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staberind posted:1. I was an English teacher for 13 years, on and off. gently caress you, you ain't no brit
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May 25, 2014 08:58
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All this debate about what is 'Britishness' etc. is interesting, but I really wonder if those who are actually voting for UKIP are thinking about it in nearly as much depth. The narrative of 'forriners are coming and taking are jobs so less forriners = better for me' is probably as deep as it goes.
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May 25, 2014 09:03
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Nationalism is totes lame
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May 25, 2014 09:25
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Illuminti posted:oh shut the gently caress up. You're so eager to jump down my throat, i've never even come close to saying that. I've acknowledged that britishness changes, you're either willfully misunderstanding or you're so blinkered the possiblity of someone not agreeing with the great and righteous path of this thread it pointless engaging. Poor little bigot, Britain First probably has a message board more to you liking. Speaking of Vanilla Coke, I remember when Wetherspoons did vodka and coke with vanilla Stolli. They were delicious.
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May 25, 2014 09:26
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gently caress's sake: So I guess instead of using Literature to broaden horizons, teach critical thinking and harbour creativity, kids will now be taught "books by dead white British people are awesome because dead white British people are awesome" I can't believe Gove has free reign to design a syllabus himself 
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May 25, 2014 09:39
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Answers Me posted:gently caress's sake: A cynic might suggest that it's deliberately making GCSE English Literature boring so kids take subjects that will make it easier for them to become productive worker drones. e: wrong qualification. Pork Pie Hat fucked around with this message at 09:59 on May 25, 2014 |
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May 25, 2014 09:53
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tdrules posted:Nationalism is totes lame Do people really think this? Isn't nationalism responsible for free education, the national health service, benefits and a bunch of other things? I can't imagine that without SOCIAL COHESION people are as willing to pay for a welfare state?
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May 25, 2014 10:00
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Pork Pie Hat posted:A cynic might suggest that it's deliberately making A Level English Literature boring so kids take subjects that will make it easier for them to become productive worker drones. Nah, it's the usual rah rah British authors Tory poo poo, mixed in with quite a lot of Dunning-Krueger. Everything about Gove's tenure at Education screams Dunning-Krueger, from Free Schools and Academies to the new Primary Curriculum and now the English GCSE syllabus. Everyone knows what actually needs to be done, we need a single public sector exam board to stop all the shenanigans with grades and cheating, but that's the one thing he won't do, instead he changes the format of exams to disadvantage everyone except those good at sitting exams.
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May 25, 2014 10:02
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HortonNash posted:Nah, it's the usual rah rah British authors Tory poo poo, mixed in with quite a lot of Dunning-Krueger. Everything about Gove's tenure at Education screams Dunning-Krueger, from Free Schools and Academies to the new Primary Curriculum and now the English GCSE syllabus. The focus on exams is one of the worst things, some kids are going to be screwed for no good reason. I ended up studying English through to postgrad but if I'd taken mostly exams I doubt I'd even have passed my GCSEs
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May 25, 2014 10:05
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Sri.Theo posted:Do people really think this? Isn't nationalism responsible for free education, the national health service, benefits and a bunch of other things? I can't imagine that without SOCIAL COHESION people are as willing to pay for a welfare state?
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May 25, 2014 10:10
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Sri.Theo posted:Do people really think this? Isn't nationalism responsible for free education, the national health service, benefits and a bunch of other things? I can't imagine that without SOCIAL COHESION people are as willing to pay for a welfare state? O O A Venn diagram of people who really love free education, the NHS, benefits and increasing social liberalism, and UKIP politicians who think nationalism is the poo poo. (Edited as I think a lot of UKIP voters aren't aware og how lovely that party's policies are.) Nationalism is more about defining your state in opposition to other nations, increasing cohesion between some groups and distancing yourself as a whole from others. I don't think many liberals would argue that those should be specifically British values but are rather universal ideals. We could be proud that Britain has made considerable steps in the right direction, but it's not immigration that's undermining most of these.
