Misrepresenting 2nd language speakers in fiction

I quite like Hercules Poirot, especially as played by David Suchet. However, I've not read the books so I'm not sure whether the 'Frenchisms' are a faithful reproduction of Agatha Christie's writing or not, but I suspect so. By 'Frenchisms' I mean things like :

Mon ami, what will you? You fix upon me a look of doglike devotion and demand of me a pronouncement a la Sherlock Holmes! Hercule Poirot

 In particular the use of phrases such as 'Mon ami' or even 'Oui'

It's not just Agatha Christie, there's a tendency in a lot of writers to insert words from a foreign language to show foreign-ness of a character. The problem I have with it, from informal observation of others and of my own performance in foreign language, is that the kinds of words and phrases that characters like Poirot are shown using are not the kind of phrases or words that we tend to use in second-languages. Why? Because they are the 'easy phrases' we learn first. The first-language phrases we are likely to carry into our second-language usage are the harder things where we may not know the word. A second-language speaker of English is more likely to say 'my friend' or 'yes' but say something like 'etage one' because they haven't learnt 'first floor' yet, than they are to pepper their English with simple common phrases drawn from their first language.

What we tend to see in these fictional cases is actually the knowledge of the writer of the 2nd language projected onto the foreign-language character, and if the writer is not really well-acquainted with the language in question, what they are likely to know are phrases that a beginner would have learned or (possibly) the stereotypical characterisations of other writers or storytellers. I would recommend that any writer wishing to push beyond stereotypes of speakers-of-English-as-second-language should go to a few classes where people are learning English and pay attention to the way that they are taught common phrases and drilled in frequently-used contstructions and can end up producing sentences which are 'close enough' concatenations of these rote-learnt phrases with vocabulary inserted. Reproducing that kind of thing would have much more verisimilitude as would including misunderstandings where the second-language user responds not quite appropriately because they haven't understood something about what has been said to them and produce an answer or response which is on more familar ground for them.

Co-operative university

I've found myself musing over the last few months, as you do, about the way that our Higher Education system is being funded and the cultural effects that seems to be having on the enterprise: on students, on institutions, on staff and the relationships. expectations and possibilities created or ruled-out.
My own university, Northumbria's history prompted a further sort of reflection. A major strand of the precursor institutions was a set of educational establishments set up by a Congregational minister and his church to serve the educational advancement of working class and poor families. So my musing was about how a university could run without the business ethos taking over and the whole thing becoming a version of service/product provision for customers. Then I wondered what if students were not positioned as 'customers' or 'consumers' -could that be done?

So I started wondering whether a university could be a co-op. All staff, like the John Lewis Partnership, as genuine economic partners in a truly democratic organisation (see also article on the Uni of Mondragon). Students who, like the customers of the co-op shops, could become members and be paid dividends on their fees. Alumni could remain members, perhaps.

The problem with universities in their current form is that they “treat professionals as employees”, he argues. This means that running difficulties and big decisions are seen as “management’s problem”, not “our problem”.
Give staff a slice of ownership and control and they are more likely to take responsibility, [Mervyn Wilson, quoted from here)

I like the idea that students could become members too. Perhaps that could help the Students' Union to find a fuller and renewed role.

There are already co-operative schools in this country and perhaps they could offer us a glimpse of how it could be.

The co-operative trust model embeds co-operative values and principles into schools. These include open membership, equal democratic participation (one member, one vote) and a clear line of accountability from those who manage the schools to those that use the school and its extended services. Importantly this offers schools the opportunity to involve the wider community in the running of the school, including local people, businesses, voluntary groups, charities, parents, pupils and staff through membership of a ‘Council’ or ‘Forum’. The ‘Council’ appoints trustees to the trust which, in turn, appoints governors to the governing body of the school. The Council plays a pivotal role in delivering the trust’s objectives in accordance with the core co-operative values.  (quoted from here)

Co-operative university seminar | The Co-operative College: This approach offers a new take on debates over privatisation, marketisation and the defence of the ‘public university’ It'll be interesting to hear what the outcomes of the seminar are in a few days time.
PS An article pointing to some of the seminar papers here. One of the slides in the presentation cited gives a useful summary of why bother which seems to pull together the various things that have gone through my mind about the topic.

