This morning (early in the morning) I did some broadcasting. Not so you'd notice. It won't emerge onto the airwaves for several months. But once again, after I'd written that up, I find that my education blogging time is limited. Plus I have a headache. Maybe I should get a sick-note, scan it in and stick it up here.
So instead of the usual ranting and pontificating, I have a question. John Dewey. For years I've been trying to get a handle on this guy.
Can anyone suggest (links to) good articles about this guy that won't take me half a day to read?
I find – oh dear, here comes some more educational pontification – that if I want to learn of the significance of some thinker, I learn more and more quickly if I read stuff that is strongly partisan, in favour and against. Maybe it's that I come from two families of lawyers. I find that if I want the truth about something I stage an argument about it, and then judge. If you see what I mean. (That was the kind of programme I was involved in this morning also. The BBC has the adversarial principle built into its DNA, or at any rate the Radio 4, local radio, discussion bits that I get involved in.)
The Christians disapprove, right? And is that just the creationists? Or do other Christians have other objections? And how about all those conservatives who associate Dewey with falling standards? Which they do, yes?
My friend Chris Tame, who is a Randian, can't mention the name of Dewey without spitting metaphorical blood. What's might that be about?
It's not that there isn't enough stuff. It's that there is, if anything, too much. I don't know where to start.
Here?
This looks as if it might be helpful. As might this.
Guidance anybody? Thanks in advance.
So I started to write a little piece for my Culture Blog, and nine hours later I finished it, leaving very little time for my duties here. And I have promised these people something soon as well, on a civil liberties theme of some kind.
So, a link here to something about a teacher, but which also has civil liberties vibes. It is often said that those who have done nothing wrong, have nothing to be frightened of. The nothing in question that they have to be frightened about being the total surveillance regime, of cameras everywhere and uniquitous universally available information, potentially available to anyone with a PC.
The piece is basically about the serious horrors being suffered by Chris Cooper's Asian neighbours. But he makes a passing mention (in brackets) of the problems potentially risked by that other social minority, teachers:
(We've not suffered any of this – I went to bed last night without the thought of it crossing my mind. (In the past, however, we've had a few eggs thrown at the house by some of my wife's less affectionate students.)
I said a day or two ago that I was thinking of volunteering to teach reading. I still am. But I'm also thinking, maybe it would be a wise precaution not to do my volunteering too close to where I live, to start with anyway.
More than half of all independent schools still do not allow state school pupils to share their facilities, despite the Government's efforts to encourage more partnership between the two sectors.
Encourage. Partnership.
And almost one in 10 of the private schools which have collaborated with the state sector admitted charging more than the going rate for facilities to make a profit from state schools, a survey of 900 fee-paying schools found.
Collaborated.
If you want to buy something from me which I don't want to sell to you, I too will charge more than the "going rate". I usually have my price, but if I really like my something, my price will be high. But, it is mine. I can charge whatever I like. You have the freedom to say no. What would we say of someone who insisted on "buying" something from you, but insisted also on only paying the "going rate"? In other circumstances this is called "compulsory purchase", and the words "compulsory" and "purchase" are often followed by the word "order".
Almost 70 per cent of fee-paying schools reported that they had not opened their specialist teaching facilities such as classrooms, science laboratories, or drama studios to local state schools, according to the study by the Independent Schools Council (ISC).
Could it be that they don't actually want to open their specialist teaching facilities? Makes sense to me. They sound expensive, and complicated to mend if they get broken.
The ISC released the study as part of the sector's campaign to be allowed to keep its charitable status.
Charitable status. Nothing like tax breaks to keep people in line. Command and control lives
I'm impressed by this. It's one of my favourite people at the moment, Theodore Dalrymple, proving that teaching doesn't have to go on and on, build up a "relationship" etc, to have an effect. Often it can consist of saying one true and forcefully expressed thing, and moving on.
“You know, you done me a lot of good when I was in jail,” he said. “I came to you for help. You said I didn’t need no medicine, I just needed to decide not to come back. You said there was nothing wrong with me. I thought you was very hard, but you was right. I’ve kept out of trouble for four years ever since. You spoke straight to me.”
This bloke recognised Dalrymple when they met again, but Dalrymple didn't recognise him. And that's my point.
Dalrymple is obsessed with being right, and he mostly is, in my opinion. When he is right, and someone tells him he's right, he's pleased and he doesn't mind who knows it. I much prefer proud men with something to be proud about, than men who have nothing to be proud about and aren't. He is, in short, something of a show-off. He wades through the miseries of the underclass, telling it (and them) like it is, proud of being right, showing-off.
Show-offs can make excellent teachers.
It's only a short posting today, but about something that looks interesting, namely Volunteer Reading Help. I found out about it by reading this.
It is, as is fairly obvious, a volunteers-to-teach-reading scheme. I've been trying to wangle my way into active education without committing myself to anything too huge or time consuming, and this might be worth me looking into a bit further. An hour a week for each child, apparently.
I know, I know, it's got government all over it. But if it's good then good, and if it's bad, then I can blog about that, can't I?
Anyone know anything about this scheme?
In the same bit that mentions VRH, John Clare also supplies a link to these people, who put themselves about rather more than I first realised.
Category: Brian's brilliant teaching career • Literacy
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Classicist Dr Peter Jones prefers short and clear words, even if rather badly spelt, to the pseudo-business-speak of the modern British University. Jones mentions the verbal fog that is modern literary criticism, but says that this doesn't matter, because … well, because it doesn't matter, it's only lit. crit. But this business-newspeak is everywhere, he says.
… Take any of the following nouns: aspect, role, development, challenge, context, stakeholder, opportunity, provision, resource, direction, investment, portfolio, policy, programme, skill, track-record, liaison, quality, function, end-user, process, commitment, profile, range, environment, skills, outcome, collaboration. Throw in any of the following adjectives: key, crucial, proven, wide, broad, emerging, expanding, international, ongoing, developing, innovative, pro-active, strong, strategic, organisational, or any of the above nouns used as adjectives (‘policy relevance’, ‘information resource’). String together with verbs such as facilitate, deliver, develop, broaden, enhance, support, encourage, co-ordinate, champion, implement. That’s it. You too can soon be talking about ‘pro-active development opportunities facilitating and delivering an ongoing end-user collaboration process’.
Jones rightly identifies the Thatcher era as the time when this crap crept in. The idea that you should try to run a university like a good business came to mean in practice that the people running universities started talking like bad business managers.
Brian's Education Blog will implement a key, crucial, proven, wide, broad, emerging, expanding, international, ongoing, developing, innovative, pro-active, strong, strategic, but not all that organisational information resource and end-user collaboration process. That means that it will try to be good but may not always succeed, and that you can comment if you like.
