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'Nepotism, fraud, corruption, waste and cheating ...
Welcome to England's school system'*
Photo: Policy Press
‘With almost daily reports of failings in school management,
what can be done to improve educational outcomes for everyone?
Pat Thomson takes on England’s muddled education system, highlighting failings caused by the actions of ministers in successive governments. While corrupt actions are taken by some, it is predominantly the corruption of the system that is at fault. She exposes fraudulent and unethical practices, including the skewing of the curriculum and manipulation of results, and argues for an urgent review, leading to a revitalised education system that has the public good at its heart.’- Policy Press
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‘Pat Thomson is uniquely placed to comment on contemporary secondary schooling. Her current position is Professor of Education and convenor of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Creativity and Literacy (CRACL) at the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom).
Prior to taking up her role as an academic in the UK, Pat had more than 20 years experience in SA schools. She held leadership positions in some of our most iconic secondary schools which, in large part, were set up to address significant instances of educational disadvantage. She was the founding coordinator of the Bowden Brompton Community School. She held leadership positions at both The Parks and Paralowie R-12. She was principal of Paralowie for 11 years (1985-1997). Beyond her extensive school leadership experience, Pat also served as President of SASPA, held senior positions in the Department and completed a PhD at Deakin University.
Based on the research for her doctoral thesis, Pat wrote Schooling the rustbelt kids: making the difference in changing times (2002, Allen & Unwin). It was dedicated to the Paralowie community and stands as a definitive and instructive account of the many challenges facing ‘disadvantaged schools
Pat has always been an outspoken defender of public education. This strong political stance has been an acknowledged feature of her role as a principal and in her academic research and writing. On her recent visit to SA she spoke to SASPA principals in February: “Public Education: For the Public Good?” Click here to access Pat’s SASPA address.’- Excerpts from Pat Thomson: a recent visit to South Australia
Photo: SASPA
‘Prof Pat Thomson, known for her award-winning work on creativity, the arts and education, has quietly been on a darker mission: for the past six years behind the scenes she has been collecting reports of what she calls corruption in the school system.
Academy sponsors siphoning off money from school budgets, teachers fiddling test results and heads claiming unlawful bonuses are not just a case of a few bad apples, she claims. Instead, says the professor of education at the University of Nottingham, such dishonesty and greed are evidence of the unethical system in which schools work.
Her 3,800 examples of bad practice, mainly from England but also from other countries where market forces have been injected into public services, tell a story of nepotism, fraud and cheating. In England, they also highlight structural “reform”, with its waste of money on free schools that never open, the horrendous ongoing costs of successive private finance initiatives (PFIs), and the way schools are pitched against each other for survival.
But the source lies at the heart of governments that have allowed spin and perception to replace decisions for the public good, she says.
She has written a book on her findings, explaining how what she regards as corrupt practices are built into the system through competition, market forces and wasteful procurement. Although most people work ethically within this corrupted system, the book provides ample opportunities for the less honest to further their own or their school’s interests if they think they can get away with it. She gives the example of the boss of an academy telling teachers to cheat in tests, and the widespread off-rolling of students to improve schools’ results.
What the country needs is an independent public commission to start the conversation about what we think a school system should be doing and how best to educate young people for the future, instead of focusing on fiddling with school types and the curriculum, she argues.
“Money urgently needed in schools has been spent on tinkering with the system, structural change that doesn’t alter what happens in the classroom between students and their teachers,” she says.
A prolific researcher, journal author and enthusiastic blogger, Thomson usually visited schools with successful teaching and learning but felt unable to ignore the disastrous events she saw across the wider system, such as the bullying of staff by heads buckling under pressure to improve results at any cost.
Included in her hit list of bad practices are failed government initiatives that deprive schools of badly needed cash. Malmesbury school in Wiltshire, for example, has to pay £40 a month for “managing” a canteen bench bought by PFI, on top of installation costs. With 13 years of the contract still to run, it works out at £6,240 just for its “management”.
