Carry On… Up The Conservatives

Exclusive Breaking News !

All Change Please! – the blog that broke the news that the Government was being secretly run by International Rescue (Thunderbirds are Gove), can now reveal that, with the announcement today of the double-dip entendre recession, Thunderbirds have been sacked and the Cabinet has now been taken over by the cast of the Carry On films…

Prime Minister David ‘Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it infamy’ Cameron is in fact now none other than Kenneth Williams.

And yes, that’s Peter Butterworth as The PM’s manservant Nick Clegg

While Michael ‘Ooh Matron’ Gove is being expertly played by Charles Hawtrey, straight (or otherwise) from the 1950s.

And Frankie Howard is George ‘You might feel a slight prick’ Osborne

Here’s Kenneth  “A woman walks into a bar and asks for a double entendre, so the barman gives her one.” Clarke is played by Sid James

While Barbara Windsor appears as Theresa ‘Cheeky’ May

Wait, isn’t that Bernard Breslaw as William ‘Things are going to be hard’ Hague?

And finally here’s Joan Sims making a guest appearance as Mrs ‘This lady’s not for turning’ Thatcher

Meanwhile our on-the-scene reporter, Ivor Bigun claims to have photos of the entire cabinet immediately using the rear exit and going up the back passage of number 10. Just how long can they continue to keep it up? And when will Jeremy ‘stupid’ Hunt be forced to resign? Apparently Sgt Bung has been put in charge of the investigation.

And as for the current Tory slogan: “We’re all in this together“, the mind boggles…

What a Carry On…

With thanks to Tristram Ariss for the initial idea and selection of images

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.

O.M.G! (Oh. My. Gove…!)

King Gove the 1st of England

Well it seems that every state school in England is to receive a new copy of  a special edition of the King James Bible from the government – with a brief foreword by Michael Gove…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/nov/25/michael-gove-king-james-bible?CMP=twt_fd

“In a speech at Cambridge promoting the virtues of a classical education, he [Gove] called for a deeper study of literature – “Austen’s understanding of personal morality, Dickens’ righteous indignation, Hardy’s stern pagan virtue” – scientific reasoning, history and foreign languages.

Gove said that society should be more demanding of teachers and students. “We should recover something of that Victorian earnestness which believed that an audience would be gripped more profoundly by a passionate, hour-long lecture from a gifted thinker which ranged over poetry and politics than by cheap sensation and easy pleasures.”

Not content with dragging schools back to the 1950s, it now seems he is setting his sights even further – back to the 1850s.

Meanwhile in the Daily Mail… well, need I say any more?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2066317/Can-Michael-Gove-save-Britains-schools-education-Tory-leader.html

“Michael God now faces an almighty fight to impose his vision of a high-quality education on our country. Everyone who believes in education must support him.”

The Daily Mail doesn’t quite conclude.

However, this is all really just an opportunity to provide a link to this excellent post:

http://mattpearson.org/2011/11/25/the-myriad-confusions-of-the-godly-mr-gove/

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!

Flippin’ Tech!

It seems that the Khan Academy continues to get funded and promoted as the transformational answer to the future of education we’ve been waiting for all these years..

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/khan-academy-receives-5-million-to-accelerate-the-reinvention-of-education-2011-11-04

At one level I have no problem with students watching short video clips that support a broad-based learning experience, and maybe the Khan Academy will eventually get round to providing some that are actually inspiring and accessible. My main concern is that politicians, school managers, parents and even students themselves will come to accept that this is the apogee of what digital learning has to offer.

For example, one of this year’s new buzzphrases appears to be ‘Flip the Classroom‘, or ‘Flip-thinking‘. Essentially the idea is that instead of using classroom time to deliver fact-based learning, students watch knowledge-led video lectures for homework and spend their time in class applying what they have learnt, under the direction of their teacher. The suggestion is that “they can stop and review things when they want, do things at their own pace, do it when it’s convenient”, and that they need time out of class to “reflect, ponder, get to grips with the ideas“. That is of course assuming all children have access to the internet whenever they want or need it.

Flip the classroom every teacher should do this

Hopes that the internet can improve teaching may at last be bearing fruit

Flip-thinking

As a result the suggestion is that learning technologies – such as computers – should be removed from classrooms, which can then be transformed into more friendly ‘learning environments’. And of course that the Khan Academy continues to be hailed as the cutting edge of ICT for teaching and learning. Apparently Khan ‘gets it’. Well, I’m afraid I don’t. It’s still very much a case of ‘New Technology, Old Learning’. And the danger is that while Khan might say it is intended only as part of a wider learning experience, it may quickly become the only learning experience for some.

So is ‘flipping the classroom‘ really a revolution in teaching and learning? I think not. Because when I was at school we had primitive tech devices called ‘textbooks’ which were full of dull  ‘just in case’ facts and which we had to learn for homework for a memory test the next day. That never worked for me then, and it certainly won’t work now for the vast majority of today’s students. And the idea of watching short review or preparation video is hardly new either – I was producing similar resources for an educational publishers 20 years ago. The only difference is they were being delivered on CDs. And they contained a high proportion of images and short amounts of text.

