Allowing schools to mark their student's "coursework" is a scam

Watching Newsnight, I was surprised to learn that GCSEs are taught on a modular basis.

Isn't this a scam?

Cramming for one module, getting through the exam, then abandoning everything you have learned while you move onto the next topic cannot be a legitimate way of studying a subject and completely negates any possibility of knowledge integration where each part of a course interacts in the student's mind so that a much deeper level of understanding is achieved and is tested at the end of the course - especially important in humanities subjects.

I also think allowing schools to mark their student's "coursework" is a scam.

If modules and internal marking of coursework have become standard in state schools then no wonder we have seen year on year grade inflation for the past quarter century.

Also no-one has mentioned the possibility of marking the January students down as a way of achieving parity - this is just as valid an argument as the clamour to mark the June students upwards.

Sainsbury's

Very impressed by this Sainsbury's mailshot.

Not only money-off vouchers but a compelling list of why you should do your shopping at Sainsbury's:  supporting farmers, Fairtrade products, sustainable fishing, animal welfare, donations to the Woodland Trust.

The ethical case is overwhelming.

The Review Show is looking at Zadie Smith's new novel NW this evening.

I hope they are going to consider whether it contains unacceptable examples of chav caricatures (as in the Martin Amis novel Lionel Asbo).

Allocating positions in the elite

Writing on the website of the new think tank CLASS, Independent writer Owen Jones bemoans the fact that 4,000 school pupils have been awarded a "D" grade English GCSE whereas before the crackdown on grade inflation they could have expected a "C" grade.

http://www.classonline.org.uk/blog/item/our-young-people-deseve-a-secure-future1

Does he really think the best interests of those young people are served by pretending they have achieved more than they have?  Does he also think it is good for the country that young people are given access to taxpayer-funded sixth-forms and apprenticeships on the basis of dodgy qualifications?  Only the first paragraph of the article is worth reading, the rest of it is left-wing gush.

Writing in the Guardian on Tuesday Peter Wilby tells us that examinations are just "rationing devices" to allocate "university places and positions in elite professional occupations".

The whole point of the education system should be to transmit the British interpretation of Western culture from one generation to the next.

If it fails to achieve this wider objective (and there are grounds for thinking that the state schools have failed - totally failed) then there is little point in concentrating on the narrow objective of allocating positions in the elite.

All that will happen is that we will get an elite culturally ignorant, self-serving and self-obsessed.

Or has this already happened?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/26/gove-battle-against-higher-grades 

Is Kevin Pietersen what is known as a "plastic Briton"?

Is that why he was disloyal to the English team?

Thought for the Day by the Reverend Angela Tilby on Radio 4

Alarming Thought for the Day by the Reverend Angela Tilby on Radio 4 this morning.

Alarming because in her attack on the philosopher Ayn Rand she told the BBC audience that the religious education she (Angela Tilby) personally received when at school taught "equality".

I am not a priest, but I do not know of any part of the Bible where equality is the recommended dogma for life on this earth, so despite Angela Tilby's canonical elevation one has the unsettling feeling that here is yet another Anglican priest who does not seem to know the Scriptures.

Also the Reverend Tilby, in discussing Ayn Rand, failed to mention that the Russian-born philosopher was an atheist from a Jewish cultural background, and therefore whatever her philosophical outlook it was always unlikely to have been a perfect match with Anglicanism.

Ayn Rand experienced at first hand a socialist society (in Soviet Russia) and knew far more about the practical and lethal implementation of "equality" than the Reverend Angela Tilby, in her rarefied Oxbridge world, ever will - there was no acknowledgement of this in Rev Tilby's broadcast.

This is not to defend Ayn Rand's Objectivism per se - an atheist philosopher cannot see more than a partial glimpse of the truth about society ("if you turn your back on the light you will follow a shadow"). 

This is to defend her cogent philosophy against what can only be described as an ignorant and opportunist attack (albeit an ignorant attack expressed in well-modulated Oxbridge tones).

King Arthur's sleeping knights

Dreary rainy Bank Holiday Monday.  After lunch of cold beef (the remains of yesterday's joint), boiled potatos and peas I drove thirty miles to a village on the other side of the county.  Just as I arrived the sun came out (briefly).

Mysterious mounds in a pasture indicate the medieval village was considerably larger than the present hamlet - the grass too wet and waterlogged for me to look at the site properly.

In the church porch were two medieval recumbent effigies, the purpose of my visit.  The knights were both in armour from the early 14th century.  The one on the left (above) had around his head a cusped and crocketed canopy with angles either side.

The one on the right in superb chain-mail.

Various local stories surround the figures, none of them likely to be true - they were two brothers who went off to the crusades; they were local landowners who fought a duel in which they both died; they are part of King Arthur's sleeping knights.

