Military recruitment or What's education for anyway?

I’d like to put the record straight for those readers who have the impression I’m not concerned about boys’ poor communication skills and under-performance at school. I am, because we all know what happens to some of those boys: they join the army.

And as the UK armed forces are currently operating below full strength according to statistics from the Defence Analytical Service Agency, there’s a new vigorous recruitment campaign encouraging 17s year olds to fly apache helicopters instead of going to university.

The case is especially relevant to the wild Welsh highlands of Gwynedd where the city of Bangor’s recruiting office has the second highest recruitment rate in the whole of the UK. I don’t think it’s anything to with the persuasion skills of the recruiting officers – it’s because there’s not much else on offer in the way of youth employment opportunities, as I’ve blogged elsewhere. So, despite parental opposition (particularly since the invasion of Iraq) the youth of the area depart, telling themselves as they’ve been told, that they have the chance to learn a trade and ignoring the fact that it may involve killing or getting killed. The news still makes it clear that it’s a man’s job and, in fact, this is one area of life where sex discrimination does work in women’s favour: it is still boys who are wanted as cannon fodder. On the other hand, it is the wives and mothers of soldiers who have been campaigning to bring troops home.



As I’m recounting this to my daughter who’s studying in England, she informs me of something I should have known about a long time ago: the university officer training corps (UOTC). Operational since the beginning of the 20th century, this programme currently comprises 19 units across the UK and aims:

To develop the leadership potential of selected university students through enjoyable training in order to communicate the values, ethos and career opportunities of the British Army.

It recruits students into weekend boot camp activities and offers the perk of free holidays abroad (or as it is stated: ‘we learn to plan and carry out expeditions overseas’). The purpose is not to persuade them to join the armed forces per se but to foster pro-army attitudes among the middle-class, according to one student’s analysis, “so that the future captains of industry will encourage their less well-educated workers to join up if there’s a war.”

The Khaki Dragon

This kind if inequality is particularly striking in Wales, which, as one of the poorest areas of the UK, seems to have become central government’s backyard for military developments, increasingly dependent on the British war machine for economic survival.

It was Plaid Cymru who late last year blew one whistle, providing figures to show that the army recruitment division visited schools in deprived areas of Wales twice as often as those in wealthy areas and thus highlighting the trend across Britain - which led to the MoD curtailing its practice of school visits (although the Welsh Assembly itself refused to take action).

However, cadet training, which takes place outside schools, is still booming in Wales: there are an estimated 7000 young people between 12 and 18 in over 100 cadet units and up to 4000 17- 32 year olds trained as Territorial Army soldiers in 23 TA units. Such enlightening statistics can be found in comprehensive research commissioned by Wales CND into the militarisation of the region. Their report entitled The Khaki Dragon - which is available to download here - also provides a full listing of sites in Wales that are used by arms related industries (at least 35 involved in military contracts) and military-sponsored education and research (Defence Technology Centres at Cardiff and Swansea universities).

And as Ray Davies, chair of Cardiff UNA, blogs:

Between 2001 and 2004 the Ministry of Defence provided military training for over 12,000 personnel from 137 countries, many with poor human rights records. All of this raises the prospect of Wales being used as a training ground for any corrupt dictator who happens to have a million pounds to spare.

What’s education for anyway?

I wrote an earlier post on the St Athans military academy and the involvement of the Open University there. But I’m pleased to see that there are some instances in Britain where higher education questions its own role in contemporary society. Prior to the No Border camp, London academics ran a 2-day free open access event at Goldsmiths University entitled The migrating university: No detention, no deportation, no borders in education where one of the panels discussed the following:

Does a university education offer a passport to a world of opportunity? Are the old exclusions of race, class, gender and ability fully redeemed by our policies and ‘inclusive’ programs? Or is the new hierarchy a filtering mechanism which promises precarious labour for some, security and success for others? While some may never question their right to access, do some have to fight to move at all and others struggle daily simply to pass or fail? Is education really a social good, a pass to freedom; or is it rather a ticket to a new set of subjugations?

