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THE BATTLEFIELD 1 TRAILER: DID IT OFFEND ME OR DIDN'T IT? - by Mr Biffo

10/5/2016

40 Comments

 
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I was on a train for a lot of yesterday - hence no Digi, see. Sorry about that.

The woman sat in front of me spent much of her journey on the phone.

She worked for a hospitality company, and was discussing different types of food that different types of event demanded.

Indeed, as a result of her indiscreet bellowing I learned her unflattering opinions about a colleague, and that certain VIPs at this year's Wimbledon are going to be treated to "roasted English chickens". And she really believed in what she was doing. The sense I got was that her job really mattered to her. That it was her life, her identity. And I wondered when her journey began.

Not her train journey, duh. That began at Euston, like mine. But her journey to the point where she was committed to negotiating the best price for English chickens rather than, y'know, spending her day laying in a field, enjoying the sun, and stuffing her face with Twizzlers.

What led somebody to reach a point in their life when they could really buy into that? Where it meant something. Where it became who she was, not what she does?

​She was born unprogrammed, like we all are. She could've been anyone, done anything. Her life could've gone in a myriad of directions. Yet here she was on a train, talking about English chickens. And there I was going to a meeting to do my job - which was a direct result of my own life journey.

What does any of this have to do with Battlefield 1? Stick with me. I'm trying to work something out here.

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THE DAY WE'RE BORN
What we believe in begins the day we're born.

​We're indoctrinated into whatever society and community we emerge into. Religion, philosophy, family traditions... whatever is around us becomes our norm.

It's only when we're flung out of our home for the day to go to school that The Machine - society's needs - really starts to get its claws into us.

Schools don't teach us how to be nice to one another, or have fun just for the sake of it.
They're flesh factories, a Victorian throw-back. At best we're coughed out the other end to become the next generation of unquestioning, obedient drones. At worst, we emerge busted and bruised. 

The unspoken truth is that the emphasis of our education system is on ensuring we can support the infrastructure of our top-heavy society; not one another, or ourselves.

PROFESSIONAL CYNIC
​That might seem like an overly cynical view to you, but I see more as idealistic. If we all downed tools and went to live in the woods, civilisation would crumble. The Machine can't afford to have that happen, though. Better to get us while we're young and pliable, and ensure our obedience for as long as possible.

So much of our upbringing is about conditioning us to believe things that serve The Machine. Plugging anxieties and insecurities into our wiring. Conditions of worth that ensure we tow the correct line, and beat ourselves up if we don't.

You can sit on the sofa on a Tuesday lunchtime playing Uncharted 4... but will you entirely be able to silence The Guilt Bell? I probably won't be able to. Sometimes it's easier to give in to the tolling and do what it demands, just to shut it up.


We're taught that our value as human beings is dependent on getting an A in maths, not getting an A in basic decency, or enjoying life. When you meet someone, how often do you ask what they do for a living - as if that truly defines who they are? Our society in the West struggles to quantify our quality of life through anything other than financial wealth; money makes us happy, we're told. 

It doesn't have to be that way.

Bhutan's culture is based on spiritual values, rather than material ones. Since 1972, the country has operated a Gross National Happiness philosophy. It's subjective and difficult to quantify, but surely growing up in a society where our happiness is top of the political agenda has to be worth more than growing up in a society where we're encouraged to work until we drop... and feel terrible about ourselves if we don't?

And another of the things The Machine wants us to believe in is blind patriotism and idolatry of the Armed Forces, so that we don't question the wars.

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ARMY GAMES
I grew up in a military family. My dad missed National Service so much that he signed up for the Territorial Army.

​Most weekends he spent at the local TA centre, or off on manoeuvres in Belgium. Occasionally I'd go along. Play on the trucks and jeeps. It was exciting, Boy's Own Adventure stuff - for him as well as me.


My eldest sister joined the RAF in her late-teens - where she met her first husband, who was in the USAF.  I've two nephews who fought in Afghanistan. Both my granddads fought in WW2 - in fact, my dad's dad was just old enough to have been in service during both World Wars; he turned 18, and was conscripted right at the tail-end of WW1.

