Elephant in the [Class] Room

Daniel Hoffman-Gill offers an interesting opinion on the alienation of the white working classes in the UK. Essentially, he does not want to see this group left behind and the comments that follow his blog posting highlight the differing (read 'divisive') points of view on the issue. Whatever we think however, it remains true, that white working class children have the lowest levels of academic achievement in schools and remain the most socially immobile of all the demographic groups within the UK (see the Joseph Rowntree Report). Invariably, schools that take these children in will have a bigger cultural issue to tackle in their communities that they serve and are challenged with breaking a culture of low aspiration at the individual, parental and societal level. It's a tall order.  

Sir Robin Bosher of the Harris Federation of Academies, describes his findings: "I see about 10 per cent in each class who are so unsociable that they hurt others, adults and other young children. But they’re unsociable because they’ve no practice at being sociable." Compare that to other 'poor' groups - European Muslim migrants, people learning in a non-native language and so on. Think also of people in the developing world who live a hand-to-mouth existence who also start off with disadvantage. The difference is, in general, these groups tend to value education and see it as a key to social mobility. 

As an educator, with a body of experience in several countries, it goes without saying that I believe that education is an important means to meet the needs of the wider social good. I cannot ignore, however, that in England education is way too (negatively) politicised and this makes education as a public service vulnerable to constant government manipulation. The challenges, however, of being at the chalk-face on a daily basis means that educators have a different perspective on the social matters that children bring into school and meeting the needs of the white working class is not as simple as another set of reforms. 

It would be fair to conclude that essentially 65 years of exhaustive educational reform in the UK has not delivered on closing the educational achievement gaps for white working class children or driving up their aspirations. The occasional examples that highlight traditionally working class people being the first in their families to access higher education are something of an illusory distraction. Progress to university remains a mainly upwardly mobile, middle-class aspiration. 

The social mobility arguments remain at the cornerstone of the 'moral purpose' behind education and there is some expectation that schools pick up the task of changing social and behavioural cultures. Scaled up on a nationwide level, is this possible or appropriate? I would understand if people thought that education plays a part in social reform, but in all honestly, despite the many dedicated professional educators who reach out to vulnerable communities, nearly 70 years after the post war education reforms began, who is actually responsible for breaking the culture of non-aspiration? Do we continue to respond to white working class low achievement with more resources or changing how teachers and schools are judged? 

Elephant in the [Class] Room 

It would be wise to stop, pause and consider why (and for whom) we aim to push through unchecked reforms. Are we missing the elephant in the room? What is it about white working class children that puts obstacles in their paths for achievement? Should our responses be 'politically challenging' rather than 'politically correct'? Is it okay to be critical of a consumerist, hedonistic culture that doesn't prioritise education? Can we honestly expect a completely universal educational approach/examinations system to work for all? Can we accept equality when we live is a society divided by class and race? Should political interventions be removed once and for all from education?

Malala Yousafzai commented a few weeks ago about British teenagers not appreciating their educational opportunities. She was right. I have seen schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan and know the conditions under which children learn. They aspire for better and in the most dangerous and poorly funded conditions, the fight for education is being bravely fronted by children. In comparison children in the UK are very fortunate and to have a public educational culture that is supported by a generous financial investment per pupil that remains amongst the highest in the world. Isn't a quality, free education a very real golden opportunity that some are simply giving up?

There is an elephant in the room. Are we prepared to admit it?

Find out more about Education Reform here

History of Education in the UK: Wikipedia
Arc of Underachievement: BBC
The Underclass: Prisma

Murder and Apology

In the hysteria and media vulturism that has surrounded the murder of Lee Rigby, I still feel that this post comes too soon. The family of the dead soldier needs time to grieve, the space to support each other and to make sense of the situation. The media is not as forgiving however and sensationalism grabs the headlines. Much as I try to resist being drawn in, eventually I feel that I should also voice a comment.