• Disenfranchisement / Alienation of academic labour (casualization, instrumentalism, performativity, managerialism) 

• Challenge to notion of student as consumer 

• Market volatility, competition, differentiation 

• Alignment of values with governance  perhaps benefits performance & bottom line

And another slide notes an alignment of academic and co-op values: "Co-operative values are (broadly) academic values:
self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity"

See also article on the Uni of Mondragon and the New University Cooperative of Canada.

Pseudo-education & linguistic prescriptivism

It's really nice to find someone not only making points that I have every so often made in this blog, but doing so with the kind of passion I also feel about it: See here Pseudo-education as a weapon: Beyond the ridiculous in linguistic prescriptivism | Metaphor Hacker: here are some bits I particularly liked.

“educated” people go about spouting nonsense when it comes to language. This nonsense seems to have its origins in half-remembered injunctions of their grade school teacher. And because the prime complainers are likely to either have been “good at language” or envied the teacher’s approbation of those who were described as being “good at language”, what we end up with in the typical language maven is a mishmash of linguistic prejudice and unjustified feeling smug superiority. Every little linguistic label that a person can remember, is then trotted out as a badge of honor regardless of how good that person is at deploying it.

It's that linguistic prejudice and smug superior feeling that gets me. I find galling the misplaced self-assurance of being 'right' about for example, so-called split infinitives. Misplaced becasuse it doesn't stand up to more than about 30 seconds of more careful thought about the nature of culture, language and the construction of 'authority'. So it's right that ...

those who spout the loudest, get a reputation of being the “grammar experts” and everybody else who preemptively admits that they are “not good at grammar” defers to them and lets themselves be bullied by them.

Quite so; I have people in mind who fit the loud spouting description ... So kudos to Dominik for calling out one of these spouters, here's a relevant excerpt:

People who spell they’re, there and their interchangeably know the grammar of their use. They just don’t differentiate their spelling. It’s called homophony ... all languages have some high profile homophones that cause trouble for spelling Nazis but almost never for actual understanding. Why? Because when you speak, there is no spelling.

And the real issue therefore is simply about efficiency and clarity in a visual medium which has fewer sensory channels to offer the message (pitch, gesture, facial expression, speed of delivery are all lost in writing). The point is the way that this kind of censure-ship is actually part of a sign-system which is about power and status and therefore has the potential to create feelings of shame or disempowerment and so constitue un-agapaic behaviour and even perpetuate hegemonic situations.

 when pseudo-knowledge about language is used as an instrument of power, I think it is right to call out the perpetrators and try to shame them. Sure, linguists laugh at them, but I think we all need to follow the example of the Language Log and expose all such examples to public ridicule. Countermand the power.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Coffeeshopification of HE?

This is a fascinating article.
The Speculist � Blog Archive � In the Future Everything Will Be A Coffee Shop The following quote may give you a flavour of why:

...cheaper ultimately wins. Repeat that story a million times over the next few years and you begin to see how the local colleges – which already are overcharging for their product – begin to suffer in favor of free programs like MITx.

Eventually you could have local campuses becoming places where MITx students seek tutoring, network, and socialize – reclaiming some of the college experience they’d otherwise have lost.

Phil thought this sounded like college as a giant coffee shop. I agree. Every education would be ad hoc. It would be student-directed toward the job market she’s aiming for.

This trend toward… coffeeshopification… is changing more than just colleges

This seems to me to be very interesting. Not least because it throws into relief what it is that HEI's might be offering. Tuition? Accreditation? The student experience?
I think that probably, at the end of the day accreditation is probably the front runner and in some cases tuition. The question in my mind is whether the coffeeshopification might lead to a disagregating of tuition from accreditation.

Of course, as a HEI chaplain I've got to start to wonder what this would mean for such as myself and indeed the whold and currently growing army of student support workers. The revenue for them (us) comes from degree fees. A disaggregation between accreditation (that is the award) and tuition also disaggregates support and welfare which are then, presumably, remerged into the societal background.
But what of communities of researchers and scholarship? What happens to those in a cooffeshopified HE system? Follow the money: where will the funding come from? How will scholars be supported? I'm afraid the most likely answer looks to me like corporations, NGOs and GOs but in a more ad hoc way.

