Education

Foundational texts like The Canterbury Tales and Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf would no longer be taught under proposals to scrap medieval literature.

Instead the English faculty will be refocused to drop centuries of the literary canon and deliver a “decolonised” curriculum devoted to diversity.

Academics now facing redundancy were told via email: “The aim of our proposals (is) to offer a suite of undergraduate degrees that provide modules which students expect of an English degree.”

New modules described as “excitingly innovative” would cover: “A chronological literary history, a selection of modules on race, ethnicity, sexuality and diversity, a decolonised curriculum, and new employability modules.”

The employability module might start with “Do STEM not English” perhaps?

Dr Mary Bousted, the joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said the Government had corrected “an obviously nonsensical position”, adding that ministers must “do their duty” by closing all primary and secondary schools to contain the virus.

An expert in epidemiology, is she? Or just another union leader out to get her members paid for doing fuck all for a couple of months?

Ms. Foor’s mother left the family when she was 4. Her father, Michael Foor, dropped out of college at the Altoona campus of Penn State to raise her and her older brother.

He moved to Breezewood, Pa., a turnpike town near Maryland and West Virginia, where he worked as a waiter and cashier, or took odd jobs. Sometimes he turned to welfare and unemployment, food stamps and food banks. Ms. Foor pitched in, starting at the age of 14, working at Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s.

“I saw the middle-aged people working there and I thought, ‘If I don’t go to college, that’s going to be me,’” she said.

“I don’t think how I grew up is necessarily a bad thing,” she continued. “It taught me the value of a dollar and what it means to work hard and I never look down on another person. But college is the light at the end of the tunnel that will make everything OK.”

Well, OK, could work.

“College is the light at the end of the tunnel,” said Rachel Foor, a senior at I.U.P. pursuing journalism.

Ah, maybe not. An industry that’s just halved its workforce over the past decade might not be that graduate way out…..

The Wall Street Journal has come under a torrent of denunciation for publishing a “sexist” opinion article that calls Jill Biden, the first lady-in-waiting, “kiddo”, and questions her right to use “Dr” in front of her name.

The article, written by a former adjunct professor at Northwestern University Joseph Epstein, purports to offer Biden “a bit of advice”. Opening on the provocative note of calling her “Madame (sic) First Lady – Mrs Biden – Jill – kiddo”, the author goes on to recommend that she drop the honorific of “Dr” before her name.

“‘Dr Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic,” Epstein writes. He justifies his condescension towards her title on grounds that it referred to an “Ed D – a doctor of education, earned at the University of Delaware”.

Perhaps not the politest article ever written. And I’m not entirely au fait with American practises. The English solution is fairly simple. Which is that a PhD doesn’t use the title Dr. outside purely academic arenas. That’s reserved – socially, societally, not formally – for MDs.

Pointing out that this might be the way to do it doesn’t deserve a torrent of denunciation of course.

Where would we be without all these people not investigating hovercraft, jet engines and nuclear power?

Via email:

The distress caused by the Coronavirus pandemic means parents should maintain the “vital tonic” of the Father Christmas myth for children this year, psychologist urges

For further information:

University of Exeter

Press Office

Sigh.

Universities must act to eradicate discrimination against working-class students, including the mockery of regional accents, equality campaigners have said.

A Guardian investigation has found widespread evidence of students at some of the country’s leading universities being ridiculed over their accents and backgrounds, in some cases prompting them to leave education.

The analysis found discrimination against working-class students was particularly prevalent among Russell Group universities. The group, which is made up of 24 institutions, has a reputation for academic excellence.

In a series of Guardian interviews, students past and present reported bullying and harassment over their accents and working-class backgrounds. Some said their academic ability was questioned because of the way they spoke.

Young Owen, famously, listening to George Formby records while at Oxford in order to preserve his accent.

First all-online global school launches, offering private education at fraction of the cost
King’s College Online will give pupils access to more than 60 prestigious schools to complement new digital learning programme

It actually seems to run very much like the Open University. Online lectures and classes, some visits to campus maybe. Just for GCSEs and A levels.

We can expect massive amounts of botching over this. And no comparisons at all to the Open University of course. For that second is the state which makes it Good.

Why are schools still such hostile places for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children?
Grace Claire O’Neill

How would anyone know if they’re never there?

Next in an exhausting list of Things You Kind of Hoped Were Satire but Turned Out to Be True — this, from the academic Sunny Singh:

“I get regular invites to debate on various platforms. I always say no. Because debate is an imperialist capitalist white supremacist cis heteropatriarchal technique that transforms a potential exchange of knowledge into a tool of exclusion & oppression.”

