Nothing particularly interesting

Oh how delicious!  The US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has made her first speech to the HE community, and used the opportunity to slag the lot of them off for brainwashing students and telling them what to think. 'What the hell?'  I hear you cry!  Is this a protest from DeVos against the anti-capitalist Frankfurt-School influences of the Social Sciences? Nope.  Seems like it is another veiled dig at the University of California, on account of them cancelling a talk from a far-right newspaper editor (Breitbart) after violent protests.  This was certainly seen by Breitbart as yet another example of an academic elite institution pandering to left-wing sentiments - and since a former Breitbart editor is now the Presi.. . a close advisor TO the President, it was kind if inevitable that Trump would weigh in and declare the University an enemy of the people, or something like that. Actually, Trump's response was: Now, leaving aside for a moment the that...

It seems that when it comes to facts and figures, as far as the government is concerned anything goes. From the beginning of this coalition’s reign, there has been a propaganda campaign which has somehow managed to convince the nation firstly that the national debt is the most significant problem the nation faces, and secondly that the cause of this problem is almost exclusively the public sector and welfare.

Up to now I have done relatively well with my New Year resolutions .  I have been swearing less (although must still admit to resorting to to occasional 'damn', albeit mainly because it is 'jollyphonic', or ' fun to say' ).  My feelings towards Mr. Gove (notice that? I called him 'Mr.') have been reigned in to be manifested only in the occasional classroom analogy and occasionally re-tweeting the ever-increasing evidence of his narcissistic and unilaterally retrograde approach to educational policy. And as for getting angry about politics? Well, UKIP have just won some local elections in my area.  By a considerable margin .  In one sense this is no real surprise, given that the area I live in dances predominantly on the right wing of most elections - but it is a blow nonetheless.  What makes me particularly irate about this is that the UKIP campaign did not even try to work strategically on tapping into the sentiments of disaffected Conservative or L...

A comment was made to me recently that I had been keeping 'rather quiet' of late.  It was nice of anybody to notice of course - and I muttered some drivel about marking, and assessment boards, and preparing a new module, and that sort of thing.  All of which is true.  However, the comment made was not a general one about the fact that I have not been irritating everyone with countless tweets quite so much, but was more specifically about the fact that they had not seen me rant and rave wildly about politicians.  More specifically, about the Conservative government.  More specifically, about Michael Gove. It is not that I have become a convert to any of these things, but there are two reasons why I have been consciously trying to reign in my impatience for Conservatives policies and ideologies, and my tendency to twitch violently at the very mention of Gove. Reason 1: Misery and Pessimism The first is that the whole business has simply got me down....

The Thick of It makes for increasingly uncomfortable viewing I have been thinking a lot about satire recently. This is partly because for only the second time in my life I am getting to teach a module on Augustan satire (one of my favourite topics). In addition though, it reminded me of a Twitter conversation I had with a couple of emminent literary gents about the satire of the latest series of The Thick of It . I was caught by the fact that one of these gents, writer Martin Wroe, was expressing exactly (but more eloquently) what I had been thinking myself - that the series appears to get darker each time, and in this series appears to portray all of humanity as posessing no redeeming qualities at all. When the infamously foul-mouthed Malcolm Tucker accuses the leader of the opposition of having “all the charm of a rotting teddy bear by a graveside”, he could as easily be describing the show itself. If you are not familiar with the series (which was turned into the fea...

I am coming a bit late to this party, as it has been some days now since Education Secretary Michael Gove announced his intention to replace the GCSE with an English Baccalaureate Certificate.   Many comments have been made about this change by people with far more knowledge and expertise than me.   Perhaps the most entertaining, passionate and yet at the same time clear-sighted comments have come from the current Children’s Poet Laureate Michael Rosen, who has been blogging at length about what he calls the ‘ GCSE Fraud’ , his firm believe that the new ‘O-level’ style qualification will not raise standards , and the fact that Gove is using highly questionable data to support his claims of a need for change. I am not a specialist of further or compulsory education (i.e. GCSEs and A-Levels).   My teaching career has been an exclusively higher education one (i.e. BA degrees).   Teachers in compulsory education are required to undergo years of sp...

I presume that most of us believe ourselves to be an expert in something.  From particle physics to computer games, from parenting to bomb disposal, most of us spend a great part of our lives focusing on something - and it is impossible to do that without knowing quite a lot about it. As an academic, my own areas of expertise are pretty precise.  I don't think it would be particularly arrogant to suggest that if I were to throw a stone from the coffee shop in which I am sitting, it would be unlikely to hit many people who know more about language philosophy in the mid-eighteenth-century English novel.  Having said that, if I were to throw a stone from here I would probably hit half-a-dozen people who know more about gardening, DIY, mathematics, etc. etc.. Being in Stratford, I am currently fascinated by the people I see with Olympic security badges.  What do they do?  Have I just said 'good morning' to an Olympian?  To a woman who was an architect of th...