Thomson lays the blame at the top of government. “We have been living with this culture of spin and deceit for a long time,” she says. “I’ve continued to collect examples and now have many more than 3,800 – one of my three clips last week was a decision by the Office for Statistics Regulation to uphold a complaint that Boris Johnson was misusing statistics on child poverty.” Johnson said there were 400,000 fewer families living in poverty now than in 2010, a claim found to have no factual basis.
“If the prime minister manipulates statistics and the Department for Education is being told off several times for not using statistics appropriately, then you can see right at the top is a culture that says it is acceptable to massage the figures and do what you can get away with,” she says.
Unless policy agendas are framed by a commitment to the public good and structured and regulated accordingly, there will be corrupt behaviour and practices, she warns.
So does that excuse the head who gave a contract to his mother’s firm or the academy trust that claimed hundreds of thousands of pounds for school repairs it didn’t carry out? No, but it’s important to look at the root causes, she says. Raising money for buildings and repair through PFI, with its expensive ongoing costs borne by schools, and bringing market forces into education through contracting out resources and services once provided by democratically elected bodies, have created opportunities for fraud, she says.
She is most worried about England but she sees the same disreputable practices eating into education systems in countries such as the US and Australia, where she was born and worked as a teacher and head before moving into academia at the University of South Australia.
The pressure on schools in England surprised her when she moved to the University of Nottingham in 2003. “I was shocked when I arrived by the punitive regime of inspection,” she says. “In my very first class, which was a master’s class of mostly headteachers, one introduced herself saying ‘Hello, I’m a failed headteacher’. It upset me that someone should take on that as their identity.
“Then I started to see waste of money, not at school level, but higher up with people spending a lot on schools that never opened, while those that were open were having to cope with the most appalling buildings,” she says.
Critical though she is of the Conservative government, she acknowledges waste was rife under Labour too. For example, the Blair government’s early academies cost on average £3m over budget, with the shortfall covered by the government, not sponsors, according to the National Audit Office.
She regards the scandalous costs of PFI as corruption, citing the new school in Liverpool built with private finance that failed to attract enough pupils and closed, but continued to cost £12,000 a day, with Liverpool council facing a £25m bill to buy itself out of the PFI contract. A teacher tells her how “management” of a new sink has cost the school £88 a year for the past 14 years. With nine years left on the PFI contract, that one sink will have cost £2,024.
Despite Thomson’s concern, she is not calling for academy status to be abolished or Ofsted scrapped. What the country needs is for the government to be “re-moralised” and the civil service reorganised so that public resources are used in the interest of all.
“The call is now even more urgent to a world living with the aftermath of Covid-19,” she says. “The private has been elevated over the public good. We need to think now about how we might do things differently, how the government might forge a new contract with the public to organise the nation in the best interests of all of us. A commission could bring together everyone in education to foster a renewed sense of solidarity and trust.”
But can 3,800 examples and one book turn the tide? “I don’t imagine this book is going to do a lot by itself but it could get people talking. I hope it will inform debates about what might be done now to help save teachers and students from a school system bruised from decades of political pet policies and projects,” she says.
* This article by Liz Lightfoot was first published in The Guardian on 8 September 2020.
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Fixing What’s Wrong with Education
Now I have a question for you, dear readers and friends of the GCGI
Please close your eyes for a moment and think about some of our politicians over the last few decades, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Cameron, May, Johnson, Osborne, Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg,..., and of course not forgetting Nigel Farage and Dominic Cummings, to name but a few.
Can you ever recall them engaging with us, sharing and answering questions of significance and value? Questions about life's bigger picture:
What is Education? What is Knowledge? What is Wisdom? What is Beauty? What is Justice? What is Love? What is Philosophy? What is Humanity? What is Nature? What is Art? What is Culture? What is the World? What is a University? What is a School? What is Literature? What is Poetry? What is Life? What is Teaching? What is Work? What is Vocation? What is Money? What is for the Common Good? What is Kindness? What is Humility?...
So my friends, how on earth can they give leadership to education? How on earth can they inspire anything or anybody to be good, values-led and a shininglight to build a better education and a better person?
You may wish to see the link below and read further on these questions and more and discover the path to an alternative education model that may empower us to address some the issues noted by Prof. Thomson and others.
