An education policy that hankers for the past and pursues the downright trivial

For anyone who saw it, wasn’t that a great story about UK School Minister Nick Gibb being asked what eight times nine makes during a TV interview on the Good Morning Britain programme?

Why was he being asked? Gibb wants to introduce testing of multiplication table knowledge in eight and nine-year olds throughout England. There is a hankering after such traditional – you might say outdated – forms of school learning among many in Conservative circles.

The wet dream of Tory education ministers
Perfectly useless as a means to develop mathematical skill

Gibb’s answer to the question?

I’ve learned through bitter experience never to answer these kinds of questions on live television.

In other words, he wasn’t confident that he knew the answer. Which, as the interviewer Kate Garraway pointed out, hadn’t stopped him becoming a government minister. His answer that eight and nine-year olds wouldn’t be asked such questions on live TV was glib but a cop out: they’re not paid ministerial salaries either.

In any case, this nostalgic longing for rote learning is entirely misplaced. It’s true that I sometimes smile at the slowness of shop staff in calculating change. If the till doesn’t tell them, or they don’t have a calculator to work it out, they often find it difficult to decide such problems as what change from a £5 note to give me for £3.89’s worth of purchases.

But who cares? They do have a till machine or a calculator, and either is likely to be more accurate than their calculations. It takes much the same time to use either of those devices as to do the mental arithmetic. In any case, the calculation doesn’t require knowledge of a multiplication table.

Besides which, this is all so trivial. What if they got it wrong and I didn’t spot the error? The total sum at stake is £1.11. Who cares? As a general rule, I’d prefer correct change, but when all’s said and done, I’m far more likely to do more damage to my finances myself, through some ill-considered purchase, than the maximum I could lose through this calculation being carried out incorrectly.

Certainly, this isn’t worth a major national initiative and inflicting more boredom and pain on children.

What’s far worse is that multiplication table exams only test children’s memory, the least interesting part of mathematical ability.

Here’s what I’d like a child (or a government minister) to do, if they can’t remember what eight times nine makes.

At the simplest level, they might say, “I know what eight times ten makes, because that’s easy – it’s eighty. And nine times is just ten times less one time, so the answer must be 80 – 8.”

Or, if the child had mastered some of the earlier entries in the multiplication table, they might say, “well, four times nine is thirty-six, so eight times nine must be just twice that, which isn’t hard to work out.”

A really clever child who knew some of the multiplication table, but not the row for eight, might say, “8 is just 4 x 2, and 9 is 3 x 3, so I’m trying to work out 4 x 2 x 3 x 3, or 4 x 3 x 2 x 3, which is six twelves, and I know the answer to that.”

To be honest, if the child took that last approach but got the answer wrong, I’d be inclined to give the work a good mark. The reasoning is so good, and it demonstrates a knowledge of factorisation (you can split numbers into simpler components) and of the commutative nature of multiplication (you can multiply numbers in any order and the result is the same). Reasoning is far more useful to mathematics than simply getting the right result – which we can obtain more reliably from the ubiquitous calculator (hey, they’re even on our phones).

Surely that’s more useful than simply parroting “72”? As Nick Gibb apparently wouldn’t. Or couldn’t.

An anecdote about Einstein recounts that a student once asked him what the speed of sound was. Einstein replied that he didn’t clutter up his memory with such information, but instead made sure he knew how to find it. I think even Nick Gibb would have trouble denying that Einstein was pretty good at maths, despite his aversion to burdening his brain through rote learning.

I’m assuming that Gibb has heard of Einstein, though he might well deny it on live TV, as a self-protective measure.

To misquote Oscar Wilde, a Tory government chasing the mirage of a reversion to traditional education policy, is merely the uninspired in pursuit of the undesirable.

Celebrating St Valentine's Day - differently.

The fourteenth of February strikes me as a good moment for a man to pay tribute to a woman. Though, in this case, not for the obvious reason. Or, for that matter, for the obvious woman.

Most people have heard of Thomas Edison, the great American inventor. The phonograph and the telephone were among his best-known achievements. He also worked on electricity distribution though, ironically, he backed the use of direct current as opposed to alternating current, the form ultimately adopted and to which he eventually converted.

He even tried to expose alternating current by inventing a device to electrocute living beings, to show just how dangerous a form of electricity it was. Unfortunately, this had precisely the opposite effect. With many of his compatriots only too keen on killing others, his device was adopted with enthusiasm and he found that he'd inadvertently invented the electric chair.

Less well-known than Edison is Margaret Knight, sometimes thought of as "the female Edison".

