Sometimes the news you get about education through the wonderful world of the Internet is almost too overpowering to bear:
Truro: Adult education classes offeredThe following adult education classes will be offered in Truro this fall: Quilting, ceramics, Latin dance, Works on Paper, Spanish, yoga, Introduction to the Computer and Introduction to Pilates.
What are "Works on Paper" and "Pilates"?
On the other hand, if this really is what counts as news in Truro, it must be a pretty quiet place, so if what you want is a quiet life …
More local education news here.
I missed this story when it was published, on the 24th.
First few paragraphs:
Philip Green, the retail billionaire, is planning to build the country's first fashion and retail academy in an attempt to "produce the next generation of entrepreneurs".The owner of Bhs, Top Shop and Miss Selfridge has donated £5m to what would be the first specialist college to train 16- to 19-year-olds for a career in fashion retail.
The college will train 200 school-leavers a year in marketing, finance and fashion buying and Mr Green – who recently tried to buy Marks & Spencer – hopes it will open for business in September 2005.
Mr Green, who left school at 16, said he had been driven to invest in the scheme by his difficulties in recruiting good staff for his own business. "We need to do something to produce the next generation of entrepreneurs," he said. Mr Green said it was often difficult to tell the difference between graduates and those who had left school with only A-levels.
"If you ask a lot of these people why they went to university they don't really know. It's either because they think it's what you are supposed to do or because it gives them another three years before they have to go out to work.
"If you get underneath it all some of it really defies logic. We take on A-level people and graduates who are three years older but are only earning £500 more. That's quite scary given that it probably costs them £30,000 or £40,000 to get there."
A-men.
I recall how, during the Cold War, you could quote anonymously from some speech, evidently made by some extremely discontented old buffer who no longer cared about little things like being sent to die in a prison camp. The economy is shit. Nothing works. Repairing a fridge takes for ever. The country needs industrial managers willing to be responsible for things, honest government officials, a sober army, far less poison in the air and in the water, far more adventurous use of modern technology, better manners, young people to behave themselves, trains to run on time, blah blah blah, it's all going to hell, etc. etc. And then you revealed that the man who was saying all this was none other than Mr Brezhnev, in his main Supreme Lord High Everything speech to the XXXXXXXth conference of the Communist Party of the USSR. He was nominally in charge of everything, yet he never got what he wanted either.
This reminds me of that:
He gave a frank assessment of the education system's failings, particularly for 14 to 19-year-olds."Too much of the work does not stretch the ablest pupils enough,” he said.
"Too much of the work leads some pupils to switch off entirely and to turn to truancy and disruption.
"Too much of the assessment is an excessive burden rather than a stimulation.
"Too many students leave school without knowing their grammar and being properly numerate," he said.
"There is too much of a division between the academic and the vocational streams of study. …"
So who is this discontented old trouble maker? Why it is Mr Clarke, the politician supposedly in charge of Britain's state education system.
Further to my reference yesterday to Professor Instapundit, he is doing some election coverage for Guardian Unlimited, and via that I came across these photos, taken by the man himself at the University of Tennessee.
It all looks idyllic.
This one, which he also uses to entice you in, but which I do not understand at all, is my favourite:
His religious-theme photo for the Guardian is a fun snap also.
Georges Lopez, the teacher and reality movie star whom I wrote about here and here, has lost his case against the makers of the movie he was the star of:
It was a moving portrayal of everyday life in the rural classroom, and became an huge and unexpected French cinema success when it was released in 2002.And, as the star of the prizewinning documentary film, Etre et Avoir, Georges Lopez felt it was only fair that he should get a cut of the &euor;2m (£1.3m) profits.
The director disagreed, triggering an acrimonious lawsuit which has raised uncomfortable ethical questions about the exploitative nature of fly-on-the-wall film-making.
This week a Paris court ruled that the schoolteacher, who allowed his tiny one-class village school to be filmed in lessons and at play over the course of a year, had no grounds to demand a €250,000 (£170,000) payment.
This was essentially a contract argument. What was the deal? According to that deal, do the film makers owe Lopez any money? No, said the French court.
Lopez himself says that this is an intellectual property argument, which means that tomorrow, I may well be writing about this case in my weekly bit for here.
