Oh, Lordy Lord *

Yesterday I attended a seminar at the House of Lords, somewhere I’d never been before. In terms of the nation’s heritage, it’s grand and impressive inside, if somewhat reminiscent of a public school. It’s well worth a visit, especially as it gives one some important clues as to why politicians seem so stuck in the past rather than looking towards the future.

In many ways, the session I attended was little better. It was entitled ‘A New Vision for Design Education: is design learning at school fit for purpose?’, and organised by the ‘Associate Parliamentary Design & Innovation Group‘, whoever they are. It was a gathering of the great and the good in the field, all very eloquently expressing the purpose and benefits of design education. Here’s the question I asked the panel:

“All the values and aspirations expressed here today were initially identified and developed in the 1970s. It didn’t succeed then in scaling itself up and being embedded in the curriculum, so how and why should it now, particularly in the context of the current political ideology in which Schools Minister Nick Gibbs recently welcomed the decrease in the time that pupils studied subjects such as Art and Design, Design and Technology and Drama as ‘an encouraging trend’?”

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/education/timetable-boost-for-traditional-class-subjects-7678723.html

Sadly no-one really responded to this challenge, although one of the panel did say something about it being important not to be pessimistic, which I regret to say I still am. No-one really said anything that had not been said already during the past 35 years. It was all largely about preparing students for life in the last quarter of the 20th Century rather than the first quarter of the 21st Century, and as a means of recruiting new designers for the old profession. The potential impact on design education of the rapid shift towards on-line learning, and how the industry itself will need to respond to the changing circumstances of a population being able to design and make things for themselves at a local level using CAD and 3D printers, was not mentioned.  And I didn’t notice anyone in the audience with an iPad, and neither was I aware of anyone providing a live commentary via Twitter.

On the positive side it was good to hear everyone essentially in agreement about the importance of design education, and an emerging consensus that a lot of the problem was that the message was not being co-ordinated and driven by a single body, though there were no suggestions as to who this might be, let alone any volunteers. Strangely no-one mentioned the fact that design education provides an almost perfect fit with the wider specification for what are currently referred to as 21st Century Skills.

However I did learn one thing I didn’t know before. Apparently no current member of parliament has the faintest idea what design is all about (OK, well we have all already guessed that). Except for one, who owns a 15% stake in his family wallpaper and fabric design business. Any idea as to who it might be? No? OK, here’s a clue:

http://www.osborneandlittle.com/

* Lordy Lord – as in the expression used to “express frustration, exasperation, worry, or tiredness”. Pretty much sums up my response really.

 

Image credit: Oliver Quinlan

A brief history of dates

Until the media start to change the way they portray education it’s going to be hard to start to shift the popular belief that learning facts is still what matters the most. Take this item, which appeared recently in the Guardian online:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/quiz/2012/mar/06/history-dates-quiz?CMP=twt_gu

So how well do you know your British History?

I don’t think it matters to the general population whether children know for a fact that Richard III was killed in 1054, 1301 or 1485*, or if the Battle of Trafalgar was in 1799, 1805 or 1815. And anyway if they really want or need to know it, now it only takes a matter of seconds searching on the Internet to find out. What would perhaps be more helpful is to understand more about why these things happened and what the consequences were, alongside knowing roughly what order they happened in. Meanwhile more emphasis on the changes of lives of ordinary people tends to have more relevance and interest for ‘ordinary’ students than the lives of the Kings and Queens, politicians of their day, and the great battles of their age. Reference to the achievements of more women would not go astray either.

The Guardian item was derived from this report in the Daily Mail on the proposed new National Curriculum History. The content of the curriculum, and the essay as the means for assessment, appears to serve one key purpose – to prepare students more effectively for studying history at Oxbridge. To put it another way, around 99.999% of the population are going to be required to follow a course quite inappropriate for their needs in order that that the 00.0001% will be more successful on entry to university.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting history isn’t important. It’s essential we all learn to understand how to find out about the past to understand the present and anticipate the future. Indeed I suggest history should be embedded in all ‘subjects’, from maths to geography and science to d&t. I also have a theory that the best way to approach history is to study it backwards from the present – so that instead of starting with the Romans (or whoever), the curriculum should start with the relevance of today and deal first with how and why things are the way they currently are, and so on back over the decades and centuries.

