Election fever has gripped the country’s media in the UK; indeed, it is hard to avoid the glee of broadcasters and reporters who are revelling in the stories that the impending general election on 7^th May is generating. Politicians are touring the country kissing babies – and feeding lambs – and the polls reveal that the count is going to be tight and perhaps genuinely unpredictable. Still, despite the enthusiasm of the Duracell-bunny-like media pundits (or perhaps because of it), it can be extremely tempting for ‘ordinary’ people simply to switch off, to wonder what it all has to do with them, and to doubt that their single vote is even worth casting.

Well, whatever we think of the media coverage, here are 5 reasons why we should all vote:

People have died to give us the right to vote. The World Wars of the 20^th century were all about freedom, including the freedom to vote, and the suffragettes spent years campaigning to give Women the vote. If we don’t vote, or we waste our vote, we dishonour our past.

Voting gives us collective power. Our preferred candidate may not always win, but if we take our responsibilities seriously and research the candidates carefully – their parties, their policies, their opinions, their integrity – then we are better able together to make the right choices for people who will represent us in Parliament. If we don’t, we can’t.

Our MPs are local as well as national – they are supposed to help fight important local issues with national clout – voting for them means that we expect them to work positively within our own local community.

Voting reminds Governments that they are chosen to represent the people. The more people who vote, the more keenly the Government must recognise that it is the people of the country who have placed them in a position of power, not the machinery of politics itself. A lower turnout distances a Government from that tie to the people.

It is our responsibility in a democracy.  Not every citizen in every country has the right to vote. We, on the other hand, have the right to vote for whomever we want in free and demonstrably fair elections, and – above all – this is we why should value this opportunity to vote and exercise our right to do so.

It is not long now until 7^th May. Plenty of time to reflect and prepare to cast our votes.

“When you’re smilin’ keep on smilin’
The whole world smiles with you”

So wrote (and sang) Louis Armstrong, and who amongst us hasn’t experienced the power of sharing smiles and happiness with others? Since 2012, today (20 March) has been designated the UN International Day of Happiness, and this, the relevant Resolution explains, is why:

“The General Assembly,[…] Conscious that the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human goal,[…] Recognizing also the need for a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes sustainable development, poverty eradication, happiness and the well-being of all peoples, Decides to proclaim 20 March the International Day of Happiness”. 

Go to the website of Action for Happiness, which co-ordinates social action and personal activity for the International Day of Happiness, and you will find a list of ways in which to achieve happiness. It is not for the cynical (obviously); read it and take it at face value, in the spirit in which it was intended, and reflect:

Giving

Relating

Exercising

Appreciating

Trying Out

Direction

Resilience

Emotion

Acceptance

Meaning

Very neatly, of course, it spells out ‘Great Dream’ … and why shouldn’t happiness be a ‘great dream’? Happiness as a concept is much maligned and scorned; it is often seen as something superficial, often linked to material goals. Substitute ‘contentment’ for ‘happiness’, however, and come a little closer to understanding deep, powerful happiness – a state of existing, thinking and doing where we can fully be our confident and secure selves, and where we can positively influence the lives of others.

Of course, as with most things that are worth anything in life, happiness doesn’t happen without effort. Happiness is as much about the doing as it is about the being.

So, today, as you go about your daily tasks, seek to ‘be’ happy and ‘do’ happy. The world will be that little bit better as a result – and that’s a promise.

I have so far resisted taking a stance on the phenomenon of selfies – those snaps of oneself, taken and posted on social media, despite the fact that they are ubiquitous, a recognised word in Oxford Dictionaries Online since 2013, and increasingly institutionalised, as is evident by the development of mainstream paraphernalia to ease the selfie-taking experience. (Have you purchased your ‘Handheld Monopod Selfie Stick with Phone Adapter’ yet?)

The reason for not taking a stance is that snapping selfies is not a one-size-fits-all experience; people take selfies for all sorts of reasons. At one end of the spectrum is, no doubt, the self-obsessed narcissist; at the other is the connector of friends and family through shared visual experience. Most selfies probably result from a mixture of motivations that places them somewhere on the continuum between these two positions, and are probably relatively harmless, if (depending on the content/context/accompanying description) potentially a bit tiresome.