Palmalito marmalade

A friend returning from Florida gave me this jar of American Palmalito marmalade.  Different to English marmalade, it has a fresh and intensely sweet taste - very enjoyable.  Looking at the ingredients I noticed it contains the infamous corn syrup (which I think is banned as a food additive in the European Union).

Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulkes

I am currently reading Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulkes.

This is another of the books I bought about ten years ago and am now only just getting round to reading.

Charlotte Gray is very disappointing.  I have been ploughing through it for nearly three weeks which for me is a long time to be stuck with a book.  The first sections in London and during the training are quite interesting, but once the scene switches to France it resembles a literary bread-pudding (everything mixed up together and so heavy that I feel it is giving me indigestion). 

Digressions are everywhere, including what seem to be irrelevant soliloquies on the nature of art, the upbringing of children etc.  There is also a ridiculous section of dialogue where a group of people discuss the imposition of new laws in occupied France as if reading aloud from a very dull history book.  The love scenes are wooden. 

The characters seem one-dimensional - the good characters are all good, the bad characters are all bad (completely at variance with what must have been the complex reality of France under occupation).

Several people already seemed sozzled - the past week at work

Monday

Check-up at the dentist.  I took the whole day off work (holiday) as I wanted to do my tax return.  But after I returned home from the dentist I just spent the rest of the day reading and looking at the television.

Tuesday

Heavy queues of traffic so that I was half an hour late getting to the office.  New temp Donna was on Reception so it seems Kyla has gone.  The whole morning wasted replying to e-mails.

Lunchtime the Institute's Director, Vijay Singh, took everyone to a local hotel for drinks to celebrate his one year anniversary of taking over the Institute.  Deputy Director Lois Cooper, who is very ill with cancer, was also there - the first time I had seen her since she was taken ill.  The hotel bar gloomy and cavernous, and completely without any atmosphere.  Conversation stilted, and the only person who seemed animated was Vijay Singh.  He told us he had "seen off" Alec Nussbaum (who had attempted to "merge" the Institute into his department).  It is unlikely however that Alec Nussbaum will be so easily deflected.

When we returned to the office the management meeting was held.  Vijay Singh was presented with a gift - a baseball bat to symbolise his macho style of management.  He swung the bat around and said (jokingly) "Now where's Mr Nussbaum".

The actual meeting was very general and nothing serious was discussed.

Wednesday

Time seems to be passing so slowly it feels as if this month is stretching into an age.

I struggled to complete the Competition Analysis report.  I discussed the document with Vijay Singh, wanting to prepare him for the lack of any real data to support the argument.  He was in a good mood and told me that the Institute had a new donor which will reinforce our independence from Head Office.

Thursday

In the morning a meeting to discuss Competition Analysis.  I presented my report and to my relief it was received well.  Later I told Marcia Walsh the meeting had gone far better than I expected.

I stayed in the office until 7.30, as it was the day of the office Summer Party and there was no time to go home.

This year the Summer Party was a dinner held at a local hotel (the same one we had gone to on Tuesday), paid for by the Institute.  Rain falling as I parked my car and went into the bar where I found everyone had gathered.  The drinks were free, so several people already seemed sozzled (IT clerk John Johnson especially). 

At the dinner, held in the hotel restaurant, I sat next to Mrs Singh.  The food was good, but small portions.  At the riotous end of the table (well away from me) the office juniors were throwing things at each other.

After the meal we sat in the bar which had become very crowded.  Mrs Singh talked about the land her family had lost when they had fled into India from the new creation of Pakistan.  I stayed until 11.30 and then left.

Friday

Several people had taken the day off, so the office was quiet. 

I'm afraid I find Jon Snow's attempts at cheer-leading for the Paralympics very leaden.

Is this the best Channel 4 can do?

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/jon-snows-paralympic-show

Invest more in the programme

Watching Press Preview on Sky News last night, I do wonder why they do not invest more in the programme so that they can benefit from the audience that has watched Newsnight and would be ready to switch over to another serious news programme.

They should bring the time forward by ten minutes to about 11.20 and have a higher calibre of guests (yesterday they just had Carole Malone and Bonnie Greer, both of whom spouted low-brow anodyne nonsense opinions).

The "Prince Harry naked" story

On several levels the "Prince Harry naked" story is occupying a prominent place in the media.

My first reaction was that this is a non-story - you could look at the Facebook page of almost any British person aged in their teens or twenties and see similar pictures. 

Equally the issue of press freedom (the pictures have not been published in the United Kingdom) seemed to revolve more around the imminent publication of the Leveson Inquiry than any issue of reverential self-censorship.

However the story has featured on last night's Newsnight (BBC 2) and this morning's Today programme (BBC Radio 4) so it seems there must be a more serious aspect to the story that people are groping for.