And that's what I really want to talk about. You know: that trailer for Battlefield 1.

We're all told that the lives of soldiers matter more than anyone. Except, uh... y'know... when The Machine is sending them off to be shot at or blown up or kill other people. Then they're expendable. Except: "Boo-hoo! Boo-hoo! Well at least they died fighting for something. Here, Private Corpse: have a flag and a medal."

I was at Seaworld in Orlando some years ago, and prior to the killer whale show - you know: the one they're shutting down because the whales ate someone, because (who'd have thought it?) those massive creatures go mental if they're kept in a swimming pool - they asked any members of the military to stand up, so that they could be honoured.

We were then treated to a brief video and musical segment, full of stirring patriotism, sunsets, flags and eagles... and the military people got a standing ovation, with several bucket-throated rednecks chanting "U-S-A! U-S-A!"

It made me feel slightly sick. I mean, why didn't I get a video and a standing ovation and rednecks chanting at me? It all seemed a bit unfair. I'd paid my admission fee same as everyone else.

But at least it wasn't the trailer to Battlefield 1. Which made me do a sick. The question is... why? Why did I feel an immediate sense of "Uh... that seems a bit tasteless"?

Do I really care, or do I just tell myself I care? Because I don't think I care. And yet... for a moment, I seemed to care. Which is it, for pity's sake?

THE NOT-SO-GREAT WAR
Due for release later this year, Battlefield 1 takes the series to the First World War. As Blackadder Goes Forth records, it was a war of attrition, much of it spent in the trenches.

​There were other fronts around the world, but it's reasonable to say that the so-called Great War was anything but great. It was a meat grinder... which ultimately led to an even worse World War.

To look at the trailer for Battlefield 1 - apparently, it has become the most liked video game trailer ever on YouTube - you'd think it was the most exciting, action-packed, cool-yeah!, conflict in history.

One soundtracked by The White Stripes, because there hasn't been any decent music released in the last 13 years. People get their faces smashed in with shovels and stick grenades by faceless, gasmask-wearing Huns. Biplanes soar like X-Wings. Flamethrowers spew fire, and cannons spit death in synch with the soundtrack.

It pulls out every trick in the book to make the First World War look neat. And it feels like an enormous misstep. And the important word in that statement is "feels". Not "is".

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ANY PROBLEMS?
​I've got no problem with a First World War-based shoot 'em up in theory, same as I've no problem with a game set in World War 2 or the Middle East.

It would be enormously hypocritical of me to start taking issue with the content of the trailer, when I've enjoyed many first-person shooters based around real conflicts. 

As a kid, in lieu of games consoles with realistic graphics, I had toy soldiers. I had an Action Man. My troops never suffered post-traumatic stress. Getting arms and legs blown off was cool. I like war movies. I used to grab branches and run around the woods using them as guns.

Besides, if my nephews - who were in Afghanistan - can continue to play Call of Duty without being offended, I'm not going to get on my high horse either. They can seemingly separate the reality of what they experienced from the video game fiction. 

And yet I had a gut reaction to the Battlefield 1 trailer, more than I ever have had to Spec Ops: the Line, or Modern Warfare, or any other contemporary-set war game.

Is that because those wars happened during the course of my adult life, when I was self-aware enough to call their morality and purpose into question? Was it because I grew up subconsciously absorbing the message that the veterans and fallen of World War I should be honoured? Was it just my programming reacting?

Or perhaps I'm not offended by the content of that Battlefield 1 trailer, as much as I am offended that they tried to insult my intelligence. I know that World War 1 wasn't cool. We all know it wasn't cool. It was all trenchfoot and shellshock and mustard gas.

​Battlefield 1 isn't some alternate history: it's supposedly meant to portray the First World War that actually happened. And we know it wasn't soundtracked by Seven Nation Army. 

I mean, I like the Battlefield games. I'm going to play Battlefield 1 no matter what - not least because it presents a theatre of war that has been hugely underrepresented in games. And that's when I catch myself, and realise what's really bothering me.

