Category - Education

Regular readers will know that I periodically cover topics that are associated with the dumbing down the education system in this country, and the annual hullabaloo come exam results time which seeks to pretend everything is really OK. So this latest story fits in rather well.

It seems that a teacher, David West, from Rossett School in Harrogate – came up with the “brilliant” idea of using Lego figurines to cover the history of Hitler in the 2nd World War. And this was to A-level students – not kiddies. West published the “lesson” on his blog – the viewing of which I ought to point out is by invitation only, so it’s more of a private notice board – as an example of what others should do. This led to a storm (on closed student and teacher forums).

Just as a reminder, Hitler and his regime was directly responsible for the deaths of around 6,000,000 Jews and around 5,000,000 non-Jews. When you factor in the manner in which many of these deaths occurred, the entire story is off the scale. And certainly well beyond Legoland.

The exercise involved pupils being asked questions such as ‘why is Hitler wearing a witch’s hat?’, which prompted the response ‘to show the spell that Hitler put on Germany’.

The man is obviously a genius, and his claims to be “world renowned on Twitter” and “a sensation on YouTube” (according to his page on Edmodo) must be well founded. West insisted:

…[the lesson] was ‘creative’ and ‘memorable’ while not compromising on ‘depth and detail’.

Yes. I’m sure that it WAS memorable. But perhaps West needs some re-training so that he can learn to distinguish between “memorable” and “useful”. Oh. And “embarrassing”. Because I remember that when I was at school, extrovert or childish activities like this would have been hugely embarrassing to me and many others. Sometimes – and for a great many people – the best way of learning is to be provided with the facts and then to talk about them sensibly. Not to end up in some sort of pantomime dreamed up by someone who considers himself to be a “world renowned sensation” in spite of providing no back up evidence for the claim.

If you’re still not convinced, here are some of other questions posed:

Why is Hitler waving to a cat? He is giving up his personal happiness to devote himself to the nation.

Why is the spider laid like that? He is giving the Nazis salute showing how devoted all his people were.

Is this really for real? It’s like a Santa Claus myth you’d teach to pre-schoolers, not A-level students who are almost classed as adults. And to make matters even worse, Rossett School is apparently rated “outstanding” by Ofsted, so is it any wonder we have the annual festival of trying to pretend that the 100% crop of A* grades actually means something?

West is talking up the “support” he has received from inside the school, arguing that simply because students have said that they got a lot out of the lesson then he must have done a good job. Of course, he fails to see that it is a case of the tail wagging the dog – because how the hell can a student tell you if they have learnt anything? It is down to exams to do that. Oh, wait. Guaranteed A*s… a sad downward spiral. However, West dismisses the near-universal negative comments outside of his little enclave.

Face facts, Mr West. It IS dumbing down. It IS childish and inappropriate for A-level students. It IS shallow. And let’s not even get started on how it trivialises the issues of Hitler, Nazism, and anti-Semitism among young minds which may not yet have grappled with the topics.

This time of year sees a lot of new pupils who are in their first year at university. On more than one occasion I have driven to various halls of residence to pick up a pupil, and been struck by the groups of (mainly) males sitting outside in hoodies smoking and spitting. The only thing missing is their BMX bikes.

I have repeatedly reminded myself that only a few days previously they would have been doing this outside the local chip shop or on benches in shopping precincts of whichever towns they came from. So it comes as little surprise to read this story on the BBC website.

This year’s freshers gathered outside the Capital FM Arena and filmed themselves chanting:

Now she’s dead, but not forgotten, dig her up and **** her rotten. You wish, you wish, you wish you were in Cavendish [one of the Halls]…

God knows what the hell it is supposed to mean. For one thing, the little prats haven’t been associated with “Cavendish” for anywhere near long enough to have formed any sort of serious attachment to it, and certainly not one that warrants this display of childish behaviour. But then some twat then had to go and post it on YouTube.

Quite frankly, society would be much better off if necrophilia was all they got up to – that way we could be sure they wouldn’t breed. As it is, all we can do is hope vainly that Nottingham University actually finds those “culpable” and sends them back where they came from so that they can grow up and maybe try further education again in a few years. But I certainly won’t hold my breath – the video has been around for over a week and they’ve done nothing.