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May 25, 2014 10:17
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gove isn't a fan of literature attacking paranoid anti-communist witch hunts by an entrenched right wing establishment? o_O
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May 25, 2014 10:19
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HortonNash posted:Nah, it's the usual rah rah British authors Tory poo poo, mixed in with quite a lot of Dunning-Krueger. Everything about Gove's tenure at Education screams Dunning-Krueger, from Free Schools and Academies to the new Primary Curriculum and now the English GCSE syllabus. So you didn't notice the specific content banned? Of Mice and Men is about how poor people cannot successfully rise due to prejudices in the system, The Crucible is about exploitation of hysteria, and To Kill A Mockingbird is about racial prejudice in law enforcement. They all ask questions that the Tories really don't want the next generation to be asking. ThomasPaine: you can make your own Diet Vanilla Coke by adding a small amount of vanilla extract to your glass before pouring. I can get half a litre of the stuff for £7.50 from Costco and that's enough to flavour several hundred glasses, so don't waste your money on the £1 a can stuff.
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May 25, 2014 10:27
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Sri.Theo posted:Isn't nationalism responsible for free education, the national health service, benefits and a bunch of other things? I suppose you could argue that since a war against German nationalists eventually resulted in those things, nationalism is partly responsible for them - but if it weren't for nationalists at home, we might have got them sooner.
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May 25, 2014 11:06
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Jedit posted:So you didn't notice the specific content banned? Of Mice and Men is about how poor people cannot successfully rise due to prejudices in the system, The Crucible is about exploitation of hysteria, and To Kill A Mockingbird is about racial prejudice in law enforcement. They all ask questions that the Tories really don't want the next generation to be asking. I'm a lowly primary teacher, and it did cross my mind that there may be some political motive, but the inclusion of Dickens on the approved list threw me into doubts and so I decided to leave the litcrit to a specialist.
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May 25, 2014 11:13
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HortonNash posted:I'm a lowly primary teacher, and it did cross my mind that there may be some political motive, but the inclusion of Dickens on the approved list threw me into doubts and so I decided to leave the litcrit to a specialist. There may be some 'it's old and therefore safe' going on with Dickens. He's addressing the problems of the Victorian Era, and this is the 21st century. Checkmate, liberal academics.  let's ignore the fact that quite a few of the Tory Party literally want to bring back the Victorian era.
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May 25, 2014 11:19
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wait, what are the problems with the gcse/gce that call for a single exam board putting aside the point that the hullabaloo over what would go into the single exam would be completely impossible to navigate
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May 25, 2014 11:37
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Cerv posted:gove isn't a fan of literature attacking paranoid anti-communist witch hunts by an entrenched right wing establishment? o_O Nor a fan of tales of the brutal oppression of disabled and impoverished migrant workers created by the depression. Mysterious
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May 25, 2014 11:41
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Robot Mil posted:All this debate about what is 'Britishness' etc. is interesting, but I really wonder if those who are actually voting for UKIP are thinking about it in nearly as much depth. The narrative of 'forriners are coming and taking are jobs so less forriners = better for me' is probably as deep as it goes. It's probably true that many people who are attracted to UKIP don't think deeply about the nature of Britishness or whatever, but Illuminti is probably articulating feelings that are quite widely (if inchoately) held by many people (not just UKIP-voters). I don't share his feelings, but I think the way they've been dismissed by most of the people in this thread is kind of missing the point. It's one thing to say, 'you can't coherently define Britishness - you're being irrational and are just scared of change', but that kind of dismissive response doesn't do anything to deal with the feelings that lie underneath it all. Of course it's not a rational position - it's based on deeply held feelings rather than a system of logic - but the vast majority of political positions are based on feelings rather than logic. I think Illuminti has a point when he(?) says he's been hounded out of this thread. No one's really engaged with the actual point he was making, which is an interesting one. I.e. how do you respond to people who feel genuinely unsettled by change (or the appearance of change)? Is it something you can realistically deal with? Again, it's not a view I share, but I think dismissing it and calling Illuminti a bigot doesn't help anything.
