Schooling #1

/me blows the dust off this blog

BLEG: any interesting links you have to share on education theory?

Prompted in part by a talk at Cambridge Geek Night #13 about the poor quality of ICT in schools, I am mentally exploring the possibilities of unschooling and am interested in what's already been attempted in this area.

Essentially, school to me seems like an only moderately successful way to keep kids quiet during the day so that adults can work, and I strongly suspect that the current system does very little for those who aren't so smart or who have crap parents and so on.

So I'm questioning everything. Some initial thoughts:
- most teachers are not amazing. But there are some really amazing ones out there. Can we leverage the amazing ones better to eg. deliver video tutorials or course materials on a massive scale?
- are "teachers" even the best people to enforce classroom discipline?
- is the notion of "classrooms" and "classes" even that helpful? 45-60min lessons seem mostly a way for schools to box up packages of information in a way that's easy for them while not necessarily being that great for kids.
- what's with homework? Almost no adults do homework related to their jobs.

I suppose I idyllically dream of an education utopia in which kids are excited to be at school and get taught important things that help shape their articulations. I don't know about you but my <18 education covered none of the following:
- critical thinking (don't believe what you read in the papers)
- logic
- personal finance
- how to learn more effectively
- the sociology and psychology of bullying, and of the school experience in general
- any sort of encouragement to introspection

These things are not "history", "science" or "English" but they all seem to me to be vital pieces of what we expect adults to be, and yet we seem to largely require children to work these things out for themselves.

Alice Thompson: moron

Oh, why do I read the Times? It only makes me angry. Today Alice Thompson is claiming that a 1% mansion tax is unfair and unaffordable. Her own numbers in her column suggest that there are 250,000 houses liable, and at 1% of at least £1m. a go that's £2.5 BILLION per year. Consiering that estate agents will value your home for nothing (or perrhaps under this scheme a fee of up to... £100) how on earth can that be unaffordable?? It's ludicrous. Who reads this column and agrees with it??

I'd write more but I'm on my phone.

Goal-line tech is immaterial. What's needed is good-quality refereeing. Technology would be useful for the edge-cases, when it is uncertain whether the call has crossed the line, or if the attacking player was within a foot of being on-side. Neither of these cases, nor Thierry Henry's blatant hand-ball in the qualifiers, should be a matter for the beeping machines.

I don't know much about football, particularly not the org structures of referees, but that appears to be what needs improving. Seems to me that a 3-challenge video-replay system would help deal with the most egregious cases with technology that's available to all the major leagues already.

Budget

The budget was, of course, an appalling raid on the poor. And that is entirely to expected, being largely a Tory budget. I imagine there's a bit of politics going on here in that they want to get the bad news out of the way as quickly as possible - they are going to have 4 more budgets before the next general election so it is better to be bad now and good later.

Despite that, that 20% VAT rate is going to scar the Lib Dems for a long time, and will probably still be potent enough to bite them in 2015. Expect a return of those VAT bombshells, this time probably exploded ones.

I am lucky enough to have been born into a society in which my particular set of skills happen to be quite valuable, meaning that I am in the top 10% of income earners in the country (the decile statring at approx £40k - it's lower than you think). Okay, so I don't have any children yet, but I literally have money to burn.

If I didn't believe the government was wasting large slabs of tax on things like "defence" (or "attack" as I like to call it) then I would be inclined to overpay my tax bill because I really believe that people like me should be paying more.

Who is it at the top of the Tory party who honestly thinks that screwing the poor is a good and sensible thing to do? Who says "I know, instead of raising the top rate of income tax, CGT, council tax on large homes, instead of introducing green taxes or local income taxes or land value taxes, what this country really needs is for poor people to pay more for their phone credit, dog food, Sky subscription, kitchen utensils, beer, clothes, Coke and petrol!"?

It's a good job I'm only supporting the Lib Dems because of their position on electoral reform. They'd better get that right. I mean, I know that this is a Tory budget with a bit of Lib Dem restraint, but if this is the best the Lib Dems can deliver, it's pretty pathetic.

I DIDN'T BREAK THE LAW - I *AM* THE LAW

George Osborne, theoretically at least, is David Laws’ boss. What he should be doing, provided there are no further facts to scrutinise, is stepping outside the door of Number 11 and calling down the thunder. He should tell the press that his faith in Laws’ ability is undimmed. He should say that forcing Laws out of the closet was to the press’ shame. He should say that he believes that Laws has made and will make sound and prudent judgements about the economy and looks forward to continuing to work with him through a very difficult period. In other words, he should be willing to step into the line of fire for his colleague. Showing this amount of courage could turn the Coalition into a team; the spectacle of a Conservative defending a Liberal Democrat would do nothing but cement trust. It would also be an eloquent statement to the Alistair Campbells of this world that their form of political discourse no longer works.

Too right.

Stuart White is distressed by the abolition of the Child Trust Fund, claiming it as "one of the great liberal achievements of New Labour".

I am a great believer in the Ackerman/Alstott idea of a "stakeholder grant"*, particularly as a cover for university tuition fees, and it is sad to see the basis of such a grant strangled in its infancy by the very liberals who should be 'pro' such a scheme.

Is there anything that can be done before the fund is abolished, in order to save it?

I'll be writing to my Lib Dem MP, who might actually have the power to do something about it for once.

* Incidentally, why has Alstott been dropped from Stuart's list of stakeholder grant progenitors? She literally (co)wrote the book on the subject.

NO COALITION WITHOUT PR, NICK

Keep the pressure on. Email him here, and tweet at @nick_clegg.

Mention STV. AV and AV+ are not really good enough, and he knows this is true. Let's deliver a fair voting system for ever. Email. Tweet. Pass it on.

NO COALITION WITHOUT PR, NICK email cleggn@parliament.uk tweet at @nick_clegg #letsactuallyfixthevotingsystem please RT

Edit: added hashtag. Also, you can email the Lib Dem Federal Executive here. Please be brief, polite and unsubtle.