There’s not much sense of autonomy here in north Wales. Along with RAF Valley (which trains fighter pilots from all over the world) the picturesque Isle of Anglesey also houses Britain’s largest magnox type nuclear power station at Wylfa. This is likely to be replaced soon by Wylfa ‘B’ if the latest 'consultation’ gives the government the go-ahead to build a new generation of power stations across the UK.



Though I’ve returned home from my travels, I still seem to be living in a developing country which has been forced to sell out under external pressures, is subject to cynical class-based control and where political leaders like to take the name of the Lord in vain as they make empty promises of peace and security for everyone. Our elitist society where intellectuals criticise exceptions like President Chavez - for closing down private schools in Venezuela and daring to say that capitalist ideology destroys the values of cooperation and egalitarianism.



Read The Khaki Dragon: download the Wales CND report here



human rights

Boys may under-perform but it is women who are under-paid

“Girls outperformed boys by 11% in Key Stage 1 (seven year-olds) writing this year.”

It’s that time of year - results from school examinations and other national assessments have been published and newspapers herald the poor communication skills of boys as a national crisis. The Guardian is even hosting a major event this month for secondary headteachers ‘to identify barriers that impede boys’ learning, to work on practical solutions and set future goals to raise attainment.’ My intention is not to dismiss this as a valid topic for discussion. I’m simply saying it isn’t news.

Let’s go back to the dark ages of the 11 plus examination (established by the Butler Act in 1944). That national assessment test was used in the last year of primary education, allegedly to separate out children with academic potential, placing them in grammar schools, while the future hewers of wood and drawers of water were sent to ‘secondary modern’ schools. Because it was well-known even in those days that boys under-performed in the 11-plus, a special quota system for them was established, to ensure that grammar schools were not predominantly populated by girls. In other words, a percentage of the boys who went to grammar school did not merit their place. And a certain percentage of girls who went to secondary modern school were too bright to be there.

The practice was discontinued at a national level by the Labour government in 1974 (although it is still used in a few education authorities today) partly on the grounds that age 11 was too early to determine an individual’s future and that the exam favoured middle class children. The introduction of the comprehensive system also eliminated this 30 year-old practice of discrimination against girls at age 11 – a fact that has largely been overlooked in discussions about education in today’s ‘meritocracy’.

Of course, there is still a tendency for girls to have to teach themselves, especially at secondary school, while their teachers’ attention is taken up by boys’ bad behaviour. And unfortunately in many co-educational classrooms boys tend to undermine the confidence of teenage girls and inhibit them from showing how bright they really are. So girls sit and listen, take note, do their homework, help each other out and apply themselves consistently to coursework tasks throughout the year - rather than taking a mad dash to revise one week before the exams - behaviour which often earns them the epithet of being intellectually unadventurous and ‘not as naturally bright as boys’.



But in all this, the obvious answer to the conundrum of boys’ under-achievement seems to have been ignored. If, for the 60+ post-war years of co-educational statistics, boys continue to under-perform in comparison with girls, could the reason perhaps simply be that boys are not as bright?

‘News’ reports last week on another well-known fact suggest that we don’t need to worry about this because it doesn’t affect their achievement in later life. 30 years on from the Equal Pay Act, women may climb the career ladder faster than men – but are paid nationally 17% less for doing the same job, according to the latest National Management Salary Survey. Frances Gibb and Marcus Leroux in The Times, 5th September disingenuously reveal that 75% of women in the survey viewed qualifications as benefiting their career prospects compared with 66% of men. Of course: women know they have to work harder to get on and even when they are successful, are still under-paid.

So why should we bother about boys’ under-attainment at school when our ‘meritocratic’ society is still stacked in favour of men’s achievement at work?



The Equal Opportunities Commission, in its final report before being merged with other watchdogs into the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights on 1st October, has laid out its gender agenda: all those aspects of continuing sex discrimination in Britain which still require action by the new body.
The integrated human rights commission has potentially the advantage of being able to address the kind of connections between gender, race, class and ability that are not always made by the news reporting of the day.

