29th May 2006
Thinking of a progressive nationalism (June) by analogy with friendship, as Aristotle does in relation to civics, highlights the challenge that faces the centre-left. First, Aristotle noted that justice is failed friendship: the law has to move in to resolve conflicts when goodwill fails. The implication here is that the language of duties and rights is indeed not adequate for a sustainable national identity because it lacks mechanisms that build goodwill. Some source of positive civic feeling is necessary, particularly given that people do not have equal commitments to all humanity. Second, deeper, long-lasting friendships are based upon affection for the friend as they are in themselves, and revolve around issues of character, shared experience and the good life. Lesser kinds of friendship depend merely on common interests, and come and go with those interests. The implication here is that a sustainable basis for national belonging has to engage people in deeper issues like national character, history and ideals—embodied in institutions that everyone in even a plural society respects or, perhaps better, learns to befriend.
Mark Vernon
London SE5
NHS reform 1
17th June 2006
Julian Le Grand's apologia for the state of the NHS (June) is well founded but incomplete. The NHS is producing better results as the quasi-market takes effect, while targets and top-down management become less burdensome. NHS staff are better paid, at long last. In the context of the whole NHS, the deficits really are trivial. But there is an awful sense of having been somewhere near here before. The last Tory government was led, somewhat uncomprehendingly, to a quasi-market NHS structure. It was just beginning to work. When the electorate dismissed that government there was reason to hope that within three years or so of New Labour coming to power, the NHS would be producing results like those which Patricia Hewitt tried to trumpet this spring. But the incoming Blair regime had other ideas; dozens of them. The last of these initiatives are only now being reluctantly abandoned. So we lost about five years of improving NHS performance and a great deal of money was spent to less than good purpose.
David Heigham
Madrid
NHS reform 2
4th June 2006
Julian Le Grand and Patricia Hewitt may believe that the NHS has had its best year ever. No one else does. The mishmash of conflicting policies—such as the private finance initiative, "choose and book," practice-based commissioning, independent sector treatment centres and payment by results—is leading to significant short and long-term damage to the NHS. The changes increase bureaucracy and transaction costs, without any gain in productivity. The government responsible for this idiocy deserves its political armageddon.
Peter Davies, GP
Illingworth, Halifax
The English holocaust
26th June 2006
Manneken Pis mocks Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French foreign minister (June), for asking where the commemoration was to the English victims of the Holocaust. Why? The Channel Islands were occupied by the Nazis and the entire Jewish population shipped to the camps—with the assistance of some islanders. Other English Jews were trapped on the continent and sent to the camps. One was Leon Greenman, whose book An Englishman in Auschwitz (2001) describes how on arrival his wife Esther and small son Barney were gassed, while he was selected for slave labour.
Glyn Ford MEP
Brussels
Successful invasions
22nd June 2006
Robert Laver (Letters, July) says "there are no authentic examples of successful regime change brought about by an invading army." I can count at least three in this country alone. The first was the Roman invasion and conquest of AD43, the second the Norman conquest beginning 1066, and the third the glorious revolution of 1688. The first of these regime changes involved the replacement of an incoherent set of tribal rulers by a more or less military government. The second was a replacement of Anglo-Saxon semi-democratic rule by an imposed foreign dynastic feudal system. The third, engineered by an invited Dutch invasion, was the replacement of what was becoming absolute rule by divine right by something which developed into our present constitutional system. All three must, by any normal standards, be considered successful. That said, I agree that there is a signal lack of examples of democracy being established from the top down.
Colin Reid
Admaston, Shropshire
After Freud 1
19th June 2006
Alexander Linklater and Robert Harland provide a timely article (June) on the remarkable take-up of cognitive behaviour therapy in Britain. They repeat Peter Fonagy's crisp analysis that CBT is "marketed as an antibiotic when really it's an aspirin." The antibiotic analogy promises a simple, cost-effective, once and for all "cure." Hence Polly Toynbee, in praising the new Layard depression report in the Guardian, describes CBT as "a quick win, an easy happiness hit." This may work for some individuals, but it will not improve their longer-term resilience. The real challenge in the 21st century is adapting and thriving in a world we don't understand and can't control—the "conceptual emergency." This is the world Harvard psychologist Robert Kegan describes in his book In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life. The new interest in mental health is a sign that we are waking up to the emergency.
