An awful lot of energy is expended by all academic bodies creating systems to protect them from deception. We assume students might try to cheat, we talk about untrustworthy sources, lecturers are not trusted to teach in the way they think best, funders don’t trust us to spend grants appropriately. I wonder what proportion of any academic budget is spent ensuring that bad things don’t happen? Has anyone speculated on the notion that the more systems you create to guard against a minority of untrustworthy individuals the more you create an environment in which the trustworthy cease to trust. It strikes me as an obvious descent to the lowest common denominator when we cannot entrust lecturers to spend budgets supporting their own students and teaching. Instead another group of slightly senior lectures who only slightly know the lecturer and the students pass the decision up to a committee of managers and accountants who definitely know neither. All lecturers in collaboration with their students, should be given a budget to spend as they wish.

Hate the term. It’s so disgustingly liquid on the lips. It’s an acronym for learning and teaching. At some stage in educationalist history the term teaching was dropped and teaching and learning or learning and teaching  replaced it. It’s meant to celebrate the idea of mutuality. A sort of right on reaction to slam desks and copying from blackboards. Learners teach and teachers learn. The snake biting its own tale. Trouble is when you come to experience it as a learner of teaching that you realise  there is no learning, just teaching, in fact worse than that it’s drilling. ‘Though shalt exercise your educationalist instinct in this way and this way only as failure to do will prevent the award of a qualification that teaches you to teach others how not to learn.’ The argument is that learning to teach is a discursive process with many different perspectives, however any discussion on the need for a system at all is off the table.

Just curious. I am by no means an expert on pedagogical theory but I just read an article in the Guardian which suggest that there is no evidence that detailed feedback to students makes any difference to outcomes? Now that we are all encouraged to write essay length feedback to accompany feedback length essays wouldn’t it be a good idea for someone to check whether we might be better off doing something more useful.

I think getting the students to work in teams, particularly in their first term is a good idea – socially. Thereafter I am far from convinced. The worst teams I ever participated in were during my team as a mature masters student. Team marks were to be awarded and, as by far the most mature of the mature students, I took a North Korean approach to team dynamics – basically listen to me, do the work or die. It didn’t work, they didn’t do the work, so I did and we all scored highly. What did I learn? – some young people give a shit a lot less than some old people. Useful life lesson? Nope. When working in teams in the professional world the imperative of a common cause or being paid is the glue that holds the team together. That’s how and why the team comes to be created. In an educational environment, a team is either a group of friends, a random collection of odds and sods, a group constructed around some bogus skills criteria or a subliminal expression of the lecturer’s prejudices, hang ups or fantasies. The result is stressful, off putting, risky and usually  results in wildly inflated marks prompted by the lecturer’s relief  that the group did at least get through the process without needing the services of a psychiatrist. 

It’s that time of the year when we lecturers are reminded that our key role is to give students numbers that they can add together to make degrees. Apparently the way we assign numbers is the same throughout disciplines and across sectors because we have quality processes, standards and benchmarks. This is plainly the sort of nonsense only those educationalists who have lost touch with human foibles could have invented. In fact we are swayed by a multiplicity of criteria eg – have we had our morning coffee, what is the weather like, how many similar or near identical papers have we just read, do we need the bathroom or another coffee or both. Then there is the question of interpretation. An open ended design assignment can be interpreted in many different ways, who is to say if one way is better than another. The solution is to spell it out in advance. Tell the student exactly what they have to do in order to do well. Break the marks down into tiny little atoms. Five marks for this and 3 marks for that. That way they can get a perfect score. Oh no – we can not  award 100% that would be absurd – anything above 70% and we are gasping for air. So we need to find some reason why nearly one third of the available  marks remain outside of the students reach by quibbling over quality or originality or professionalism or spelling. Thus the illusion is maintained that marking is somehow fair. It isn’t, it never has been and it never will be and the sooner we come clean with students and tell them to make there own minds up about what mark they should be awarded and give themselves a degree the better. Either that or we start marking subjectively but honestly. Tell them what you think but tell them that they should ask themselves and others what they think. Let them mark each other’s work. Don’t bullshit about some rung out, cynical external examiner taking a sample, bring in an outside professional or someone off the street and ask what they think of the design, would they buy it, use it, love it want it. This is so far removed from the notion of 5 marks for this and 3 marks for that that it reminds me, just for a moment that critiquing an emerging artists work can be a joyful useful experience. If my students tick all the boxes I shall be awarding some 100 percents just to stir up the stats.