Wisdom and the Well-Rounded Life: What Is a University?
……
Thank you very much Prof. Thomson for this excellent and timely study. The nation owes you a debt of gratitude.
As a retired academic colleague, may I please share the following with you:
Although our universities are very lucky and privileged to have academics such as yourself, we must, however, never forget that there are also many guilty academics who are responsible for this moral and spiritual decline in our country by being the cheerleaders for neoliberalism and the values-free education.
I will be most grateful if you would kindly have a look at the link below:
To All Striking Academic Colleagues in Britain: Turn the Strike to a Force for the Common Good
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...And finally, the fundamental question at this moment is: Can education find its transformative roots again, be reformed and become for the common good?
The answer to my mind is an emphatic NO, unless the following is understood and addressed accordingly:
To reverse this destructive path we need a different model of education and we need a different economic value and economy. However, these are not possible to achieve so long as The Fraudulent Ideology reins supreme. Full stop. Carpe Diem!
Why Love, Trust, Respect and Gratitude Trumps Economics
And These are My Ten Steps to Make the World Great Again
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GCGI Vision for Education: Serving the Common Good
Look All Around You and Pursue the Common Good
In the midst of economic, social, political, moral and spiritual challenges, we need a vision for what we think education is for. We must come together and recognise that education is something deep and rich for the common good.
Since the rise of Thatcher and her poisonous ideology of neoliberalism and her promotion of individualism, selfishness, arrogance, narcism, feral competition, and such like, we have forgotten the art of knowing what it means to pursue the common good.
Given what was highlighted above on the eruption of corruption with its costly and tragic consequences, leading to our divided country and polarised politics, we must endeavor to set aside our own narrow interests, ideological agenda and partisan differences to work together for the good of the whole society.
If we cannot work together as one nation for the good of all in this time of crisis, for sure we will fail a fundamental human, moral and spiritual test as a people. Carpe Diem!
Look All Around You and Pursue the Common Good
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‘Higher education in the UK is morally bankrupt. I’m taking my family and my research millions, and I’m off.’*
‘After 25 years I feel Britain has broken my trust. I’m one of many academics who now see their future in Europe.’- Prof. Dr. Ulf Schmidt, who was director of the Centre for the History of Medicine, Ethics and Medical Humanities at the University of Kent. In September 2020 he became professor of modern history at Hamburg University.
Prof Ulf Schmidt is leaving Kent University for a new job in Hamburg: ‘Since the Brexit
vote I have feltlike a “leaver” in a waiting hall.-Photo: Wikipedia
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...But first Nota bene
The ‘Independence Day’, Not Long to Go!
What a Tragedy, What a Loss
The Heroes of Brexit!
Britain is left with these, whilst Professors, researchers, philosophers, historians, scientists, engineers, doctors, teachers, nursurs, care home assistants, warehouse workers and food factories, fruit pickers, delivery drivers, construction workers,..., are all leaving.
UK’s Greatest Loss---Europe's Greatest Gain...And we did it all ourselves. A national suicide par excellence!!- Photo:gloucestershirelive.co.uk
Nigel Farage: one of the leading proponents to leave the EU, standing infront of his immigrant poster
which many people believe depicts "echoes" of the 1930s literature.-Photo: bbc.co.uk
'The EU’s goals and ambitions are the same as Hitler’s': Boris Johnson.- Photo: express.co.uk
The ‘Independence Day’, Not Long to Go!
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‘Higher education in the UK is morally bankrupt. I’m taking my family and my research millions, and I’m off.’ *
Prof. Dr. Ulf Schmidt
‘As academics in England prepare for their strange new semester, I have been making the most of the familiar countryside of the idyllic North Downs in Kent. This summer, the picnics and the walks have been bittersweet: after more than 25 years in the UK, I am leaving to take up a professorship at Hamburg University in Germany.
Why am I going back to the country of my birth? England no longer feels like home. Instead, since the Brexit vote of 2016, I have felt like a “leaver” in a waiting hall. Now I am going, and the emotional cost will take a long time to come to terms with.