“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history that we make today.” (Henry Ford, Chicago Tribune, 1916)

* And anyway, as every schoolchild from the early 1980s knows, the most important fact to remember about Richard III is that he was unintentionally killed (in 1485) by Edmund, “Blackadder”, when Edmund thought he is trying to steal his horse.

Why I’m feeling none too exciTED

http://tedchris.posterous.com/behind-todays-ted-ed-launch#comment

On Tuesday, there was an announcement from TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) about the launch of TED-Ed, its latest initiative/mission ‘to capture and amplify the voices of great educators around the world’. Sounds great, but of course in reality it’s all about hosting short video clips of teachers lecturing students. So yet another case of ‘New technology, Old Learning‘. Though, to be fair, at least the TED videos, unlike most of the blackboard-based Khan Academy ones, involve the production of a good quality visual experience that makes the content more accessible, understandable and memorable. And they do at least ask the audience questions and promote curiosity. Which is great if you are following an intellectually academic pathway, but not so helpful if you are a different type of learner.

Now I’ve no objection to this as such, provided of course TEDEd continue to fund high production values and not rely on free second-rate contributions from Sunday afternoon wannabe video directors – but given the vast, incalculable number of ‘facts’ there are these days that they are going to need to cover, that seems somewhat inevitable.

But what really concerns me is the extraordinary enthusiasm with which this (and the Khan Academy) is being greeted by teachers, as if it’s the best thing since the invention of the ‘chalk and talk’ blackboard approach to education, and somehow heralds the start of the great learning revolution we’ve all been waiting for since, er.. the invention of the blackboard. So when we’re informed that:

- Video does indeed have a powerful role to play in education.
- It allows great lessons to be shared online with vastly bigger audiences.
- It allows teachers to show things that would be hard to show live in every class.
- It also can allow kids to learn at their own pace (hello, replay button).
- The best length for a video to be used in class is under 10 minutes.
- The best videos often use animation or other visualization techniques to deliver better explanations and more compelling narratives.

It’s as if back in the 1980s I had never thought to wheel the TV set and VCR into the classroom and showed my students a short video clip or programme that in somewhat enhanced the content of the lesson. At the time we also curated a video library that students were able to access and watch anytime, anyplace. Or that I had not been producing short ‘bite-sized’ audio-visual ‘slide-shows’ delivered over college networks for a FE publisher back in the mid/late 1990s. So what exactly is new?

But the real danger, as I keep going on about in this blog, is that the the process of learning becomes increasingly seen and understood by the public, and promoted by the politicians and media, as being about getting students to sit and passively watch knowledge-based video clips produced for free by enthusiastic teachers, followed by a series of computer-generated and marked multiple choice questions to supposedly assess ‘ability’. This may be more cost-effective, but isn’t education.

Meanwhile here’s what Tony had to say about TEDEd in a recent email…

‘Learning is not (just) ‘sage on the stage’ knowledge transfer. And even if it was, it is not linear (press play sit back and absorb with no interaction or changes in direction), and it is different when you record it as it stops being a living experience. It’s not even the difference between a live performance or a film of the live performance, or a film inspired by the live performance – you had to be there. It’s humming it on the way home and trying to play it and deriving new stuff from it, and painting to it and dancing to it.  It’s a starting point in an active process of doing and creating something of your own, not just a cerebral card collection of other people’s ideas.

And even if you can ignore this unforgivable misunderstanding of the learning process, the really evil thing about it is that it completely denies the existence of the learner as a participant with any contribution or difference or value or purpose of their own. How arrogant. It is the worst form of educational imperialism performed as monologues when at the very least it should be a structured dialogue, and at best an improvisation.’