My own slide into academia came out of desperation. Just as my talent as an artist ran out and my entrepreneurial ambitions lay in tatters I was lucky enough to be misidentified as a good potential university lecturer by my generous institution. I was 43  with no academic experience but a superficially flash CV which looked impressive and industry based (something they said they wanted). At first I was love struck with academia – everyone was so smart, conversation with colleagues was electrifying, students were fun and the hours were blessedly short after freelance work. One thing bugged me, teaching was discussed and taught as if it were foreign language . The language of education was very technical and in meetings I struggled to know what people meant. Marking schemes, assessment matrices, learning outcomes, weighted assessment strategies, benchmarks, standards, quality, peer observation and 2 million different acronyms. Worst of all were these obligatory module handbooks which tied you to a rigid scheme of activities before you had a chance to meet the cohort and assess the best way of getting your stuff across. These were like contracts, that not only told the students what to expect they told them what to do to do well and what they would have to do if they messed up.  In my previous life in theatre the notion of discovery, of surprise of the excitement of watching a director twist and turn manipulating the content to the needs of the cast was not there.  In fact in teaching such flexings of finely tuned  intellect is not considered ‘good practice.’ btw: a term I have come to despise. I was disappointed – everything I had ever learned about how to keep an audience interested – most particularly – not telling them what was going to happen before the show started was to be abandoned. A very bad idea in my view.

I have added a new category of posts to my blog. Anything obnoxious posted in this category is my opinionated opinion, and my opinion alone. It is unlikely to be that of my employers. Academic freedom is a privilege that I intend to enjoy, without slagging anyone off or losing my job.

I have returned to work after cancer treatment and an extended trek through the shadow of death, feeling a great love for life, for my institution, for students, a great love for colleagues and a fresh perspective on some of the nonsense that university lecturers seem to say, do, publish, teach and preach (shame on them). So this will be an alternative outlet for academics, like me, who think some things academics do or are required to do are daft.

In the UK, education is dominated by an oppressive educational establishment often driven by a political agenda. Its influence has spread from primary, through secondary and further education and is now having an impact on higher education. I have no doubt it is sometimes well intentioned, but its products are tables and charts, statistics, measurements, standards and ultimately rules which can reduce the role of the teacher or lecturer to that of an automaton applying an algorithm. In my view, those of us in education, who still have a voice, should speak out against this trend toward bureaucratic bullying. This is my offering. Besides, public venting makes me feel better, fresher and a more enthusiastic teacher.

I cannot guarantee I will write anything original or witty…. and I shall protect those I love by making stuff up sometimes. So don’t believe a word.

A colleague at work sent me his DID selection (yep its the sort of thing we academics do) and it reminded me that a few years ago now I started a thread in which several of us put up our DIDs and we had to identify the song singer etc. That was before Maria and I rushed to Waitrose for organic braised coconut leaves for tonights drinks with Teminimah and Henry. I don’t think I ever put mine up. So here is my selection. I have not really taken the true DID approach of relating them to key points in my life – these are just spine tinglers and have been tingling me more or less since I got into classical music. The other noticeable feature is how incredibly similar they are. I mean more or less the same! I didn’t think too hard so I assume they are soulful rather than clever clogs responses. However some of them are bloody clever.

5 points composer

5 points work

prize – acclaim

good luck

I am feeling rather sober so nothing entertaining below. Maybe wait until the next one.

I don’t know why but I am rather proud of this. It is part of my drug schedule for the next month. I start today. One of the nurses agreed that I was winning the ‘consuming most drugs in one month’ award but I think she was humouring me. Nonna next door requires a small shopping trolley for her monthly quota, but I am definitely catching up. Surprisingly my drug banquet is indicative of good news. The amyloidosis is under control and my heart condition is now getting some attention, so with luck after three months of probable poorliness I might have a period free of so many pills. Won’t that be lovely. Meanwhile juggling the various doses and times necessitates Maria at my shoulder while I sit at a clear desk with all the bottles and blisters packs in a row ticking off my list. As I have overdosed two of three times in the past this precautionary measure is not over the top.

