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November Numbers
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Our trip up the west coast of North America stated at San Diego on the US-Mexican border. Two weeks later, north of Vancouver, we ran out of road on Canada's highway 101. A forty-minute ferry through beautiful forested fjords and snow capped mountains brought us to the lands and traditional home of the Sechelt Indian Nation one of Canada's "First Nations". Here we were privileged to be invited to watch the unveiling of three new totem poles bringing to five the number facing Vancouver Island across the Straits of Georgia. Highway 101 now becomes a dotted line with a further ferry to Powell River - still Sechelt lands. Then there is nothing. |
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| The new totem poles are unveiled and John Nelson (Chicken Pie) gives a traditional blessing with eagle down | ||
The totem poles are anchored with stout galvanised bolts to study concrete and steel emplacements. As my First Nations host Stan Dixon, said (half humorously and in a different context) "we have learned the white man's ways". Stan is editor of the First Nations' newspaper Kahtou News, a businessman and a past Chief of the Sechelt Indian Band. It was thanks to Stan that we were allowed to spend a bright morning enjoying the ancient chants and traditional head-dress and regalia while the totem poles were blessed with quantities of eagle down. Not tuned in yet to the First Nations' accent, I was expecting "eagle dung" and was very pleasantly surprised as soft white feathers hit the Pacific breeze. I do hope they forgive me.
Stan may have learned "the white man's
ways". I hope he doesn't learn all of them and that we can at least understand
some of his. Two things were particularly striking: the First Nations sense of
time and their balance between substance and presentation, which is so
different from ours. Almost nothing in my industry dates back twenty years and
nothing useful dates back five. Against this the First Nations happily grant
"the white man" a ninety-nine year lease on some beach front real estate as a
mere flea-bite in the 20,000 years their nation has held the land in trust.
They have been negotiating a treaty with the Canadian Government for 150 years.
It is still not concluded. At a recent meeting, the Premier of British Colombia
said he felt they were almost ready to sign the final draft. Apparently the
Sechelt Chief agreed anticipating the signing in "about one hundred years".
I studied English at teacher training college and the
English department were always banging on about "appearance and reality" in
literature and life. I didn't understand then, but I do now. While every
American town will have a web-site, a tourist office and a T-shirt, up until
the 60's the Sechelt elders would not easily divulge the hundreds of
traditional names of their settlements and landmarks. In most of North America
presentation is well ahead of substance - very few things are actually
"awesome" when you get to try them.
Our annual accounts are awesome of course, and a very popular download. This month a new set is published on the web. We sold £1.8m pounds ($2.7m) worth of special needs resources to you over the year to July 2000 and sales are up by 30% since then. But just carry that figure of £1.8 million in your mind for the moment.
"Combining Anglia Multimedia and AngliaCampus …. with Granada Learning 'will create a major broadband education business' " says Chris Johnson quoting merger documents in the TES Online magazine. He adds that "Granada is approaching the level of influence of education's biggest ICT firm, RM". Appearance or reality? Substance or spin? Actually it is eagle dung.
Anglia Multimedia's last accounts showed annual sales of just £1.8 million. After acquisition of Nelson Multimedia, ILP, SEMERC and Brilliant Computing, Granada Learning sales have declined from £6 million to less than £5 million over a five-year period. By contrast, RM's accounts for the same period show £162 million annual sales - thirty-two times as great as Granada Learning and even recent acquisitions will not bring Granada even into the same order of magnitude.
Accurate information without spin is
important. Our retiring Chief Inspector of Schools, Chris Woodhead is
apparently joining the Daily Telegraph to tell us all how we could do much
better without LEAs, LEA advisers or LEA advisory teachers. Well one of the
LEAs roles (which it did rather well) was to filter the ICT industry spin and
give schools a digest of what was actually useful in the classroom.
Lets invigorate the LEAs and let's take our time in building a totem pole to what is actually worth buying and what will empower pupils and help them learn. We could all scatter some eagle down to that.
Martin Littler
West coast water from hotel windows:
Morro Bay,
California; Crater Lake, Oregon; Lewis River, Washington State; Fraser River,
Vancouver BC.