I'm at odds with the media adopting extreme views, but I'm also at odds with jumping on the bandwagon of apology or justification. These are not appropriate responses. Lee Rigby was murdered in cold blood, in a most gratuitous and savage manner by assailants who had somehow been dehumanised. That act of absolute unashamed brutality, the immediate events leading up to it and the delayed response of the authorities should be under the media and investigative microscope. For the same reasons, I made a decision not to comment on the Boston attacks the Woolwich murder has led to Muslims being rolled out onto the social media platform to apologise or distance themselves from acts of terror (murder). This is a type of approval seeking and constant apology is something that I do wish to entertain. Frankly, I sense inferiority when this has to happen and I'm bored with it. Murder of someone innocent is murder. It is heinous and it deserves a just punishment. That is true if some white Norwegian is behind this or some deranged  men on the streets of London are behind this. Individual acts like this simply do not represent all the members of a society. It creates an unnecessary pressure to be apologetic. Would we also call it murder if the innocent are killed by soldiers in combat? That perhaps is a rhetorical question, though it is one I could come back to in a future post. Right now, this apology by the BBC's Nick Robinson - where the killers in the Woolwich murders were described as having a 'Muslim appearance' - has the sad potential to be almost comic.

Read Areeb Ullah's take on this.

Image Source: Real Street

Time

This past Sunday, British Summer Time ended and it was the first time in several years (for me) that I have experienced 1am twice in the same morning. The truth  is, I couldn't distinguish one "1am" from the other, and personally for me, not much changed between the two.

Time however, is something that  I have been thinking about a little, of late. My feeling is that we spend "time" trying to manage "time". Ironic, I guess, but when we live in a world where we are pressurised by "time" and surrounded by debates about whether we should allow our bodies and minds to follow a natural flow of time rather than an invented notion of it, there are thoughts around the subject worth exploring. Sometimes, for example, we look back and wish we could reverse time, but that begs the crucial question about whether there is such a thing (physically speaking) that can be reversed. If one second is barely different to the second before, I wonder if the measure of time is sometimes something of an arbitrary exercise. 

German Mathematicians and Philosophers Gottfried Leibniz (July 1, 1646 – November 14, 1716) and Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) were classical time 'sceptics'. In their works they broadly argue that time was relative and not absolute. And whilst there's a converse view too, of course, that proposes that time is a fundamental universal structure, for now I want to explore my own thoughts on this which sides with the view that time does not exist.

According to Leibniz and Kant, time would be disconnected from age and the process of getting older. Even Antiphon (Greece, 5BC) argued that time was unreal. John McTaggart (3 September 1866 – 18 January 1925) famously wrote a book entitled, The Unreality of Time. Time therefore, just is - something we talk about and little else. I'm inclined to agree. We have limited 'time' on Earth, but we have dreams and desires that go way beyond our lifespans. And perhaps right now that is where the accepted norm of time bothers me the most. Not time itself, but what we think it to be and our desire to control something that barely exists.

To fulfill everything we hope to achieve we think that we need more 'time' and during the North European winters, we attempt to control 'time'* by adjusting clocks. One of the reasons clocks moved back and forth every autumn and spring is that we try to capitalise on daylight by playing with 'time'. What we don't accept is that our natural selves may well be best suited to less activity during winters and that is the way it is. Instead we change time and continue to force everyone into the same 'time' patterns in a bid to keep up productivity. It was, for a time, a creative solution. But whilst, human creativity is good, but is it wise to continue to pretend we have created more 'time' just by fiddling with the clocks?

*by switching between BST to GMT in Autumn and then back in Spring

Wicked-Pedia: Volume III

Behind the Curtain

Taking a sneak peak behind Wikipedia, helps us learn a little about what is really going on.

Wikipedia is constantly behind re-written, changed and updated, negotiated, and developed. There are rules that need to be adhered to and often a finished article comes after a process of development through negotiation, sometimes arbitration and final editing. Under Wikipedia rules contributors to an article must check for neutrality, weighting and reliability through a dialogue process that includes patience, fairness of intent and "wikilove". See the flowchart below to see how the process works.

Case Study: Talk: Criticism of the Roman Catholic Church

The case study I explore here looks at what is going on "behind the scenes" in an article that appears in Wikipedia entitled Criticism of the Roman Catholic Church. Let me begin with a disclaimer - I'm not writing about Roman Catholicism; what I'm doing is taking a look at some aspects of the debate that go on before a "finished" article in Wikipedia can come into fruition. There's a good deal of debate between contributors here, some early debates about the direction, and thus the title of the page. Bearing in mind, the central tennant of NPOV (neutral point of view), an adminstrator has at some point locked the page from further editing to allow the contributors to reflect on their own agendas and to allow them to reach a consensus after an edit-war between differing contributors has pursued. It's easy to follow one's own bias and in this example, the adminstrator is trying to get the contributors to avoid making general statements that could be deemed biased (in the sense of the religion) but to consider the sense of wider social threat that existed in 17th Century France - there was general anti-Huguenot sentiment in France from secular bodies during Louis XIV's reign, as well as the RC establishment.