Hmmm still thinking, but this has certainly got me intrigued.

Teenagers begin high court challenge against tuition fee rise

I don't think they'll succeed, but it'll be interesting if the case enables the facts to be heard. See here: Teenagers begin high court challenge against tuition fee rise | Education | guardian.co.uk:

Two teenagers have begun a case in the high court against the government's decision to let universities almost treble tuition fees next year

It will all hinge on two main challenges:

(1)... the rise in fees is in breach of the right to education protected in the Human Rights Act 1998. That right does not guarantee free higher education, but it does place curbs on steps that limit access to higher education ... and

(2) ... the government failed to give "due regard" to promoting equality of opportunity as required under the Race Relations, Sex Discrimination and Disability Discrimination Acts.

I don't think either will succeed because I suspect that the conditions under which the finances are actually granted are likely not to be considered a bad deal. In the case of the first objection, the fact that the student finance arrangements are arguably better than the previous arrangements (and I would say, in effect, closer to grants and a graduate tax) and in relation to the second objection; it's not debt as we normally understand it: it is written off if unpaid by a certain point, it is only payable on a PAYE basis once ones income reaches a (higher than present) certain point. It's in effect, a hypothecated graduate tax. The odd thing is that a Conservative administration has swallowed the idea -it's occured because it has been dressed up to look like a safely capitalist loan. But in effect, if the investment doesn't produce a graduate with the kind of lifetime increase in earnings usually predicted, well, the government picks up the bill. That's the real worry: sometime in the future, the books may not balance ...

But perhaps I've misunderstood something.

Of course, that is not to say anything about the rights and wrongs of various approaches to financing HE.

While we're on the topic, however, I think it may be worth considering an article about the future of HE. In this case in the USA, but I think some of the issues are transferable.

http://faithoncampus.com/four-disruptions-that-could-shake-up-college-ministry/ I'm particularly interested in the demographic issue combined with the issue of whether HE will continue to be considered a good investment. And on that issue, it's also worth having a read of this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/oct/31/university-open-days-soar; the consumer approach is finally coming home to roost; the faint beginnings have been with us a little while, but it seems to me that here it arrives in fulness.

Victims of metaphor: serious crimes and stepping into creativity

the eight Buffalo schoolgirls “were victims, though no one realized it at the time, not only of a rapist, but of a metaphor.”

You might reasonably ask how that could be.Well it is to do with how the police investigating framed their task and how that framing was summed up in metaphor (or is that vice versa?) In this case the police didn't put certain information into the public domain that could have pceweted further rapes because they saw their task as catching the bad guy rather than saving girls from violation.

And this article on dehumanisation in generating violence seems to show a similar process at work: reframing using metaphors* to categorise and 'prime' responses.

The articles referenced here report some research into how metaphoric framing affects reasoning ability in relation to crime.The article links this to the way that science is reported (because in actual fact, popularising science relies on metaphor and simile) but the same could be said of practical theology.

This insight tells us how important it can be that we reflect on the way that we are perceiving and thinking about things. We can be trapped in our own approaches and limited perceptions. By questioning them and consciously seeking to look at them differently or to supplement them using other images, models or metaphors we can create new possibilities, new futures, more resilient solutions more creative responses. In theological reflection the exploration/analysis should be a point of recognition of the metaphors, models or images that we currently use and to become aware that they may be limited and pull in new-to-us ways to view whatever it is. In the reflection stage we consciously try to bring to bear the riches of biblical imagery or incidents which can in turn open up not only different ways to think about whatever it is but also give us the possibility of perceiving and connecting with the ways of God in it.


*Though David Livingstone Smith claims that 'untermenschen' is not a metaphor but literal. I'm not so sure that works not when the term is linked as it was to terms like "vermin" or "disease" applied to people. It seems to me that untermenschen in that case is merely a catch-all term for a cluster of metaphors aimed at reframing a certain group in terms that made an implicit case for their enslavement and eventual elimination.