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May 25, 2014 11:46
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I guess having lived all over the Uk for the last 40 years I struggle to see the changes in culture that are supposed. I do see more people with a different skin colour or speaking in other Languages to me than I did 25 years back but that doesn't affect my perception of British culture or impact on my life in any negative sense. In fact on reflection that main change in British culture I see is in attitudes. People seem quicker to blame, more self centred and have less belief in social justice. I don't put that down to having more brown people in the country, I put that down to the last 30 years of right wing/neoliberal political leadership and media support of that agenda. The problem is it's easy for the boss classes and media to reinforce these differences to draw attention away from the real issues effecting British life. Theirs no coherent or authoritative voice challenging the popular narrative.
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May 25, 2014 11:55
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I made the point that Britain tacitly moved from an ideological framework where the question of immigration-induced change was tacitly answered in a patriarchal, authoritarian manner - i.e., that change would occur but that state power and establishment consensus politics would resolve any rising conflicts - to a direct challenge of the implicit assertion of the capabilities of the state from both the New Left and the new-ish right (Powellism etc), which is why the question today doesn't seem to have an answer. New Labour straightforwardly saw the beginning and the end of the ethnic integration question as one that could be resolved via civil-social groups and messaging, with only the pure economics reserved as the concern of the state.
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May 25, 2014 12:03
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Serotonin posted:I guess having lived all over the Uk for the last 40 years I struggle to see the changes in culture that are supposed. I do see more people with a different skin colour or speaking in other Languages to me than I did 25 years back but that doesn't affect my perception of British culture or impact on my life in any negative sense. In fact on reflection that main change in British culture I see is in attitudes. People seem quicker to blame, more self centred and have less belief in social justice. I don't put that down to having more brown people in the country, I put that down to the last 30 years of right wing/neoliberal political leadership and media support of that agenda. I don't disagree with this. I think there's more of an appearance of change than actual change in terms of the integration of immigrant communities. And the local election results seem to suggest that those places most affected by cultural change related to immigration (i.e. in London) are less likely to vote UKIP. So I agree with you that this is more down to a change of attitudes than anything concrete. I live in Cambridge and I know that I hear foreign languages being spoken a huge amount as I walk around the streets. Where I live there are a lot of Eastern European languages, in the centre there's a lot of Chinese and Japanese, and all sorts of European languages. I find it hard to identify with people who claim to find this upsetting or threatening. It doesn't bother me at all, and when I actually think about it (because someone like Nigel Farage mentions how he finds it upsetting to hear foreign languages being spoken), I tend to think of it as either a neutral thing or a good thing. I basically can't relate to Illuminti's concerns in general. I can imagine in specific cases feeling unsettled by change. For example, if elderly people have lived in the same place all of their lives, and that place has changed around them so it is now much more popular with immigrant communities than when they moved in: I can understand how that could feel alienating, simply because the community they grew up with has gone, and they're unlikely to be a part of the new community that has developed. Particularly if they're elderly - it can be hard to adapt to new things at that age. However, how much of a problem that actually is, I don't know. I think most people who are voting UKIP probably aren't in that position. Whitefish fucked around with this message at 12:10 on May 25, 2014 |
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May 25, 2014 12:08
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I now live in a very rural community and the changes that have happened here over the last 40years are the slow death of traditional village life due to the influx of rich people using such communities as rural holiday homes, pricing out the young locals and meaning the area is now either long term elderly residents and the very wealthy. You could argue that this is a change in the traditional British rural life but again hard to blame it on immigration unless you blame it on white flight.
