A plea to Nicky Morgan and STEM evangelists

It seems, if the reports I have read are true, that the Education Secretary,  Nicky Morgan*, has warned schoolkids that choosing to study Arts subjects, "Could hold them back For the rest of their lives."

It seems she said this at a 'Your Life' event to promote and encourage kids to study the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths). She told the gathered masses that studying arts and humanities closed our children's career options rather than opened them. She continued by saying that those kids who have no idea what they wanted to do tended towards the arts and humanities stuff but this closed so many options whilst STEM subjects meant doors would be one for you to pursue careers in medicine (bit of a silly example after the comments from yesterday's doctor's strike) and engineering (wonder if she's visited the former manufacturing centres recently).

She said that employers valued maths as the most desirable subject, which is a fair comment because being numerate is important, but then put any spark of intelligent thinking out before it could catch fire by adding, "People who study maths to A level will earn 10% more over their lifetime."

The last nail in the coffin was banged in with the observation that too many kid are making the wrong career choices at 15 - perhaps this means that we need to give them more information and let them make their choices a little later?

It seems to me that the three foundational subjects derive their status because everyone needs to be able to read, write and count - I don't think many would disagree with this - but the event was about the STEM subjects (maths and physics in particular) so I guess we can write off Morgan's comments as mere marketing. But I don't think we can ignore them because in her words we find more of the same old tosh that is damaging our kids and making our nations poor as we disregard the arts and humanities. Mind you, looking at some of the tosh that gets wheeled out in the unmade beds, concrete hours and other 'art' that some competitions parade and applaud, perhaps the arts are doing the work for her!

Now I am someone who studied maths and science and had pretty useful careers in engineering and technology. I am a STEM person and I have enjoyed the world I inhabited before swapping it out for a dogcollar, but have to make a few observations and issue a few correctives:

i. Education is about imparting knowledge in a way that enthuses and informs. It's goal is to discover in each of our children those things that attract them (so we need teaches to understand and make them attractive) and things they have natural gifts and attitudes towards- and maximise them.

School is about discovery, nurture, excitement and enabled and fulfilled kids - not blessed grades!

ii. Whilst I, as a kid, wondered about those who 'don't do science' I soon came to realise that we are all different and my spending every available minute in London's Science Museum (I'd walk their and back from Stoke Newington most Saturdays as a kid) was something that shaped me. I wonder what I'd have done if I'd discovered the V&A first (was nineteen before I lived there for a week listening to Wagner) or stumbled into the National Portrait Gallery - would I have become captivated by music and art then rather than fifteen years later?

Taking up the STEM subjects in favour of the 'soft' subjects might, as Morgan says, get you a career in medicine, science or technology BUT if you don't have additional languages you'll function at a disadvantage and need those who did humanities to speak and listen for you. Oddly, most of my medical friends were musicians and book readers - loves that began at school and saw them get better grades in English and mUsic than they did in Maths and some of the sciences.

What we are heading for with this eschewing of the 'soft' arts and humanities is a bland, uncreative and dismally grey world.

iii. This is not about enabling kids and seeing them fulfilled, this is (in my humble opinion) about creating a country who are at the forefront of technology and science: It's about Gross National Products and out 'taking our place' as a major technological and scientific force. Because this generates money and wins worldwide approval.

This is about more than making our children numerate - it's about guaranteeing income and marketable goods for future. Isn't that why we worry abut out the advances in technology from the East?  We buy their stuff because they use cheap labour and high technology whereas where once might ocean-going vessels were built we now find a few men welding shopping trolleys (I kid you not!).

What I think Ms Morgan should have said is this:

'Kids, find the things that excite you and put everything you have into making them yours. Become the best person you can be at the things that excite you and seek to understand the world around you. Learn that we are all different and understand that 10% extra earnings over a lifetime is a lot to pay to deny who you really are!'

