The reunion of the old guard of TLG June 2015 (photo: Dmitri Shashkini)

MUSIC

The Third Act of the Second Opera of the

Tetralogy?

When I see this photo, I ask myself some tough questions.

Can a government agency truly innovate and change the
education system?

In the heady days of Misha's reforms, and the buzz that

produced, we (and I include myself here, as I have never
wavered in my faith in this project as originally
conceived) believed that we could. However, the main
problems which we encountered were that such ideas
could not really be implemented top down; and that we
met local resistance at the grass roots level.

The result was the effective cancellation of the

experiment and the throwing of all these talented people
(pictured above!) to the four winds. In my own case, after
the castle came tumbling down, I looked in detail at what
had been achieved, and decided that the TEFL model
itself was at fault. After two years of research and
experiments, I have discovered another and better,
content-oriented approach. And I would advocate multilingualism as an obvious first building-block in any
innovating language education system, because
languages have to be encountered in clusters to be
interesting.

Isolating English into a ghetto is not the best way. If we

must have English on its own, then let it be served up
with due reference to the indigenous language and
deeply inserted into a cultural context - of which the
children should have a mature awareness. Hence the
huge benefits of using film as a medium of instruction,
and thereafter, drama. To say nothing of music,
movement and song.

Luckily I have now got an upcoming job in a mature postSoviet society, Hungary, a world leader in education
reform. So far as I can perceive on very early
acquaintance with a new phenomenon, here there are a
variety of approaches going on (some people being
traditionalist, others experimental). I have no doubt that I
can continue to work in a highly experimental and
innovative way, and indeed that this will be encouraged.

The dry bones of TEFL - a system which is just illconceived and cynically based on the desires people have
to jump though those hoops called exams, and massively and shamefully, on the desire of UK publishers
to cling on to worldwide commercial empires - will be left
far behind.

But for any revolution to take hold, such ideas, and the
few like them which have obtained worldwide credence Montessori, Michel Thomas, Waldorf, Kodaly etc - will
need to be far better known.

Now, the only way that can happen is for government to

release its grip on the content and trust civil society to be
intelligent enough to come up with its own solutions. It is
fatally wrong that a matter as personal as education is so
massively entrenched in prescriptive and centralized
mechanisms. In Georgia, this is quite mild, although there
was (and I guess still is) much needless bureaucracy.

But in the UK there is a massive sclerosis in the education

system. Childhood is eroded by testing, teachers are
furious about this - and about their inability to be true
teachers, imparters of wisdom and knowledge, not facts but totally impotent; and that corrosive, terrible malaise
of England - a too-powerful executive - is everywhere
manifest.

Fatally, as we are now seeing, in visa legislation too. This

makes the obvious dream of exchange between Georgian
and English schools still a very utopian idea; although
within the 28 member states of Europe, countries can

make exchanges to their heart's desire, based on the 90

days visa regulations.

I would like to believe, finally, that a picture such as that

above does not just show a reunion of Monarchists or
Romanovs reliving their battlefield glory days, but the
seeds of a new civilian movement for educational change
in Georgia....

Yet, of course, unfortunately, it doesn't, because the

original ideals were never sufficiently deeply entrenched.
The main blame here must lie with Misha. As is now
obvious, his dedication to his country and to these ideals
which all of us were naive enough to believe he cared
about passionately, was paper thin.

Because if it had not been, there would not have been all
the drama which has now meant that he can no longer
contribute in Georgia: we are just left with the wreckage
of the dreams he inspired.

But we must move on. The very recent signs of hope from
the current government (the 365 day visa rules for 94
countries) are extremely inspiring. In the circle of a year,
we have seen Georgia move through 180 degrees in its
5

feelings about cultural engagement with the outside

world, and it is now firmly and unequivocally sending the
clearest possible signal that it is open for business and
indeed inspired.

Misha's policy was for 360 days: this, now, is for 365 - it
even innovates here. And meanwhile Estonia, too, has
shown that extremely simplified business legislation,
quite a lot of which I believe still is in place here, can be
very positive for a swift-footed, reasonably small,
emerging country. And thus we have seen the Lari almost
speed back from its historic low of about 6 weeks ago and the signs are very good indeed.

So - beyond all chagrins and elided hopes - let the ancien

rgime of TLG remain as a social group and a force to be
reckoned with; and may it, in future years, debate the
germ of an idea I sketch out here: that there need to be
education movements involving citizens which feed back
into government; and that government itself needs to
beware of taking too much overall control in the sensitive
and crucial area of education.

The miracle may be that - far beyond the comic opera of

Misha's days we now have in Giorgi Margvelashi a truly

inspired President who can take the country the distance

it needs to go: Act Three of the Valkyries!

Because Georgias youth is courageous and willing

enough to set out into that eternal flame around the
Mtatsmindathat is Sakartvelo.
_________________________________________________________

https://www.youtube.com/wau9Rr1o9wtch?v=1nu gives
the Wagnerian source; an audio extract from the last
fifteen minutes is given above.