BATTLEFIELD JUAN
What's really bothering me is this: I don't know what's bothering me. Something about the Battlefield 1 trailer made me feel it was a bit iffy... and that's possibly because of the family I grew up in, and because I've absorbed some of that latent military patriotism through the TV and newspapers, and Help for Heroes cake sales. 

I've written this big long piece in which I rant about schools, and Bhutan, and English chickens, and I don't really have a conclusion. Reading this article, anyone would think I just went off on some sort of stream-of-consciousness diatribe, without really knowing the point I was making.

Or maybe I do have a point.

​If somebody is going to release a game set during World War 1, then I don't want the one that Battlefield 1 appears to be. I don't want bright colours and dumb, visceral action, that appeals to the lowest possible common denominator. I want one that feels real to me. That evokes the muddy slog of the trenches, rather than the stylised romance of video game war.

One that at least has something approaching historical accuracy... that stands as some sort of interactive testament to one of history's most ridiculous conflicts. Rather than something that's had the edges sanded off to ensure it appeals to bucket-throated rednecks.

Battlefield 1 says it's set during World War 1, but nothing of that trailer said World War 1 to me. Not as I understand it to be. So maybe it's not the content I'm offended by, but the fact that they don't appear to have made a World War 1 game that's tailored specifically to my own personal desires.

Which is the most important thing that any game needs to keep in mind.

"U-S-A! U-S-A!"
FROM THE ARCHIVE:
​BEING A FAN OF A GAMES DEVELOPER: WHY IT'S UNCHARTED WATERS FOR ME - BY MR BIFFO
MAKE THE ZX SPECTRUM GREAT AGAIN! - BY MR BIFFO
THE GREAT DIFFICULTY MODE DEBATE: ANOTHER STORM IN A TEACUP? - BY MR BIFFO

40 Comments
Jay
10/5/2016 10:23:05 am

Really good article, Mr B. I guess it could come down to this: WW2 feels sort of fair game because it was a 'just' war. There were clear cut goodies and baddies. WW1, on the other hand, was (like you said) a horrifying incompetant meatgrider that just chewed through a generation of people for no very good reason.

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Mr Biffo
10/5/2016 10:39:46 am

Cheers, ears. Yeah... I was floundering a bit. Not entirely sure what was bothering me about it. But it's probably that.

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Clockwork Fool
11/5/2016 01:42:41 am

Could it be that it's a mixture of the pointless tragedy of it all and how rare it is for a game to deal with world war one? Nobody even really seems to talk about world war one. It's had less of the horrifying novelty worn off over the years than the all too played out endless retellings and variations on world war 2.

I suspect that we simply haven't built up the same emotional callouses to the revolting truth of WW1 like we have with WW2.

Superbeast 37
12/5/2016 07:13:34 am

Who were the "goodies" in WW2?

The nations that between them had invaded and colonised half the world including brutally crushing rebellions from the natives?

Or perhaps the nation that had committed an act of mass genocide, almost eradicated an entire race from a continent, imported slaves and still practiced segregation?

The thing with wars is that everyone believes their side are the "goodies".

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Jay
12/5/2016 08:21:26 pm

The first bunch. They were the goodies.

Penyrolewen
12/5/2016 10:47:19 pm

Ever see/hear that Mitchell and Webb sketch (it was on radio and tv) when they play SS soldiers? Brilliant. Check you tube if you haven't
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
Think this is a montage but you get the idea.

Keith
10/5/2016 10:54:47 am

For me, it's the type of game; should world war 1 games put you in the position of being a superpowered kill machine? Doesn't matter how good the graphics are, that's going to be unrealistic, and effectively is just a world war 1 skin.

Set a game with a proper story and with an experience that seeks to capture a heightened reality, and I'd be all over it. Treat the era with reverence, in a kind of Red Dead Redemption way.

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Gordon Palsy
10/5/2016 10:56:03 am

Your editorial, and time to think on it, has led me to draw similar conclusions.... However, as you also said, WW1 is so massively underrepresented in gaming that I can't help but feel delighted deep down that we finally have something on the horizon, and a AAA title at that. That was my initial impression to this announcement.

WW1 is fascinating in so many ways. Such a dark period in humanity. I've been crying out for a game that can do it justice, and I'm not sure a FPS is the answer. Nor a dry military tactical game, of which I'm sure many exist.