She was born, on 14 February 1838, in the US state of Maine. With only limited education, she went to work at the age of 12 in a cotton mill in Manchester, New Hampshire. That was where her talent for invention first emerged. She saw a fellow worker injured by a steel-tipped shuttle that was flung out of a mechanical loom. She invented a safety device to stop that happening again and, though, we don't know what it consisted of and she never patented it, the invention was adopted by other mills throughout the town.

Margaret Eloise Knight 
"The Female Edison"

The invention for which she is most to be celebrated, however, was a process for cutting and gluing the foldable paper bag. Because it is foldable, it packs very small. Because it is biodegradable, it doesn't have the same disastrous effect on the environment as plastic bags - David Attenborough, in his recent Blue Planet II series reveals how plastic is causing havoc among sea creatures. So it's both a useful invention and one whose time has come around, again.

Rather more constructive an invention than, say, the electric chair, I can't help feeling. But that may just be me.

So, on this Valentine's day, I raise my glass to Margaret Knight on her 180th birthday and remember her fondly. That great invention of hers never died out in the US but it's practically vanished in Europe. It's time to reintroduce it.

I appreciate that this is not perhaps as romantic a sentiment as is generally associated with this day. But it's just as heartfelt.

A fine invention. Useful and highly topical

So French, so very French

We're just back from a week in France, and it's been a real pleasure. .

It felt a bit like a homecoming. This is partly because we used to live there, partly because as well as being undoubtedly English, I also hold French nationality (for which I am profoundly grateful in the light of Brexit), so I think of France as my second home anyway. So I suppose it was a bit of a home-from-homecoming.

What was particularly attractive were the specifically French touches we met in the course of our stay.

France may be in top place, but the EU and Provence are right there too

It started at Marseille airport. Outside the terminal, three flags were blowing, practically rigid in the Mistral wind. It was striking that, though pride of place was given to the flag of France, alongside it were the flags of the traditional province to which Marseille belonged - Provence, whose name comes from the Latin word for province, so in a sense it's the province - and the flag of the European Union.

It seems that the Marseillais have understood that you can be a member of the European Union, and proud of it, without giving up the slightest trace of your attachment to your country or even to your local roots. A lesson that many of the English, sadly, seem not to have grasped.

From the airport we trekked up into the mountains. We were in France for the skiing, after all. These mountains were in the Southern Alps. The advantage is that the weather tends to be far better than in other parts of the same range, though the risk is that the snow may be poorer. Fortunately, this time there was plenty of snow as well as plenty of sun. Fair-weather skiers that we are, the combination was just what we needed.

We stayed in a private flat rented out by its owners. It was luxurious for the four of us and would have been comfortable for six. But six was the maximum. Which made it gloriously French to discover that the kitchen cupboard contained sixteen dinner plates. Food, you see, matters.

Just about enough dinner plates for four. Or even six

Even more to the point, among the huge collection of glasses - for water, for red wine, for white wine - there were even ten champagne flutes. I suppose champagne is just one of those things you have to share with your nine best friends.

Among all the glasses, just about enough champagne flutes

Still it was a glorious place to stay. You could see the first ski lift from our bedroom window. An ideal location from which to enjoy the ideal conditions.

We could see the nearest ski lift from our bedroom window
As you can see, the fashion in ski clothing this year was for the
understated and inconspicuous

On the way back, we stopped at a local cheese shop. I was particularly impressed by the locker system they've introduced. A client just phones ahead (or, I suppose, goes on-line); the shop takes the order and the payment for it; and a few minutes before the stated collection time someone on the staff pops out and fills the appropriate locker with the goods ordered.

Amazon does something similar in England with books or films or household goods. It again feels distinctly French find that, even up in the Alps, they do it with cheese. French and endearing.

Cheese lockers - because you need your cheese fresh. And convenient

So it was truly a home-from-homecoming, and a great way to spend a week. Especially as the sun was out when we got back to Marseille, to the extent that we could eat outside in our friends' garden out on the coast. What a restorative for the winter-weary…

Sun on the sea in St Cyr sur Mer

Labour and Brexit: time to lead

If you watch a friend signing a document committing a large sum to an organisation that is scamming him, you do him no service by offering a better pen. Instead, if you want to help him, you'll try to talk him out of the mistake he's making. He may not like you for shattering his illusions but it is still the best favour you can do for him.