Personally I think Georges Lopez should have stayed away from the courts, and written a book about his life and his educational beliefs. And it need not have been a long book. That is, he should have turned the massive reputation that the movie bestowed upon him, into a river of cash. It would have sold a bomb, would definitely have been translated into English, and I would definitely have bought a copy. As it is, his saintly image has been hurt by his decidedly unimaginative behaviour. Now, he says, he is going to appeal.
Sad. Everyone knows you make nothing from the movie that makes you into a star. It is your next few ventures that make you your money, even if they flop. And in his case, who says they would flop?
It seems that there are quite a few things about the world and its ways that Monsieur Lopez has himself yet to learn. Yet one more proof of how brilliant people can be in one setting, and then how inept they can then be when they stray beyond that.
Alice (as "in Texas") has some thoughts about universities:
>But that's the irony: universities probably would still have some kind of place, if they just updated their ideas and got real. The trouble is, they are too insecure to confront that. But unless they come to terms with the fact that knowledge is growing itself outside universities now, and that for all sorts of reasons, people are not going to pay huge sums of money just so an institution can rubber-stamp its learning-location as well as its examination score, they are doomed.Which is to say, genuinely intelligent people will opt out of them, so their standards will spiral down and down. And the people at the Justin Timberlake conferences won't notice what parodies of themselves they have become, of course.
I don't think I agree. The great thing about going to university is all the other people who go, from among whom you are almost bound to find human gold. You get to drink and **** and talk all night with them, and unless and until the world invents another way for the semi-brainy and brainy-brainy to find one another at That Age, the university idea will still have plenty of life in it. People will curse and rage against these places for being so silly, but other people will still want to go. The Internet may well replace lots of the academics, but lots of other academics, instead of being rolled over by it, will learn how to make the Internet an ally rather than an enemy.
I mean, I'd love to have had someone like this as one of my professors. Reading him every day or two is good, but chatting with him every week or two would be even better.
Dare I suggest that Alice's fulminations are evidence of the geographical fallacy, as I like to think of it, which say: geography (i.e. geographical proximity) doesn't matter any more, because of Modern Communcations.
Also, universities have been through very bad times before. In the nineteenth century, it is my understanding that British universities, instead of, as now, being rotten with third-rate "humanities" bullshit artists who publish far too much, were rotten instead with third-rate theologians who didn't publish anything at all. Science, meanwhile, was being developed in spite of the universities rather than because of them. But eventually Science took over the universities and made a new golden age for them.
But that last bit is somewhat of a guess. Better-than-guess comments, anyone?
Gratuitous university picture:
… which I googled my way to via here.
Busy day today at digital camera class, but here's a link to an article about blogs in education. I've not read it yet, but Jackie Danicki of tBBC has.
This is a story I hear a lot these days:
Children are missing out on life-changing adventure pursuits because teachers fear they will end up in court if things go wrong, says Ofsted.Outdoor activities such as canoeing, rock climbing, archery and sailing are in decline as schools opt for less risky courses or drop adventure training altogether, says David Bell, the Chief Inspector of Schools.
Teachers have been prosecuted, and one was imprisoned for 12 months last year, over the drowning of a boy on school visits. Schools also fear compensation claims from parents if children get injured.
In a report to be published today the inspectors say outdoor education is a minority area in most secondary schools, despite some excellent examples of courses led by teachers with vision.
"The benefits of outdoor education are far too important to forfeit and by far outweigh the risks of an accident occurring," says Mr Bell.
"If teachers follow recognised safety procedures and guidance they have nothing to fear from the law."
And circles are square. No they are not, says the rest of the Telegraph piece. Circles are circular, squares are square, and the law is fast making childhood adventure that any adult can be held responsible for damn near illegal. Following "recognised safety procedures" isn't a guarantee of no grief, but is itself grievously burdensome.
Concluding paragraphs:
John Dunford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, said: "The fact is that accidents can happen. With so many parents turning to the courts at the first sign of a problem, schools are right to be extremely cautious in their approach to the organisation of outdoor activities."Regrettably this has created a situation in which many teachers have felt unable to take on the additional responsibility.
"This has led to a reduction in the number of visits which are a vitally important part of the educational experience, especially for children from families that could not otherwise afford them."
Indeed.