Oh, and it’s good to know it’s not just Tony and me. Here’s someone else who has some some doubts:

http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.in/2012/03/khan-academy-not-good-pedagogy-and-not.html

Raspberry Pi in the sky

A Raspberry that gives kids a taste for tinkering (Telegraph)

Raspberry pi computing under the bonnet (Guardian)

Over the past couple of days there’s been a great deal of press coverage over the launch of something called Raspberry Pi, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that with a single stroke the problem of teaching children how to code had been solved. But start asking important questions such as – err – ‘What exactly is Raspberry Pi?‘ – and suddenly there’s an awkward silence. As usual with a ‘techie’-led device there’s a distinct lack of consideration about communicating its features and benefits to a non-techie audience, or indeed of realities of the use the product might or might not get to be used for.

Indeed, for all you non-techies, perhaps you’ll find this ‘QuickStart’ tutorial exciting, informative  and easy to follow?

Or perhaps not. Anyway, as far as I can make out, Raspberry Pi is a small circuit board with a relatively low-powered computer chip that limits its use to the fairly ‘basic’ programming functions of the early micro-computers of the 1980s. But at the same time it’s also very cheap for such a device – about £20 to £30. The main pitch therefore appears to be that ‘every child should be given one’.

But simply handing each child such a device and expecting them to learn how to write code is a bit like giving every child a Latin textbook and expecting them all to magically become Latin scholars. While this approach will certainly assist those children who have good teachers and a real interest in learning programming, for the vast majority it is going to remain inaccessible and unattractive. Or – to extend the analogy made in several newspapers – it’s a bit like giving a child a car-repair manual with the expectation that in future they will all be able to maintain their own cars – appropriate for some in the 1960s and 70s maybe – but now everything is safely hidden away in a black box where you can’t get at it. And anyway, today most people are much less interested in tinkering with how the car works than they are in where it enables them to go.

Raspberry Pi has its merits and the potential to help a number of teachers to teach a number of children about coding. But maybe it’s a bit more of a Humble Pi in terms of a breakthrough resource? What the media, techies and the politicians forget, or fail to understand, is that in the development of an appropriate IT-based curriculum there needs to be a clear and compelling purpose, supported by a good teacher with a sophisticated ability to mentor and support rather than lead and drill. Teachers also need the creativity to design and scaffold exciting appropriate tasks as well as the technical skills to provide support where necessary and is called for. And that while some children may have a particular aptitude for programming, others are going to be more interested in the potential of developing social media, gaming, and designing websites and apps that satisfy human needs and wants.

Meanwhile it’s essential to realise that the IT industry is not all about being able to sit and write a program. These days, collaborative, creative and agile problem-solving, management and communication skills are just as essential.

Teachers who can deliver all this are few and far between, and are already doing it with Arduinos and Lego Mindstorms and various other control kits as well as with established programs like Microworlds. And schools are already full of PCs that can run these programs.

It’s not more cheap and not particularly cheerful kit and kaboodle we need, but more intelligent and widespread support for teachers to help them use and exploit what’s already available.

And meanwhile perhaps the techies should do a bit more user research?

‘For Eben Upton…it is a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to long years of thinking and planning. “We have been working on the Pi for six years, but we have never tested it with children – the target market,” he says.’

Oh, and has anyone out there got the faintest idea as to why it’s called Raspberry Pi?

With thanks to Tony Wheeler for his contribution.

Making maths and English a more funky shade of pinker

What do you mean, you don’t know who this is?

Now for what is All Change Please’s 100th post, here are a few things that irritated me during the week.

First was the headline: Young unemployed ‘need maths and English at GCSE’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-15863830

“The report raises concerns that over the last few years, schools have been encouraging pupils to study for qualifications that are seen as easier to achieve to boost their position in league tables.