Margaret Hannah
International Futures Forum
After Freud 2
20th June 2006
I read the essay "After Freud" in complete disbelief. Psychoanalysis is still alive and well and the results of its findings are well embedded in various fields of learning, both scientific and artistic. Child psychology is an excellent example of a body of knowledge that was brought into being as a result of psychoanalytic work and has resulted in great strides forward in our care of children. The article also implies that neuroscience has somehow disproved Freud's theories, when in fact it is doing precisely the opposite. The respected neuroscientific work of Antonio Damasio and Jaak Panksepp is helping us to understand the basis of our primal emotions and drives. Scientific American published a paper in 2004 saying, "neuroscientists are finding that their biological descriptions of the brain may fit together best when integrated by psychological theories Freud sketched a century ago."
Paul Williams
London SW2
Cooper soft on Blair
3rd July 2006
Robert Cooper (June) gives us an elegant and intriguing synthesis of changes in the further reaches of diplomacy and makes compelling and persuasive points on the way. But he is far too forgiving of Tony Blair. So WMD was the reason for the invasion—really? At a time when Blair's own intelligence chief was reporting that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy"—a decision to invade Iraq already taken by the Bush administration—and when his own spokesman was pumping up the rhetoric in a Joint Intelligence Committee report on Iraq's WMD, this is hard to believe. The Americans did not believe it, as the book Cooper cites (Cobra II) makes plain. Either the Americans conned Tony, or they recruited him into their secret plan to make the middle east safe for western interests.
Joe Roeber
London NW8
A musical audit 1
25th June 2006
Nick Crowe's conclusion (July) that classical music theory is "way behind the realities of contemporary music practice" and "outmoded" is a little hasty. Here in Oxford's jazz scene, when it comes to creating a decent solo, understanding such basics as chord sequences and the cycle of fifths is as essential as ever.
Stephen Ashworth (alto sax)
Oxford
A musical audit 2
10th July 2006
Nick Crowe's essay portrays well the scope and diversity of musical activity in Britain. He provides a comprehensive account of some extremely imaginative current developments and positive trends in music education. He is right to argue that positive trends are discernible in many directions. He takes interesting soundings as to how music performance and music education are responding to changing times and rapidly advancing technology.
That said, there is an alarming fault-line running through much of the article. The cause of this rift is an apparent misconception that music-making is an easily won endeavour, that the all-join-in ethos is a sufficient condition to create a healthy art form. Yet where is the commitment to hard graft, continuous incremental learning, career-long professional engagement? Where above all is respect for the mastery of the craft of the advanced, professional musician over and above that of amateur participation?
Would any of us consult an unqualified lawyer? A rookie fund manager? A Saturday afternoon surgeon? Certainly not. We all want the best we can afford. We want people who are specialised, skilled in their chosen sphere. We want the benefits of their experience.
Yes, there is high-quality amateur music-making. Its value is unimpeachable. It can unite and galvanise communities, and inspire the individual. It is worthy of encouragement and support. These are contexts in which sport as a practical endeavour is probably the nearest comparable activity to music. In music as in any sport, one can always aim higher.
But there is a telling difference: in sport the principle of accessibility always co-exists rather than competes with that of having an elite cohort of high achievers whose targeted efforts are deemed worthy of support. In sport the value of the best is recognised, and it pulls up the quality of and the appeal of the whole. In music, always referred to as a universal language, yes, we want people who can speak to us directly. But does that mean we throw away all linkage between what is of value and the virtues of quality, skill and effort?
It can be argued that technology allows more people to develop a "musicality" which bypasses the need to learn traditional musical skills, which are not necessary in what Crowe calls a "post-performance era," where other capabilities take their place. The pendulum has swung too far. To extend the sporting metaphor, the equivalent would be to expect Pro Evolution Soccer 5 to teach a kid how to perfect the curving swerving dipping free kick. The ABRSM's Sound Junction online music resource was not supposed to give instrumental teachers the heave-ho, but rather to complement what they learn on instruments. The presence of a committed teacher with professional energy surely has to be helpful in awakening and developing young people's true potential to be willing bystanders as they are removed from the picture must be a mistake. Crowe points out some interesting current trends in music education, highlighting what he sees as its recent transformation. He sees the influence of classical music on music education as having narrowed the activity and held back innovation because it has failed to acknowledge the decline in classical music's reach in society. The reader is led to the conclusion that until recently, higher education's role in music education has been unimaginative and reactionary.
