TONY McMANUS died this month, following a long illness. Thousands felt they knew him through the strength of his letters and articles.
The imposition of Higher Still for Tony represented the hollow triumph of one-dimensional man (and woman) in Scottish education. That it should happen at the same time Scotland was rehearsing her new steps in self-determination made it ironic, and bitter. A small cold-minded oligarchy was imposing its will on a generous-minded nation.
Tony McManus decided it couldn’t be allowed to happen, not unless we were willing to sacrifice just about everything that has made Scottish education distinctive: breadth of intellect, rigorous thought and rich imagination. He wasn’t alone. The resistance began in Edinburgh and swelled out.
Tony said that Higher Still was unworkable. The exams fiasco proved him right, but that gave no satisfaction. It was our own pupils, indeed our own children, who were caught in the mangle.
He also said it was undesirable, particularly mandatory internal unit assessment. In June 1999, the Educational Institute of Scotland conference agreed, and the EIS submitted that view to the Scottish Executive’s consultation on assessment, which closed last December.
At the time of writing, with four months gone and only six weeks to the start of new courses, we still haven’t heard the outcome. If the professional view goes unheeded, and the narrow view of the Scottish CBI is arrogated instead, then this Executive will surely have made itself illegitimate.
Should the trade union view be heeded, then that will be welcome, and long overdue. And a bit too late for Tony. Campaigning wasn’t his style, yet he did it to protect the things he held dear. He could have done without continually banging off letters to the paper, when there were songs to sing, poems to write, young minds to teach.
Yet, stunned by the intransigence of the authorities, he wrote those letters, sustained that campaign, right up to the end. We owe him an incalculable debt.
I was on the wrong side of the world when the grim news came, by e-mail. I missed the funeral. But 300 were there: his deeply grieving family, his bereaved friends and colleagues, the sixth-year pupils from South Queensferry who paid tribute and played and sang.
Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon.
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?
How can ye chant, ye little birds, And I sae weary fu’ o’ care!
They came to salute the truth of the man.
