Learning Together, Learn Together

I sometimes wonder where the Guardian gets it’s ideas from. Today they have an alarmist article stating ‘Education in jails ‘must not be undermined by London Bridge attack’’

I wasn’t under the impression anyone was suggesting it would.

The article does contain something rather telling,

“ Over eight weeks, those taking the Learning Together courses meet to read, study, discuss and write essays before “graduating” together. Prisoners do not get a formal qualification but gain credits towards an undergraduate degree in a related subject they may take later.”

This should come as no surprise to anyone.

Once upon a time, there was a thing called evening classes. They offered classes in pottery, or conversational French, or book keeping, or creative writing or whatever. People would pay their money, go along and learn things. Sometimes there was a certificate involved, mostly there wasn’t.

And that was the problem. It was particularly a problem for Mr Blair, who liked to keep a count of how wonderful he was. So alongside the growth of practically every college offering degrees: came the notion that your ten weeks learning how to order coffee, or asking directions to the train station in Spanish, should come with a credit.

You can barely move these days in anything faintly resembling education without being offered a credit to towards a degree that you probably will never take. It wouldn’t surprise me if the driving test comes with a credit.

Now I know I rather teased Learning Together yesterday. Well today we learn more of what they have been up to, and I did find myself rolling my eyes.

For instance, a ‘poem’ (and I use that term in the very loosest sense) written by Mr Khan was used by them in promotional literature. And here it is…

“I write so my words become a soothing light/I write so I can enter the coldest hearts/I write so I can speak to those locked off/From the world blocked from the blinding absence of sight/I right so I can express what I feel is right”

The moment I saw this I immediately thought of art day, a poem I wrote in 2016, and generally gets me banned from every internet forum, or venue that I have read at. Sometimes I am offered elaborate explanations for why it is distasteful, often it is simply the reference to ‘ahmed’ that is enough to trigger the outrage.

What the Anywhere-problem-glasses-brigade (who endlessly complain about everything) fail to address, is the point that ‘david lord’, the trained artist portrayed in the poem is only deemed to ‘capture it well’ (the experience of mental illness in the case of my poem) because he is doing so in the required and predetermined manner.

They really freak out about Bleaching a Mouse too — but that is another story.

One can only imagine the outrage if instead of hackneyed, cliched bankers, on his mural, Mear One had instead sort to portray an assortment of petty Anywhere types, who all appear to have interchangeable faces, and problem-glasses. Obviously he wouldn’t. For the simple reason his mural would be banned before it was ever commissioned, and he would never work again, on the grounds of his making a legitimate political statement.

It isn’t what Mr Khan says in his ‘poem’ that bugs me, it is that it expresses perfectly what he is expected to say. One can almost hear the patronising cooing, of ‘look, the nasty man has tried to write a poem.’ Followed by, ‘quick get that written up in your PhD… I think he’s talking about prison or something… yeah it’s prison.’ Followed by a paragraph or two in overly elaborate code, no doubt using the terms service users and stake holders on the next funding application.

Ah yes, you say, but you weren’t there. You don’t understand how difficult it was for him. When we started working with him, it was impossible to get him to write anything. He really opened up over the time he was working with us and blah, blah, blah….

So what you are saying is, that it was like every creative writing course ever.

And no, I’m not naive, I am well aware that not every prisoner Learning Together works with, is a Stephen Fry or a Jimmy McGovern. And I am well aware of the issues of literacy and numeracy (and mental health issues) within the prison population.

As for the rest of it, this business about the computer, and Mr Khan going to London unsupervised, I would like to say I am amazed…. but I really am not.

I long ago ceased being surprised by anything the Anywhere class says or does.

btw the person I feel sorry for in all of this is James Ford. Yes, he’s a murderer, but he’s done his time. Thanks to the know-all recklessness of Learning Together, he’s had his name smeared all over the papers, for doing nothing more than trying stop a nutcase. Isn’t someone in authority (if such a thing exists anymore) supposed to have a duty of care towards him?