This is one view, but it is partial in the extreme. The idea that all British conservatoires apart from Leeds have stood still, and failed to be a positive influence in current thinking is rejected out of hand by the music colleges I spoke to, and for good reason. It is a view which wilfully kicks away a very high quality infrastructure of work in music education and accumulated expertise going back at least a generation, and which additional funding reversing previous declines For example, the LSO Discovery programme which Crowe mentions is not new. Its guiding spirit, Richard McNicol, a respected figure internationally is about to begin his fourth decade of innovative work with orchestras in the education sphere. Larry Westland's Music for Youth and the showcasing activity of the Schools Proms, the youth orchestra and youth jazz orchestra movements; all these combine to make a wealth of activity which celebrates talent and its potential for development.
And we should not ignore the reputation for quality and vision British music educators have abroad. Richard McNicol was invited by the Berlin Philharmonic to instigate its Education Programme in 2002. Pete Churchill's reputation for running large education projects around jazz composition and choirs is of unassailable quality and reaches to Australia. The Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen has an international reputation, but the leading light of its work on improvisation is the unique Django Bates. In this case one could say Beckenham's loss is definitely Denmark's gain.
And what about the patient behind the-scenes research into the value of music in education and in child development at London's Institute of Education—one of the world's major centres for music education research and development? From Keith Swanwick's pioneering work on the musical spiral of understanding, incorporating performing, composing and listening as equal partners, throughout the music curriculum there is a valuable and world-class legacy on which to build.
Finally, there is the more informal training of musicians across all genres to consider. Can this legacy or musicianship be assessed without paying due credit to jazz education, which now has new prominence and energy both in the preliminary stages of education, where the natural instinct of children to improvise is developed, and in conservatoires.
This is a world inhabited by people with an infinite generosity of spirit and an engagement in their subject which always leave a lasting mark: take composer and arranger Eddie Harvey, who wrote for the Benny Goodman band, still at 80, having lost nothing of the capacity to lead and inspire, pedalling his bike up to London College of Music in Ealing; or Charlie Beale whose superhuman energy launched the superb ABRSM Jazz programme in 2000, the publications for which have now racked up sales over half a million units; or Charles Alexander's determined and patient championing of the Aebersold teaching methods using play-alongs, by running courses and distributing educational materials since 1984.
Professionals in the schools music education sector have difficult balances to strike: at primary level, the debate is about the role of the music co-ordinator. Schools which have kept a music specialist have had to fight an heroic struggle against financial odds, others foster the work of musically literate teachers, while others have a music co-ordinator who may be a non-specialist. At secondary level, there is the tension between sustained, progressive instrumental/vocal learning, and the quicker, cheaper, numerical target-friendlier fix of participation via large workshops. Instrumental tuition tends to be costly, which may explain why the government's earlier specific funding pledges, according to the Music Education Council, have now resulted in convenient ministerial amnesia.
The escape into the refuge of music can take many forms. For some, we gather from Crowe's article, it might be record shops and car boot sales (I've been there too), for others it might be learning Chopsticks or the opening riff from Wonderwall and giving up. But a relentless young mind can and should be persuaded to seek out its potential. For Alan Greenspan in his late teens in the early 1940s, it was the rigours of saxophone and clarinet at the Julliard school of Music, preparing him for the music profession in which he started his career, but was to abandon; for the teenage Condoleeza Rice in Aspen it was "planning a career as a concert pianist"; for culture minister David Lammy as a boy treble: "I found my voice in Mozart's Mass in C Minor, in Peterborough Cathedral" (Speech to Assciation of British Orchestras, January 2006). These people first explored their potential in music, and later used the skills and the habits of the performing musician to develop and build exemplary careers in other spheres.
The question is whether these are useful role models, or whether the mass of the population has to get by without ever knowing such activity exists. One eminent figure in the music education sector told me my arguments in favour of recognising the value of sustained effort were "swimming against a very strong tide." Tides change. But the basic human urge to grapple and persevere with the rewarding, all-consuming challenge and aspiration to create music of quality is timeless.
Sebastian Scotney
Jazz Development Trust