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May 25, 2014 12:13
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ronya posted:wait, what are the problems with the gcse/gce that call for a single exam board A single exam board needn't mean a single rigid exam or syllabus. You could easily make a core + module syllabus that allows schools to tailor the courses to their needs and abilities (not all schools have the same access to facilities, particularly in science and DT).
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May 25, 2014 12:18
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May 25, 2014 12:20
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rural real estate excluding the young locals is heavily tied to the (also relatively recent) formation of rural conservationism, which - because Britons view fellow Britons as 'like themselves' - took the form of a reaction against the infrastructure that was being made to support these changes (the highway revolts), instead of the form of a reaction against the internal migrants moving in and buying out property. Notice that CPREism takes a decidedly different slant when it is rich Saudis moving in - only then is there a voiced complaint that the buyers are failing to integrate.
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May 25, 2014 12:22
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HortonNash posted:A single exam board needn't mean a single rigid exam or syllabus. You could easily make a core + module syllabus that allows schools to tailor the courses to their needs and abilities (not all schools have the same access to facilities, particularly in science and DT). why would that diminish politicization of the material at all
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May 25, 2014 12:23
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So what's Educating Rita about, thematically (Wikipedia has a plot summary, but doesn't delve deeper than that)? That might tell us something about Gove's new curriculum.
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May 25, 2014 12:30
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ronya posted:why would that diminish politicization of the material at all I think we are talking at cross purposes. There has been various scandals surrounding the current exam boards (e.g. Running cheating seminars), this is because they directly profit from selling their exams, syllabi and materials to schools. The way to eliminate this corruption would be to remove these companies, hence a single public exam board. To eliminate the politicisation that we are seeing now with Gove, you'd need to make it and the syllabus independent of DfE or ministerial interference. There's no reason we couldn't set up a body to administer and produce exams and syllabi. Best of all the course materials could all be made available for free online, so anyone could study for an exam/brush up on a subject/audit what the kids are learning.
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May 25, 2014 12:34
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I'm not sure Gove put more thought into it than instructing an intern to remove all non-British texts which is a really poorly executed move as is you would think that a competent politician would know that the right move would be to first introduce a $$$$ NEW PROGRAMME $$$$ favouring British texts authors and then making it tempting to switch, therefore making the old curriculum unattractive, which can then be discarded due to 'lack of interest and the overwhelming success of the new syllabus'. Then the budget for the carrots can be slashed. not doing this suggests that Gove is either (1) in the belief that someone, somewhere out there in Middle England will be wowed by Gove's tough-as-nails nationalism in defence of British Literature, or (2) is just really incompetent pick one!
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May 25, 2014 12:35
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ronya posted:wait, what are the problems with the gcse/gce that call for a single exam board Exam boards were/are competing to offer the easiest exams to schools, who would pick them because they needed to maximise their number of C passes. It is the crossover of a few perverse incentives.
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May 25, 2014 12:37
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ronya posted:I'm not sure Gove put more thought into it than instructing an intern to remove all non-British texts (3) by basically his own admission a manchild trying to re-live and share his childhood of a more patriotic Britain and harder exams that existed only in his head
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May 25, 2014 12:39
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I have no doubt the exams were harder, but I cannot see a return to its particular brand of hardness  in any case OCR sets the GCEs and GCSEs for Singapore right now, and they're certainly harder than they are in the UK, so it's not as if the boards can't do it if there is demand for it
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May 25, 2014 12:49
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ronya posted:I have no doubt the exams were harder, but I cannot see a return to its particular brand of hardness That's no harder than exams today, if anything that looks easier than any exam I took in the 1980s. Key points are, you only have to answer *5* of those questions, so can ignore whichever 4 (e: 4+ because section 3 isn't shown, so it's 5 out of at least 9, probably more likely 15-20) you find hardest. And the current affairs aspects would have been pretty obvious at the time, they look 'wtf?'-y today because they're not today's current affairs, but say a 'explain UKIPs rise to the mainstream' would be a piss easy question today.