The recent furore about the rise in ‘brelfies’, however, has made me wonder whether there might be some way to turn selfies into a positive power for good. ‘Brelfies’ – selfies taken by women breastfeeding their infants – have caused a storm in the past week or so. Are they an important step in the empowerment of mothers, or inappropriate nakedness – sharing gone too far? This is a topic to which I do react – breastfeeding is an entirely normal activity, and – if anything – needs to be promoted and celebrated visually far more strongly than at present, to compensate for its absence. UNICEF agrees – one of their key recommendations in their Breastfeeding Manifesto is that governments should “Develop policy and practice to support breastfeeding in public places”, and they call on governments to “do all they can to protect women’s right to breastfeed in public places and encourage greater social acceptance of this important and natural practice”. Brelfies, in fact, could actually do some good.

And this got me thinking … perhaps there could be a third dimension to the motivations behind selfies – not just the narcissistic or even the communal, but the motivation of the global citizen. Far-fetched? Perhaps … but then, we learn from what we see and hear around us, and the more an idea is promulgated, the more widespread and accepted it becomes. When we enter a smoke-free bar, we register still the public health value in the smoking ban; when we recycle our newspapers, we do so not just out of habit but because we know it is good for the environment. Imagine bringing that dimension to our selfies … imagine selfies of women at work around the world, consciously posted (in part, at least) because this connects them and emphasises the importance of gender equality. Imagine selfies of 16 year old girls at school. Imagine selfies of old people being well cared for.

Think what we could achieve if we post pictures of what is possible in our world today; think how we could unite people through different but similar experiences across the globe. Imagine a virtual platform of selfies which could celebrate, motivate and inspire.

The next time you – or someone you know – takes a selfie, consider why, and remember this third dimension. After all, a dash of global citizenship will do us all good.

The IMF have spoken: in a staff discussion note published a few days ago, entitled ‘Fair Play: More Equal Laws Boost Female Labor Force participation’, the authors outline research which supports women’s involvement in the workplace in all countries of the world. Their main finding is that “less legal discrimination against women is strongly associated with higher female labor force participation”; moreover, the evidence suggests that when more women participate in the workforce, the country thrives economically. The report reminds us of the conclusion of the World Economic Forum’s 2014 Global Gender Gap Report, namely that a positive correlation has been found between gender equality and per capita GDP and the level of a country’s competitiveness, as well as the human development indicators for which we all should be striving.

The authors of this recent report express their findings cautiously, not wishing to offend: “In recommending equal opportunities … this study does not intend to render a judgment of countries’ broadly accepted cultural and religious norms”; when they speak of the power of removing legal obstacles to gender equality in the workplace, they temper their conclusion: “legal changes enable women to enter into economic activity, which may change social attitudes. It should also be emphasized that the policy recommendations in this note with respect to creating equal opportunity should be considered against the backdrop of countries’ broadly accepted cultural and religious norms.”

Understandable though this is – a natural desire not to upset, perhaps, or a more subtle move towards evolution rather than revolution – it is nonetheless unfortunate that the authors could not be stronger in their recommendations. All the evidence they cite demonstrates clearly that economies and societies thrive with greater gender equality. No country is free of bias or prejudice; the authors of the report are certainly not advocating following a particular model. Their conclusions point strongly, though, to the – surely now indisputable – fact that when men and women are treated equally, the world is a better and more prosperous place, in every sense.

This is a message we all need to hear, repeat, and work to translate into reality. The IMF’s conclusions help us along this path.

The UK Telegraph’s newspaper interview with Tom Bennett, published today, is worth a read. It follows on from widely publicised recent comments make by Andreas Schleicher, Director of Education and Skills at OECD, which attempted to debunk various myths about the top-performing school systems … again, these too are worth a read. What both educationalists share in common, it seems to me, is a desire to orientate teachers and policy-makers away from a belief that one size (or even one system) fits all in educating young people, and we should remain open and appropriately sceptical as we attempt to assess the effectiveness of any initiative in education.

