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Posts Tagged ‘education’

The Satanic Verses Affair

Monday, March 9th, 2009

I saw a great 90-minute special on the recent history of the Nazi-style book-burning of The Satanic Verses.

Watch it quick – it’s only on iplayer for one week (I think).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00j6bnt/The_Satanic_Verses_Affair/

Read: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00j6bnt

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/14/newsid_2541000/2541149.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7883308.stm

A lesson from history I hope never to be repeated again. This is covered very well in the excellent book The Fallout – How a guilty liberal lost his innocence

The problem with arguing about stuff which may be uncomfortable to “people of the left”, is that whenever you try to argue a fact about religion, immigration or events like this, the default retort from the left is “read it in The Daily Mail, did you?”. Andrew Anthony is a Guardian journalist – kind of kills off that argument! Here’s a good example.

Comment is Free profile of Andrew Anthony

Isn’t it time we all stopped pretending to be offended?

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

I think it’s time we started ignoring people who pretend to take offense and any and everything they can, just to make a noise.

Like the MP that told a joke. Factually accurate, you may not like it, but lots of people don’t like a lot of stuff. No need to take offense...

Cllr Roger Walkden, whose hometown of Dover, Kent has been at the centre of immigration controversy, was reported to Tory leader David Cameron’s office and the local government watchdog over his gag.

Guest house owner Cllr Walkden could be reprimanded or stripped of his seat on Dover District Council over the funny – in which an immigrant is handed a free eight-bedroom house by a fairy after arriving in England.

In the punchline the new foreigner’s house and other new-found gains are stripped away after he asks to become native, with the fairy explaining “Now that you are English, you’re entitled to f*** all.”

The Tory Party immediately distanced itself from the joke – condemned by the town’s MP as offensive.

Then there’s the play about immigration

Campaigners have already disrupted one performance of Richard Bean’s play, England People Very Nice, by mounting the first onstage demonstration in the National Theatre’s 32-year history.

However, they are now planning to picket audiences arriving at the theatre and Travelex, one of the National’s main sponsors.

Last Friday, two protesters clambered on to the stage at the National’s Olivier Theatre and condemned Bean as racist.

Then we have a few people in a private conversation, taking offense that someone referred to a tennis player as having hair similar to the Robinsons Jam trademark

CAROL Thatcher emerged last night as an unlikely rallying point for freedom of speech, after the former prime minister’s daughter was axed by the BBC for referring to a tennis player as a “golliwog”.

Then there’s the story of Al Jonson. Al Jonson blacked up. To have a play any other way would be historical revisionism. Oh dear…

It was one of the iconic moments of the 20th century – Al Jolson singing “My Mammy” in the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer. But in a new theatrical production based on the life of the man famous for “blacking up”, the actor who plays Jolson will perform the song without minstrel make-up, to avoid offending audiences.

The decision not to include a full blackface scene in Jolson & Co – the Musical at the King’s Theatre in Edinburgh next month is likely to invoke allegations of over-the-top political correctness. 

Then there’s the guy at Samizdata who blogged in support of Gail Trimble.

Except he made the mistake of finishing his support of her intellect with

And then again, I will openly confess to having a weakness for brunettes with brains and a cultivated voice. I see the young lady has a few male admirers on the web. Good for her.

Nothing wrong with that, you’d think. Oh dear….someone’s pretending to take offense

Good for her not that she is trouncing all challengers, not that she does not feel obligated to hide her pride at achievement as so many would want we uppity women to do [...] but that a few men online – you included – find her hot. Because at the end of all the bothersome question-answering, is that not the ultimate success?

She sounds a bit nuts, to be honest. But again, an adult who can make her own folly.

But what really prompted me to write all this was this blog.  The story (if you can’t bring yourself to wade through a mound of socialist nonsense) is that this guy’ s son brings home a 12 year old literacy assisting book (the book is 12 years old, I mean). The story is:

Kids play in tree in bloke’s garden, tree has TPO (tree preservation order), then house gets sold. Woman moves in. Either she or her solicitor didn’t do their homework and fail to notice the TPO (hardly tricky – it’ll be one of the basic things the solicitor is looking for), woman tries to chop tree down. TPO gets enforced, tree lives on.

