Quotulatiousness

September 8, 2009

What’s in a name?

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Education — Nicholas @ 09:17

For most people, certain names pick up associations that have to do with the first person you encountered who bore that name. You may view all “Garys” with mild apprehension, while you’re automatically well-disposed to “Michaels”. “Kathy” or “Chelsea” may remind you of an unpleasant classmate from grade school, while “Tina” or “Pauline” may be viewed in advance as good people, all based on your early experiences.

Teachers in Britain have their little list of names, too:

As teachers eye the register on the first day back at school this September, they’ll be nervously keeping a sharp look-out for certain names which “strike fear into the nation’s tutors”.

The list of those likely to make mischief includes young ‘uns dubbed Aliesha, Brooke, Brooklyn, Casey, Chelsea, Connor, Crystal, Demi, Jack, Jake, Jessica, Kyle, and (pay attention at the back there El Reg’s Executive Vice President, Global Sales), Liam.

This roster of foreboding comes courtesy of Bounty.com, which polled 3,000 blackboard botherers to determine just which names spell trouble. Doubtless there are those among you who have a lad called Jake who’s an absolute angel, but that makes no difference to tremulous teachers, because they’ve already got him marked down as a wrong ‘un as soon as they clock his ID.

September 4, 2009

The show must go on!

Filed under: Education, Politics — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:45

David Harsanyi looks at all the reasons it would be a good thing to support President Obama’s schools webcast next week:

Why would anyone want to deprive impressionable school-age children of hearing the inspiring wisdom of the president? Barack Obama is determined to impart his knowledge upon our pliable offspring via webcast across the country next week, and we should not stand in his way.

This is, as they say, a teachable moment. There is nothing to fear. Naturally, teachers and parents, incapable of handling the sheer concentrated intellectual force of such a historic event, have been forwarded a detailed lesson plan by the Department of Education (sic) so that no child will be blinded inadvertently by the dazzling light of hope.

[. . .]

Moreover, if your child is incapable of handling a 20-minute haranguing from a self-important public servant, he will be tragically unprepared for the new world. (Whom do you think he will be dealing with when he needs that hip replacement in 60 years?)

Even if you oppose the president on a political level, it is empirically evident that the more one hears his homilies the less inclined one is to trust him. And Obama’s penchants to lecture us endlessly, to be the center of attention endlessly and to saturate the airwaves and national conversation are clear indications that he believes government is the answer to every societal, religious, economic, and cultural question we face. Why should your kids be immune?

Well, I’m convinced. Just as long as there’s no singing (Monty Python reference, in case it’s too obscure.).

August 31, 2009

Frederick Pohl graduates from high school

Filed under: Books, Education, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:42

Fred Pohl, the long-time science fiction author (his first published piece was a poem in the October, 1937 issue of Amazing Stories, according to Wikipedia) has finally received his high school diploma:

Happens that I never graduated from high school, the reason being that I quit school as soon as I was old enough, which was 17. I had several reasons for doing that, but the one I prefer to give when asked that question is the one given by my friend John Brunner when he quit in England, at about the same age. That was, “I had to leave school, because it was interfering with my education.” (In case you wonder, I didn’t go to college, either. I did teach at several and lectured at scores if not hundreds of them, all the way from local community two-year schools to the Ivy League, in maybe a dozen different countries as well as our own, but I never attended one.)

[. . .]

I do have one problem, though. I remember matchbook ads for a correspondence school, back in the days when people still carried matchbooks, which promised that people who got a high-school diploma would get $25 more a week. The problem is I don’t know whom to bill.

August 26, 2009

Print media’s problems

Filed under: Cancon, Education, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:04

Colby Cosh has concerns about the direction in which the newspapers have been moving:

Some days I think print media should die even if I would too

Our business would have a lot more credibility if we spent less time giving each other awards and concentrated on handing out boobie prizes for uncritical, gormless stuff like the St. Albert Gazette‘s breathlessly excited coverage of a new local math curriculum for primary schools that “covers far fewer concepts.” As I get older I grow more cowardly about making enemies in a rapidly contracting business, plus I’m taking the piss from a somewhat higher summit than I used to; but seriously, how do some people sleep at night?

August 19, 2009

QotD: The annual Beloit College Mindset List

Filed under: Education, History, Humour, Quotations — Nicholas @ 12:12

If the entering college class of 2013 had been more alert back in 1991 when most of them were born, they would now be experiencing a severe case of déjà vu. The headlines that year railed about government interventions, bailouts, bad loans, unemployment and greater regulation of the finance industry. The Tonight Show changed hosts for the first time in decades, and the nation asked “was Iraq worth a war?”

Beloit College, 2009-08-18

July 20, 2009

Decoded: the secret of modern education

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education — Nicholas @ 17:06

Tyler Cowen provides the skeleton key to understand the modern education system:

Placebo effects can be very powerful and many supposedly effective medicines do not in fact outperform the placebo. The sorry truth is that no one has compared modern education to a placebo. What if we just gave people lots of face-to-face contact and told them they were being educated?

[Ben Casnochna writes:] He reluctantly provides the terrifying conclusion: Maybe that’s what current methods of education already consist of.

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