It occurs to me that we may be seeing a manifestation of atavistic ideas about the line of succession in general and the third in line to the throne in particular.  In the past monarchs had to be physically perfect, and disabilities of any kind tended to disqualify princes from succession.  The middle-aged gushing of Vanessa Feltz on Newsnight yesterday, as well as more general hysteria on overseas websites, indicates that Prince Harry is physically flawless (and few people can visually survive candid naked snaps unless they are genuinely photogenic).

So in terms of the monarchy as "divine" (perfect people were a sign of divine blessing); the Royal Family as warlords (a military leader had to have a demonstrably strong physique); and the monarchy as a guarantor of stable government (princes in the line of succession had to be capable of reproducing) the Prince Harry naked story seems to be reviving ancient and long-dormant ideas about the role and validity of the monarchy.

And as a postcript to this theory, I noticed that Sam Wollaston in a Guardian television review of a Channel 4 documentary (The Queen's Mother in Law http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/aug/21/the-queens-mother-in-law ) felt obliged to jeer at the in-bred nature of royal families, as if the mental instability this produces is grounds for shame and disqualification - it is unusual that someone as left-wing as Sam Wollaston should (presumably unintentionally) express quasi-medieval ideas about the need for royal perfection, and it seems an especially insensitive thing for him to have said on the eve of the London Paraolympic Games in which people with mental disabilities have been readmitted after a period of expulsion.

Daily Mirror article by Mark Ellis about nearly a million NEET young people.

I would be interested to see how many of this million are alumni of comprehensive state schools.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/money/city-news/neets-number-of-young-people-not-1274758?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

The 2015 election

Very interesting discussion earlier today:

• The 2015 election will be decided by what the government projects itself as being in the course of doing as much by (or more than) what they have actually achieved.
• Low interest rates are key - in an effort to help the 8% unemployed do not forget the 92% who are employed (and maybe try a campaign emphasising the high status of manual labour).
• Big society concept has barely begun to tap into the national reserves of idealism - has the potential to reform society in terms of mutual aid.

Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan's choice of clothes

Features writer Hadley Freeman devotes a whole page of the Guardian's G2 section to talking about American Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan's choice of clothes.

In her list of possible reasons why he dresses "badly" she misses out the obvious one - that he isn't vain about his appearance.

The Guardian, we should remember, cheered through three elections Tony Blair and his hyper-tight trousers and carefully mediated appearance.  Mrs Blair even had a personal style guru installed at 10 Downing Street.  The Guardian, via the features of Hadley Freeman, presumably prefers to judge politicians by style not substance.

Also in Hadley Freeman's feature she refers to Rev Giles Fraser's attack on Ayn Rand as being irreligious.  Are Rev Fraser and Ms Freeman suggesting that Ayn Rand's atheism invalidates all her work?  This reminds me of Antonia White's schooling where she was not allowed to own, read, or even refer to, any book that was not written by a self-professedly Catholic author.

Is not the real reason for this frivolous sort of feature the fact that the left has so far not been able to land any serious blows on Paul Ryan, and that he is beginning to alarm them?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/20/paul-ryan-republican-dresses-badly?newsfeed=true

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/ryan-and-romney-a-contrast-in-sartorial-styles/2012/08/14/da09ea70-e642-11e1-8f62-58260e3940a0_story.html

Tim Soutphommasane's vision of a more "patriotic" Labour Party

(https://twitter.com/RachelReevesMP )


Shadow Treasury Minister Rachel Reeves appears to be endorsing Tim Soutphommasane's vision of a more "patriotic" Labour Party - reported in a New Statesman article by George Eaton http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2012/08/ns-profile-tim-soutphommasane

The article points to the Olympic Opening Ceremony as providing a catalyst for a new nationalist interpretation of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom.

In many ways the adoption of a more "patriotic" policy would solve several problems for the Labour leadership.  An emphasis upon "Britishness" would outmanoeuvre the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales (probably essential if the Labour Party is to have a long-term future).  It would also marginalise the hard-line socialist members of the Labour Party who oppose the party's metamorphosis into a more social democratic model.

However Australian society is not the same as British society, and what worked in the antipodes is unlikely to work here.  For instance, there appears to be no meaningful class structure in Australia to intrude into definitions of "patriotism".  Also, Australians have a myth of everyone, rich or poor, being equal immigrants into an "empty land" (myopically ignoring the genocidal extermination and repression of the original inhabitants).

In the United Kingdom there are already well-established myths that will not be easily overturned.

But Rachel Reeve's endorsement indicates the proposals are probably also endorsed by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls.

PS I know the supposed difference between patriotism and nationalism, but I regard the differentiation as false - when most people say "patriotism" today they mean nationalism.