Pretty simple, huh? As well as new words, it teaches children about basic laws – nothing really new, political or controversial there. And I strongly believe that children should be given the tools to reason, decide and think about rights, responsibilites etc. And WHEN they reach 16 they can go and break a law if that’s what they want to do, and if they don’t like that law, at 18 they can vote. Or move country. 

Let’s recap: This is a literacy aid using a fictional story about a tree with a legal device in place before the new owner purchases the property. That’s the whole effing point of the story! Sadly, it seems literacy isn’t a strong point with our blogger’s readers. Instead, they want to encourage destruction of property, both personal and protected.

For example

 

Away down to the schoolhouse with you, as soon as you have printed your big posters that say “The headmasters car belongs to everybody! All are permitted to climb over it.”
Posted by: Monty

 

Great White Hopes – Professor David Gillborn on race on Radio 4

Monday, January 5th, 2009

The BBC recently ran a couple of programmes on Radio 4 called
Great White Hopes

Henry Bonsu investigates current debates about class and poverty in education policy, in the light of calls by Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights, for Britain’s white working class children to receive special educational funding, alongside other underachieving minorities.

Wow – actually seems like a good idea. Unless your name is Professor David Gilbourne Gillborn (see footnote below) in which case you manage to undo the last 15 years of progress with the most ill-judged comment I’ve heard for a long while. Listen and weep!

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So, who is this Professor David Gillborn?

My work includes ethnographic research on racism in schools and classrooms; conceptual writing on the nature of racism in educational policy and practice; mixed-method evidence reviews; and analyses of policy initiatives at local, national and international levels

If you’re still awake and want to know more, his book Racism and Education: Coincidence or Conspiracy? is available second hand from Amazon marked with a “low price” of £499. I’ll take two….(cheaper copies do seem available)

Now for a correction: I was contacted on 31/March/2009 by a representative of academic publisher Taylor and Francis. I am always happy to quickly correct any mistakes, and it appears I made quite a big one confusing Gillborn and Gilbourne, who had both written on race in education.

We would like to draw your attention to your article “Great White Hopes – Professor David Gilbourne on race on Radio 4”.
http://www.digitaltoast.co.uk/great-white-hopes-david-gilbourneThe article uses a radio interview with Professor David Gillborn (note the correct spelling of Professor Gillborn’s name) of the Institute of Education, London, and then links to a lecture by Professor David Gilbourne of UWIC, Cardiff. You seem to suggest that the radio interview and the lecture are by the same person. David Gillborn of the Institute of Education, London’s research concerns race and racism in education. David Gilbourne of Cardiff Metropolitan University’s research examines qualitative research in sport and exercise. As far as we are aware, the two are not connected. Please would you amend the text of
http://www.digitaltoast.co.uk/great-white-hopes-david-gilbourne accordingly.

Thank you to that person for bringing this to my attention – as they contacted me through the private form, I haven’t used their name, but they can use the comment field below if they’d like to add anything.

Britain’s involvement in slavery to be taught in schools

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

According to the BBC:

Britain’s involvement in the slave trade is to be studied by all secondary pupils in England from September.

Children will study the development of the trade, colonisation and how slavery was linked to the British empire and the industrial revolution.
Um, haven’t all schools always taught that anyway?! Isn’t that just part of history? I guess not.

I have a concern. I remember listening to a programme on R4 about the anniversary of the abolition last year, and I heard a couple of bits of astounding ignorance, both from teachers who basically chose not to (or were unaware of) African chiefs and Saudi Arabian involvement in slavery.

And then there are sites like this…I see NO mention of of the fact that Britain was one of the FIRST to abolish slavery, that Britain only accounted for 5% of the slave trade.
Most of the trading happened in Arabian countries, which didn’t abolish slavery until 1962.

But then, this site’s title informs us that
Britain abolished the slave trade on 25 March 2007“. Doesn’t sound like Marika Sherwood is very clued up!

You know, listening to people talking about British involvement in slavery, you’d think we were going to Africa with nets and rounding them up!

I’m all for history being taught, but in full. But I wonder if they’ll include the inconvenient truths?