Going on, she should end with:

'Teachers, excite and enthuse those in your care. Help them to explore the whole world before them: Take them to the theatre, concerts, museums, art galleries and more beside (this is where she apologises that they can't really do this because of the lack of government funding and the deconstruction of the state education system). Take you children and watch them and as the flame flickers in them, fan it into a fire that consumes them and help them to blaze with passion for those subjects.

Some are called to be actors whilst others are called to be doctors - both bring cheer to the soul.

Some are called to be artists whilst others creat computers that enable to who aren't to be creative.

Some will build and do technology, but without the copy writers and journalists, who will read about them or buy the products?

Some will make music and sing, others will dance and all, regardless of their occupation will find solace, comfort and inspiration in this.

Dear Ms Morgan - don't condemn our children (or our nation) to a grey stodgy future.

When I was doing Physics we were told to buy the book 'Scientists must write'
By the time we're finished will it be 'Scientists need to learn to read?'

+ 'Your life' is a campaign to encourage the kids to study maths and physics; their goal being a 50% increase of kids taking exams in the subjects over the next three years.

* perhaps from henceforth that should be amended to 'moron' (should we have a poll?)

When Technology just doesn't help

I have spend the first part of the day so far (150 minutes) telephoning people and having conversations and arranging stuff and it's been sublime (thus far). I've heard happy things, sad things and generally found out so much more than I would have done had I merely engaged in the usual run of the mill email exchanges that have become the norm' in the wonderful world of ministry.

In addition to this I found myself clearing some seventy emails - most of which required a 'Thank You' or 'noted' or 'in the diary' comment to render them 'dealt with'.

When in conversation with people, especially clergy and others whose life is full of engaging with people, the day-to-day reality is that we are finding ourselves shuffling more and more virtual paper and engaging less and less with people in real 'flesh and blood' settings - but this was not always the case.

Talking to a man who was ordained around the same time I was born I heard of the days when the clergy would get on their bike and be out there visiting the people in their patch. There were few telephone calls to be handled and what needed to be done was done with the people when and where the need was (and they had a good idea where and when the needs might arise because they knew their people!). He spoke lovingly of the days when every day was a 'drop-in' and a day to drop-in on those he served and paperwork was a small part of the job and never in the way of being the Vicar the people needed. Rose-tinted glasses? Perhaps - but a more idyllic picture than my mountain of emails, texts and voicemails :-)

The problem is that we appear to be living our lives remotely. People send me an email and assume because they've sent it the job is done and that's whatever it was about is sorted. I had email problems and found that much of what I sent vanished (or worse still, turned up some weeks later - which caused chaos) and so I began to contact people on the really important stuff and it has paid dividends in terms of relationships and local knowledge - and considering I'd rather have a meeting than a message I wonder how much truer this might be for some of my friends and colleagues?

So here's a challenge for me (and you can join in if you like):

1. I'm going to try and telephone five people every day to touch base and see how they are,

2. I'm going to engage with people on a face-to-face basis wherever the need is found, not by mail, message, text or other means that stop me being relational, wherever I can.

3. I'm going to try and cut down the 100+ work emails by better communications practices, and

4. I'm going to engage with people over diary items rather than just click the mail and assume that the link will create (and pass the thing on to all my devices) the event because there's a free slot.

I've had eleven calls out and five in thus far today and it's wonderful.

Tea drunk  and ten-minutes on soapbox away,

Happy Monday

Technology - blessing or curse?

Well today it's a curse!

One of the big things I love about technology is that it helps me to juggle the many things of life in a manageable and controlled way, most of the the time. But when it goes pear-shaped, life suddenly develops the ability to make for a stomach churning roller-coaster ride.

And that's been my experience today for not since the time when I upgraded the operating system on my phone have I had so much stress from the things that usually keep me organised! The last time I managed to lose all of my historic, present and future diaries and although the system had cleverly made backups of the data - it stupidly hadn't told me that it had and so for a couple of days life was a real pain.

