Hello reader - My name is Gareth Morgan and I've been selected to be one of this year's Nottingham Roosevelt Scholars. As someone Nottingham born and bred it’s a massive honour to have been picked alongside Miles and Angelela to visit the United States and explore my chosen subject of primary literacy, specifically working with children from deprived areas or who have English as a second language. I want to talk briefly, as briefly as I can, about my initial feelings about being a Nottingham Roosevelt Scholar and why it means so much to me, using the three words of the title. If you read my blogs you might come to realise that I think words are really important
Let's start with "Nottingham": I am more than a bit, probably painfully over-enthusiastically, proud of Nottingham - a place that has been my home for 25 of my 29 years. It's where I grew up, it's where my family are from and it's where I discovered who wanted to be when I grow up (I still don't really consider myself a grown up). It's where you can ask someone if they want "spread on their cob" and they don't look at you funny. It can be "black over't Bill's mothers" and "yer tabs can laff". It's where you can call a bus driver, or really anyone, duck. It's also the home of the greatest football team to ever play the game and a newly bestowed UNESCO City of Literature. It’s where I learned to talk, to express myself and to read – the latter mostly at Sherwood Library or Seely Primary School.
Nottingham is a great place to be. I genuinely can't think of a much better day than a Brown Betty's breakfast on St James' Street, catching the number 36 to QMC roundabout and walking up the lime lined avenue to Wollaton Hall for a walk round the lake, followed by going back to town for an Annie's burger and a drink in the Keans Head. I hope that some of the people I meet on travels get the chance to come to Nottingham and do this with me!
As far as Roosevelt goes, I think we're in a time that needs a new FDR - someone who can grasp the nettle and invest in skills and infrastructure like the New Deal did. This was a radical reshaping of the American Dream and one which created the powerhouse that the country is today. It also created America's social security system and invested in the arts and documentation of heritage. In the uncertain economic and political times we're living in since the banking collapse in 2008, would a Roosevelt-like figure be the firm hand the world needs on the tiller, although some believe that Obama could have a shot at this legacy once the dust on his presidency has settled and an objective assessment can be made.
With scholarship, I believe every day is a school day and that learning is something we continue throughout our lives. Policies put forward by some of the parties in the current general election of a National Education Service offering life-long learning are something that would sway my vote. To quote another great statesman of the Twentieth Century, Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. Hopefully, with help from many people across America and the UK, we can change the way we support the way children across the city and county learn and develop a lasting love of books and reading.
This will be the first blog of many in which I’ll be documenting my preparation, my trip and my return. I’m looking forward to all that I will discover and share with you on my journey this year.
Thanks for making it this far!
Gareth