During the processes involved in the various Wikipedia edits, the adminstrator reminds contributors to consider weighting given to subtopics (in this case, the arbitrator suggests that the debate is headed off topic). The adminstrator also reminds the contributors that they need to avoid maligning each other's sources/cited historians, encouraging them to seek resolution, through Wikiquette, ultimately threatening to lock them out completely.

Behind the curtain ... it's all very interesting.

Wicked-Pedia: Volume II

"Wicked"

Wicked Ver 1

Perhaps an attempt at reaching out to the Urban-aware* audience. Of course, those who are, will tell me that "wicked" is "good" and not "evil" in the world of Urban-speak. That said, I am quite happy to play on both senses of the word, because it serves to illustrate a point. Wikipedia is the most popular and the largest encyclopaedic reference out there - open-source and free - it is open to all - to contribute articles, to edit and to refine. Wikipedia is growing as people add topics of interest or contribute to articles already posted. I'm a front-end user and remain loyal to its potential. That's the first sense in which I use the word "wicked".

Wicked Ver 2

However, in Volume I of this topic, I explored how Wikipedia is not without flaw. There are poorly written, poorly referenced articles and contributions to this body of knowledge from people who whose point of view does not necessarily conform to the NPOV (neutral point of view) standards that are key to Wikipedia. Worse, there is abuse, deliberate attempts to hijack, push agendas and malicious vandalism; "wicked" in the commonly used sense of the word.

... The Places In-Between ...

But the spirit of open contribution is at the heart of Wikipedia; a repository of information that is bias-free and up-to-date with quality citations and links to other referenced works. Editing is continual and occurs through a process that is behind the scenes - some modifications are not checked because of vastness of scale and the principle of "good intent", others are subject to automated bot checks, and others are edited by teams of volunteers to ensure that the rules are followed; neutrality, reliable citations, academic style of writing, spelling and grammar. Disagreements can be reported through processes that includes teams checks and adjudicators. (... to be continued ...)

*Personal Opinion: Urban-speak is not always for the faint of heart

Wicked-Pedia: Volume I

Wicked-Pedia

I like Wikipedia, and use it as a point of reference, even here in this blog. Often I'll follow the articles in full, but mostly I pick up points of interest through scanning. For me, Wikipedia fits the need to fill my curiosity that my Hutchinson Encyclopaedia once served - similar to the times that I would spend in the school library looking at Britannica. Later, when we had Encarta, with it's stylised indexing, media files and hyperlinks, I thought that I had the world of knowledge all in one place. It was a good start, but of course slightly inaccurate - there's simply too much information to store and collate on a single CD-ROM. Besides, the fundamental disadvantage with Hutchinson, Britannica and Encarta was that they were pretty much out of date as soon as they went to press. Besides, what about the hidden pockets of information, that never quite made it to a volume of Britannica, or into the final edit of Encarta?

Step forward Wikipedia. I can spend a good deal of time, reading about the Jurassic and find myself clicking on the hyperlinks that carry me off somewhere else, where I'll follow another entry with interest; dinosaurs, air composition, flowering plants, modern farming, economy, gold, the periodic table, alchemy, the Renaissance, modernism, geo-politics and so on. All, advert free, without stepping outside of the Wiki-world.

The People's Encyclopaedia

But is Wikipedia, the fountain of all knowledge? It is, I guess, without boundaries, but there-in is the Achilles' Heel. We live in an Information Age, where the cyber-world is littered with junk, incomplete works, debris, misinformation and malice. This does, quite often, creep into Wikipedia, and therefore the whole process of navigating through Wikipedia, like much of the WWW, is about being able to spot obvious bias, avoiding the vandalism, recognising the variation in quality and taking care to check and validate what is presented as a 'truth'. Wikipedia may be good, but like anything good, it has to be supported to keep it good and we still need to take care where we step when exploring.  

(...to be continued ...)