Now I have somehow developed a glitch that has seen appointments move across the diary by one day and so tonight has yesterday's entries and and so on! Of course, had I a time machine all would be well but as I don't I can only offer a prayer of thanks that it had only a couple of days had passed before it was discovered. What would have happened had I been on a manic week I shudder to think but as this week is set aside for prayer, planning and administration I'm in a better position that I would have been had it been a heavy funeral week or one of multiple meetings.

'Technology is a great servant but a poor master,' one of my colleagues used to say as systems drove us to do things to their timescales and not ours (we were in a server room at 02:00 at the time working on a backup system). The problem is that using paper is a great idea until you lose the paper of have to change the appointments. How many of us have scribbled out, written in and then scribbled out changed appointments and wished we could have something easily erasable like we find with the tablet technologies so many of us use?

The same scenario exists with us and God where we want Him to do all the hard work for us so that we can walk through the day with the minimum of effort and whilst God is indeed a servant He's also a sensitive and engaged master. He knows who we are and what we feel and guides, rather than demands or inflicts the things we need to do upon us. Unlike my mobile God has never had an upgrade crash - in fact I can only think of one which took us from Human 1.0 through to Human 2.0 through the application of the 'Jesus patch'.

Still feel sick at the thought of having missed appointment though :-p

Forget Messy Church ...

How many of you out there remember when church was fuzzy?

Now I visit a number of clergy and people in the course of the year and was stunned to find someone recently tell me that their church had no time for all the clever LCD projectors and white boards, instead they still used their OHP (OverHead Projector) and acetates and 'Fuzzy Felts'.

Now for those of you out there who have missed this, Fuzzy Felt, was THE bee's knees when it came to Sunday School and All-Age services. Take a look at an example here:

The best bit was that during the sermon or activity these little figures would slowly curl and fall. An added attraction as we used to run a sweepstake on whether Mary, Joseph or Jesus would hit the floor first (my favourite was Daniel and the Lions).

Now considering the fact that we are a communications industry (Church) I struggle to see how people can take pride in living in the last century. We need to embrace and utilise to the full any technological advances that assist us in the task of getting our message out there and taking pride in living in the past is nothing but misplaced and destructive pride - so there we go, I'm officially frustrated of Tamworth (grrrr).

Church and technology

I struggle with all the people who tell me that Church should be less high tech. An observation I received this week went like this: 'So many people pull out their iphone and open their Bible. Why can't they use proper Bibles?' There was only a few obvious responses and so I asked the more interesting question, 'So where's your Bible?'

The problem was that I knew the answer before I even realised I was going to ask it, for I've seen the person in a number of settings and even though we have Bibles on offer in our (and the other places I'd seen them) I don't think I've ever seen them with one! So I have to say that I'm happy for people to pull out an electronic device and 'open' their Bible on it.

A while back I visited a church where the congregation were campaigning to keep their OHP (overhead projector) rather than get 'one of those computer things' and I guess the people who came before them moaned about the demise of the 'fuzzy felt'. But the reality is that Church is in the communications business and this means that whatever we can use to make our message more inviting, accessible and engaging has to be embraced - this doesn't mean that we need to be sensational or divert from the message because of the medium we are choosing of course!

I love the idea of twittering and being able to respond to the questions, observations and challenges during a sermon - but when the technology (or the tweets) push the Gospel into second place than I have to cry 'Enough!'

Technology for technology's sake is not always wrong but being bleeding edge for the sake of it, especially when leading edge is sufficient to communicate well - that use of technology that pushes the primary stuff into the background as we worship technology - I'm sure you know what I mean (and that's been something I have been guilty of in my own life too).

So, how do you do yours?

What is good technology and what (if you consider there to be such a thing) is bad?

Happy Friday

Say one for yourself!

One of the brilliant things that technology brings is the potential  to make things accessible and by virtue of this accessibility make them commonplace and one of the best areas this can be seen is in that of prayer.