From Instapundit to Dean's World to Iraq at a glance and a description of a TV programme about a school:
The teacher said: ‘we learn those kids the morals and ethics of Islam, how to respect the people, we are studying the Koran, and learn it by heart, the pupils here are so happy and proud of their future as they'll grow as good men'Till now, I asked myself: 'so what?..what’s wrong with this system, since it is an ordinary school, and does not hurt anyone, let them learn what they want to learn, but without harmful outcomes'..
However …
Future troubles began to be clear half an hour from the beginning of this movie.The kids were talking about the Jihad and how they are ready to be one of AlMujahideen, their parents were so happy with their 'courageous and strong' boys, and that they would get AlJannah (the paradise) sooner or later.
Then, the manager of this school and some also bearded guests came by (obviously the big leaders) and started to talk in front of a crowd of teachers and boys explaining how the United States want to spoil their youth and destroy Islam, how they came to Afghanistan to destroy and make an end to Islam and how they want to control the Islamic world and many other thoughts, and then began to shout and scream: 'God bless our great leader Osama bin Laden, God bless our great leader Mullah Omar’ ‘Death to America'..'Death to America and her collaborators' and the crowd replied in a louder and scary voice the same 'great' words of their supervisors!
So attract innocent kids, put them in this religious school which resembles the jail, no one kid has the time to talk or see anything except his teacher and the Koran, wash their brains completely for years and fill it with hatred and hostile ideas using dangerous strict thoughts in the name of Islam, and then, It's obvious from the environment of this school what will the 'graduates' be.
The word 'education' covers a multitude of sins.
This really hits home with me:
Remember the essays you had to write in high school? Topic sentence, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion. The conclusion being, say, that Ahab in Moby Dick was a Christ-like figure.Oy. So I'm going to try to give the other side of the story: what an essay really is, and how you write one. Or at least, how I write one.
…
The most obvious difference between real essays and the things one has to write in school is that real essays are not exclusively about English literature. Certainly schools should teach students how to write. But due to a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of literature. And so all over the country students are writing not about how a baseball team with a small budget might compete with the Yankees, or the role of color in fashion, or what constitutes a good dessert, but about symbolism in Dickens.
With the result that writing is made to seem boring and pointless. Who cares about symbolism in Dickens? Dickens himself would be more interested in an essay about color or baseball.
How did things get this way? …
That's all I've read so far, but he certainly has my attention.
If I ever get to teach writing, I hope it will be by helping my pupils to write about what they want to write about, and to think about what they want to think about. Letters soliciting career advice. Explications of the Premier League scoring system and what difference three points for a win instead of two has made. Why rap is great despite what parents and teachers (and I) say about it. Why I am bored. Which were the best movies this summer. Why girls are stupid. Why boys are stupid. Why boys are still stupid but …
You can be logical and entertaining and informative and persuasive about anything. I strongly agree that confining it to being logical and entertaining and informative and persuasive about English literature is a big mistake.
Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily (which really is daily for me) for the link to this.
On the other hand, if you really are interested in symbolism in Dickens …
Here are two more reports, about how home schooling is on the up and up, in Scotland:
The latest figures produced by the Scottish Executive show there were 480 children educated outside school in Scotland, who were known to the authorities, in 2002/03. The number represents a 38% increase compared with 2000/01, when there were 349 children in the same category.Over the past five years, the number of children excluded from Scottish schools for violent behaviour has increased by almost 18%. A study of young people in Glasgow last June revealed that 20% of young boys, including primary children, carried knives to protect themselves.
A spokeswoman for the Home Education Advisory Service (HEAS), told Scotland on Sunday: "The most common reason which people give us for considering home education is fear of violence and bullying at school. They fear that their learning is being disrupted, and that it’s making their lives miserable.
"Many fear that the system is unable to cope and keep the small number of children who cause problems from ruining it for the rest of them.
... and in the USA.
In Florida, the number of home-school students has nearly tripled over the past ten years. Nationally, the United States Department of Education says the number has swelled to more than a million kids. Home-school experts say it's even higher.Oregon researcher Brian Ray, of the National Home Education Research Institute, estimates two million kids are now taught at home.
"In the last four years, we think home schooling has grown at least 30 percent," says Ray. "Study after study, many of which I've done, have shown that home-schooled children are well above average – 15 to 30 percentile points above on standardized achievement tests."
Ray points to last year's first and second place winners of the National Spelling Bee – both home-schooled. And now even Harvard University says it accepts home-schooled applicants.
My bet is that it won't be long before Harvard goes looking for home schooled applicants.