By the way, I think slavery was a horrendous and despicable part of history that we should learn from. But let’s get some perspective – I’ve no reason to feel guilt. My forefathers weren’t sugar traders or land owners.

Let’s have history as it was, and less “guilty white man” crap like this

Hmmm, I’ve just had a thought – imagine a world where between 65% and 80% of everthing you worked for was taken from you. And if you didn’t give it, you were threatened with violence and imprisonment.
Oh, wait. That’ll be tax in the UK.

ETS Europe SATS marking company – massive stuff-up

Friday, July 18th, 2008

ANOTHER huge stuff-up from American-based marking company, ETS Europe.

Just read the above – what a sorry story. And apparently, they use GCSE students to mark the papers!

Un-be-lievable. And I heard a bit about it Radio 4 this morning – NO-ONE from ETS or the government had the most basic decency to be interviewed – ETS pulled out at the last minute.

Isn’t ANYONE sick of the way the government treat our children with lowest common denominator, expensive poor quality marking companies?

Couple of bits of audio – here are a couple of young readers on Radio 4’s 6pm news, thurs 17th July:

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I’d be more worried about not being able to understand “yoof speak” than anything else! As someone on the message boards said:

We have a Jamaican friend over here. He was telling us that the West Indian patois so common on the streets and schools of London and elsewhere, would not be tolerated in the West Indian schools. He says it beggars belief that in England it is allowed… and remember he IS Jamaican.

This interested me, because I was Headteacher for most of my career hundreds of miles north of London/Essex/the East End. On occasions, one of my RURAL pupils would begin talking with a kind of Estuary/Essex/West Indian patois accent!!!!

Well, that was easily solved in school, as I simply refused to acknowledge anything said in such a fabricated accent for that area.

However, have you noticed that anyone employed as a “Youth Worker” apparently needs as their number one top priority, just such an accent, and in all probability to dress down to the same standards as the “yoofs”.

Can we not be allowed to teach children to speak properly any more, to have role models who can speak English, and to have a media that doesn’t think it is “wiv i’ ” [that's a 't' missing by the way] if the actor/personality doesn’t put on the most awful, forced, incoherent accent?

Maybe we need a grown-up debate about standards in everyday language?

And here is the view from The Now Show

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No-one sick of this government yet? Where are the protests? Where are the riots?

British bad at maths – exam cheats – dumbing down

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

In the last few days…

From The Times (added 30th June 2008)

Pupils are being rewarded for writing obscenities in their GCSE English examinations even when it has nothing to do with the question.

Write ‘fuck off’ on a GCSE paper and you’ll get 7.5%. Add an exclamation mark and it’ll go up to 11%
One pupil who wrote “f*** off” was given marks for accurate spelling and conveying a meaning successfully.

His paper was marked by Peter Buckroyd, a chief examiner who has instructed fellow examiners to mark in the same way. He told trainee examiners recently to adhere strictly to the mark scheme, to the extent that pupils who wrote only expletives on their papers should be awarded points.

From BBC News

A report this week by think-tank Reform laments the drop in numbers of people taking maths A-level, at an estimated cost to the economy of £9bn.
“The UK remains one of the few advanced nations where it is socially acceptable, fashionable even, to profess an inability to cope with maths,” it says, despite a maths A-level putting on average an extra £10,000 a year on a salary

Also University cheats ‘not expelled’

University students who are caught submitting plagiarised work are very rarely expelled, shows a survey.
A study found only 143 students caught cheating were expelled out of 9,200 cases – despite almost all universities threatening expulsion as a sanction.

Exam papers had answers on back

Thousands of teenagers are facing uncertainty over their exams after a GCSE music paper was found to have some of the answers on the back.

Students ‘had hints’ before exam

An exam board is investigating suggestions that some teachers gave students hints about what questions would be in an A-level biology exam.

I know this myself – I went to Reading College 11 years ago, and it was tough graft.
I went back 2 years ago, and it was a joke – they virtually stood there and read the answers out as the exam was happening! I blogged about it.

All this came to mind when I heard Harriet Harmon whiffling on about how educational standards are far higher than they were 10 years ago.

Does ANYONE believe that?!

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