Still no action as of 13 October, but it would appear that the proto-politicians who comprise the students union have found a new word to keep repeating. See if you can work out how many times the word “misogyny” is used in this latest article. More significantly, look how pissed off D&G Taxis and Domino’s Pizza are at having been dragged into this puerile episode.

A third-year student, who did not want to be named, told the BBC… during her first year she was part of a group taken to a secluded spot and taught a song about sex with women, which they were warned not to repeat.

How pathetic.

As of 25 October it appears that some of the students involved have been fined, though the University refuses to confirm or deny this. If it’s true, the “fine” consists of a paltry £150 – which will no doubt be considered a badge of honour among the retards involved.

The incident also appears to be only to do with misogyny now. No one seems to be the least bit concerned about how a large group of alleged adults was standing around in a public place swearing at the tops of their voices. They appear still less concerned that such behaviour is both sanctioned and encouraged by the University and the Students Union.

Worse still is the fact that a number of Student Union reps were also involved.This has apparently given the Union the opportunity it needs to have a lot of meetings before it, too, dishes out whatever it laughably considers as “punishment”.

I was talking to one of my pupils about this, and she told me some of the things that “freshers” are expected to do. It was a real eye-opener, and clearly shows “freshers week” to be a far more insidious group of events than the posters would have you believe. It’s a form of indoctrination for minds that are still only weeks out of childhood (and, as this story shows, in many cases still years away from leaving it).

Well, the union reps have been “removed from their posts”, but they’re still at the university.

As I said above, there is more to this than meets the eye. Freshers are specifically taught these immature chants (and many other rites), and no matter how much is made of it being against some sort of “union code” if reps do it, they’re still apparently appointed specifically to encourage the freshers to behave this way.

I love tis quote by the union president (Harry Copson):

We also recognise that this issue is culturally ingrained and one that comes to light not through malice but through a lack of awareness.

It’s no wonder it is “culturally ingrained” when this sort of behaviour (in various forms) is encouraged at every university throughout the country during freshers’ events. It mainly comes about as a result of gross immaturity, but there is an underlying malice that cannot be glossed over. The person who filmed the event in the first place was obviously upset by it because of the person she is. The morons who engaged in it – and those who taught it, not to mention those who go under the guise of political officialdom who know damned well it happens – do so because of the kind of people they are.

What makes it really frightening is that these same people will gain degrees, some will run the country or large companies, and most will probably breed. God help their children having parents like that.

I saw this on the morning news and it gave me a few unpleasant flashbacks – to work, not school!

Ofsted has reported that persistent low-level classroom disruption is damaging pupils’ learning and long-term prospects. Ofsted says that leadership and authority is lacking, so the problem isn’t being addressed. As you’d probably expect, the namby pamby head teachers don’t agree. The BBC article lists the following as examples of disruptive behaviour:

• Disturbing other children (38%)
• Calling out (35%)
• Not getting on with work (31%)
• Fidgeting or fiddling with equipment (23%)
• Not having the correct equipment (19%)
• Purposely making noise to gain attention (19%)
• Answering back or questioning instructions (14%)
• Using mobile devices (11%)
• Swinging on chairs (11%)

The morning news showed several dramatized examples, one of which really triggered the unpleasant flashbacks for me. You see, you don’t need to be a teenager to be distracted by people with issues.

In the final years of my employment in the rat race, I was plagued by people who were socially deficient. We had been forced to adopt an open-plan office arrangement – successively losing a dedicated office, then 5 foot cubicle walls, and finally ending up with secretarial walls that barely extended above desk level. At the time I left, they hadn’t quite got to the stage of mandatory sharing of underwear and bodily fluids, but that’s the direction it seemed to be heading.

On my island of four desks, I had my boss to my left. He had this habit of licking out his coffee mug (inside and out) complete with slurping every time he had a drink. To my right was this guy who made sandwiches at his desk, and he would get butter all over his keyboard, mouse (which I was responsible for maintaining), and workstation area. One time there was fish roe – the cheap caviar kind – all over it as well.