Prior to now, the otherworldly, nightmare style sequences in the Darkness have been the closest we've got to experiencing the horrors of World War 1, and that doesn't feel right to me.

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Harry Medium
10/5/2016 11:20:43 am

Well, where else in videogames journalism (or any journalism) would you get a critique of a trailer that also questions THE ENTIRE CONCEPT OF SOCIETY?

Nowhere, that's where.

Ps, Mr Biffo - what do you think to trailers for films that are just STARTING production (Star Wars VIII, I'm staring down your sharklike, dead-eyed snout)?

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Mr Biffo
10/5/2016 11:30:37 am

You mean like teaser trailers? I don't really have an opinion. I guess they serve a purpose, to get the audience excited...

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Harry Medium
10/5/2016 11:46:51 am

Not exactly - did you see the teaser for Star Wars ep 8, just because it was (gasp) the first day of filming it.

Dr Kank
10/5/2016 11:41:03 am

The trailer doesn't look all that historically accurate to me. WW1 Tanks in a desert? A giant zeppelin death machine flying low over trenches? The White Stripes?

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Harry Medium
10/5/2016 12:10:52 pm

I'm pretty sure Meg White is old enough to have been around for WW1.

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Antony Adler
10/5/2016 01:00:39 pm

boom boom !

Ronnie Rooney
10/5/2016 11:50:46 am

Great peice.

Feel the same.

Have played too many war games to stand there and shout about how wrong this all is. But it just looks so fuckin' NAFF and like you say, it's a bit insulting to everyone's intelligence.

Now you've got stuff like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWTTpyN7Oyo

Which is arguably how a WWI game should be presented. Very reverential, sticking close to the source material but still able to promise excitement through the core gameplay. Great.

But equally, you SHOULD be able to have a WWI game that has over the top violence, swearing and done more in the vein of Inglorious Bastards or something.

But the way this particular trailer speeds it all up, over-colorizes it, adds spikes to the weapons, tries to make MUSTARD GAS cool, and completely changes the texture, weight and energy of the entire war, seemingly with no edge or angle of approach to it's presentation other than "Duuude, this is so fuckin' siiick" is just cheesy and terrible.

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Rich
10/5/2016 01:15:37 pm

This reads like you've spent too long looking at the game sans all the elements that make modern gaming a sham. Yes, BF1 looks lovely. Yes, BF1 will undoubtedly be a well balanced FP shooter. But it will also suffer from EA and Dice's greedy DLC model and that is why a new Battlefield is a hollow prospect. Another £40 game competing with the likes of yet another Halo title with 10 times the multiplayer content right out of the box. GTA, even Destiny, offers more for your Sterling than Battlefield ever has.

Yet no one is bringing this up. A consumerist hobby, post-gamergate (a gang which proved gamers have little to know grasp of the value of money, the absurdity of advertising, or the perpetually downward spiral demand of multimillion dollar gaming budgets) should be far more aware of shortcomings systemic of our want want want culture. But, no, let's not even mention that EA will definitely charge you twice to play Battlefield 1. First for the game, then for the content. Content which can be included from the start AND given away for free simultaneously to all players upon release.

The trailer says nothing about the Battlefield 1 experience other than some of the graphics look different to the last Battlefield game, which the same people no doubt spent extra money on after the retail price.

That is what stops this veteran Battlefield fan from continuing. That and my fat thumbs.

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Superbeast 37
10/5/2016 05:13:07 pm

I am sure someone will bring it up but I certainly won't because there is nothing wrong with EA and others DLC models.

It all comes down to math. I.e How much do they lose from people refusing to buy the game and how much money do they earn from the DLC.

The revenue from the DLC easily offsets the loss in game sales from those boycotting the product. We hear a lot of complaining but very few people will actually boycott a product that they actually wanted in the first place.

The market is working absolutely perfectly and has merely found the true value of the product.

A game + season pass is the same price in real terms that I paid for far more simplistic games 20 to 25 years ago despite massively increased development costs.

If people think it is worth they will buy it.