I was from Germany, but I no longer feel I am from there. My seven-year-old son was born in England. His first language is English – he is English through and through. He loves fish and chips; he knows all the players in the England football team (although he’s quite a fan of Wales as well). Now we are going to Germany, and it’s life-changing and daunting for us all.
We’ve decided to go because England seems characterised – not unlike the 1930s – by an impassioned anti-intellectualism that seeks simple answers and negates context and complexity. Now a wave of redundancies is snaking its way through the education sector. While the country is in the grip of a pandemic, and with no vaccine in sight, vice-chancellors have sleepless nights – one would hope – over how to keep their outdated business model afloat.
The problem cannot be fixed unless politicians and university leaders recognise that the commodification and commercialisation of knowledge is fundamentally flawed. Knowledge needs to be free. Bildung macht frei – education sets you free – was the motto of 19th century German social democrats to forge a more egalitarian, classless society. People, they argued, should not be judged by their wealth or class, but by merit alone. A university sector such as the one we have now, dependent on those who can afford to pay, is doomed. It cannot attract the best.
Young people are told they are “consumers” in a shop where they can choose what and when to learn. They can expect a “service”. Some have taken their university to court if their course did not “deliver” promised results. This is no longer a viable, decent learning environment in which students from all walks of life and cultures are supported to achieve their potential. This is not a place in which the next generation of citizens can flourish. The rise in the number of students suffering from mental health issues speaks volumes. A student suicide is “managed” by the media department for fear of bad publicity. What matters are “bums on seats” to keep the ship afloat.
Britain’s cherished higher education sector, once the envy of the world, is on the brink of collapse. The humanities were world leading – and still are in many areas. Scholars in English literature, creative writing, the arts, languages, history and philosophy were acclaimed across the globe. But now the sector as a whole is bankrupt, not just financially, but morally. It has lost its integrity and seems unwilling to engage in critical reflection about the causes of this unprecedented malaise.
Likewise, research is taking a massive hit in post-Brexit, post-pandemic Britain. There is good evidence that the exodus of more than 10,000 scholars from Britain’s universities since the referendum continues unabated. Scotland has lost almost 2,500 academics. Countries such as Germany are beneficiaries of this mass migration of intellectual talent. Scholars and their families are voting with their feet. Britain is experiencing a significant “brain drain”. Life is too short to wait until the country has come to its senses is what most Europeans – and many British academics – think.
Berlin, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Munich, Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna and all the other major European cities have not been idle. They know this is a historic opportunity to attract some of the best minds in the world. At least one other German professorship has recently been awarded to a senior academic from Britain. I know scholars from around the UK who admit that the only reason for them to apply for grants is to increase their chances of leaving this sceptred isle.
The loss will be counted not only in intellectual and cultural capital, but in financial terms as well. Hundreds of millions of pounds will no longer be spent in Britain, but in the capitals of Europe. Thousands of post-docs and doctoral students will no longer flock to British universities to study with experts in their field but move instead to where they can find the best intellectual climate, the best infrastructure and career prospects. Britain’s attractiveness is waning.
In 2018, we marched with 700,000 for a People’s Vote. We printed our own shirts with graphics from Axel Scheffler’s Gruffalo. One said: “There is no such thing as a Brussalo”. Not everyone got the joke. It was my son’s first demonstration and we combined the trip with a lesson about democracy – and a bit of history too. It gave us hope that all was not lost, that things might turn out all right.
But the ship has sailed. The people (apparently) decided in a referendum to turn their back on Europe and there was no need to ask them again – it was a once-in-a-generation decision. Students and others who had not got up that day to vote later wondered if they should have. They lamented that they had been robbed.
On the day we learned that my wife’s British citizenship application had been successful, my son broke down in tears. For months he had worried that his mother would be “deported” after ministers – Theresa May, Philip Hammond, Amber Rudd, Brandon Lewis – said that EU citizens could be made to leave. The Brexit decision fundamentally changed our outlook on Britain as an open, welcoming society. It changed our sense of belonging. Trust, that invisible bond that links us to other people, had been broken.
