Issue 27 Autumn1999 David Almond's 1999 Carnegie Medal Acceptance Speech Delivered on 14th July 1999 David Almond >>>>>>>>>> Next Carnegie/Greenaway Item	Collections under which this       article appears:       Reading Related Articles or Resources Other Articles by Author

Its a particular honour that this medal is awarded by librarians. It was a library that was crucial in turning me into a writer. It was a small, square, unspectacular place, a place of exploration and discovery, a place where I could wander in enthralled silence, a place where I could plunder treasure, a place where I could dream and grow. Nobody watched me as I wandered, nobody questioned me, nobody tried to record what was happening inside my head. Outside of libraries, in our schools, there's madness around. I have to say that when I visit schools that I envy many of the children I meet. I wish I'd gone to schools like theirs. We're surrounded by mythmongers, of course: schools are sinks of mediocrity, teachers can't teach, children can't learn, children don't read any more. I'd like to drag these glib prophets of decay into some of the classrooms I've been in recently, places run by hugely talented teachers, populated by keen, cheerful, hardworking children. I'm not sceptical about these people. I'm sceptical about the ludicrous demands that are placed on them.

In Skellig, Mina simply dismisses schools. "We believe that schools inhibit the natural curiosity, creativity and intelligence of children." She's an extremist, part of a tradition that includes her hero, William Blake. To our educational pedants, devoted only to setting targets, recording progress, ticking boxes, Mina's words, and the whole sceptical tradition, are ludicrous. William Blake? Wasn't he the crackpot that pottered naked in his garden and saw angels everywhere? He said schools drive all joy away. Joy? Creativity? Imagination? How can they be reduced to a tick box, how can progress here be recorded? And if it canıt be recorded, how can it exist? And didn't all that crackpot stuff just lead to swivel-eyed 60s progressives, and lunatic deschoolers? Laugh, move on, produce another form, design another pilot project, set a target to shift 27.37% of 9 year olds from level 3 to level 4. In 50 years time, it's these mechanistic obsessions that will be seen as laughable. The concentration on assessment, accreditation, targets, scores, grades, tests, profiles will be seen as a kind of madness. There's an arrogance at work: the arrogance that we know exactly what happens when someone learns something, that we can plan for it, that we can describe it, that we can record it - and that if we can't do these things, then the learning doesn't exist. The arrogance leads us to concentrate on a particular kind of work - noses-to-the-grindstone treadmill kind of work, work that is observable, recordable and well-nigh constant. Get kids into school fast! Get them assessed while they're in nappies! Get them going to literacy clubs, numeracy clubs, lunchtime learning clubs, and holiday learning clubs! Holidays? Let's cut them. School day? Let's lengthen it! Homework? One hour? No, let's make it two, eh? Let's see them - children and teachers - work, work, work! And let's get plenty of people watching them and recording them while they're at it.

What would the assessors and recorders have made of Archimedes splashing happily about in his bath before he yelled Eureka! What would they have made of James Watson snoring in his bed as he dreamed the molecular structure of DNA? What would they make of writers as they work, if they'd watched me, say, when I was writing Skellig? Needs to apply himself in a more organised manner. Messy notebooks, often totally illegible. Inconsistent. Some days hard at work, very productive. Some days mutters, curses, is disaffected, dreams out of the window. Can be found madly playing computer games when should be 'on task'. Record-keeping negligible. Unwilling to reflect on processes gone through or skills developed. Must do better.

The exhausting chase after what we're told are higher standards has become a national obsession - an established religion. We've consigned the Blakean heretics to the flames. We've cast the demons - the deschoolers of the 60s and 70s - into outer darkness. We've laid waste the heathen temples such as Summerhill. What remains? A monolithic system, with the National Curriculum its Book of Common Prayer. The pedants are triumphant, and go about their task of disintegrating our world. Like medieval philosophers they debate the exact weight to be given to every fragment. 15% on this subject, 12.5% on that, 5.7% on the other. They demand their tributes: targets, records, evidence.

Despite it all, I'm an optimist. I see teachers and children involved in the passionate quest called education. And I know that the heretics haven't gone away. They live on inside our schools, in a kind of inner exile. Who are they, these gargoyles, these demons? They're energetic, inspirational men and women. They know that the minds of young people do not exist in fragments, that the elements of the world merge and flow and give life to each other. They recognise that learning can be planned but that beyond the planning and recording there is a mysterious zone of imagination, intuition, insight in which the beady gaze of the record-keeper is deadly. They understand that there are moments when children must be left alone, given space and silence and respect. We must also be brave enough to leave these teachers alone, to give them space and silence and respect. As weıre into percentages, why not have, say, 10% gap time built into every school term. A time when target-setting can consist of maps of possibilities, when record-keeping can consist of speculations, a time when we can admit that perhaps we haven't really got a clue whatıs going on inside the children's heads. Let's call it "Eureka Time". Maybe we should have a Blakean garden in every school, where children and their teachers can simply wander, explore and dream ... But no, this is all crackpot stuff, isn't it? Let's design another form. Let's set another target. Lets get these children working at 93% efficiency 95% of the time. Let's get those noses to the grindstone.