Vonnegut: how to get a degree

Apropos of checking out Kurt Vonnegut's use of science and anthropology in his science fiction, I found this amusing wee story. Vonnegut is the writer:

 I got a letter from a new dean at Chicago, who had been looking through my dossier. Under the rules of the university, he said, a published work of high quality could be substituted for a dissertation, so I was entitled to an M.A. He had shown Cat’s Cradle to the anthropology department, and they had said it was halfway decent anthropology, so they were mailing me my degree

Now this got my attention because I recently suggested to  a colleague that a possible assessment task relating to church history might be to rewrite the endings to a couple of short stories I read. They are alternative timeline stories where the writers manage to rewrite Christianity out of the picture. The task I would set would be to take the story on a bit further, take on the 'what if' of the story but develop the story in such a way that Christian faith endures in the timeline. The assessment criteria would be historical plausibility (which would rest on a good understanding of the actual history) and theological integrity in relation to the context.


The book is below and the particular stories to think on (though there are at least two others worth considering) The Wandering Christian and A Letter from the Pope.


Of course the other interesting thing is that people want to write Christianity out of history.

Organic vs mechanical metaphors

A couple of days ago, reading an Adult Education conference report, I discovered that there had been a question about a part of it entitled 'tools for education'. The challenge was whether we could find a more organic metaphor than the mechanical one employed there. I take it that the point is that 'tools' implicitly frame learners as machines and educators as mechanics. Or at least the classroom as a machine. There is an implication that the right application of tools and techniques will produce 'learning'. Of course it is more complex than that, and that is just the point. The kind of things that are complex are often organic. The point is that there isn't a simple input-output thing going on, rather several inputs running through a dynamical and interactive system producing a series of outputs which have statistical correlations but not inevitable ones.

Anyway, what organic metaphor could do the duty for what 'tools' attempts to capture and does so in a way that meaningfully captures something about the complex dynamical nature of the exercise of teaching and learning.

The only thing that I've managed to come up with is 'genes'; they are a simple finite set of things which combine to produce things of great complexity. However, they are not the only factor: we now know that they are affected in their expression by things like hormones and even other environmental factors. So while genes have a determinative role, they are not all that is at work.

Of course the difficulty may be that the metaphor is not immediately clear. 'Genes for education' doesn't sound like it's a metaphor yet. It tends to sound like it may be a literal statement about our genetic dispositions to learn.

So, back to the drawing board. Or do you think it could work? Or is there a better metaphor lurking out there?

Organic Organizational Design: "From our industrial age roots, organizations were thought to have clear boundaries and assumed an authoritarian, hierarchical pyramid like organizational structure. Our organizations reflected a mechanistic model. This was effective for the time since the need for responding to change was not as immediate. Access to information was not easy nor was the workforce as educated. Access to information and decision making was concentrated at the top. This authoritarian hierarchical model provided clarity, consistency, and control."

Mentor-protege relationships: Age matters

This research needs extending into causes, but the reality of the phenomenon seems clear. Here's a synopsis: Mentor-protegerelationships: Age gap really does matter. And the cash value seems to be: "Older and overstretched mentors may be too far removed from their young proteges' experience to train them effectively. There is a disconnect."

This is clearly important in the design of educational experiences, though we should hold off too-agist a take on it: some of potential causes could affect the matter greatly: if it is to do with seniority, responsibility rather than empathy and identification then it may not be age as such but the correlates of age in institutional cultures.

The other intriguing possibility is the missional one: that clergy rarely seem to develop vocations or even 'conversions' in people more than 10 years either side of their own age ....

Private schools entrench privilege

If you're interested in education's role in creating, or not, a just society with opportunity for all to fulfil potential, then this is a must-read article. I seem to recall some of these stats, but collected together they seem to make a compelling case to change the way we organise education in the UK. It's here: How private schools ensure a life of privilege for their pupils | Education | The Observer And here's a taster:

"By the time this September's intake of five-year-olds arrives at the school gates, their futures are already being shaped. A bright baby from a poor background is liable to be overtaken by a less bright baby from a wealthy background by the age of 22 months, boosted by educated parents and a stimulating home environment, according to research first published by the then education secretary Estelle Morris. And that's just the start.