The British government has spent a long time trying to hide the results of its own analysis of the potential economic outcomes of the different options for Brexit: leaving the EU but staying in the Single Market and Customs Union, leaving but with a good trade deal in place, or leaving with no deal and having to revert to World Trade Organisation terms ("hard Brexit). However, the government has been forced to release the reports to Parliament. The broad lines have begun to leak.

Those of us who voted to remain within the EU will not be at all surprised to discover that there is no option that is economically beneficial to the UK. The harder the Brexit, the worse the impact. And the regions most affected will be the North of England and to a somewhat lesser extent, the West Midlands.

Brexit damage to the UK economy by region
From the Guardian

These, coincidentally, are the regions that voted most solidly for Brexit. They are also, the North of England above all and the West Midlands to a somewhat lesser extent, the heartlands of the Labour Party - my party.

It's easy to sympathise with Labour MPs, and indeed Labour Party members in those regions, who feel that opposing the Brexit views of so many constituents will undermine the party's position. It's particularly tough for the MPs, whose very jobs are at stake. So it's comprehensible that there should be calls to show understanding, even sympathy, for the anxiety about the EU expressed by so many in those regions.

This is often dressed up as an economic concern. EU immigrants are taking local jobs or putting excessive pressure on health, housing or education services. However, there is no evidence that any of this is happening and now there is evidence that Brexit would be no solution anyway - the government analysis shows that Brexit would wreak far worse damage on services and employment than immigrants ever could - if they did cause damage. 

There is no valid economic argument for Brexit.

Which leads to the darker, uncomfortable truth about a lot of these Leave voters. A truth we don't like to voice inside Labour. Their concern about immigrants may not be about economics at all but simply about immigration. 

What drives it is fear of the other, the foreigner - which is a translation of the original Greek that gives us the word xenophobia. It is the attitude summed up by Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party at the time of the Brexit referendum, when he spoke of his discomfort at finding himself in a railway carriage in which everyone around him was speaking a foreign language.

If "understanding" or "sympathy" means accommodating xenophobia, then Labour would be crossing a red line which lose it its soul.

Our supporters in the Brexit camp have swallowed a snake oil salesman's patter. They believed the now-discredited claims of the Brexiters that there would be a huge Brexit dividend that could be used to fund the NHS. They believed that many of their woes were caused by immigrants and leaving the EU would solve the problem. They believed it, and the latest leaks demonstrate again how mistaken they were.

Labour is the friend of these voters who are going to bear the brunt of the harm Brexit will do to Britain. It has a duty to speak truth to the Brexiters among them, explaining clearly how mistaken they were, not in a superior way, but just as one would attempt to prevent a friend signing away his money. We should be winning them round to what the evidence demonstrates: Brexit will solve none of their problems. And they need the chance to change their mind and exit from Brexit. Or at any rate, the chance to stay in the Customs Union, the least bad option of those on offer.

Instead the Labour leadership continues to sit on a fence. We're told the Brexit vote must be respected and no opportunity to revise that vote must be given. We hear claims, demonstrated to be entirely false by the example of Norway, that it isn't even possible to stay in the Single Market after leaving the EU. And we're told we have to go along with Leave sentiments, without interrogating ourselves as to whether those sentiments are simply based on economic misapprehension or on something far more toxic: downright xenophobia.

That doesn't feel like leadership. It feels like followership. And it's time Labour learned to lead once more.

Especially on the Brexit issue, the most urgent of our times, the one on which our friends most need our help.

Hail Trump! Those about to weep salute thee

Well, here I am, hoist on my own petard.

My cruel mockery of Donald Trump for having only one achievement in his presidency - the tax cut he arranged to hand himself and his pals - now looks profoundly misplaced. It seems he's about to add a second. And it's - yuge.

Having seen the great Bastille Day parade down the Champs Elysées in Paris, Trump has decided that it's time to have something like that in the US too. Because, you see, he's a great admirer of the military. At least from afar.

Impressive spectacle: the Bastille Day parade
on the Champs Elysées

Why do I say, "from afar"? Because Trump was granted the opportunity to show his admiration for military service up close during the Vietnam War. Sadly, he was unable to take advantage of that opportunity because his studies obliged him to defer joining up - repeatedly. And then, by sheer bad luck, he was forced to take a further deferment on medical grounds, because of a bone spur in his foot.

For those of you who may be worried about how much suffering that bone spur caused him, it will doubtless come as a relief to learn that the problem cleared up. Even at the time, it didn't prevent him playing golf or squash.

These regrettable obstacles to the distinguished military career he would no doubt otherwise have had have in no way reduced his admiration of all things military. Indeed, he gets upset when people make questionable claims to military credit. For instance, he was clear that John McCain, Arizona Senator and a fellow Republican, who was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese for over five years, during which he resisted ill treatment and even torture, was no hero.

