I have about nine bruises on my back. And a cut lip. And scratches on my arms. And a sprained shoulder. And a pulled muscle in my leg. And a headache. And slightly blurred vision. (Although I think that last one is because Darling Wifey put my glasses somewhere and I can’t find them.)

Why?

I was tickling Little Nutter – and somebody (Darling Wifey?) Shouted “Pile on!”

Even the dog joined in!

I stopped off in Sainsbury’s in the centre of York this afternoon, after I had picked up Little Nutter. We needed some cat food.

He knows the drill in supermarkets: if he is good then Daddy says, “Choose” and he leads me around looking for his treat. Today we were followed by a gang of the kids I teach, kids who were thrilled to see that I was not really the ruthless, vindictive tyrant I pretend to be in school.

Then Little Nutter chose his treat: a cheap loaf of plain bread and a small bottle of water. The kids I teach stood in slack-jawed amazement and Little Nutter jumped up & down and clapped his hands with excitement while I paid for these delicacies and handed them to him.

That, I think, is an away win for the Genghis Khan of the Classroom.

So, we have an Education Secretary who is a member of Opus Dei. That’s us and Spain, I suppose.

I could use this space to make my own ‘definitive’ (hah!) evaluation of Opus Dei’s role in the world; it would be fun to do, as well as interesting to read your reponses. But I am more interested in the perspective of political analysts in the British media. The question about whether or not Ruth Kelly is into self-mortification seems to be of far more importance to them than the potential implications of Josemaría Escriva’s question, ‘Is this task only for priests and religious?‘ The priestly role we accept in baptism, and its implications for education, have informed Catholic policy since (as Gomez Addams so beautifully put it) Godknowswhen. To put it bluntly, there is a tension between Catholic education theory, which is centred upon the spiritual, moral and intellectual formation of the person being educated, and the current political environment in which (thanks to the thrall of management theorists) the procedures of acquisition of an unspecified thing called “an education” are everything, and the only thing that we are allowed to concentrate on are those procedures. If we treat the political rhetoric in the manner it deserves and judge the education system by its actions, then we have to accept that everything that schools do is for political benefit rather than society’s benefit – and the benefit to the child doesn’t even enter the equation.

The question we should be asking is whether Opus Dei’s approach to education is significantly different to the rest of the Catholic Church’s (and which the British body politic has, so far, had no problem with,) and whether Ms Kelly is sufficiently intellectually aware of the difference between the sizzle and the steak to get rid of the mountains of crap that have poisoned our education system over the last couple of decades.

But all the newspapers want to know is whether “Cute Ruth” wears a “barbed wire garter” (presumably this is just a salacious reference to a cilice.) Except for the Guardian, of course, which has joined some of the more rabid individuals on Christian message boards in mistaking the Da Vinci Code for the real world and opposing Catholic influence in anything on the grounds that it is, well, whatever they are paranoid about at the moment.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, our esteemed politician (who is simultaneously a ‘highly principled and spiritual intellectual‘ and a ‘mindless slave to an austere cult‘) continues to spout the mindless platitudes of the Department for Education’s management culture – which is so intellectually impoverished that it cannot tell the difference between means and ends.

An interesting day.

I spent the morning in a meeting with an education official looking at the post-16 Theology course I have designed for our school, seeing about getting Learning Skills Council accreditation for it (and, more important, the funding of £1,700 per student per year.)

For three hours we looked at the course content, the delivery, the assessment, the grading criteria, the resources – everything. And in the end the official gave her judgement: yes, my course meets all the criteria and will duly be accredited…

…once I have redrafted the documentation to fit the government criteria.

So for the next month I will be spending my evenings rewriting perfectly good documentation onto education authority proformas. This means that I have to specify and differentiate between aims and objectives; between reliable evidence and valid evidence; between tactics and processes; between strategies and activities; and, not forgetting, between evaluative and qualitative judgements. But above all I must be clear and un-bureaucratic.