People DO think it is worth it and they DO buy it. That's the free market working.

A triple A game in 2016 is easily worth £40 + £30 for a season pass

My copy of FZERO I bought in 1992 for £45 would be £84 in today's money.

My copy of Wipeout I bought in 1996 and also for £45, would be £76.19 in today's money.

It is not for you to accuse gamers of having no grasp on the value for money. That is very arrogant if I may say so. I am perfectly smart enough to know that even with the DLC, the games I buy today are historically some of the cheapest I've ever bought whilst being the most expensive to produce by a huge margin.

£10 is worth far more to a tramp than it is to me. A guy at work has a fountain pen that cost £600 and he deemed it "a reasonable price". He is on three times my salary though.

It is up to the individual to determine what £X is worth to them and that will depend on a number of factors.

However with video games I can objectively demonstrate using primary school math, inflation calculators and industry data on production costs, that games with DLC/Season passes today are value for money.

Obviously it sucks if you have a below average disposable income but that isn't EA's responsibility. You can buy the products at a later date for a huge discount anyway.

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Damon link
10/5/2016 01:17:09 pm

You know I majored in history and while I focused on the social history of media more... Something about the fps games that focused on war never sat well with me. I can't place it but my guess has always been that they weren't was as I understood it. A hellish affair of death. No glory.

That said I never idolized the military. It was what you did if you weren't smart enough for college and couldn't get a job. Maybe bring born to liberal parents post-viet nam did it?

I don't know.

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Harry Steele
10/5/2016 01:36:49 pm

I saw the trailer but I didn't realise until your article that this was supposed to be set in the 'real' WW1 and not an 'alternate' WW1. Not saying an alternate is in better or worse taste, but the trailer certainly didn't portray a WW1 I recognised

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Kara Van Park
10/5/2016 01:40:45 pm

Not offended, just aware enough of the subject to see history dressed up as something it wasn't to satisfy the palate of the current generation.

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Stuart
10/5/2016 01:48:55 pm

I think this game is part of the long backlash to brown fps games; WWI was perhaps the most brown war there ever was, and since the early-to-mid-2000s, the genre was flooded in attempts to capture a realistic aesthetics of war (though mostly through WWII and Vietnam games).

I agree, I'd prefer a version of this game that captured respectfully the horror of the Great War, but that sort of product isn't going to give EA a return on their investment; for publishers of AAA games, history needs to be profitable above all else. Today's big games need to be bombastic and colourful, and publishers feel the brown tag is the kiss of death. But there's fantasy brown, as in Quake, and brown in an attempt at realism.

Yes, if this game was alternate history, I'd be all over it (IMO, the best representations/critiques of WWI are in non-WWI games that have a supernatural twist, such as 40K, Eternal Darkness, or, as one person has already said, The Darkness).

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Superbeast 37
10/5/2016 02:28:20 pm

Some games sacrifice realism for fun and some do the opposite.

If the artistic licence makes you uncomfortable or the realism seems boring then simply pass on it and buy the opposing type of product.

If a more realistic interpretation of WW1 would be popular enough to turn a profit then someone will make it - or you can kickstart it and make it yourself if you can attract the backers.

EA have an obligation to their investors to make a profit and no obligation to accurately reflect history/the horrors of the conflict and lose their money.

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Koozebane
10/5/2016 03:07:34 pm

When I was there US military personnel got in free to Sea World so that hadn't even paid like everyone else.

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Merriweather link
10/5/2016 03:37:46 pm

That trailer is so, so shiny.

Perhaps what's bothering you is that WWI should be matt, not gloss?

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Elliot
10/5/2016 03:39:28 pm

Fantastic piece. Echos my thoughts on a number of fronts. I'm in that age group where I'm being told on a regular basis that my government wants me to have the right to fulfil my dreams of buying my own house (handily also ensuring I'm dragged up to my titties in debt), kindly not troubling me with such trifles as actually having dreams of my own (it's to befriend a bear and ride it to the shops if you're wondering). It's pervasive and troublingly effective.

As for the game, I just hope it's done a little less gung-ho.

