School inspections are a funny business. They sit on an obstinate paradox which makes it difficult to have confidence in the results.
An experienced observer can glean quite a lot about a school from walking the corridors: are the students cheerful and well-behaved; what is on the walls? Our observer can gather more from looking at documents: are the teachers planning and conferring, do they attend development courses, are they well qualified for what they are doing? But really if you want to evaluate what is going on you need to visit the place where education actually happens: the classroom.
This is where we trip over the paradox. The classroom is usually populated by the class and the teacher. Add an inspector and you are no longer looking at a normal lesson. The teacher usually knows the inspection is coming and can be tempted to put on a bit of a show.
Less obviously the class may respond to the presence of a stranger. When I did my teaching practice (a long time ago) my classes were fairly riotous. It was an all-boys school, and all the boys knew I was the lowest form of teaching life, and would be leaving after one term anyway. But by a kind convention, during the assessment visits from my tutor everyone behaved impeccably. Teaching briefly became easy.
The important variable in an inspection is the attitude of the inspector, which can range from "How can I help?" to "Impress me or die!" The gentle end of the spectrum can be found in the autobiographical works of Gervase Phinn, who was an inspector in the more photogenic parts of Yorkshire. The harsh end of the scale led to the tragic case of Ruth Perry, a primary school head who killed herself after being told that an inspection would lead to the school being downgraded from "outstanding" to "inadequate".
Local inspections have generally languished in obscurity until last week, when the Education Department started publishing fairly detailed reports on individual schools. These demonstrated an impressive level of patriotic enthusiasm. Schools were rated on how far they had integrated national security into the curriculum, and whether they had introduced the required national education subjects.
The inspectors also, rather bizarrely, gave their verdicts on the quality of the flag raising ceremonial and the singing of the national anthem. Some schools were chided because the singing was not loud enough.
Public ire ensued, mainly because so many of these criticisms were levelled at two schools catering for "special needs", the currently acceptable euphemism for children mentally or physically ill-adapted for conventional school life. Many observers, including me, thought that teachers in this demanding field probably had more urgent things to worry about than staging routine patriotic performances.
Special needs teaching is much more difficult than the conventional stuff and demands extraordinary patience, sympathy and persistence. It is one of life's major injustices that money and prestigious titles (Professor Hamlett to you, Sunshine!) are showered on those who teach a carefully selected audience of consenting adults, while the saintly qualities required of special needs teaching go unheralded and unrewarded.
Having been loudly scolded on-line the Education Bureau subtly shifted its position. If children could not learn about the Basic Law and other constitutional matters they could at least be taught to sing the national anthem.
The bureau said "March of the Volunteers" had "a distinctive rhythm, a high-pitched melody, majestic force and embodies the courage and indomitable fighting spirit of the Chinese nation. Schools have a responsibility to let students understand the etiquette and attitude required when performing the national anthem, so as to cultivate students' national identity and respect for the country."
This really does not address the basic question, which is whether teaching primary school kids to sing this particular tune "loudly" is a good use of educational time. After all the anthem was intended as a film score, not a school tune. The rhythm is difficult, the range wide, and there is much variation in both.
The British national anthem (God save the King … or Queen as the case may be) provides an illustrative contrast. It is a plodding, simple tune. It can be played on anything from a kazoo to the Mighty Wurlitzer and everyone who has been required to play it recognises that it is terminally boring. The March of the Volunteers is more exciting, more interesting and more demanding. Some professional musicians have had trouble with it.
I imagine few schools have a band capable of providing the backing so what is proposed is a sort of communal karaoke with a sound track. Students who have not been attending, or not been attending to, lessons in Putonghua will also find they are effectively required to sing in a foreign language.
Under the circumstances complaints about the volume of the singing seem ill-advised. Different halls have different acoustics. Primary school kids are not opera singers and a common reaction to uncertainty about the tune or the words is to drop the volume. As we cannot switch to an easier song we will probably have to put up with this.
Anyway students will survive a few extra singing lessons. Whether the March of the Volunteers can stand this sort of treatment is another matter. Somewhere around the 30th repetition it will cease to embody the "courage and indomitable fighting spirit of the Chinese nation" and come to embody only the Education Department's enthusiasm for repetitive and boring patriotic performances ... by other people. Do you think school inspectors start the week by singing the national anthem together?
No, I don't think so either.
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