But the newspaper advertisement I read for three key directors for the commission doesn’t bode well. Even as a linguist and an institutional development consultant, I couldn’t quite decipher the job description for ‘stakeholder relationships’ although I’m perfectly familiar with the concept. Perhaps it was written by one of those men whose communication skills are 11% poorer than mine but whose salary is 17% more.

Read more about the EOC gender agenda.



human rights

Out of Basra

Preparing them for a future they cannot yet imagine…

No, really, how could I make it up? I found this slogan accompanying the photograph above on the home page of Metrix - the private consortium which - I have just learned - won the British government contract earlier this year to develop and run a mega military academy in St Athan, south Wales, as part of streamlining UK’s armed services. The consortium includes a subsidiary of the US company Raytheon(‘customer success is our mission’) which makes cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions, supplies electronic guidance equipment for the British nuclear weapons system Trident and is a favoured US government supplier of arms to Israel.

No surprises there, perhaps, but another long-term partner in the consortium is the Open University (‘study with us and fulfil your potential’) as Brenda Gourley Vice-chancellor proudly announced when opening the new Cardiff office in March as part of the Wales’ assembly government mission for a ‘learning nation'. Gourley also spoke at the OUSA conference 14 April on ‘learning from the past – embracing the future’: ‘Lastly let us not forget our social justice agenda – if we join hands together, we can change the world.’

As the report from a meeting of activists at the Temple of Peace with Cardiff university researcher Stuart Tannock points out: ‘Young people will be trained to in a craft which murders people, destroys environments, has no respect for communities and can lay waste huge areas forever. You have to blink hard to make certain this is actually Wales and not Wonderland.’

While Gordon Brown brings the British soldiers home from Basra it’s clear that no lessons have been learned about how best to prevent conflict, as I predicted when he first took office. Peter Beaumont highlights in The Guardian that youth training opportunities in Iraq, especially in Basra, are now largely provided (for men) courtesy of the Mahdi army of Moqtada al-Sadr and restrictions (which didn’t existed before 2003) are placed on women university students regarding dress and behaviour.

Meanwhile, despite Tony Blair’s appointment as special Middle East envoy, his support and influence have been conspicuously lacking in the case of the under 19s Palestine National Youth Football Team. Due to tour the UK for 3 weeks over the British summer and play 3 matches in the north-west of the country as part of a youth project – a visionary educational and bridge-building initiative of benefit to all involved – the team were banned from entry at the last minute by UK government visa restrictions.



Several reasons have been given. The official one from UKvisas (‘making travel and migration work for Britain’) with reference to the British Consulate in Jerusalem ‘which continues to provide a service in Gaza’ explains that some of the team from the Gaza strip did not meet the visa criteria. In fact the authorities were afraid that some of the players would seek asylum in Britain: in other words, ‘they were too poor to come’. Journalist Mark Steel ironically suggests the government were afraid the young people were part of a terrorist plot . Check them out.



As is reflected in the film Goal Dreams, to be screened at the All Wales Peace Festival this month, it’s actually quite difficult to put a national football team together ‘without a recognized homeland, no permanent domestic league, no place to train, Israel air strikes on the Palestine stadium…’

But, never mind, the Israeli football team will be playing at Wembley this weekend 8th September although a vigil against the government’s hypocrisy is being organised and the self-styled ‘world’s greatest football blog’ (edited by an Israeli football fan) doesn’t mention the Palestine team at all.


The United Nations resolution 58/5 entitled ‘Sport as a means to promote education, health, development and peace’ recognizes the power of sport to contribute to human development, touching the individual, community, national and global levels. In particular sports programmes are regarded as a key strategy for addressing the social alienation of disadvantaged youth and helping to fulfil their potential.

As we all know from Hollywood films, sporting activities, like the Open University partnership, can mean working together to change the world. But whatever else young people may learn at St Athan, we can be sure it’s not cricket.

Read the full report on St Athan’s military academy from UK Indymedia here