Where does all this leave me and my family? I was awarded a €10m collaborative grant from the European Research Council to study the European “common good” with partners in Berlin, Sofia and Budapest. My share of the grant comes with me. The offer from a German university with a higher salary was attractive; the infrastructure and support on offer will be outstanding. So I guess my family and I will be fine. But the sense of loss has been inexplicably sad for me and for my British friends. Emotionally, there are huge question marks in our lives.
Why did all this have to happen? Perhaps we will never have an answer. For me, it has been a British love affair. I look forward to coming back – one day, perhaps. But now it is time to go.’- *This article by Prof. Dr. Ulf Schmidt was first published in The Guardian on 8 Seotember 2020
Below please see from the GCGI.INFO Archives on some of the issues raised by Prof. Ulf Schmidt in his article:
So, They Got Their Brexit Done!
The Disintegration of this Disunited Kingdom- Canon Dr Paul Oestreicher
THIS ENGLISH BREXIT- Canon Dr Paul Oestreicher
Britain today and the Bankruptcy of Ideas, Vision and Values-less Education
Neoliberalism destroys human potential and devastates values-led education
Are British Universities Universities anymore?
Students as Customers? What utter nonsense!
The Journey to Sophia: Education for Wisdom
Wisdom and the Well-Rounded Life: What Is a University?
What is the Purpose of Education?
Small is Beautiful: The Wisdom of E.F. Schumacher
What if Universities Taught KINDNESS?
What is the Value of MBA and Business Education?
Make 2017 the Year of Values-led Education to Make the World Truly Great Again
A timeless reflection on two types of teaching and learning
Welcome to the New World- Class British Bogof Universities
The Sorry State of British Universities: Could a university be the next HMV?
What Can I teach my students in the age of Selfie, Isolation, Virtual friendship and loneliness?
Student Suicides at Bristol University: My Open Letter to the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Hugh Brady
University students are crying out for mental health wellbeing modules
Is Neoliberal Economics and Economists 'The Biggest Fraud Ever Perpetrated on the World?'
Values-free, Market- Driven Education: What a Disaster!
My Economics and Business Educators’ Oath: My Promise to My Students
The Value of Values: Values-led Education to Make the World Great Again
To All Striking Academic Colleagues in Britain: Turn the Strike to a Force for the Common Good
Poetry is the Education that Nourishes the Heart and Nurtures the Soul
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At 31, I have just weeks to live. Here's what I want to pass on*
By Elliot Dallen
‘Now that there’s no longer any way to treat my cancer, I’ve been reflecting on what
I want others to know about life and death.’
Dallen's writing is a memento mori to everyone in search of life’s meaning.
‘I have come to see growing old as a privilege. Nobody should lament getting one year older,
another grey hair or a wrinkle. Be pleased that you’ve made it.’ Illustration: Matt Kenyon/The Guardian
With weeks to live, Elliot Dallen reflects on what's important in life
‘Elliott Dallen doesn't work for Barclays any more. But he did - after graduating from the U.K's university of Exeter in 2011, Dallen joined Barclays in 2017 as an assistant vice president in business performance and analytics division of the corporate bank. Then in 2018 he was diagnosed with cancer. Now, aged 31 he is just weeks from death.
Dallen wrote an article in the Guardian about his condition at the start of lockdown, when he feared that he wouldn't survive the initial months of the pandemic. He did survive, and now he has written in the Guardian again - about what it feels like to slip inexorably towards death at the very start of the fourth decade of life.
Dallen has no regrets about his career before his diagnosis, although it's not his career that stands out. "The first three decades of my life were pretty standard," he writes. "Well, actually they were awesome, and everything was going pretty perfectly with regards to work, health, relationships and friends. I had plans for the future, too: learn some Spanish, see more of central America, and get a bit more out of it with some volunteering too."
"A life, if lived well, is long enough," says Dallen, adding that this might mean travelling or it might mean staying active and aware. When you find yourself slipping into autopilot, Dallen says to "catch yourself" and take simple pleasures in things like movement.
He also advocates being grateful for friends and family and aware of privilege, being vulnerable and allowing connections to others, giving back, and protecting the planet…’+
Below you can read Dallen's own words.