Almost 30% of children on free school meals did not get five good GCSEs last year: two thirds of children from lower socio-economic groups do not make it to A-levels. Children on free school meals represent just a staggering 0.5% of all pupils gaining three As at A-level, the magic circle eligible for places at top universities.

And it is not for lack of innate ability. The Sutton Trust, a charity that campaigns to improve educational opportunities for young people from non-privileged backgrounds, estimates that every year 60,000 pupils in the top 20% of their peer group academically do not make it to higher education. Bright pupils who are educated in poor neighbourhoods are more likely to be steered into NVQs, not academic exams, the trust's research suggests."

I'm particularly interested in that last remark because, making adjustments for era, that was me in the 70's and it is frustrating to think that it is still happening. By dint of opportunity and determination I did manage to get beyond the place in society that was being made for me. However, it did mean that I have played a long catch up in some areas to develop skills and discover perspectives that were 'handed' to those in grammar and private education. It shouldn't be that way.

Learning -Social And Computational

At one level this is no surprise, but it's always good to take stock of the emerging evidence. Learning Is Both Social And Computational, Supported By Neural Systems Linking People: "principles that are emerging from cross-disciplinary work: learning is computational, learning is social, and learning is supported by brain circuits linking perception and action that connect people to one another"
Now this article is mostly focused on babies learning where I'm more looking for adult-learning related stuff. Nevertheless, we should recognise that we don't entirely leave behind the childhood stuff. I've just been on a conference where I was reminded that learning is still something we do all the time; we are either learning or consolidating or building on or revising our learning so far. "We can learn what to do by watching others, and we also can come to understand other people through our own actions," -we never stop doing that.

In another article on similar themes but analysed differently because the research is related to learning and artificial intellingence.

homo sapiens also draw on three uniquely human social skills that are fundamental to how we learn and develop: imitation, which accelerates learning and multiplies learning opportunities; shared attention, which facilitates social learning; and empathy and social emotions, which are critical to understanding human intelligence and appear to be present even in prelinguistic children.

It's the shared attention that got my attention because of the perspective I mention elsewhere of us always learning (I would say that we are defined in part as learning beings), then classroom or intentional learning has to be social and the chief mechanisms would be about co-ordinating shared attention. It seems to me that most things that we know about good teaching and learning devolve from that ...

How does learning happen best?

I've been teaching or rather trying to facilitate learning about theological reflection. I keep an eye on research as best I can to help me to reflect ongoingly on things learning. One of the things I put before students is a bunch of models of theological reflection. The main one of these is an adaptation of the Kolb cycle; the pastoral cycle or spiral (there are others) One of the things I have said to students is that we should regard this as a tool for making sure that the things that happen when we reflect at our best are built into our reflection and become second nature to us: they are the ingredients of good reflection and that therefore we may notice that things are not as tidy as the models would seem to imply. This was simply being honest on my part: my observation of using the pastoral spiral to facilitate reflection on critical incidents or aspects of placement experience showed me that things that fit under the different phases of the spiral/cycle simply do not appear in the 'right' order often. A thought about an action point may actually feed back to analysis because it enables us to see a dimension of the situation afresh. Or it may feed back to reflection by exposing a theological assumption or opening up a theological vista not previously noted. The same kind of feed-back or feed-forward things can be seen with all of the staging points on the spiral/cycle.

So I felt affirmed to have been pointed to this article,
How does learning happen best? in which Phil Race makes a consonant observation: "I maintain that human brains are much more sophisticated than merely to perform sequential operations in any particular order. Our brains work on overlapping areas all at once. Whatever we do, we have feelings about it. We're always making sense of the feedback we get as we do things or as we think things. We're always in the process of making sense of the experience of what we try to do or try to think. In short, all the stages in our learning are going on all the time. Certainly, we may focus on one aspect of learning more than others at a given time, but we don't suddenly stop doing one thing and switch to another."
No argument from me!
He offers instead a ripples on a pond model. I'm not actually convinced that this is better in terms of the diagram, but the idea of feedback is at least conceptually built in. I note, too, that he is looking at learning through a different set of staging points (helpfully recognising the emotional side of the matter too). I'm going to be thinking about the modelling even more now, though ....

Can a revolutionary new strategy deliver exam success?

