Mote 5 (Edited by Dom Hale)

British Schools in Hot Weather (DRAFT/UNFINISHED) performance 25/26th Jan 2020 Maxxi Museum

Good evening, everyone

I read a lot of the newspapers and the first thing I notice is all types of schools in Britain are considered as a disaster; free schools, grammar schools, academies, comprehensives, faith schools.

So all types of schools including private schools are considered a disaster.

Now.

British private schools are regarded as being some of the best schools in the world.

When I was head of Eton, not too longer ago, I couldn't tell you the amount of times my PA would come knocking on my door (knock knock knock) and would come in saying:

’HEADMASTER…HEADMASTER….’

‘Yes, Yes,’ I would usher her. ‘

Someone is on the phone from somewhere like the... MAURITIUS.’ 

An island known for its beaches, its lagoons and its reefs. Not its British schools.

These phone conversations usually involve asking to set up a school elsewhere abroad.

I must say, very tempting, and whilst I was headmaster I set up several schools abroad.

I set up 2 in China and one in Thailand and it is a fact that every head of every private school will have had such a request every month for the past several years

Because our schools are so admired.

I was asked by the Chinese government to set up a school in Hong Kong, not but 4 months ago.

These schools being SET to the MODEL of a traditional British private schools.

Rugby, Winchester, Wellington, Charterhouse.

The parlour, Election Hall and the Election Chamber. The chief nurse of English statesmen.

On a field sable three lily-flowers argent…

lasting for ages to come, whose perpetuity

We wish to be signified by the stability of sable colour…

bring forth the brightest flowers redolent of knowledge

Maybe British schools, BRITISH PUBLIC SCHOOLS being set up in China means that they are more suited to a Communist country.

I don’t know.

I don’t know but what I do know is that there are pupils walking around in another country with straw hats and blue blazers and if you asked them would they consider these schools, private schools, as a disaster.

They would not understand what you mean.

They would not even understand the question itself.

Every year thousands of children fly from country to country despite the distance, despite the cost, despite the privation of a these BRITISH  schools.

Because they consider these schools better than the ones in their own country.


Not too far away is the DOYEN of social class mobility in Britain, John Goldthrope.

I’ve read his work and he is absolutely emphatic on what determines social mobility in Britain.

We are here, talking about the role of education in inter-generational social mobility.

We are talking about fathers, sons, mothers and daughters. We are talking about where you are born and to what you are born into, having a direct relationship to your education and therefore your later life.

Rising demand for qualified personnel will require the expansion of educational systems

And progressive reforms aimed at creating a greater equality of educational opportunity.

So that all available human resources can be utilised as effectively as possible.

Origin-Education-Destination.

Say it with me!

Today data is the crude oil of the modern economy.

Now it is standard poetic practice to curse the protos heuretes-the person responsible for any substantial breakthrough.

Yes! we are talking about scientific breakthroughs and education.


Social mobility and its success will depend however on freedom, openness and pluralism.

The lifeblood of this fair nation.

If only they had never invented the ship, then Jason would never have sailed to Colchis and all sorts of disasters would never have happened, yet here we are and oh! Oh! Oh!

How we have changed and transformed since then.

The human frame would not withstand the very speeds attained by Stephenson's rocket, and yet now our understanding of the natural world is being transformed by genome sequencing.

And it is a deep human instinct to be wary of any kind of technical progress, for it is this that will alter the current status quo.

Smarter children and smarter cities, all pullulating with sensors, joined together by interconnectivity by an internet of things, bollards communing invisibly with lamp posts and so forth.

So there is always a parking space for your electric car, so no bin goes unemptied, no street unswept and the urban environment is antiseptic as a Zurich pharmacy.

As said, data is the crude oil of the modern economy.

We don't know who should own these new oil fields.

We don't always know who should have the right or titles to these resources.

Can these algorithms really be trusted with our lives and hopes?

It is yet to manifest, in truth.

Origin-Education-Destination. Origin-Education-Destination.

As new technologies seem to race towards us from the far horizon.

We strain our eyes as they come, to make out whether they are for good or bad – friends or foes?

AI – what will it mean?

Helpful robots washing and caring for an ageing population?

or pink eyed terminators sent back from the future to cull the human race?

What will synthetic biology stand for – restoring our kidneys and our eyes with miracle regeneration of the tissues, like some fantastic hangover cure?

Or will it bring terrifying limbless chickens to our tables.

These are big question that starts with education.

What we truly understand or can begin to understand is the emerging markets that come with contemporary education.

Britain is leading in these fields, we know this by the very statistics.

By the numbers alone!

We are leading in the tech-industry. Will nanotechnology help us to beat disease, or will it leave tiny robots to replicate in the crevices of our cells?