‘At the beginning of April I wrote a piece for the Guardian. If you haven’t read it, the headline pretty much sums it up: “Terminal cancer means I won’t see the other side of lockdown”. Given the pandemic and the announcement of shielding for vulnerable people, I thought I wouldn’t be able to live out my last few months in the way I’d imagined. It seemed like I would be stuck alone, with no light at the end of the tunnel, and without the comfort of friends or family.
Five months on, I’m still here, but much has changed. Thankfully, the experience wasn’t as bleak as you might think. During the first few weeks of lockdown I found I was floating nicely through the time by staying occupied and upbeat. In many ways, you can’t beat the liberation of being able to wake up when you feel like it, having few plans set in stone and being able to do whatever you want with the time you have.
‘Before the lockdown started, I took the opportunity to go to Colombia.’ Photo: Elliot Dallen
Over the past couple of months, though, my energy levels have dropped, and I have started doing less. I look drastically different. I have lost a lot of weight. A 20-minute coughing fit is now part of my morning routine while my chest tries to settle itself. It’s nothing that some steroids, morphine, an iced drink to settle my throat and time spent dry-heaving in front of a bucket won’t eventually sort out, but it can get really distressing – like an intrinsic panic response.
At points I was really struggling. The loneliness of Covid was making me miserable, and I needed company. But my sister came to the rescue at just the right moment. She moved back into our shared flat at the end of June. It made a huge difference, and I don’t know where I would be without her. After months of isolation, having a family member close by changed everything.
Elliot with his sister at Lulworth Cove, Dorset. Photo: Elliot Dallen
At the same time, out of the blue, I was told I was finally suitable for a drug trial that had been dangled in front of me for more than a year. The oncologists made it very clear that this would not be a “magic bullet”, and the goal would be to extend life by a few months. The aim of the treatment would be to stop the cancer stealing all the nutrients and energy my body needs.
But I was not in the same good shape I had been in at the beginning of other treatments; I was extremely short of breath, unable to exercise and felt lethargic. And after pinning my hopes on the idea of a drug trial for so long, it took just over a week for it to batter me. My days involved moving from my room to the sofa, feeling like I had the flu and struggling with mental fog. Almost immediately I realised I just couldn’t do it. Life for me is about living, not just clocking up the years. And this drug made living almost impossible.
I realised I had to finally accept the inevitable: that there was no treatment. I thought this mindset would leave me feeling completely liberated. I was wrong. With nothing left to fight, it really was just a question of waiting. The battle became emotional and mental. It has forced me to reflect.
The first three decades of my life were pretty standard. Well, actually they were awesome, and everything was going pretty perfectly with regards to work, health, relationships and friends. I had plans for the future, too: learn some Spanish, see more of central America, and get a bit more out of it with some volunteering too.
I imagined settling down in my 30s or 40s with kids, a mortgage and so on. Or maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe my friends’ children would call me Uncle Elliot as their parents gathered in the kitchen looking slightly concerned about their single 45-year-old friend about to set off travelling around Mongolia. Either way, growing older with my mates and living my life to the full was always my ambition.
Of course, the second part of this storyline won’t be written now. It’s a shame I don’t get to see what happens. But everybody dies, and there will always be places and experiences missing from anyone’s life – the world has too much beauty and adventure for one person to see. I will miss marriage or children, blossoming careers and lives moving on. But I’m not alone in my life being cut short, and I think my time has been pretty good.
At this point I should say a word to my friends. Being this ill complicates all relationships. The rut I found myself in a few weeks back hasn’t lifted. I’ve definitely been “feeling the victim” a lot more than usual. My acceptance that my time and energy is now limited comes with the knowledge that I won’t be able to catch you all properly to give our relationships the time and appreciation they deserve. I get so many messages from you all, which often exceed the energy I have to reply. Where I am able to see people, I’d just say keeping me company and being positive is helpful. I want fun, laughter, happiness, joy. I think it’s very possible to have this kind of death – there is likely to be a shadow of sadness hanging over proceedings, but for the most part I want everyone relaxed and to be able to feel the love.