A government source said: “Under Labour millions of children were pushed into non-academic qualifications that were of little value”.

“The government is raising standards by allowing only the best qualifications to count in the league tables and increasing the number of children doing the academic subjects that businesses, parents and universities value most.”

This is, of course, complete nonsense. Virtually all pupils study maths and English to GCSE, so the issue of studying so-called ‘soft-subjects’ instead is irrelevant. And, while universities value academic subjects, the majority of businesses and parents don’t.

Employers are looking for a range of basic skills – such as how to write clearly and concisely using reasonably correct grammar and spelling, to work as part of a team, how to add up, take away, multiply and divide, and calculate percentages, be punctual, polite and reliable and have a good work ethic, etc. But this is a very small part of what the current ‘academic’ GCSEs in maths and English are essentially measuring. For those learners not destined for academia – and that’s at least 50% – far too much time is being spent trying to teach them high-level theoretical concepts at the expense of ensuring they are proficient at a basic level.

Meanwhile I’ve always been amused by the title ‘Functional skills’ (better known as ‘Funky skills’), which are defined as:

‘those core elements of English, mathematics and ICT that provide individuals with the skills and abilities they need to operate confidently, effectively and independently in life, their communities and work’. (QCDA, deceased)

I always want to ask what ‘non-functional’ skills are? My answer is of course ‘academic skills’, i.e. those that are of no practical use whatsoever…

What we really need is a qualification that is accepted and valued by potential employers as a recognition that a school-leaver has achieved basic standards in real-life applications of maths, English and IT. It could be taken at any time, during, say Key Stage 3 or 4, whenever the learner is ready, and sat more than once if necessary.

Not of course that it will make much difference, as there will still not be any jobs available for them, however well qualified they are.

Moving on, the Quote of the Week award goes to that nice elite Mr Gove, last seen on some yet-to-be-discovered, far, far away galaxy (if only…):

‘We can all marvel at the genius of Pythagoras, or Wagner, share in the brilliance of Shakespeare or Newton, delve deeper into the mysteries of human nature through Balzac or Pinker,’ he said.

‘I believe that denying any child access to that amazing legacy, that treasure-house of wonder, delight, stimulation and enchantment by failing to educate them to the utmost of their abilities is as great a crime as raiding their parents’ bank accounts – you are stealing from their rightful inheritance, condemning them to a future poorer than they deserve.

‘And I am unapologetic in arguing that all children have a right to the best. Yes, I am romantic in one sense, I suppose. I believe man is born with a thirst for free inquiry and is nearly everywhere held back by chains of low expectation.’

Read more, if you dare: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2065907/Michael-Goves-rallying-return-traditional-teaching-values.html#ixzz1ei2zIdoc

All Change Please! can just imagine the following conversation:

Human Resources Officer: So, we’re an innovative global  software engineering company. We need creative staff with a passion for emerging infrastructure nano-technologies and who are confident working with Perl, C++ and Python in an agile inter-disciplinary environment. So what have you got to offer us?

Job seeker: Well, err, to be honest I’ve not the faintest what you’re talking about, but if you like we could have a jolly interesting discussion about the brilliance of Shakespeare or Newton, or perhaps delve deeper into the mysteries of human nature through Balzac or Pinker*…

HR: Hmm. Have you considered working in a call centre?

* Just in case you’re wonder who Pinker is, according to Wikipedia:

Pinker is known within psychology for his theory of language acquisition, his research on the syntax, morphology, and meaning of verbs, and his criticism of connectionist (neural network) models of language. In The Language Instinct (1994) he popularized Noam Chomsky’s work on language as an innate faculty of mind, with the twist that this faculty evolved by natural selection as a Darwinian adaptation for communication, although both ideas remain controversial (see below). He also defends the idea of a complex human nature which comprises many mental faculties that are adaptive (and is an ally of Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins in many evolutionary disputes). Another major theme in Pinker’s theories is that human cognition works, in part, by combinatorial symbol-manipulation, not just associations among sensory features, as in many connectionist models.