I do not know the answer to these questions.

What I do know and what we can attest to is how British schooling has directed the brightest of minds to the most competitive sectors and has driven up the bar in these respective areas.

The very idea that we would diminish our inventions, seem ludicrous!

Do we wish to stand in the way of the British companies working to use 3D printing to make an engine capable of blasting a rocket into space.

Or stand in the way of multiple African countries, now capable of accessing bank accounts and transferring money using a simple app; they can buy solar energy and leap in one transaction.

No electricity to green power. The global impact of British institutions is recognized.

Then why do we seek to question to the importance of British schools, either in Britain or as a global asset.

To impede such progress, is to advert the progress forward.

We know we are going to succeed not on ideology but simply what works!

An engine is in approach, take care ladies and gentlemen!

Destruction of country houses in 20th-century Britain PART 1 (DRAFT/UNFINISHED)

From memory the modern physiognomy of 

the best picnic is on Agars Plough,
how can you forget massive gazebos 

overflowing with fresh salmon
and Moet out the proverbial bucket!

O' dancing in the moonlight

we're dancing in the moonlight 

when that moon is big and bright 

it's a supernatural delight, 

when everybody is dancing in the moonlight!

o' we're dancing in the moonlight 

pin locked and the clashing oars are

needle grown out of HM Government

children are the bilge for best water

just like rabid class equipment 

declines in 'returns' of each cohort reneged 
sorry is the hardest word but you learn 
from your mistakes remember 
you just like walking around its intrepid fantasy 

with elbows in the topiary garden dancing to

the architecture of moonlit colonnades, 

the custodial moonlit amphiteatres, the moonlit

night-club interiors as designed by Edwin Lutyens 

on old drugs and re-thought as a underground bungalow 

and exit into anti-ligature moonlit prisons 
with calico print on the walls that keep you

in a second nature bind
like the new poor law. 

By day devoted exclusively to treadmill prayer,

and by night the very cradle of blessed liberty!

a palliative of others in the good collective bed

endogenous to mobility regime

upping flowers in a new

version of dirt if they do not exist 

from their own subsistence then 
remember biting the monarch bestowing
largess horsepower is reinventing the 
wheel to 70 poor boys of custos closed

by the brocas as informal water 

pageant splitting custom made faux-stone toys 

blocking up amenities all the way down 

Dorney lake like shit doesn't sink!

well I'll let you know to each his own
keep on a pierced porphyry throne for 
imperial measure to watch
the poor niche alcoves. 

Dewaele (2016 Re-edit)

Unknown for everyone as difficult 

matter the word that comes to me: 

a lord violent, shady

but inhabited in flat biting 

cingulum tough body

dry-hair over a beautiful broken face

unknown for everyone 

a wagon for a wagon

always in the fog, 

cottony, all day long

looked like he was sleeping 

considered it all with formidable finds

the child cuspids battered

often prisoned

tough dry-hair

raised out by mother,

stories of histories

time immemorial

in the bistro spilling conversion

the preacher preached, 

life on the screen on the street

without any distinction 

a lord, a violent sir

head shady but inhabited 

Life is Sport (2016 Draft re-edit)

More milk dispensaries than ATM’s

ballerinas siesta with jogging bottom 

left at home all day family planning,

domestic care and 

educational systems can’t predict 

aerosolised, manic and ambulatory

in Victoria Sq. is the destruction of restaurants                                  

a yes that can’t hear 

milkweed the sustenance 

monarch or avuncular 

gone to the numbers 

game and not war

and you won cold from warmth

resplendent light makes work 

that is not work

light bulbs in daylight  

asks such a slightness that

needs a head against a tree 

looted floribunda

in kitchenettes in SUV’s 

arboretum full of profound 

asthma attacks with mothers and fathers

in bed, glued together 

yearning for timeless grasp 

of verities ausmerze 

6 million lazy gluteus’ 

drive cars without ancestors 

full with silence and cunning pass pink

filis and its cages rented

is this property of the mind?

virtuous world tongues coming

thru your window at midday 

wall of lips sing

of all things to eat: 

dirty worker consolation

o' vulnerable grid

what occurs in your latitude

master monstrance

dance on the temples

today who named

a meticulous industry 

and of conditions

laid for fear put the fly

out disturbing its casual unpreparedness

the meaning of royalty it too can be killed (2019)

the meaning of royalty it too can be killed, 

bin bags, hay, management bonus

 2019

Housing Act (2019)

Cover by Daniel West 

Cover Typography Joshua Hart 

pp. 35

26 Poems 

Email littlebighammers@gmail.com if you want a copy for 6 pounds. Hopefully more...soon