Of course, part of this is a drive towards greater and more effective (and impartial) research in schools and amongst young people. The more we can track outcomes, the more certain we can be that individual interventions (or combinations of interventions) actually work in helping young people to learn more and become more ‘educated’. Research undoubtedly has its limitations – by its nature it largely generalises, and not every young person, in his or her specific circumstances, is ‘generalisable’. If our goal is to ensure that every single young person across the world has access to the education strategies and resources that help him or her to become the best he/she can be, with the ultimate aim of being able to contribute as best possible to their local, national and international community, then we have to acknowledge that even detailed, ‘cast-iron guaranteed’ research outcomes will not necessarily work in reality with every individual.

Yet the more we know, the more likely we are to be able to approach our goal. The more (proven) tools that teachers have in their repertoire of ways to nudge their students into learning, the more likely it is that those learners will thrive. Great and experienced teachers have learned over the years how to understand and respond to the particular needs of their pupils; every day in their classrooms, mini-research projects unfold and develop, consciously or otherwise, as they test out how to stretch and support their students in different measures, appropriate to their needs. Educators and educational systems have so much that they can learn from one another; when this learning is planned, considered, tested, weighed and weighted, then it stands to reason that it can be enormously helpful to others. As we mature in our understanding of how children learn and how education systems prosper, then it is to be hoped that we will develop our ability to think critically about education and share our insights on a platform where they in turn are evaluated critically, for the greater good, ultimately, of our young people and their education.

A goal worth working towards indeed.

The Equaliser (which I watched recently on another longhaul flight) is not necessarily a film I would recommend – the body count is high, the pre-movie warnings about the propensity of adult themes are accurate, and while Denzel Washington plays his part well, one is left rather morally uneasy at the thought that one bad deed deserves another … even if that second bad deed rids the world of an unsavoury character (or several).

However, the first few seconds of the film grabbed my attention and held it. Before any of the storyline unfolded, before the bodies starting piling up, and before even the characters had graced the screen, the audience was presented with a quote by Mark Twain:

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

Real truth lies within this quote: at the risk of stating the obvious, we do not exist and can achieve nothing if we are not born; moreover, unless and until we realise our direction or purpose in life, we are unlikely to make the most of our time on this planet. When we can see and understand our goal, we are far more likely to pursue it and to achieve it. It stands to reason, therefore, that the day on which this goal becomes clear to us is an important one.

Of course, it is not necessarily easy to pinpoint at which moment – on which day – this realisation occurs. Has it, indeed, already occurred? Are we sure? If we aren’t sure, then did we just miss or overlook it? If we are sure, then how can we tell that that was the real thing? Or is our moment of realisation still to come?

Well, maybe we know what we are meant to do in life … or maybe we don’t. In either case, it does us no harm to keep our eyes open to what life brings us every new day, and to keep checking in with ourselves – and others – that what we think we should be doing during our time on this planet is in fact what we should be doing. We may never know for certain, but if we keep vigilant, every day, then we have a far better chance of working it out.

And then, of course – and how reassuring and empowering this is – each new day becomes one of the most important days of our life. Treasure it.

On a recent longhaul flight, which is about the only opportunity I have to watch movies, I was very taken with the espionage thriller, ‘A Most Wanted Man’. Based on the novel by John Le Carré of the same title, it was Philip Seymour Hoffman’s last leading role before his death in February 2014, and he was most convincing as Günther Bachmann, the man running the slightly shady, under-the-radar team whose aim was to develop intelligence about potential security threats in Germany and beyond. As an example of character acting, it was excellent, and well worth watching.

What prompted me to write about the film here, though, was not a new-found desire to review the latest Hollywood releases; rather, it was a phrase in the film which jumped out at me, and which made me think. Years of seeking the moral message in anything I see, read or experience have perhaps attuned me to identifying key moments and messages in films and books, but the fact that this particular phrase was repeated – and emphasised – later in the film gave me the sense that it was not accidental on the part of the writer and director. I would need to read the original book to see if this was Le Carré’s intention from the outset; whether or not it was, and whether or not he explores in greater depth the ambivalences around the behaviour of our intelligence forces as they seek to protect us, the effect of the phrase in the film remains.