Try telling that to Year 11 on a Friday afternoon.

And if you don’t know what this great man Pinker looks like, just go back to the top of this post.

Wait! There’s more…   O.M.G!

GCSE? It’s as easy as ABC

“Mind your own business, mate…”

So at last it’s GCSE results day, and yet again we are being treated to the TV spectacle of seeing groups of ever-so-clever students opening their plain brown exam envelopes only to discover that they’ve all got A*s.

Can we please see someone on TV open their exam results and discover they have ‘failed’ their A levels or GCSEs? How well have schools prepared them for this disappointment? It must be really distressing for them to witness the joy and delight of the great academic know-it-alls of their schools and anticipate that they are missing out on the glittering careers that must surely await them after they succeed with their A levels and eventually graduate from university. The problem is no-one has told them it’s not like that anymore, and that many graduates a degree and a large debt is probably the last thing they want right now.

So, although I don’t necessarily agree with the idea about lying about one’s grades, it’s great to come across Charlie Brooker’s recent, and very different media message, in which he concludes:

“Your grades are not your destiny: they’re just letters and numbers which rate how well you performed in one artificial arena, once.”

And finally, on the subject of ‘grade inflation’: “My exam results have come through: I got an A, B and C. I’m hoping they will  teach me the rest of the alphabet when I’m at college”.

Now this is what I call a free school…

Back in May last year I posted about the plans for new Free schools:  ‘Three’s no such thing as a Free school’ , and mentioned AS Neil’s famous, indeed infamous, Summerhill. In contrast to the usual negative media representation of the place, a much more positive account of the school appeared in a recent article in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/aug/19/summerhill-school-at-90?

Here are some extracts from the school policy document, taken from the school’s website:

To allow children to experience the full range of feelings, free from the judgement and intervention of an adult. Freedom to make decisions  always involves risk and requires the possibility of negative outcomes. Apparently negative consequences such as boredom, stress, anger, disappointment and failure are a necessary part of individual development.

To provide choices and opportunities that allow children to develop at their own pace and to follow their own interests. Summerhill does not aim to produce specific types of young people, with specific, assessed skills or knowledge, but aims to provide an environment in which children can define who they are and what they want to be.

To allow children to live in a community that supports them and that they are responsible for; in which they have the freedom to be themselves, and have the power to change community life, through the democratic process. All individuals create their own set of values based on the community within which they live. Summerhill is a community which takes responsibility itself. Problems are discussed and resolved through openness, democracy and social action. All members of the community, adults and children, irrespective of age, are equal in terms of this process.

To allow children to be completely free to play as much as they like. Creative and imaginative play is an essential part of childhood and development. Spontaneous, natural play should not be undermined or redirected by adults into learning experiences. Play belongs to the child.
“When my first wife and I began the school, we had one main idea: to make the school fit the child – instead of making the child fit the school” — A.S. Neill

Now if only all the new, so-called free schools were like Summerhill… Indeed, if only all schools were like Summerhill?

Why I’m voting for Mickey…

Will the proposed half-GCSE Vocational Qualifications become known as Minnie-Mouse courses?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2016995/Michael-Gove-4-500-Mickey-Mouse-courses-face-axe.html

As usual the Daily Mail can be relied upon to trivialise any story about education. Although the recommendations of the recent Wolf report are clear, it is thin on explanation and exemplification of what is unsatisfactory with current vocational education courses. Simply saying some are excellent and others aren’t is not terribly helpful. And seeking the views of employers and moving towards more external assessment is something we’ve heard many times before. Reducing the number of GCSE equivalents for each course might be seen as having some merit, but mainly for reducing the validity of vocational courses within academically-based school league tables, rather than putting the needs of students first – some of whom might actually have had a better chance of finding employment at the age of 16. Now all they will end up with is a string of F and G GCSE grades which are less likely to impress potential employers than evidence of real, on-the-job experience.