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Clive Peppard
10/5/2016 04:53:36 pm

A realistic WWI shooter probably wouldnt have the appeal game devs are after. Spending hours cowering in a trench while the enemy shells 7 shades of scared out of you followed by being ordered to slowly walk toward certain death by an oxbridge buffoon whose daddy secured him a cushy commission.

plus every multiplayer battle ending in what is essentially stalemate, with the machine gunners having KDR's of about 200:1 and the infantry having KDR's of about 0.0000001:1.

Also, there was no Kraken.

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Ben
10/5/2016 05:05:37 pm

I have pretty much reached a point where I don't see the necessity or value in gamefying real world conflict; it seems hugely inappropriate to trivialise such appalling chapters in human history, almost universally without even attempting to explore the deeper, darker nature of such events. I also think that, to a wider public, thematically speaking, these kinds of games just paint the medium in a very poor light. For me, the only genre that could possibly work in a WW1 setting would be a survival horror; I kind of like the idea but can't help feeling that if done properly, the resulting experience would be relentlessly, oppressively grim. Maybe that would be OK though.

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Kelvin Green link
10/5/2016 06:24:35 pm

Valiant Hearts is quite a good WWI game. It is nothing like this.

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Penyrolewen
10/5/2016 08:55:49 pm

I'm not even going to talk about the game.
I'm just offended at your comments about schools. No, you don't have to care. Yes, I am a (primary school, outdoor learning) teacher. And yes, I have the right to be offended.
Schools may have been like that once. Secondary schools still may be- I have limited experience of them.

But primary schools are places (and I've worked in many, all over the UK and some abroad) where the staff really care about the kids, want them to have the chance to achieve whatever they want and put in a huge amount of effort to help them do this.

With many schools, like my current one, school is the safe place for many of the children. They have chaotic, dangerous lives and school is a haven. We provide calm, support, food, often clothes, shoes, lifts and even occasionally money (to pay for trips etc.). No the system is not perfect. I hate the pressure the government puts on schools to improve SATs results- which leads to kids being taught at high pressure to pass meaningless tests because the government won't trust schools. But all teachers (every one I have known) feel this way. We try to jump through the hoops we are forced to and carry on doing what we feel is important and necessary for the children.

I hate the way that children who have no role models at home, no safe place to learn, no food to fuel their brain, no books at home and so on are expected to learn FASTER than the comfortable middle class kids (like my own children) because the poor kids come into school at a lower level than middle class ones and so that gap has to be closed by us, the schools. No one looks at how to fix society so that the children enter school as well equipped for life as their better-off peers.

But it really pisses me off when someone as intelligent and normally well informed as you dismisses all schools as flesh factories.

Yes, I get paid fairly well (a maximum of £36k unless you are management, in case you're wondering), yes I get 13 weeks holiday (I do work a 60 plus hour week in term time) but I didn't go into teaching for money or holidays- it's hardly champagne lifestyle money is it? I went into it, like every teacher I have ever known, to work with children. Because I care and I'd rather have a job with what I feel is an intrinsic value rather than just work for money.

I do not define myself as a teacher, I am much more than that as a person but that part of my life is one that I feel is valuable and hopefully one that helps others as well as paying my bills.

I'm not going to lower myself to sweepingly generalise about the role and effect of children's tv- your day job- but it wouldn't be hard. Glass houses, Biffo.
And thanks for continuing to spread negative and devaluing opinions about schools. Yes, there are other paths but if you want to take part in this society and take some of the rewards it offers, education is a good plan.
If you don't, feel free to travel your own path. But just think how many poor children all over the world fight desperately for an education. Has anyone ever, really, thought education was a bad idea?
I could go on. But I won't. You get the idea.

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Mr Biffo
10/5/2016 09:05:13 pm

Dude... Calm down. I know a LOT of teachers - my ELDEST DAUGHTER is a primary school teacher. My mother, sister, ex-wife, and several friends are either teachers, or work in schools. I don't for a second think a single one of them doesn't care about the kids. Heck - in another life I would've loved to have been a teacher. I still would.

But.. I still think the system is fundamentally broken... for all the reasons you stated. My step-kids do hours of homework or revision when they get home from school. The pressure they're under at the minute from SATs and GCSEs is abominable. I just think it's so, so wrong.