He was not computer literate and was a one-finger typist. The combination of sticking keys and his inept typing literally shook the desk group every time he hit a key, and God help you when he decided to delete a block of text… backspace, backspace, backspace, backspace… It was like an earthquake.

He used to eat vegetables from his father’s allotment – one whole lettuce, one whole bell pepper, one whole parsnip, etc. at a time – as though they were fruits. He would bite ravenously into oranges, apples, and pomegranates. The juice was everywhere. One time he apparently climbed into his car pooler’s car one morning with an opened tin of pilchards for putting on sandwiches later that day.

Then, directly opposite me, was a hummer. It took me months to figure out where the annoying background noise was coming from, but I eventually nailed it. It turned out that when he was at his workstation he just hummed all the time. An annoying, low-pitched, almost constant hum.

On a neighbouring desk island another colleague was clumsy and heavy-handed. She was only happy when she wasn’t getting her hands dirty, and therefore spent a lot of time in and out of stationery cupboards and drawers. It was slam-bang-slam-bang whenever was around. She knew it annoyed me and would simper “sorry, Fergus” every time she did it or heard me tut.

About the same distance away, but in a totally separate department (it was open-plan, remember) on another desk group, there was a buyer who conducted every single phone call on full-volume speakerphone. She listened to all her voicemails using it, and if she called someone (which buyers do a lot) she would similarly use the speakerphone while she rummaged loudly in cupboards waiting for someone to answer. When they didn’t (which people who buyers call tend to also do a lot) she would just let it ring and ring until it cut off, and then redial. She’d do this almost constantly when she was at her desk. When she had to go out for a meeting, she doused herself in that cheap Impulse deodorant, which floated around the office via the air-handling system for an hour or more.

So I can fully understand how bad behaviour in the classroom can have a detrimental effect on the education of children. It’s just a shame that no one can take the problem seriously in the workplace. None of my ineffectual and incompetent managers would.

This story on the BBC caught my eye. It begins:

As many as three quarters of a million young people in the UK may feel that they have nothing to live for, a study for the Prince’s Trust charity claims.

This makes me angry whenever I read it, but not for the reason you might expect. My reason is based on one of the examples given in the story, where a young male tried to kill himself because he couldn’t get a job. His story begins and ends as follows:

Excluded from school at the age of 14, [he] had no qualifications…

…But after attending a course run by the Prince’s Trust, [he] built up his self-confidence and gained new skills and qualifications. Now 23, he works in a residential home for young people and is studying towards a youth worker level 2 qualification.

I seem to be the only one who can see that it is bad behaviour (and whatever caused it) and the subsequent lack of qualifications which was fundamental problem. Once he had sorted himself out and gained some sort of education – which he should have got 10 years earlier – he got a job. Surely there is an obvious lesson to be learnt here?

It’s all very well rattling on about how people who have been unemployed for a long time suffer depression, but much of the time they brought it on themselves by bunking off school (and getting away with God knows what). Childhood isn’t childhood any more. You get 14-year olds who think they’re adults – often egged on by well-meaning but incompetent parents and teachers – who simply refuse to study properly at school. You don’t need 40 GCSE A* passes to get a job, though God knows that’s not difficult these days. Just a handful of Grade Es passes as an education and is more than enough to gain employment. It might not get you into Merchant Banking – you should have got the A*s if you expected that – but it’s certainly a lot better than having a disciplinary record the FBI probably has a copy of.

Too many kids think they’re grown up at 12 and get away with it. It’s a shame they only seem to actually grow up in their 20s once they’ve realised that the gutter they have crawled into isn’t as cool as it once seemed. Reading between the lines, many of the kids referred to in that article did not have stable family backgrounds (many young girls have got two or three kids of their own by the time they get to his stage). This is where most of the problems stem from.

The Prince’s Trust says:

If we fail to act, there is a real danger that these young people will become hopeless, as well as jobless.

As far as I’m concerned, any action needs to be for the generations still at school – to force them to get a bloody basic education instead of pissing about until they’re 20-something then expecting the world to save them.