The Encyclopaedia of the Brethren of Purity

Of course, no discussion on encyclopaedias would be complete without mentioning the Brethren of Purity, whose 52 volume compendium was completed in Basra, Iraq circa 1000 CE, later to influence post-Renaissance encyclopaedias in the West.

Sharbat Gula - شربت ګله - Afghan Girl

... a modern icon of innocence ... 

Some captured images work their way into our deep consciousness and the photograph of the Afghan Girl is one that we all know. We've seen it; we've been stirred by it; we recognise it; it's there. A bit like Che Guevara or Monroe. Even when we don't know it, we know it. For me, that makes the image of Sharbat Gula something of a modern icon - appearing in magazines, posters, TV, the Internet, (and though copyrighted) very much in the public domain.

Rather paradoxically we say modern icon, for the 'Afghan Girl' leads a very traditional Pashtoon life, and knew nothing of her 17 years as a public figure, where her image adorned photo-books on coffee tables the world over. Sharbat Gula (شربت ګله, Rose Sherbet) was forced to leave her home in Afghanistan during the Soviet War for a refugee camp in Pakistan where she was photographed by journalist Steve McCurry. The image was featured on the June 1984 cover of National Geographic Magazine, at a time when she was approximately 13 years old. Gula was known throughout the world simply as the Afghan Girl until she was formally identified in early 2002.

Who in fact 'owns' the public image and whether a 'copyright' and the profit arising from it should belong to the photographer, continues to generate debate. For the 'Afghan Girl' fame and image are largely immaterial. Sharbat Gula represents the heart and soul; the complex acceptance of what is Afghanistan - she was married in her early teens and in her maturity, she follows a traditional code and has a life of few luxuries; she wears a burka outside the house before strangers and speaks of peace under the Taleban.

Tor_Khan تور خان

Virtual Learning

For Matrix* boffins, you'll recall how the future of learning might be about downloading the relevant body content of knowledge and skills direct to the brain - and hey presto - kung fu expert! The whole simulated world/virtual reality issues that form the constant thread in the trilogy of films makes for an interesting starting point for a discussion about Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs).

In an early scene, Neo, the protagonist, trains his mind and learns the art of combat by entering a VLE that simulates a dojo - a classroom for martial arts. So I guess an open discussion on emerging technologies connected to learning might consider any number of possible futures especially considering the rapid scale and pace of change within educational ICT.

A Journey through Virtual Learning Environments: Initial Thoughts

It is an interesting journey that I have embarked on as a distance learning MA student in Digital Technologies, Communication and Education. I sit amongst the desert exotica of Abu Dhabi; the course is run from the University of Manchester, UK; the distance being bridged by the on-line nature of the course. Not quite The Matrix, but virtual learning of a sort? Virtual Learning Environments are currently fashionable in the ever changing world of electronic education, but let's explore:

A virtual learning environment (VLE) is a software system designed to support teaching and learning in an educational setting ... [though] ... a more correct term may be a virtual environment for learning, rather than virtual learning environment. (Source: Wikipedia)

Advantages/Disadvantages? Since the MA is also run on-site in Manchester, I will explore some observations, positives and negatives of both the live class situation (face-to-face) and the virtual learning environment.

Face-to-Face (+)
Students operate in a social setting; especially positive if that is your learning style (i.e. group discussions where feedback is instant). Perhaps easier to develop student-teacher relationship and student-student relationships. Fewer restrictions on teaching and assessment styles.

Virtual Learning Environment (+)
Opportunities for communication are increased through various tools, e.g. email, announcement and discussion boards etc. Ideas can be recorded in a more permanent (electronic) form through wikis, postings to forums and so on. Increased field of reach since students can partake in class from a distance with fewer restrictions in time. Less paper-work.

Of course, there are limitations to both approaches:

Face-to-Face (-)
Time-constraints and the physical confines of the learning environment place their own limitations. Most usually a live class is not captured - so there aren't always the same opportunities for review and discussion later. Different learning media cannot be brought together as easily.

Virtual Learning Environment (-)
Technicalities - availability of web access, understanding of how some VLEs operate, disrupted access, compatibility etc. The lack of social contact requires learners to be intrinsically motivated. May suit mature learners only. Lack of flexibility if it means that all access is restricted to viewing a screen only.

*The Matrix appears on my list of favourite films.