Quite frankly, studying the most current ‘old-fashioned’ illustrated, activity-based textbooks is a lot more informative than watching a tedious lecturer in front of a blackboard droning on in a situation where you can’t ask any questions, and the presenter has no feedback about whether anyone is listening, let alone understanding what is being said.  And what happened to the idea of personalisation, in that factual content is made more accessible as it can be placed in the localised context of the learner? Or the need to learn how to ask questions and find the answers for oneself, or how to collaborate, communicate and be a flexible, creative problem-solver?

Now I’m a great fan of the appropriate use of educational technology, and while ‘flipping the classroom‘ might have value for a small academically-inclined minority, for the average learner it’s going to be a complete turn-off, particularly if it’s the Khan Academy we are relying on. Before we flip anything in that way we need to first create high quality digital learning resources that are truly inspirational, use familiar examples drawn from real-life applications, provide insightful analogies and a little bit of humour to make the complex seem simple. Based on what I’ve seen so far I’d much rather any students of mine spent their time watching finely-crafted, thought-provoking, inspirational TED talks than Khan videos.

And then there’s ‘Get ten in a row automated assessments right and you move on‘? Per-lease…! This is just old-fashioned academic fact-filling, teaching to the test and increasingly irrelevant grading and class position. Not to mention: ‘These videos will never go out of date” and “Learning is like riding a bicycle“. This isn’t reinvention. It’s automation of the past.

http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html

Meanwhile ‘Getting rid of technology in the classroom‘ entirely misses the point about the potential use of mobile digital learning, in which information is at hand 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – if you know where to look for it – and that hand-held devices provide highly sophisticated problem-solving modelling and communication apps alongside access to a global social network. Life is no longer based on received wisdom from the past, but on received wisdom of the present. What we really need to be doing is having the technology to hand, right there in every classroom so that teachers can be continually instructing students in how to use it appropriately, and increasingly independently.

The Industrial Revolution ‘flipped’ the way many people lived, worked and thought during the 18th and 19th centuries. We now live in the ‘Information age’, and there are already many examples of how it is causing things to completely turn previously accepted practices upside down and inside out, such as in the music, movie, book publishing and marketing industries. In education, what really needs to be flipped is the curriculum and teacher-led, knowledge-based learning, along with society’s attitude to vocationally-related learning.

And you don’t want to know what DH Lawrence used the word ‘flipping’ as a euphemism for back in 1911. Or do you?
http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question96179.html

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”…

Now where did I leave my Google?

Is this the fatally-flawed new iPad 3 tablet?

‘Too much internet use can damage teenagers’ brains‘ screams a headline in the Daily Mail.
‘How Googling can harm your memory’ announces the Daily Telegraph above a further, and entirely un-related, article headlined: ‘Fatal tablet dispensed in error‘, which as it happens, was nothing to do with accidently issuing a schoolchild with a faulty iPad, but just for a moment it made me wonder.

The Telegraph report is on some rather limited research data that suggests that the way we remember things may be starting to change. It’s interesting that they interpret ‘change’ as ‘damage’ and ‘harm’. What the researchers actually discovered was that people are making less effort to remember facts and more to recall where they will be able to find particular items of information when they actually need  them. We are thus apparently developing our ‘transactive’ brain abilities. And the researchers go on to suggest that as a result educators need to become increasingly focused on imparting greater understanding of ideas and ways of thinking, and less focused on memorisation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8640393/Search-engines-rewire-our-memory.html

Meanwhile the ever-dependable Mail goes a step further and provides a test to discover if you are already addicted to the web, with the sub-head ‘A terrible shame – It’s a wake-up call’. Apparently excessive internet use may be causing parts of teenagers’  brains to waste away, based on a study of 19 year-old students who spend between 8 to 13 hours a day, six days a week playing games online.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2015196/Too-internet-use-damage-teenagers-brains.html

There’s no question that we do need to do more research to discover the ways in which the internet is disrupting the way we think and behave, and as a consequence changing the way we learn. There are some facts we do need to memorise, and it would be crazy to spend all day, every day living in a virtual world, but we have yet to work out which are the essential facts to remember, and when it’s best to be online or in the real world.

But to promote the idea that using computers is damaging our brains  makes it more difficult for teachers and parents to swallow the pill and accept that IT and learning are a positive development. Until then, we are just going to need to keep taking the tablets ourselves.

Going for Gove

http://pencilandpapertest.wordpress.com/2011/06/26/gove-adds-fuel-to-the-fire/

As might be expected, yesterday the Twittersphere was alive with the sound of of teachers tweeting their disapproval of nice Mr Gove’s remarks on the Andrew Marr show. There is now a special ‘#Gove must Go’ thread. All Change Please!’s contribution was to suggest that “Gove has been sitting in the Sun for too long, gazing into the Mirror too often, and taking too much notice of his Daily Mail…”

There can be little question now that Gove has failed to take the profession with him, and it must surely now just be a matter of time before there is a summer cabinet re-shuffle in which, in recognition of his excellent work, he is promoted to a more senior post?