And while it is true that some courses have become little more than an exercise in completing politically-correct tick-boxes, what the Daily Mail article actually reveals that much of the course content is highly relevant to working life. For example, here is a proposed list of 50 things everyone should know how to do – precious few of which are covered in the eBacc.

Meanwhile I can’t help wondering why poor old Mickey Mouse is continually associated with vocational courses? Mickey was created by Disney in 1928 as a ‘pleasant, cheerful character always trying to do the best he could’, which  sounds to me a most positive attitude towards education.  The more negative association probably started when entering the name ‘Mickey Mouse’ on a ballot paper became a way of expressing dissatisfaction with the available election candidates, i.e. that Mickey Mouse could do a better job. Around the same time the phrase ‘Taking the Mickey’ – meaning to mock or ridicule – came into usage, and although not a reference to Mickey Mouse, the two seem to have become associated.

As a result ‘Mickey Mouse’ has over time come to mean ‘small-time’ or ‘trivial’, which is curious really, because in reality Mickey Mouse is an iconic, multi-million dollar, best-selling trademark – and as such exactly the sort of approach to business we should all be striving for if we are to revive the nation’s economy. So yet again it seems to be another example of the politicians and media perpetuating the old-school myth that only high-brow academic studies are of any value, and anything vocationally or commercially orientated, or relating to popular culture, is entirely worthless.

And finally…. for those readers still without a Twitter account:  Man goes to the doctors: “Doctor I’m addicted to twitter and I don’t know what to do”….Doctor: “Sorry I don’t follow you”…

That’s Gove’s Law…

First of all, remember Estelle Morris? She suddenly turned up this morning talking a great deal of sense in a damning critique of nice Mr Gove, suggesting that he is trying to replicate his own education for the nation’s children.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2011/jun/20/estelle-morris-michael-gove-video

What makes this even more worrying though is that it seems that nice Mr Gove did not seem to have a very good Science teacher while at school. In an extended piece in The (subscription required) Times on Saturday, also reported in The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jun/18/michael-gove-exams-gcse-schools

he claims that “What [students] need is a rooting in the basic scientific principles, Newton’s laws of thermodynamics and Boyle’s law.”

Now as every pre-National Curriculum schoolchild knows, Newton’s laws were all about motion, and not thermodynamics. Indeed the first and second laws of thermodynamics only emerged  in the 1850s, primarily out of the works of William Rankine, Rudolf Clausius, and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamics

Well maybe it’s just that nice Mr Gove doesn’t believe anything he reads in Wikipedia?

Meanwhile we really can’t afford to have the nation’s children all growing up to be mini-me Mr Goves.

Don’t Truss the Russell Group

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jun/15/a-level-subjects-preferred-by-universities-by-private-school-and-comprehensive?CMP=twt_gu
Here we go again:

‘Elizabeth Truss, MP for South West Norfolk,…. said students at comprehensives were being “mis-sold low quality subjects that are not accepted at top universities…. In March, Truss recommended an A-level Baccalaureate of rigorous A-levels, comprising at least an AS-level mathematics and an AS-level language or humanity. She said this would appear in school league tables and provide a “gold standard”, which would “give students a clear steer on the value of subjects”.’

The Russell Group obviously wish to ensure that the most able academic pupils end up studying at the universities that they represent, but of course this represents a very small proportion of the total school population. It might, therefore, be more appropriate to offer some alternative advice, i.e. that if a more typical student wants to have a successful ‘practical’ career in Accounting, Business Studies, Law, Design, the Media, the Performing Arts, the Music, Food or IT industry, Sports Management or Travel and Tourism, then perhaps they should be strongly advised not to take English Literature, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History, Geography or Languages at A level? If they are being wrongly encouraged to do these subjects by their school, then they are being ‘mis-sold’ academic subjects on the basis that they will automatically lead to guaranteed employment and a successful career.