"He's not a war hero," he told a rally during his campaign for the Republican nomination for President, "he's a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured."

He's well placed to make that kind of accusation. Trump was certainly never captured. It's true that he wasn't there to be captured, when McCain was being shot down in his warplane, but hey, when you have all those deferments inflicted on you, what can you do?

In any case, his new initiative will set everything straight. A military parade in Washington! He could take the salute, just like such Soviet leaders as Khrushchev and Brezhnev did. Those were inspirational gestures in wonderful times. And Trump can bring them back for us.

Taking the salute: Soviet chief Nikita Khrushchev, his successor 
Leonid Brezhnev framing the first Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin

A second achievement for the US President then. And one that he is prioritising. Who can question that doing so is entirely worthy of the man he is?

And what a fool I feel to have questioned the fitness of such a man for office.

Pick your battles. And don't be afraid to win them.

When it comes to skiing, it isn't going fast that's hard. It's going slow. And stopping. Do it for a few hours, after a couple of years without, and your muscles will soon tell you so. Any fool can point skis straight downhill and go fast, but if that fool doesn't know how to turn and stop, the result is unlikely to be conducive to the fool's good health.

That makes skiing quite a metaphor for life.

Don't you get slightly tired of those life-affirming principles that motivational courses delight in? You know, the suggestion that if you just put enough into it, you can achieve anything. Whenever I go into the centre of the town where I live, Luton, I'm greeted but a huge sign proclaiming that if I can dream it, I can do it.

Ah, yes. Motivational thinking. Inspirational.
But somewhat lacking in contact with reality...

Well, frankly I've had dreams which it fills me with horror to think I might some day have to live out. Equally I've had dreams which might well get me into serious trouble if I were try to realise them. It may just be me, but I find dreams a poor guide to life.

Still, that's clearly not what those well-meant exhortations mean. They're not asking us to fly under our own power because we dream it. They know we can't all score the winning goal in a World Cup Final. They realise that being an internationally acclaimed movie star requires a lot of talent and a lot of luck and not just a lot of ambition.

What they mean is that we shouldn't be held back from reaching for the apparently unattainable just because we fear to try. Take what happened to me on the first morning of my current skiing holiday.

One of the least pleasant ways of getting up to the top of a ski slope is what we English call a ski-lift, but the French call a téléski or far more earthily a "tire-fesse" which we could possibly translate as a "bum-tugger". You stick a pole between your legs (now, now, keep your thoughts clean) and perch precariously on a round disk at the end. The pole, attached to a cable overhead, then drags you, on your skis, up the hill.

The first time I came across one of these infernal contraptions I came off it three times in three attempts, before finally giving up and taking a a different route back to the resort. The experience left traces in my injured subconscious that are far from plesant. Traumatic, almost.

So when I was confronted with one of these bum-tuggers, with signs at the entrance warning that it was unusually long and included stretches with a gradient of over 50%, all my nerves started jangling.

"Impossible, impossible," they were crying to me, "don't even attempt it. Certainly not on your first day. Perhaps not even on your last."

To decide a thing is impossible is to make it so. And the view from the top of the ski-lift was, I'm told, exceptional. Besides, there was no other way out. It was time for my mind to take control of my instincts.

"We've done this kind of thing dozens of times," it soothingly told my nerves, "and we've coped with steep slopes and long runs. If this is a bit longer and a little steeper than some, well, it'll just be a little more of what we've confronted many times before. Not as comfortable as a chairlift but perfectly achievable."

And so it proved to be. Far easier than the threatening picture my instincts painted. Indeed, my sister-out-law, who was my guide on this outing, somehow kept leading me back to the same place, so in the end we took the same ski lift four or five times. By the end, my nerves were completely reconciled to the experience. I'd go so far as to say they were blasé about it.

Which is the other danger. Get too familiar with a hazard and you stop seeing it as hazardous. You get too casual and then things go wrong.

Never take a long, steep ski lift ride casually. Never stop focusing on the task. Never, for example, be so irresponsible as to fish a phone out of your pocket with one hand while holding the pole with the other, so you can take photos of the experience.

Bum-tugger at work:
you sit on a pole and get dragged along on skis

Now it feels to me that, whatever the would-be motivators might say, this is all applicable in life.

You shouldn't be put off doing something because you're afraid of failing. Why, you might well fail, but as long as you take the trouble to learn from the failure, you greatly increase your chance of success at the next attempt. Above all, if they only thing that's stopping you trying something worth doing is your fear, then confront that fear and overcome it.

