The Gender Gap

Nurture or Nature? It is a question that has exercised the brains of psychologists and educationalists since political correctness was in nappies. Do children follow certain paths because of their inherent gender or their treatment during their formative years? I may have mentioned that my wife is a primary school teacher and it is her view after 20-odd years teaching the little brats...er dears, that in general, Nature usually wins, no matter what the trendy educationalists and the government will try to do to load the dice. In other words ‘Boys will be Boys’ and vice versa and there’s not much you can do about it, or should do about it except work with the fact.

Earlier this year, there was a news article dealing with a report from The Institute of Education on the subject of which musical instrument children chose to learn that tends to enforce the view that nature has taken a firm grip when it comes to Rock ‘n’ Roll. Looking at which instrument is favourite when it comes to individual choice, it seems that the boys rush to the guitar whilst the girls are picking up a flute or, gulp, the harp. Try getting that in the back of the car for home practice!

So, surprise surprise, whilst boys are fighting for the guitars, drums and brass instruments to make as much noise as possible, their feminine peers shut the door to get a bit of peace to practice that difficult D♭ arpeggio on their oboes and flutes. It must’ve made school a very confusing place for the likes of Joan Jett, June Millington, Nancy Wilson, Vicki Peterson and every other guitar totin’ woman. Or indeed, Ian Anderson, Thijs Van Leer and their flautist brothers.

Seems to me that actually, instruments pick you rather than the other way around. Looking at most bands, the drummer is always the mad restless one, the keyboards player is studious, the bass player laid back and the guitarist the extrovert. Each instrument then picks their player from across the sexes. Of course, more men than women are aggressive extroverts but more women than men are relaxed and socially inclusive. Note how many more female bass players there appear to be than raving lead guitarists.

Two fundamental truths arise here. One – men and women are, thankfully, different and there’s no use saying otherwise. They will always be drawn to different pursuits despite what any ‘expert’ may tell you. Two – there are always exceptions to any rule and holding back boys and girls who desire to be ‘different’ is as damaging as forcing them to act against their nature. Now, where did I leave my Bagpipes?

No Fun

‘We don’t need no educashun!’ sang the Pink Floyd somewhat ungrammatically and looking at their bank balance you felt they had a point.

But does education really have a place in pop music? I can’t help feeling that somewhere along the line pop music has become a little too worthy. I blame LiveAid (1985 for those old enough to remember) for trying to raise the stature of the medium out of the ‘purely for enjoyment’ category into the ‘take us seriously’ category. It seems that everywhere you look and this includes music, everything has to be educational rather than just plain fun. There is something of the intrusion of the Nanny State at work here. You can imagine the scene in Nurseries everywhere:

All together now kiddies…
‘Hey Hey we’re the Anthropoid Apes,
And people say we primate around,
But we’re too busy learning,
To put anybody down.’

Perhaps all music outlets should become a branch of Early Learning then we’d all know where we stand. Toys long ago became instruments of ‘Education’ so that we cannot buy anything for a pre-schooler without it having to teach them something. My own experience reveals that toddlers generally ignore these overpriced teaching aides and continue to play quite happily with cardboard boxes and wrapping paper thus learning a basic British right – to be suspicious of all authority.

Which is why I really can’t get to grips with politics in music, there’s too much preciousness involved and it turns me off. We have that stuff breathing down our necks all the time, the last place I need it is entertainment. But what I really don’t need is some earnest teenager ramming a non-too subtle ‘message’ down my throat. Comment on the state of the union by all means but don’t preach otherwise I’m off to play with the cardboard boxes.

Let’s be clear, I have no quibble with those who make a general observational protest in lyrical form – Nerina Pallot’s ‘Everybody’s Gone to War’ is a good example – but I really don’t want to spend money on a CD that then accuses me directly of creating all the world’s ills. It’s not all my fault, honest! Nor do I take kindly to being told to give money to various causes by rock stars who could probably finance the problem out of existence, personally.

So, where were we? Oh yes…
‘Hey Hey we’re the Monkees,
And people say we Monkee around,
But we’re too busy singing,
To put anybody down.’

Much better.

Could Do Better

I very rarely venture into the world of politics but having a wife who is a primary schoolteacher has sensitised me to goings on in the education world. The current UK government has mooted the idea that on top of the mountains of bureaucracy heaped on the education system, teachers should now produce a weekly on-line report for every pupil in their care. Just in case you haven’t grasped the magnitude of the task, let me say that again, ‘a weekly on-line report for every pupil’. I trust that Prime Minister Gordon Brown will personally be producing a similar weekly on-line report on what he is doing for the country? Don’t count on it.

Perversely, I still have all my school reports and very entertaining they are too. They reflect an age when public servants were not crippled by the dead hand of political correctness and a spade was, funnily enough, a spade. My favourite is from my old Geography master, who when assessing my achievement as top of the class in his subject provided a succinct appraisal in the single word, ‘Good’.

But he is not alone. A newspaper recently published extracts from school reports of various well-known public figures and what a hoot they all are. There is a fair splattering of the usual ‘He/She will never amount to anything’ but many had a deliriously off-kilter flavour typical of a less straitjacketed world. The one that caught my eye was a headmaster’s report on the young Richard Briers. I’m sure Mr & Mrs Briers would have been bemused to read, ‘It would seem that Briers thinks he is running the school and not me. If this attitude persists, one of us will have to leave’. Brilliant!

You wouldn’t get anything anywhere near that degree of surrealistic humour these days – it’s all too homogenised, grey and frankly tedious. In a way, this seems counter-productive as many of the best teachers have an innate madness about them that makes them irresistible and to remove this part of their personality through political machiavellism is plain daft.

There was one such individual at my school and shamefully, I can’t remember his name. Whenever it was his turn to take morning assembly, the place was packed to the rafters with standing room only at the back. It was the sense of danger he seemed to invoke when you (or even a nervous Headmaster) really didn’t know what was coming next that was so spellbinding and there is no doubt that he succeeded in getting his message across whether you believed it or not. I doubt he would get a look in these days and more’s the pity.