Back to school

On Monday children in England returned to their classrooms for the first time since the 2021 lockdown was introduced. I knew that because I heard them clattering past my house on their way to school. There was an exuberant atmosphere, much swinging of bags, slamming of doors and rattling of railings. And there were voices, too. Some subdued, some loud and unruly - but it all reminded me of how these diverse energies are so often overlooked, reined in and brought to serve adult purposes. In this I find myself in sympathy with the work of some scholars and researchers who wish to dislodge reductive accounts of meaning making and even to challenge reductive ideas about what children, learning and school are and could be. Yes, on Monday there was an almost palpable sense of relief. Children were back in school, they were back together, and the event underlined my understanding of how children thrive in each others company as well as through the sensitive guidance of adults. Of course they may also have been some reluctance, let's not forget that there will have been children who were less enthralled by the prospect of school, children who were not excited, were worried, anxious, or just uncertain. But all told, the crucially important function of public education is that it provides spaces for children to be together - not only classrooms and other places designed for learning, but also outside, at the school gate, in playgrounds as well as in corridors and doorways. Such spaces tend to be less regulated, but they are the spaces in which the energy of childhood culture thrives, where children play and interact, often under the watchful eye of adults but not usually through their explicit direction. In this way schools - and primary schools in particular, have always offered so much more than the learning on offer. Unsurprisingly this is a large part of what children will have missed. Parents and children have been thrown back on their own resources these past months, often heroically supported by teachers who have worked under extremely difficult circumstances to provide learning opportunities remotely. All told, being back together feels like something worth celebrating. That said, I don't subscribe to the notion that children are now massively behind, or that they should necessarily be subjected to additional days and hours of study. Those arguments seem to come from the outdated view that children are like empty tanks to be topped up daily with fresh content, a view often held by those who mistake the arbitrary construction of age-related norms for objective truth. If anything, we need something more like the summer play schemes which used to be modestly funded by local government. The school premises were vacant, the curriculum was put to sleep and the normal rules of engagement could be re-negotiated. Volunteer teachers and parents worked informally together to organise games, creative activities and outings for children of all ages. Above all children could be children together in a loosely structured permissive context. What better as an economical and humane approach to healing the scars of lockdown?

Dwelling in error

Creative processes can be as interesting as their final products and that's partly because they are occasions in which thinking really is live, where something different could always come into being, or fail, or just remain in potentiality. I was reminded of this listening to dramaturg Ruth Little speaking about her collaborations with award-winning dancer and choreographer Akram Khan. Part of a Radio 4 series Behind the Scenes followed the development of their project Xenos, the story of the 1.4 million Indians who fought in the Great War. It is reported to be Khan's final outing as a dancer. The process of developing the piece is all about exploring possibilities, working on a difficult theme with a challenging set design. 'It's dwelling in error that takes us forward' explains Ruth Little, working with 'things that are right on the margins of possibility, or likelihood, or logic, in order to discover where they collapse.' I'm convinced that all the experimentation somehow gives weight and texture to the final performance. In the process, though, there's a wonderful sensitivity or faith in what emerges out of uncertainty. What's more, the very idea of dwelling in error is very appealing to someone, like me, who's always making mistakes!

New writing

At the moment I'm writing about textual toys and the commodification of early literacy. I've noted before how a wide range of games and activity centres designed for young babies now have digital components - as do baby walkers, play mats and plush toys. Embedded in these toys are digitally-reproduced nursery rhymes, counting games and alphabet songs providing ‘edutainment’ for infants and toddlers. Although toys and toy manufacturers have always played an important part in early childhood, their role in young children’s learning is ill-defined,and under-theorised. This is especially true for early literacy in which everything from alphabet building blocks and jigsaw puzzles to  educational tablets like,the LeapPad, carries an implicit message about what literacy is, how it develops, and what roles adults, care-givers and children themselves should adopt. What is more, these implied roles blend in with current conceptions of parenting, defined by ‘social investment’ initiatives that reach into the relationship between children and adults to underscore the significance of what is done with as well as what is provided for the very young. Scollon's idea of a nexus of practice is proving to be a useful way of articulating the confluence of play practices involving literacy that are singular and situated, whilst at the same time acknowledging that play objects themselves are part of a political economy located in a global mediascape.

Peppa Pig pedagogy

The first word my grandson said was 'Peppa'. An inveterate fan from 18 months, the Peppa Pig series is available to him on TV, a choice of iPhones and iPads, and on his own DVD player more or less on demand - and he demands quite a lot! And of course there are Peppa Pig toys, interactive books, and magazines at his disposal too. For his birthday, his mother plans to make a Peppa Pig cake. So Peppa and George are available across media platforms and his everyday experience is mediated (sometimes in advance) through Peppa Pig. Yesterday he did 'jumping in muddy puddles', and as is the way with popular narratives, his family were quick to cross-reference this to a pig episode he was already familiar with. The animated pig family sits at the centre of a web of meaning-making practices through which very young children are introduced to their social world. The self-aware pig family features Peppa, her younger brother George, the over-confident and often inept Daddy Pig and the can-do Mummy Pig who regularly flies the flag for competent women. Social and cultural values are woven into the fabric of the Peppa narratives, and alongside parents and caregivers, they are the young child's first teachers. But its not a single-track road. Dylan, my grandson, has appropriated the word 'peppa' so that it stands for a range of things. Prior to his mastery of 'herro' it worked as a greeting, and more recently it has started featuring as a term of approval: something is 'peppa' if it is cool (just as 'go' is not good at all, and usually accompanies separation from his mother). Some may bemoan what they see as the corrosive influence of popular media culture, but actually it seems to me that Peppa Pig is a pretty sophisticated teacher. Meanwhile Dylan's mother won't need a cookery class to make that cake, she's already found a YouTube tutorial. And Dylan's early years teachers may face some pretty stiff competition in the coming years!

Bare-knuckle fights and WoW

I caught an interesting segment on the radio today which was about bare-knuckle boxing in the early C19th. Given that I'm reading Bonnie Nardi's ethnography of WoW, I was tempted to draw some parallells - not, I hasten to add, about violence, but about popular entertainment and gaming. Big fights might attract an audience of thousands, and were a hugely popular affair mostly publicised by word of mouth, but what struck me about the history was the way in which the entertainment itself was embedded in a nexus of social practices. Firstly involvement in the fights was a fashion, but it also included many layers of betting and even the specific jargon of flash. Mainstream media eventually got interested, and there we can trace the beginnings of sport journalism. In an interesting parallel you can see how most of the broadsheet and weekend newspapers now have sections on gaming and digital culture

Radio silence

I've had one of those times when life takes over, and blogging falls by the wayside, spending most of my time looking after baby Dylan (in the picture) and my daughter, Hannah. It's interesting watching the play/work of a 9-month old and the ways in which new media is woven into the environment. Firm favourites are the V-tech products (particularly the dance tower), but Skype calls on the laptop, grasping for the mobile phone and nursery rhymes on the i-touch are all part and parcel of daily life. At the moment my attempts at keeping a record have been squeezed - maybe I need a firmer plan. Whilst immersed in all this life goes on with several projects under way and an opportunity to re-engage with the Barnsborough virtual world. More on that later on.