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May 25, 2014 12:55
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ronya posted:I have no doubt the exams were harder, but I cannot see a return to its particular brand of hardness They're not "harder". We have moved education in this country away from simply cramming as many facts into young skulls as possible for one-time regurgitation. The goal has become to promote the idea of life-long learning, and providing the skills necessary for this to happen. So whilst other countries' exams (and old O and A level papers for that matter) look harder because they require specific knowledge that isn't taught any more, they don't service the needs of modern the British education system/ethos. As far as I'm concerned there's little point in teaching a laundry list of facts, when you have access to the Internet in your pocket, it is far more important that they learn how to apply their knowledge (problem solving, creative thinking etc). Trouble is, the media and politicians have little understanding of education beyond exam marks and SATs levels.
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May 25, 2014 13:06
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Here's the other two pages, for completeness, then:  The difficulty is tied to the expected length of answers; as a three-hour paper (36 minutes each), I think 2 to 2.5 pages per question would be about reasonable. The point is not to sketch one or two paragraphs, certainly.
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May 25, 2014 13:06
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HortonNash posted:They're not "harder". We have moved education in this country away from simply cramming as many facts into young skulls as possible for one-time regurgitation. The goal has become to promote the idea of life-long learning, and providing the skills necessary for this to happen. So whilst other countries' exams (and old O and A level papers for that matter) look harder because they require specific knowledge that isn't taught any more, they don't service the needs of modern the British education system/ethos. As far as I'm concerned there's little point in teaching a laundry list of facts, when you have access to the Internet in your pocket, it is far more important that they learn how to apply their knowledge (problem solving, creative thinking etc). Trouble is, the media and politicians have little understanding of education beyond exam marks and SATs levels. old Geography, History, etc. syllabi were definitely cramming-based, but GP was more or less about breadth of general knowledge and the ability to intelligently talk about given topics on demand the classism of the 1960s is especially evident in the last section of the 1961 paper, anyway I don't really think problem solving in non-sciences is especially examinable; if anything the easiness of examinations is an aid to problem solving as it allows a shift of assessment practices away from exams and onto other forms of certification (extracurriculars etc). So to that end, easier exams are a good thing. That requires acknowledging that the exams have, in fact, become easier, though
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May 25, 2014 13:17
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ronya posted:Here's the other two pages, for completeness, then: Is that for 16 or 18 year olds? Also reminder that we have absolute proof that our current system of education better equips people for life, in that we look at the Chinese massively underperform as soon as they have to actually *learn* things and blame it on the fact they're sober.
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May 25, 2014 13:38
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ronya posted:Here's the other two pages, for completeness, then: Yeah, some of these are classist as gently caress. They are actually quite decent as exam questions, but would require a lot of preparation with regards as to what is expected in the answer as they are also incredibly subjective. With that in mind it is impossible to say whether they are more or less difficult than modern exam questions. What we'd need to see is an A-grade and a D-grade answer sheet.
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May 25, 2014 14:11
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That paper is also different to current exams because it covers a wide range of things that would be examined in different exams now - you have Current Affairs/Modern Studies, the Sciences, and English Literature and other artsy stuff. It probably doesn't help someone who can talk about Trade Unionism all day: but probably wouldn't be able to write an essay on the structure of crystals. That's probably one big factor - its a general paper, and they don't exist anymore. Scotland has the one exam board thing: it seems to work perfectly fine (when they remember to send exam results to the right people...) and when I first learned about the whole competing exam boards while in England and Wales, it genuinely confused me since it seems like a very dumb idea. It does have its problems (my Higher Maths paper randomly decided to ask questions about things that aren't in the course and are definitely Advanced Higher things); but since you only have one board they can adjust grade boundaries a lot more when you end up with a hard paper. Scottish and English/Welsh education are very different at every level though: so I literally know nothing about the way that schooling in England and Wales...
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