The phrase uses a comparative adjective to indicate why the protagonists are doing what they do, and there is a point at which, despite coming from different angles, two key protagonists agree that they do what they do because they are trying to ‘make the world a safer place’. This phrase is especially and tragically relevant in the wake of the dreadful Charlie Hedbdo murders in Paris, and it struck me particularly because for over a decade now, I have spoken out about the role of education in our society as being to try to ‘make the world a better place’. I have two main messages that I give to young people about their education: first, that they owe it to themselves to make the most of this education – to grow, to stretch themselves, to become the best people they can be; secondly (and ultimately), that they are doing this in order to help make the world a better place.

Hearing the same conviction but with a different comparative adjective – and, fictional or not, one imagines this conviction to be held by real-life protagonists in the same field – made me wonder what would happen if we reached out and sought more comparative adjectives to slot into the phrase. What about helping to make the world a fairer place? A healthier place? A more tolerant place? A cleaner place? Different comparative adjectives will resonate with different people; each of us could very probably pick his or her favourite – the one which we find most inspiring and energising.

Just one adjective would suffice, given that none of us can take responsibility for doing everything in life. Think, though, what you could do with a single comparative adjective. If each of us were to commit to a single comparative adjective in the phrase ‘to help make the world a …. place’, just imagine for a moment what could happen. Just think of the change we could make, together.

Pick yours today – and seek to make a positive difference in 2015 and beyond.

Sometimes you need to see something in order truly to understand or appreciate it. For years I have been telling school students that they owe it to the world – past, present and future – never to forget the horrors of the world wars of the 20^th century, and I had these words ringing in my own ears as, on Monday of this week, I visited Terezin, the WWII Jewish Ghetto and concentration camp situated not far from Prague. It was a deeply unsettling experience.

Terezin is a walled town consisting of two fortresses, built by the Habsburgs in the late 18^th century to defend Bohemia from Prussia troops; its construction is impressive, and perhaps because of this it was never in fact besieged, but in subsequent years it was put to various uses as a prison, a town and a Czech army garrison, amongst others. Gavrilo Prinzip, who assassinated Archduke Franz-Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914, and who was therefore the catalyst for the start of WWI, was imprisoned in the Small Fortress in Cell 1 until he became too ill and was moved to hospital, where he subsequently died. Travel anywhere in Central Europe and you are never far from momentous history.

It was in WWII, however, that Terezin had its darkest days. The Small Fortress was used as a Gestapo base and a prison for political prisoners, who were kept locked up in barely tolerable conditions without heat, on minimal rations, and who were only rarely allowed to wash. Disease was rampant. The worst conditions in the Small Fortress, however, were reserved for dissidents from the Large Fortress, which from 1940 onwards became a Jewish Ghetto, to which were sent Jews from across Europe. Ostensibly a ‘haven’ for Jews, Terezin was in fact a key component of Eichmann’s Final Solution; it was a staging post for the death camps, and staggeringly high numbers of Jews either died here or were transported to Auschwitz, Birkenau and other extermination camps.

The museum in the Ghetto used to be the school and today contains an exhibition of children’s drawings from the years of occupation. Of 10,000 children who lived at some point in Terezin, only a handful – 23 – survived the war. Pause for a moment to think on that – of 10,000, only 23 survived. All those lives …

Man’s capacity for inhumanity to man ran rampant here. The inhabitants of Terezin were cut off from the outside world and any attempt to communicate about the terrible conditions in the town was punished severely. One tiny room in the Small Fortress held at any one time up to 60 Jewish ‘dissidents’, who were chained to the walls and could only sleep standing up, collapsing into their own excrement. As typhoid swept through the ghetto, 30,000 people died and were cremated in a purpose-built crematorium before they could be sent on to the death camps. Their ashes were thrown without ceremony into the river; the prisoners who had been made to cremate and dispose of their fellow Jews were then also killed, so as to eliminate witnesses.

This regime treated some of our fellow humans as far, far less than human, and what is so shocking to us now is that the perpetrators appeared to believe, genuinely, that they were right to do so. Look around the world today and we can see innumerable examples of human beings treating other human beings as subhuman – in ways that are not, and cannot, be right.

The 18^th century statesman Edmund Burke has been much quoted as saying that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” That was true at the camps of Terezin and other places of WWII which have fallen into history. It is equally true today, here and now, in our world where human beings inflict pain, torture, imprisonment on their fellow human beings because they see they as less important or less worthy.

No human being is less worthy than another. And if each of us truly believed this, and stood up to say so, we might just – just – ensure that the ghosts of Terezin are put to rest for ever.