And that isn't pointing any finger of blame at the staff. It's those above them in power who are at fault, who use schools and education as a political tool.

Calling them "flesh factories" was intended to be tongue-in-cheek - not a slight against you, or teachers, who I have nothing but the most massive admiration for. My target though wasn't the people on the frontline. I was aiming at the system itself.

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Penyrolewen
10/5/2016 10:24:21 pm

Oh. Hmm. (Looks a bit embarrassed at earlier tirade) Well. That's...a bit better. Thanks and sorry for the rant. I'm not embarrassed about being passionate about my job though, just a feel a bit daft at missing the tongue in cheek bit.

I just get so angry at how those in power seem so STUPID, that they miss the completely obvious. Why? They can't all be morons, can they?

My buttons are easily pressed when I work so hard to keep education meaningful. I'm lucky. I've wangled a job where I take all the kids (not all at once) outside each week. We grow things, light fires, make dens, play in mud. It's not curriculum linked at all but provides a very valuable alternative approach to learning. My head supports this (obviously. She writes the timetable, tells me what I can get away with and pays me to do it) and is a great example of the way many schools try their best, whilst jumping through all the hoops we have to, still try to provide meaningful and non-results based education.

Hrumph. (Stares manfully into the distance) Sorry about all that shouting. But you know, good to get it off one's chest. Sorry again old boy. Pip pip.

Mr Biffo
11/5/2016 08:20:39 am

And that's what I see from teaching staff: the passion. Doing their best in the face of a political system that seems to work against them. Also forgot to mention: my niece is a deputy head. I see how hard and how passionate teachers are first-hand. And what they have to deal with. I admire you so much. I can't tell you how proud I was of my daughter when she qualified.

Originally, there was a big section in the piece talking about all of it from the teacher's perspective - the pressure put on them particularly at the moment during SATs - but I took it out, because I was off on one! Maybe I should've left it in.

penyrolewen
11/5/2016 08:54:29 pm

Thanks again Biffo. I feel even sillier now.

But do you know what? I don't even particularly care about the pressure teachers are under. We get paid ok and we're grown ups. Never mind that it's pointless, all jobs come with some pressure. What gets to me is that it gets through to the kids, however hard we try not to let it.
Primary schools are judged on results. Period. (Secondaries too, I'm sure, but I have no experience of them). But if our results aren't at at least 'floor level' (which increases year on year) then OFSTED are going to want to know why.
So what we do is 'hothouse' the kids to attain artificially high results. We do this by intense (and I mean intense) teaching that is designed to do one thing - get them through a series of tests that gain the children precisely nothing.
At my school we have 'SATs club' (what fun!) - which runs for a week over the Easter holiday. That's right. In the holiday. We bribe the kids to come with prizes (mp3 players, a chance to win a tablet). We have this fun club before and after school too. Kids that don't do as well as they might in maths and literacy lessons get 'intervention' to help them - during their PE, art, science and outdoor learning lessons.

Most of this is necessary because, as I mentioned earlier, I work (from choice) in a school with lots of deprivation. The kids come in at a lower level (in speech, mobility, reading, everything) than is 'average'. So the government say that we have to teach them faster than the kids who did enter school at average levels. Because if they only progress at nationally expected rates, they'll leave us at a lower than average level.

So these kids, with all the disadvantages I mentioned before, have to do better than the nice, well-fed, well-supported, eager-to-learn middle class kids (like my own). So we have to do everything we can to close that gap.

Now, don't get me wrong, I work in this type of school from choice because I believe in education and want to try my best to help if I can in my own small way. I believe that we SHOULD do all we can to help. But beating the schools - and through them, the kids - because of the failings of society seems to be getting hold of the wrong end of the stick to me.
We need to help these kids. Not stress them out so that OFSTED can pass judgement on schools.There must be a better way.

Anyway, second rant over. This one isn't aimed at anyone other than 'the man' and I'm sorry to do it on a games site - but I know that you, Biffo, and I expect most of your readers, enjoy the side issues that get thrown up. The more people know about this crazy system, the more chance we have of something changing.
So thanks and apologies once more and I promise I'll never do it again! (or you can keep me in at playtime)

Random Reviwer
12/5/2016 01:06:51 pm

"I could go on.." Doing worry, you already have.