Because I know that that moment isn’t too far away. I haven’t asked for a specific prognosis, as I don’t believe there’s much to gain from doing so, but I think it’s a matter of weeks. Medicine has luckily turned this into quite a gentle process. That really does take a lot of the fear away. And I’m hoping impending death now grants me the licence to sound prematurely wise and overly grandiose. Because I’ve had time to think about the things that are really important to me, and I want to share what I’ve discovered.
First, the importance of gratitude. During my worst moments – the shock of cancer diagnosis, the mental lows and debilitating symptoms of chemotherapy – it was difficult to picture any future moments of joy, closeness or love. Even so, at those times I found comfort in remembering what I have: an amazing family, the friends I’ve made and times I’ve shared with them, the privilege of the life I’ve had.
Second, a life, if lived well, is long enough. This can mean different things to different people. It might mean travel. I’ve had the good fortune to be able do this, and can confirm that the world is a wonderful place full of moments of awe and amazement – soak up as much as you can. It may mean staying active, as much as possible – the human body is a wonderful thing. You only appreciate this when it starts to fail you. So when you find yourself slipping into autopilot, catch yourself, and take simple pleasure in movement, if you can. Look after your body because it’s the only one you have, and it’s bloody brilliant. Knowing that my life was going to be cut short has also changed my perspective on ageing. Most people assume they will live into old age. I have come to see growing old as a privilege. Nobody should lament getting one year older, another grey hair or a wrinkle. Instead, be pleased that you’ve made it. If you feel like you haven’t made the most of your last year, try to use your next one better.
Elliot in the Philippines. Photo: Elliot Dallen
Third, it’s important to let yourself be vulnerable and connect to others. We live in a society that prizes capability and independence, two things that cancer often slowly strips away from you. This was naturally a very difficult pill to swallow for a healthy, able late-twenty something male, but having to allow myself to be vulnerable and accept help has given me the best two years of my life, which was pretty inconceivable at the time of diagnosis. Vulnerability has shown me what phenomenal people my sister and parents are – words can’t do justice to how much they have done for me. The same applies to my friends – what better way is there to spend two years than being surrounded regularly and closely by these people?
Fourth, do something for others. Against the backdrop of Covid-19, Black Lives Matter and the desperate attempts of migrants to cross the Channel, my thoughts really turned to those who have not had my privilege – whether that’s by virtue of socioeconomics, ethnicity or the country I was born in. I always try to remind myself of this.
Fifth, protect the planet – I can’t leave this off because it’s so important. I’ll be gone soon, but humanity will still be faced with the huge challenge of reducing carbon emissions and saving habitats from destruction. In my time here, I’ve been lucky enough to see some natural wonders and understand how precious they are. Hopefully future generations will be able to say the same. But it will take a massive collective effort.
If you asked me what I’d want to leave behind, it would be a new awareness of these things among my friends – and anyone who’ll listen, really. I was astonished by the number of people that responded to my article in April. I now find myself in a position where people are asking me how they can help or what they can do that would make me happy. Apart from the obvious – looking after each other once I’ve gone – I’m going to push for people to give, be that money or time. I’ve already had so many people ask which causes I recommend, and there are loads, but I’d say any that align with the values I’ve sketched out above would have my blessing. Among friends and family there is talk of setting up a small charity in my memory.
Despite some very low times, it’s worth repeating that the period since being diagnosed has been made not just bearable but actually fantastic. I’ve had new experiences that haven’t seemed tainted by cancer – and those experiences were, as always, much better shared. In a situation that is pretty new for most of my loved ones and friends (I am yet to meet anyone I grew up with who has had to deal with cancer or a similar chronic illness at my age), it has been amazing watching them all rise to the challenge. I’m not sure if it’s just that I know a high proportion of amazing people (possible) or if most human beings have this capacity for connecting and recognising what’s truly important (very likely).
After the gut-punch of cancer diagnosis, I’ve really struggled to define a purpose for my own life. I found in time this came naturally. Life is for enjoyment. Make of it what you can.’
*This article was first published in The Guardian on 7 September 2020
+Exerpts from an article by Sarah Butcher, who is the global editor for eFinancialCareers.
You can donate to the Elliot Dallen Trust, which is being set up to help young adults with cancer, here.
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