Sunny runs a creative writing course at one of the country’s worst universities (according to the league tables), London Metropolitan.

At least it’s not one of the best universities – yet.

We are supposed to be modelling how to be good citizens in a time of Covid, but I do not see a single student wiping down their desk or washing their hands in the numerous outdoor wash basins that have been installed.

You are the teacher, you are in loco parentis. You tell ’em. And if they don’t then punish them for not.

That being what teachers are for?

We knew, of course, of the offence of driving while black. That demonstration of the racism inherent in the society etc. But this is a new one:

“To an escalating degree over my adult life. I have eschewed my lived experience as a white Jewish child in suburban Kansas City under various assumed identities within a Blackness that I had no right to claim: first North African Blackness, then US rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness,” she wrote.
“I have not only claimed these identities as my own when I had absolutely no right to do so — when doing so is the very epitome of violence, of thievery and appropriation, of the myriad ways in which non-Black people continue to use and abuse Black identities and cultures — but I have formed intimate relationships with loving, compassionate people who have trusted and cared for me when I have deserved neither trust nor caring.”

Note what she insists is worse – not only but also! – which is that fucking while pretending to be black is indeed worse.

A bit odd we’d probably think but then there’s no explaining academia.

She also doesn’t explain quite what it is that she’s done. I assume it’s that she has said that she’s black when she ain’t.

Hmm, OK, and?

Elizabeth Warren was unavailable for comment.

This is called grading on the curve:

The decision in England, where results come out on Thursday, is more rigid still: alongside their predictions, teachers were asked to put their students in order, with none jointly ranked. Then, in what Ofqual called its “direct centre-level approach”, the predictions were largely disregarded; instead, schools have been allocated a fixed number of As, Bs etc based on their performances in previous years. Students’ results will rely jointly on where they were placed relative to their peers, and how students did in the years before them.

The aim is to sort pupils into bright, not so and not. So, rank order does this. What is your problem?

At least, teachers’ unions are aiming to differ:

Almost 9 in 10 parents say their children will go back to school in the new term, ONS reveals

There was a comment here that now is the time to fire all the teachers, derecognise the unions and then rehire those actually desired and those only.

There’s merit in that.

Instead, we have thousands upon thousands of young people, often from poor backgrounds, saddled with £30,000 of debt after three years of gender realignment studies at the University of West Norfolk (formerly Downham Market Tech).

Where did he get this idea from?

We don’t know the reason that the expert goes on to give:

The Government proposals for some pupils to focus on English and maths when they return to school in September could lead to “cultural apartheid”, an expert has warned as headteachers vow to ignore the Government’s advice….

Our task therefore is to ponder what reasons there possibly could be.

Ideas along the lines of, well, literacy and numeracy are waacist, innit, are too obvious. What therefore is that argument?

The winning prize is employment at the fool think tank of your choice.

We’ve been told for generations now that the secret to a better education is smaller class sizes. We must,m therefore, hire many more teachers. True, this has largely been said by the teachers’ unions but even that source might occasionally have a valid point. Although, when we consider that teaching is the profession with the lowest A level grades at entry perhaps not.

So, now we get to find out:

Maximum class size of 15 for England’s returning school pupils
Children will be kept in groups around half the size of normal classes but unions raise fears

Let’s see shall we? There’s going to be a massive rise in school performance? Or not? And someone is taking notes about this, right?

Children who are bullied for having ginger hair are “not dissimilar” to race victims, the actress Lily Cole has claimed.

It is indeed people being mean over a perceived physical difference.

About which we might say two things. Bullying occurs in entirely homogenous societies too, for human children are evil little bastards whatever the marital status of their parents. The second flowing from this first, if racist bullying is much the same as other kinds of bullying then perhaps we shouldn’t worry so much about the racist kind?

Actual racism, sure, that’s to be rooted out. But kids being nasty shits? And?

University students should be drafted into a new “national service” to boost social mobility, a Government adviser has said.

When undergraduates start their courses they could be automatically enrolled as Maths or English tutors for underprivileged children at local schools, according to Prof Lee Eliot Major of Exeter University.

The major change required would be to bring all new university students up to a minimum standard of literacy and numeracy.

Two Es in variants of grievance studies doesn’t constitute that proof.

This is according to a typically useful study from Anglia Ruskin University.

Or does everyone read that as Angela Ruskin U and then wonder who she was?