingly look to make profit not from the core product (which tends to be subject to a very competitive market) but the various add-ons. Combined, these factors have led to an inversion of the claim companies like to make about their customers. Instead of being privileged people who deserve to be looked after in return for their service, we have become sitting ducks at which to fire volleys of further offers and demands.
For decades we have been told that the public sector needs to be more like the private sector. But while my Lambeth Council dustman may not exactly be a ray of sunshine when he takes away my rubbish, at least he doesn’t wake me up to demand I buy scented bin liners and ‘split bags cover insurance’ from him.
Welcome Boris – some questions while you are here
The RSA House is hosting London Mayor Boris Johnson today. So it would be impolite and bad business for me to criticise him in my blog.
But I can’t resist raising a couple of questions about the leadership of this great city.
The first goes back to a theme I wrote about last winter: sporting participation and the Olympics. I won’t go back to the whole affair. Suffice to say an initiative at the RSA had lined up a very impressive group of sponsors and supporters for the idea of an independent campaign to deliver on London’s pledge to make these Olympics a catalyst for mass participation in sport. Our idea was rejected on the grounds – surprising given Conservative national policy – that the Mayor didn’t need an independent campaign; it could all be done by local government. Instead Labour MP Kate Hoey (Boris’ sporting advisor) announced the establishment of a new committee, the London Community Sports Board.
That was April and as far as I can see it hasn’t thus far met. Assuming it won’t meet in August, this looks like a lead-in time for a committee meeting of a minimum six months or, to put it another way, a fifth of the time left between now and the Olympics. But have I got this wrong? Is the strategy out there and already making a difference to sporting participation in the poorer areas of London (which, last I heard, was stuck at a level way below most other parts of the UK)? If not, it is not clear how London will live up to the pledge of social inclusion and mass participation that it made when the bid was won.
The second issue is broader. What is the big plan for London? Maybe I’ve missed something but I don’t sense what the capital’s story is, aside from delivering the actual Olympic events. Whether it’s the economy, the environment, community relations, young people or old people, there are big changes and challenges ahead. But I would be hard-pressed to articulate the London vision. Some people say this is Boris’ strength; that he pragmatically goes about things like the abolition of bendy buses or the building of Crossrail without resorting to overblown visionary language. There is something to this but isn’t it also important for places to have an account of where they are going to which residents can relate at some level or another?
Boris can be a brilliant communicator and he has real star appeal as he goes around meeting the people of London. But maybe it will take a little longer to show he can be the leader London needs.
Why cash makes you stupid (sometimes)
Sorry if some people thought I was a bit sniffy about TED last week (although I can’t quite bring myself to withdraw my ‘Britain’s Got Talent for rich hippies’ jibe’). Anyway, there were two brilliant speeches on the last morning which just about made it all worth while.
The first was a powerful, insightful and extremely funny talk by orchestral conductor turned consultant, Itay Talgam. He described various forms of leadership by pinpointing the particular styles of impresario conductors. In twenty minutes I learnt more about music and about leadership than from reading learned books on the subjects.
The second was one of those talks with an idea so strong you know you will be discussing it for months. The speaker was American ideas man Dan Pink. The idea, which is the subject of Pink’s forthcoming book, is that crude incentives (like big financial bonuses or example) damage performance in complex tasks.
One of the best pieces of evidence for this claim comes from the famous candle problem. In this exercise subjects are shown a picture of a table next to a wall. On the table is a candle, a book of matches and some drawing pins in a box. The task is to attach the candle to the wall over the table, light it, but not let it drip wax on the table.
On average it takes people about ten minutes to identify the solution. This is to take the drawing pins out of the box, pin the box to the wall, then stand the candle on the box so the wax drips on to it rather than the table. This requires the subjects to make the lateral leap of seeing that the box holding the pins is not just a receptacle for another object but an object in itself.
In this test those who are offered a cash prize for completion perform less well than those who are simply asked to solve it as quickly as they can. Fascinatingly, if the test is made easier – by taking the pins out of the box so it can be seen from the start as an object in play – then those offered incentives perform better than those not.
The candle problem is only piece of a mass of evidence for Pink’s core thesis. So, his speech raises two issues: not just the fact that performance in complex tasks is harmed by crude incentives, but the question why are so few people apparently aware of this powerful finding? After all its relevance to the financial meltdown is surely obvious. Big cash incentives help bankers with the simple task of making money out of a system of financial swaps but they don’t help them with the complex task of realising the system itself is built on sand.
Let’s phrase that question another way: why is it that powerful people in important jobs don’t want to discuss research showing that being given big rewards might damage their performance. The answer, of course, is in the question.
Social mobility – some clarification
Clearly I angered a few people with my comments about social mobility earlier this week. In particular, people objected to the implication that I dissaproved of the efforts of middle class people to pass on advantages to their children. Let me try to clarify.
Middle class families will automatically tend to pass on privilege through their possession of cultural and social capital. These are the understandings, assumptions and networks that shape the expectations of young people and provide the routes to personal advancement. While social policy may seek to enhance the capital available to poorer communities there is no case for seeking to disrupt this way of passing on social advantage; after all it is not much more than good parenting.
But there are other ways of protecting privilige which are less benign. The point I was making earlier in the week was about the tendency of middle class people to colonise so-called ‘good’ schools through their home buying or sudden religious conversion. I highlighted ESRC research which showed, using value added data, that there is little correlation between how successful a school was in the past and how good it will be in the future. The reason some schools seem to get better year on year is more a consequence of social sorting (middle class colonisation) than inherent school quality.
It would be better both for schools and for wider society if middle class parents put less energy in trying to get into ‘good’ schools and more in supporting their children and being active parents in more socially mixed schools (which, as it happens, is what I have done with my two boys). There is a marginally greater risk of a child failing in a more mixed school but people (and media comment) exaggerate this danger hugely ; as I pointed out, 90% of the performance of children can be predicted from the resources and support they get at home. But, while going to a mixed school is a small risk for the well-off there is clear evidence that greater social mixing and a wider range of ability in a school are most definitely good for children from poorer backgrounds.
I’m not in the business of lecturing anyone about their school choices, but this is, it seems to me, an instance where the desire to give our own kids the very best chance runs against what may be in the interests of society as a whole.
It is because, when faced with this dilemma, most people will put the marginal advantages of their own child over the social good that the aspiration to transform social mobility may continue to be a pious hope.
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