Prayer is perhaps one of the most over-claimed and under-done areas in the lives of so many of those I encounter. I'm assuming that's a statement that will confuse and perhaps inflame some reading this, but it is the truth. Let me explain (yeah, you'd better I hear you mutter) ...

Whenever I talk about prayer, those in the conversation will nod sagely and agree that it's the oxygen of Christian living and that it is not only essential, but is a given that they do it. 'Of course we're praying,' they say. So I ask what they're praying at the moment and whether they pray alone or with partners or in triplets, prayer groups or something else. It's about now they shuffle a little more and mumble a bit and then tell me that they 'did it' , errrr, 'Last week (I think) ... ' Then it all goes quiet.

Now I don't ask to put people on the spot or to make them feel got at. I don't do it to tell them to pray, because I don't have to, they already know that conversation with the other party in a relationship is one of the ways of keeping thy relationship real and engaged. We all now we 'should' pray but we also have lives, families, things to do, televisions and so many other distractions that crowd in to stop us praying - and this is not an accident. I happen to believe that stuff getting in the way is part of a planned strategy that seeks to get in the way.

So how do we overcome this? Well part of the answer is immediacy and accessibility and this, coupled with desire, is ninety percent of the battle. The good news is that the immediacy and accessibility come in the shape of texts and Web presence, such as blogs).

One of the reasons this blog carries a shortened form of the daily office morning prayer is to make it available for those who find time during the day when they can read their Bibles and engage in prayer. Another thing that we have tried in our church is sending out by text the daily readings and the name (or names) of those who we are praying for that day. This helps those who want to pray have the passages directly or in a form they can use with their own Bibles as part of their daily devotional life.

There are so many ways we can use technology to help those who want to pray and study the word do so, and I've just come across another great system which uses QR codes (more on that over en next couple of days) and yet another which sends emails out every morning to subscribers.

I'd welcome any ways you have come across that work because at the end of the day, the more methods open to us, the more effective we can be in finding the way that works for someone and the reality is that I really do believe the desire is there in so many of us, it's just the opportunity and availability.

And prayer, although one of the main keys to revival and effective discipleship, is even more important as the primary means of communication in the relation that we have between us and God, for without it we are left with religion - and who wants rules you can't keep and confirmation that you need saving every day?

Truth Detecting Camera

Technology and the way that it is reported is a great source of entertainment and always has been I guess since the days of that superb, and much lamented, BBC programme 'Tomorrow's World'. The problem is that much of what is reported and the way that it is done often leaves me rolling in the aisles and the news item on the 'truth camera' yesterday was a real rib-tickler.

Apparently scientists have perfected a camera which can detect whether or not the subject is lying. This technological breakthrough is based upon the heat image of the subject, but let's let the BBC tell us more in their own words:

"A sophisticated new camera system can detect lies just by watching our faces as we talk, experts say. The computerized system uses a simple video camera, a high-resolution thermal imaging sensor and a suite of algorithms. ... It successfully discriminates between truth and lies in about two-thirds of cases, said lead researcher Professor Hassan Ugail from Bradford University. ... We give our emotions away in our eye movements, dilated pupils, biting or pressing together our lips, wrinkling our noses, breathing heavily, swallowing, blinking and facial asymmetry. And these are just the visible signs seen by the camera. Even swelling blood vessels around our eyes betray us, and the thermal sensor spots them too."

So effective is this new camera that it is expected to be installed in airports and other places where would be terrorists gather. Let's hope they've factored in for consumate blushers, PMT 'hot flushers' (a very interesting 'woman's hour' on that a few years back) and make-up wearers. The reporter waxed lyrical about the advances and how the days of being able to lie were numbered - that's surely a worry for many in politics, the press and the Church!

Hopefully this will also herald more investigation into phrenology (or better still, physiognomy - I know a few people with eyes too close together and suspiciously large noses!).

So better start practising or else you'll be found out - science, and big brother, are watching:

Pax