(At this point, Gentle Reader, you must ask yourself, ‘Is there anything wrong with that?‘ If it all seems perfectly reasonable and productive to you, then you are one of “them” and are no longer allowed to read my blog. Go away.)

The “up” today was one of those brief moments that we (that’s the “us” in this world, not the “them“) live for. Today was my turn to rush home at lunchtime and walk the puppy. For forty minutes we played fetch by the river next to our house, under warm sunshine and in a fresh breeze, surrounded by other sensible people who, like me, were goofing off. It was a rare opportunity to chat with some of our neighbours.

However, quality of life is not a target on the National Curriculum.

Some people are into dream interpretation, which I suppose is interesting in the same way that Myers-Briggs typology and enniagrams are interesting. I have the same sort of opinion about these things as WC Fields had about women and elephants: “nice to look at, but I wouldn’t want to own one.” Like astrology, I know it’s there but I wouldn’t want to be influenced by it.

Since I have become a patient of professional psychologists, however, every amateur psychologist I know has shown an interest. This sort of thing has provided me with hours of harmless fun. I had no idea that they were taken so seriously by so many people.

So I find myself telling friends about a recently recurring dream. In this dream, I am the guest of honour at a high-profile cultural event; if you have ever seen one of the royal family sitting on a dais watching an ex-colonial community proudly displaying its national costume and dance, then you know the sort of situation I am describing.

It is always an incrediby well-produced show. The dancing is wonderful, the costumes colourful and imaginative, the people are having a wonderful time. The media is appreciative and enthusiastic. Everyone, without exception, is smiling. No-one has noticed that I have no clothes on.

At this point in the description of my dream everyone has nearly wet themselves with excitement. Apparently this is evidence that my deeply troubled psyche is desperately trying to tell me, in enormous detail, about how inadequate it feels.

They are overlooking the fact that I am, at heart, an exhibitionist and I enjoy that dream immensely…

I spent today reading policy documents, strategic review documents, long term study summaries and league tables.

The most interesting was a “Sample Strategic Policy Implementation Plan” which, according to the preamble, has the potential to revolutionise my working practices. It then wasted six pages with a description of simple professional practices which, if they really were to ‘revolutionise,’ would only do so for the most incompetent of morons.

But the bigger fool is the one who swallows this sort of drivel and thinks it’s nourishing.

Policies are all well and good: they protect the vulnerable; allow redress for victims of corruption and negligence; clarify good practice; standardise performance. Without a clearly defined policy, how do you know that everyone is even pulling in the same direction? We need policies.

But when the importance of the policy document surpasses the practice it describes, then all of the activities involved become meaningless.

And in the education system in 21st Century Britain, the only thing that matters officially is your policy documentation and your record keeping. After all, if they permitted anything else they wouldn’t get away with a league table system that assumes a GNVQ in cake decorating is more valuable than a grade ‘A’ GCSE in Physics…

With any luck, history will condemn us for what we are doing to our children.

Money can buy a well-bred dog, but not a clever dog.

Walkies today was shortened because of the flooding. (The River Ouse in York is notorious for it, and our usual walkies is around the ings or flood banks. There are several acres of meadow that, today, are about thirty inches underwater.)

So when our canny canine saw the enormous lake that had appeared on our doorstep overnight, she charged and leaped gracefully into it only to discover that, first, it was cold and, second, she couldn’t swim.

Then there was the wall.

“Look before you leap” is a well-known proverb in the human world but not, it seems, in the dog world. If a wall is only nose high on your side, why not jump over it and see what is on the other side?

A six foot drop and a twelve foot embankment.

Finally, on the way home, our eight-inch-tall puppy decided to take on a fully-grown Doberman…

(with apologies to Philip Larkin)

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They give your doctor stuff to do.
Then he can guess the faults they had
While therapising ’bout yours, too.

Your doctor’s fucked up in his turn
From reading too much Freud and Jung.
It’s not a help to us who learn
Our choices weren’t so wise, when young.

There’s much that tears the hope from man
And grinds you when you earn your wealth.
And in return you learn you can
Regret the lack of care for health.