Interesting: wondering whether and how to incorporate this into my learning facilitation .... Patrick Barkham: Can a revolutionary new strategy deliver exam success? | Education | The Guardian: "90-minute GCSE science lesson plan that involved 20-minute bursts of intense learning followed by 10-minute breaks of focused physical activity"
The whole article indicates that there may be a lot more to be researched. And the big question might be about higher order thinking versus 'mere' factoid retention ... nevertheless, worth keeping an eye on.

Religious / faith literacy

Joanna Cox of the CofE's adult education unit sent the following out in her regular Friday mailing.

A concept being discussed increasingly recently is that of "Faith Literacy" / "Religious Literacy" (and, of course the reverse case of illiteracy in these areas - a brush that you may have heard used to tar various bits of officialdom!). While the issue has been the source of much debate in school based religious education for some time, a variety of concerns are now bringing the matter into a much wider arena - not least because of concerns about community cohesion and social exclusion.

Issues around this are likely to come increasingly 'onto the radar' of those with a range training / development briefs in the church - and it could be useful to liaise with diocesan inter-faith advisors particularly. I gather that a couple of interfaith organisations are thinking about developing faith / religious literacy "curricula" - partly to encourage officialdom / service providers etc to work sensitively. Our training networks could potentially have useful input here - both in terms of educational / learning processes, and in relation to Christian input .

The following description of "religious literacy" comes from ACT - The Association of Christian Teachers.

A religiously literate person is one who:

(a) Demonstrates an awareness of what life looks like from both theistic and atheistic points of view;
(b) Knows and understands the central determining features of certain religions (e.g. Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism) and secular ideologies(e.g. humanism);

(c) Recognises religious and secular worldviews in practices and ideas (e.g. relating to the natural environment) and has some grasp of what makes each religion/belief system what it is;

(d) Appreciates the principal effects of each religion/belief system in terms of the values, attitudes and impact it generates in individuals, families and communities;

(e) Values the development of their own religious insight;
(f) Values the development of religious insight for other people.

However there may well be other definitions / understandings of the terms in use, and it would be interesting to hear from any of you who are aware of / working with different perspectives or approaches.

The ACT definitions (which seem to be from this paper -the email didn't have a reference) are very interesting and my first reaction was to think them right and proper as parts of a definition. Then I began to think ... actually I think it's possible that quite a number of clergy and ordinands would fail to be religiously literate by the standards of part (c) and might mainly touch (d) in terms of negative impacts. Many, I suspect would struggle also with (f) if it meant that religious insight kept the person in their own religion. Now recall that ACT is an evangelical organisation, so this is doubly an interesting list. I do think that the list is probably about right; but it indicates to me that we have a way to go even with 'religious professionals'. Part of the task is to be able to make a robust biblical case for evangelicals to take this seriously. Unfortunately the ACT seems not to do this and as it stands I would anticipate some responses to write it off. However, I think that the longer perspective of loving others as ourselves, valuing human freedom of conscience, leaving room for the work of the Spirit and general realpolitik of good neighbouring demands that we take such an approach seriously.

Bank of Mum&Dad

I can't decide how much of a story this is. Though the fact I have felt moved to blog it probably answers that. I identify with it. Not reluctantly: I help fund my sons through university. But my motives for doing so comment further on this summary statement.
"'The bank of mum and dad is still a key contributor to students affording further education, even with the additional funding that is available to them.'"
About that additional funding: would that be the meagre burseries or the extra loan? In the former case, it's great to have something, but it's not enough to do without the latter. And while the loan is about as non-toxic as a loan can be (index linked, minimal rate of interest, collected by PAYE like a top-up tax, debt cancelled on retirement if you've not managed to pay it off, and so forth), it is still a loan and many of us don't want our kids to have more of that hanging round them when they start work than they have to. And what's more it's a bit of a disincentive to do voluntary work or to take work for the public good rather than remuneration because the interest still accrues. So, since many of us are actually funding our kids in part, is there an argument for grants paid for out of taxes and squeezing the regressive element out of the equation?
Most university students funded by parents | Education | guardian.co.uk:

Is it Better to Be a Creative Generalist or a Specialist?