Reply
Penyrolewen
12/5/2016 08:15:05 pm

You didn't have to read it. Was a bit much though. Sorry!

Bruce Flagpole
10/5/2016 09:28:55 pm

This reminds me, about 5 years back i helped a mate with a really simple browser game, which i refer to as the 'world war 1' sim. It's very simplistic, and whilst it's obviously a bit naff and silly, it's not meant to be disrespectful. I'm actually quite proud of it for what it is. Takes about a minute to play (if you're lucky!)..it's here if you want to try it:
https://supersmashinggreatgames.com/war
should work in most browsers, though sound doesn't work in IE/Edge...

Reply
Picston Shottle
12/5/2016 12:37:29 pm

I flew in to Norfolk, VA on Monday. Norfolk, VA is a navy town - it's where the Atlantic fleet is based, so there's always a lot of navy guys on the flights in (never out, so it seems...) and without fail you always get those "bucket throated red necks" thanking these navy guys for their service. What's that all about? I just don't get the adoration of the military that the general US populace has. It's frightening. And they get priority boarding. Even before me and my hard earned platinum status. Tsk!

Also, USA USA USA is frightening too. It's not patriotism, it's nationalism. July 4th a few years back I went down to Huntigton Beach to see the fireworks (they were shit - Liverpool has better firework displays, but I digress) and the fireworks all went off and the crowd broke into that chant: USA USA USA! Myself, and the other non Americans in the crowd all seemed at once to make eye contact with each other and cringe. It's just so...unnecessary. And it surprised me because California, I thought, was progressive and generally non red neck. Afterwards I learnt that Huntington Beach had, in the past, had big issues with the white power movement, so that may go some way to explaining it, but it was a crowd of thousands, and even if the chant was started by a smallish minority, the fact that most took it up was the really scary part.

Reply
R
12/5/2016 01:13:19 pm

I don' t think it's what Wilfred Owen had in mind when he talked about bringing home the reality of the war to the public.

Reply
Clive
15/5/2016 01:50:12 pm

I think even Baldrick could design a game that's more authentic, and that's saying something.

Reply
Stephen M. Stirling link
27/5/2016 06:15:27 am

My grandfather was gassed at Third Ypres, and I've studied the First World War rather extensively for decades. It therefore saddens me to see the grotesquely out-of-date and tendentious "meaningless slaughter" trope recycled once again, despite having been discredited among serious historians over a generation ago.

WWI (including the Western Front, which was part of the war but not the whole of it) wasn't in the least "meaningless". The people who fought it didn't think so, and they were right.

Take a look at the Treaties of Bucharest or Brest-Litovsk, or Bethman-Hollweg's "September Program" of German war aims in the west.

The Second Reich has gotten an undeserved historical pass because it wasn't as bad as the Third. That doesn't mean that it wasn't an extremely nasty, militaristic, aggressive power whose victory would have been a catastrophe. And while the Second Reich started off bad in 1914, it got steadily more radicalized and brutal as the war went on -- by 1917, Hindenburg and Ludendorff were direction the ethnic cleansing of Jews and Poles from the areas of Ober-Ost marked out for German settlement, and their Fatherland Party was... well, let's say its aims resurfaced somewhat later in German history.

Nor was WW1 characterized by an unusual degree of stupidity on the part of the commanders who fought it.

It was just full of problems that didn't have any good solutions.

The available technology and the very high degree of determination on both sides meant that it was probably going to be a war of attrition, and a war of attrition between industrialized nation-states was going to be very, very bloody.

The only alternative to fighting this bloody war of attrition through to the end was to give up; see the bit about Brest-Litovsk and the other settlements Germany imposed when it did win. They make the much-maligned Treaty of Versailles look like a Quaker sermon. Germany under that regime had no conception of how to deal with a defeated opponent except grabbing them by the throat and squeezing until their eyes popped out.

Human history is a tragedy, not a melodrama.

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