On the other hand, understand your real limitations. You're never going to fly under your own power. Don't set your heart on doing it: the only certainty of trying is that you'll be disappointed, and there's every chance of serious injury too.

Any fool can rush in try to bulldoze their way to success. The result is the Trump presidency with its litany of failures. Indeed, it's the deluded aspirations of those who voted for a Trump presidency and whose only legacy will be disappointment. Like those who voted for Brexit and set up themselves up to fail.

No. You need to pick your battles. I'll never be a champion skier. But I can get to the top of a ski slope reached by a bum-tugger. The view was excellent and the fine, long run down marvellous.

Overcoming a little angst was a price well worth paying.

The case for Brexit, made by certain Englishmen

There are times when one can begin to understand why so many English people voted for Brexit.

We recently had some work done on our house. Recommendations from friends I always feel are stronger than just a star rating on some kind of internet site. So, with our friends encouraging us to use this particular contractor - let's call him Darren - we weren't too worried that he had absolutely zero references on the website that evaluates firms like his.

Our confidence was somewhat rattled, however, by the same friends phoning us again just days before the work was scheduled to start, saying, "for God's sake, don't use Darren: he's appalling".

Still, we'd already paid him a substantial deposit by then, and his behaviour had been charming. Perhaps with effort on our part we could accommodate him.

Ah, well. Had it only been that simple. We were soon to discover that the only way to accommodate Darren would have been to give him the whole house. And pay him to improve it.

He had a little team of building workers that had been with him for years. English to a man. We were struck by how hard and how well they worked. Until we saw them at a time when he wasn't around. When the cat was away, the mice, it seemed, had endless cigarettes to smoke or phone calls to make from their van outside. If they showed up at all.

Turning a house into a tip
But it isn't builders' work to turn it back, apparently

They also left a trail of dirt behind them which none of them ever bothered to clean. Dust sheets? Apparently never heard of them. Vacuum cleaning after they'd done? Not work for an upstanding builder. Taking off their muddy boots when they came indoors? There was no time for such niceties - after all, they had important cigarettes to smoke.

We decided to be polite but firm.

"You know Gary didn't show up till 10:30?" we might say.

"He tells me he was there at 8:00," Darren might reply, "And I've never known him lie to me."

Things would get broken and have to be replaced.

"It wasn't broken when I last looked at it," he would tell us.

"Well, it's broken now," we'd reply.

"OK, but who's to say it was one of my people who broke it?"

I suppose no one could say that with certainty. Only that no one else had been anywhere near the piece in question but his people had. But we were beginning to understand that pointing out inconvenient truths to Darren, however difficult they might be to deny, would only make the situation worse. And by "worse" I mean pretty seriously worse.

"Just stay there," he told me once, "and I'll be round shortly to sort this out with you, you effing unspeakable."

Only he didn't use the word "effing". Or "unspeakable".

Things reached a climax when he told us that he knew where our sons lived and they'd better keep looking over their shoulders too. Since our sons live in Madrid, that was quite a claim. It also suggested a grip on sanity worthy of a US President (and, yes, I do mean one particular US President).

Overall, however, most of his work was done well with only some blemishes or minor elements incomplete. In the end, for the sake of peace, we decided to call the job done and get the odd bits that needed finishing - or in some cases fixing - dealt with by someone else.

Who did we turn to? Three Poles, for different areas of work. And, you know, they were appalling: they turned up on time, they were quick and efficient, they did high-quality work, they were conscientious, they were honest in their charges, they covered everything around where they were working with dust covers and vacuum cleaned behind them. They never, never threatened us or our family with grievous bodily harm.

One of them was probably the most expensive workman we've ever used, in terms of hourly cost. But since he was also the quickest we've ever seen, the cost of using him was no greater than that of Darren's cigarette-smoking lads. And, boy, the work was immeasurably better.

Now, I know that English workers are by no means all like Darren's. There are conscientious and hard-working individuals among them. But I suspect most Brits reading the account above will find it rings familiar bells. There are far too many for whom those are the appropriate standards for work.

It's to understand why they might decide to vote for Brexit. I mean, those Poles we had clearing up Darren's work, can live and work freely in Britain under the EU rules. And set those shameful standards for work quality.

Who on Earth wants that kind of competition? Especially when, to put a stop to it, all we have to do is vote to leave the EU.

A case that must have seemed compelling, I'm sure, to builders sheltering in a van for their second early mid-morning cigarette break.