The world sometimes seems so full of tragedy, terror and sadness that it can be hard to believe that it is worth hoping for – and working towards – a better, fairer, more harmonious future for all those who inhabit our planet.

Certainly, the last couple of weeks could easily have shaken our belief in this better future, with the deaths of hostages in the Lindt cafe siege in Sydney on 16 December, for example, which were made all the more terrible for those of us who knew them and whose hearts go out to those whose lives have been irrevocably changed and deprived through the actions of the hostage-taker.

The murder of 145 people, including 132 school-children, in a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, also on 16 December, was an almost unthinkable and unspeakable act; had it not been fully documented on our screens and in the words of the survivors, we would have struggled to imagine that any of our fellow human beings could ever have thought it legitimate and justified to kill – in a calculated and deliberate act – any child at all, let alone so many. For those of us who have dedicated our lives to the enabling the children of today to become the responsible, caring adult citizens of tomorrow, it is almost beyond human comprehension.

Tales of tragedy surround us – the shocking death of shoppers in Glasgow yesterday, for example, after they were struck by a dustbin lorry – and they are there even when they are not reported so widely. Scratch beneath the surface of our society, and we find example after example of loneliness, abuse, sadness, frustration and poverty – of spirit as well as of body. It is tempting to feel, surrounded as we are by all of this, that we would be forgiven for falling into despondency, sadness and inaction ourselves.

And yet we mustn’t. In fact, I would go so far as to say that we would not be able to forgive ourselves if we did so. In practice, it takes so little to make a vast difference in this world. A single candle can light an entire room; a single smile can transform the day as it lightens the heart of the giver and of the recipient, and as it is passed onwards to countless others. A single act of kindness sends ripples of goodness out into the world; what begins with one action can have immeasurable consequences for innumerable people as it warms, inspires, and encourages us to action ourselves.

Of course, what this does demand is discipline – the discipline of thought, attention, focus and determination that allows us to acknowledge sadness and tragedy, and hold it in our hearts, while not becoming overwhelmed or drowned in it. This approach to bringing change for the good requires us to commit to living our lives with the intention of working out what the right thing to do is, and of doing it – not just for ourselves, but for others, in the absolute knowledge that we have a role and a responsibility as human beings to contribute to the future of the world and to the lives of those around us.

And what better time to commit to this than now.

In recent years I have come really to appreciate the value of critical reflection that is embedded in the curriculum in British schools. In fact, it is so embedded that it is often taken for granted, as is its cousin, scepticism, and – perhaps as a result, and certainly rather ironically – critical reflection and scepticism are themselves now less frequently reflected upon as concepts. Critical reflection and scepticism have, in fact, acquired a bad name – they are seen as negatives rather than as neutral, helpful qualities, and this is rather unfortunate. Criticism is perceived as negative, and is consequently demotivating – after all, human nature dictates that if we are always being told that what we do is wrong or inadequate, then we will struggle to respond positively and with enthusiasm, innovation and creativity.

Fundamentally, teachers and schools want to engage in continual improvement. Young people do not stand still; society does not stand still; schools do not stand still. It is hardwired into the human spirit to want to improve, and in teachers particularly so – teachers and school leaders are in their profession because they want to do something that matters, and to make a difference. Change around them is often so fast that it can be challenging for schools to move at speed, however; moreover, teachers are only human too – too much criticism (with its social and culturally acquired hue of negativity) can be hard to take.

So when Sir Michael Wilshaw, the Chief Inspector of Schools, is quoted in today’s newspapers as saying that standards in secondary schools are failing to rise – figures which are disputed by the government, in any case – then it is unsurprising that teachers may perceive this as another knock. This is precisely what inspection should not do, and it is counter-productive. No-one disputes that schools should be held to account and encouraged to improve (after all, we invest hugely in schools in our education-focused society); what we need to evolve, however, are the words and the processes around inspection which empower, enliven and enable continuous and positive change.

If we could return to the concept of critical reflection as positive and valuable, this would be a great start … in the meantime, however, perhaps less haranguing and navel-gazing might set us on the right path. British education, quite rightly, has an excellent reputation around the world; perhaps we have just taken some of its core components just that little bit too far.