There's some really intriguing thoughts in here about thinking, creativity and teamwork. And, being a sucker for graphic representations, here's a starter.

It's from this article: Wishful Thinking � Blog Archive � Is it Better to Be a Creative Generalist or a Specialist? And, rightly refuses the dichotomy: "we are all generalists and specialists to some degree. Some people will have a longer vertical stroke, others a wider cross stroke, with many variations of size and proportion. (No sniggering at the back, please.) The most wide-ranging generalist will usually have one or two favourite specialisms at which s/he excels; and even the most committed specialist will need some grasp of other disciplines if s/he wants to achieve recognition and rewards." The 'T' referred to is this:

Employers say education standards falling: don't confuse them with the facts

Now this is worrying. According to polls of employers reported here Employers call government statistics into question and find education standards to be falling | Education | guardian.co.uk this result came forth: "In a survey of business leaders, the IoD found that nearly half its members thought the quality of school education has declined, and the literacy and numeracy skills of young people has fallen over the past ten years."
And where's their evidence? See my blog entry the other day to see why I'm a little skeptical of the trustworthiness of this impression. You see, I don't think that this is anything more than the great British reflex of grumpy old men and women who can't stand the thought that youngsters might actually have had a better education than them and take refuge in the different curriculum to make indvidious comparisons which have little basis in fact and much basis in prejudice. However, in this case, the worrying thing is that it is people who might have an influence on hiring and firing hold such views. Very worrying.

Education: Golden age? It was always thus...

"'A trawl through reports on examinations from the Twenties upwards reveals that there was no 'golden age',' said David Wright, chief executive of the institute. He cited an official report on O-level papers in 1958 which found: 'The standard of English was no worse than in previous years, but is still very unsatisfactory... The most evident, if not the most serious weakness, is in the spelling. A few examples will suffice: ammount, Brittain, Britian, buisness, bussiness, deffinate, fourty, fivety, ocurred, occured, payed, polytitions, publically, usualy.'"
It's a bit like reports about loutishness: there are some very modern-sounding tirades from practically ever age we have written records from. The reality is that our kids are probably better educated than ever. It's just easier to look at the inevitable downside and indulge our favourite passtime of moaning. And I speak as a trainee grumpy old man!
Education: Golden age of exams is a myth, say experts | Education | The Observer:

When It Comes To Abstinence Teens, Adults Aren't Speaking The Same Language

You'd have thought that, since Genesis 2 shows a pretty clear story of how prohibition invokes the prohibited and presents it to desire/mimetic drive thus making it likely that 'fall' will take place, Christians would have a 'naturally' more nuanced view of things like education regarding things that are not good to do. But not so, and it is likely that many of the abstinence programmes alluded to in this research are church-based 'just say no' sorts of thing.When It Comes To Abstinence Teens, Adults Aren't Speaking The Same Language: "'Abstinence-only programs often only look at the negatives of sex, not the positive. This is especially important for young women who need to have control over having sex and having safe sex,' Masters said. 'With these programs you often hear 'sex just happens' and adolescents are having less safe sex. This detracts from adolescents having a choice, and this leads to more dangerous sex with more sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies.'" It just seems that the more research there is on this, the more it seems that broader, holistic, consent and choice based approaches make sense overall. It's obliquity again. Sometimes to achieve something you have to approach it indirectly and recognise that what you are looking for is a side-consequence.

University aspiration gap remains: it's the learning styles!

Not surprising but still concerning: University aspiration gap stays stubbornly wide, survey shows | higher news | EducationGuardian.co.uk: "While overall the proportion of children who say they would like to go to university has increased from 53% in 2000 to 62% in 2008, the gap between the social classes has not narrowed."
It's about aspiration, yes. And it is good that more now aspire to university. But I suspect that we're still suffering from a malaise borne of an inappropriately narrow view of education and 'academic' which goes right to the start of formal education and begins to exclude able kids who happen to have background detriments or who are not able to key into dominant schooled learning styles. And half the problem is that the parents who take most interest are the ones who like it that way, and the ones who don't, don't because they too were failed by the system. For them and their offspring school is at best a child-minding service and more often a form of day-prison. How do you get a child to aspire to do more of the same voluntarily? And go into debt for it?