Re: Education and the Presidential Candidates

[bob <bob.adsett@lineone.net>]

>Roger Key wrote

> However any such cases will have to be brought against the teacher,
> school or local education authority and not "the muppet who wrote the
> policy." To quote cuz.

Roger

It is just another example of the way we are programmed to think and that
the poor s*d who delivers a sub-standard and potentially damaging
educational system will have to 'carry-the-can' rather than the instigators
of this folly. 
League tables, ranking, naming and shaming, Standard Attainment Targets and
the National Curriculum and most recently performance related pay have a lot
to answer for in being responsible for the demise of our once outstanding
educational system.
Politicians who are hell-bent on quick fixes and 'sound-bites' are  more
preoccupied with the effects than the causes of the 'problems' that we are
encourage to see in our schools. It amazes me that with the amount of
tampering that has taken place in the schools system  over the last 10 years
that it even functions at all.
The almost incessant interfering by Civil Servants with the working of our
educational system would lead one to believe that they have actually no idea
about what they are doing or even how the system operates. Isn't there a
definition somewhere that a lunatic is someone who keep doing the same
(similar) thing but expects a different outcome?

Is there clarity of an Aim of the educational system, or a shared theory
that guides the aim? If there is a clear aim, nobody in Government has ever
taken the time to share this with the teaching profession or the public at
large. 
To expect a government to learn from what it does when there appears to be
no theory underlying it's actions would be unreasonable. But probably the
most frightening aspect of the government's attitude is the unbending
commitment to extrinsic motivation as the method to be used to secure
improvement. 

Where is the much vaulted commitment to Lifelong Learning in the corridors
of power that would lead any manager to question an approach that
time-after-time and had failed to secure improvement. How long do we have to
wait before a light goes on and we start asking 'why' the desired change not
occurred. Sadly working smarter and not harder is not a tool in the
politician portfolio (yet).

We seem to be happy to always do what we have always done, and when we get
what we have always got we have a ready made scapegoat to blame.
Oh how silly of me, commitments to Lifelong Learning are are not genuine, no
one expects the government to actually 'Walk-the-Talk" that was just another
one of those well spun sound-bites. :0)

Ho, hum, Cynical Saturday ......

bob


--
Bob Adsett
Bingley, Yorkshire

Tel. 01274 75 24 36
Fax. 01274 75 45 85
Mobile 07980 85 22 34
e-Mail bob.adsett@lineone.net

The great tragedy of science ­ the slaying of an original, beautiful
hypothesis by an ugly fact.