Identity politics by writer and philosopher Julian Baggini in today's Guardian

Article about identity politics by writer and philosopher Julian Baggini in today's Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/19/white-cliffs-of-dover

The language used is moderate and the tone is friendly.  A casual reading reveals nothing particularly remarkable, and if anything the article appears to be a little bland.  Julian Baggini's establishment status as "writer in residence to the National Trust" confers upon his thoughts an aura of respectability. 

However there are two points in this seemingly harmless piece that should cause us concern.

In the seventh paragraph Julian Baggini tells us "we are a nation of immigrants", and in the eighth paragraph he expands "go back far enough and all of us can trace our ancestry to the other side of the water".

On the surface this seems to be a statement of the obvious - go back far enough and we can all trace our ancestry to the Rift Valley; go back even further and we can all claim kin with our far distant protozoa forebears.

The reason the "we are all immigrants" statement must be challenged is because it is an argument that has been repeatedly used in history by one group of people to dispossess another.

Most infamously, it was the offical doctrine of racist and apartheid South Africa.  Drawn up by Dr DF Malan, codified by HF Verwoerd and ruthlessly implemented by BJ Vorster, apartheid was based on the stupendous lie that Afrikaners and "bantus" had arrived in South Africa at more or less the same time, that everyone was an immigrant and that therefore no one group had any indigenous rights to the land.  Based upon this rewriting of history "separate but equal" development of different ethnic cultures became the official policy, although in reality it was not even remotely equal but heavily biased in favour of the Afrikaner immigrants.

You might think that this is a very extreme comparison to make, indeed so extreme that it has no relevance to the United Kingdom in 2012.

But the "we are all immigrants" phrase is a mantra that is gaining increasing currency, and is used to justify post-war mass immigration. 

The people who are going to lose out to unrestricted migration are those communities who depend upon communal assets.  Typically this is going to be the white working class - the indigenous majority who have chief title to the British Isles.  Derided and abused as "chavs", poorly educated and inarticulate, increasingly denied welfare benefits or assisted housing, they are paupers waiting to be decanted and "shovelled out" of the cities into what are effectively bantustans (Stoke on Trent).

Personally I am not affected by all this.  I have sufficient wealth and education to qualify for the professional elite.  But I must protest at the way the United Kingdom is being turned into an offshore international tax haven where the only people who have any rights are those who have the money to pay for them.

If I wanted to be part of a smug self-satisfied multi-cultural multi-ethnic professional elite served by a faceless transient army of peons I would move to Dubai.

An article by political editor Toby Helm discussing research carried out on behalf of think tank British Future

Also in today's Observer was an article by political editor Toby Helm discussing research carried out on behalf of think tank British Future, arguing that the "multi-ethnic" nature of British Olympic medallists reveals a nation "at ease".

If this were true it would be a cause for celebration.

However there are elements of this research, and the interpretation of it, that raise important questions.

Director of British Future, Sundar Katwala, tells us that a third of the British medals were won by people from migrant communities, and then qualifies this statement by saying "there were almost no British Asian team members".  I have not seen a breakdown of medallists by ethnic origin, but presumably he is actually saying a third of British medals were won by black people of African or Afro-Caribbean heritage.  According to the 2001 census (the latest figures we have) the black community represents 2% of the population.

So how is it possible for 2% of the population to win 33% of the medals?

Either Sundar Katwala is implying that black people have a genetic ability to do well at Olympic sports (which enters very dangerous Bell Curve territory, as a genetic tendency to perform positively in some areas must also indicate a genetic possibility to behave negatively in other areas).

Or Sundar Katwala is implying that black people are no different to the rest of the population, and their Olympic achievements are simply a result of realising their potential (in which case one is bound to ask why, given the huge sums of money necessary to develop Olympic champions, has two per cent of the population received such staggeringly disproportionate amounts of money and who in the political class authorised this expenditure and what was their motive in doing so).

Personally I think the left would be best advised to drop the argument that the Olympics has anything useful to tell us about society. 

British socialism cannot be nationalist

One week after the conclusion of the London 2012 Olympic Games, and a large article appears in today's Observer by Tim Soutphommasane, described by the Guardian as "Ed Miliband's new political guru".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/aug/19/labour-guru-olympics-milband?newsfeed=true

However, I think Tim Soutphommasane misunderstands the socialist culture of large sections of the British Labour Party.  British socialism cannot be nationalist, it is too committed to an internationalist world view.  While the Blairite faction might be persuaded by Tim Soutphommasane, is it likely that activists such as Owen Jones would embrace a policy of nationalism? (throughout the Olympic Games the most partisan statement on his Twitter site was a line saying Yorkshire was doing fairly well in the medals table).