The uni are in the process of finding a temporary replacement for me for the next three months. I am not sure how this is going to work out but the principle issue is my depleted immune system and thus my tendency to pick up bugs. The next few months are bad for this because all our freshers go into totally irresponsible social overdrive and catch everything going which they pass on to us staff. So it’s best I stay away. I managed to catch two colds and two stomach viruses over summer so the indications are that I am a viral sponge at the moment. If I am assigned to desk duties that will be fine because I can work from home. On the other hand its a bugger because our course is recruiting really well and we have a new member of staff with some fresh ideas. It feels a bit like I am regressing to the start of my illness when I had to have tons of time off and wrote loads of poems but hopefully this will be a contained absence and you will be spared my delusions of bardeur. Aren’t I lucky to work in the public sector!

Other than this medical update I don’t have a great deal to report. The boys and girls are all good and busy. Maria will require counselling in order to deal with the fact that they may not all be a home with us on Christmas Day – as a seasonal jape I said let’s go to a Little Chef in Doncaster for Christmas lunch but she’s not quite at the stage of finding it funny  – my proposal to move Christmas to May and have a pole instead of a tree just made things worse. Frankly I could not give a toss about Christmas other than I want my family to be happy and to put the 40 x  full on 100 watt lights I bought at the car boot up on the balcony. So it looks like Me, Maria and Nonna in minus 10 and 1,0000000 lumens on a snowy balcony with a 24lb turkey and three cats. I will send you a photograph.

Talking of photographs I bought a 1960’s enlarger to go with my black and white film development kit. I am quite excited by chemical photography mainly because in the hands of the incompetent, it effortlessly introduces error into every stage of the process.

This is my phone box shot and developed by me.

The theme of error had fascinated ever since my ‘pretending to understand John Cage days’ as a teenager. My PhD research more or less equated to ‘err0r = liveness’ but this, sort of, turned out to be wrong but its the theme of this years Ars Electronica festival. 

https://ars.electronica.art/news/en/ars-electronica-festival-2018/
 

On another topic all together

Having thought for years that I was such an original in suggesting that patriotism, nationalism and the whole notion of borders protecting individual nation states is stupid, I discover that, ‘internationalism’ is a core tenet of Marxism. I found an article on the new internationale  and a contribution by Jacques Derrida on Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specters_of_Marx

It struck a chord with me and seems quite timely if a little depressing – 

‘For it must be cried out, at a time when some have the audacity to neo-evangelise in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has finally realised itself as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity. Instead of singing the advent of the ideal of liberal democracy and of the capitalist market in the euphoria of the end of history, instead of celebrating the ‘end of ideologies’ and the end of the great emancipatory discourses, let us never neglect this obvious macroscopic fact, made up of innumerable singular sites of suffering: no degree of progress allows one to ignore that never before, in absolute figures, have so many men, women and children been subjugated, starved or exterminated on the earth’

Derrida lists 10 plagues of the capital or global system

1. Employment has undergone a change of kind, i.e. underemployment, and requires ‘another concept’.
2. Deportation of immigrants. Reinforcement of territories in a world of supposed freedom of movement. As in, Fortress Europe and in the number of new walls and barriers being erected around the world, in effect multiplying the “fallen” Berlin Wall manifold.
3. Economic war. Both between countries and between international trade blocs: United States – Japan – Europe.
4. Contradictions of the free market. The undecidable conflicts between protectionism and free trade. The unstoppable flow of illegal drugs, arms, etc..
5. Foreign debt. In effect the basis for mass starvation and demoralisation for developing countries. Often the loans benefiting only a small elite, for luxury items, e.g., cars, air conditioning etc. but being paid back by poorer workers.
6. The arms trade. The inability to control to any meaningful extent trade within the biggest ‘black market’
7. Spread of nuclear weapons. The restriction of nuclear capacity can no longer be maintained by leading states since it is only knowledge and cannot be contained.
8. Inter-ethnic wars. The phantom of mythic national identities fueling tension in semi-developed countries.
9. Phantom-states within organised crime. In particular the non-democratic power gained by drug cartels.
10. International law and its institutions. The hypocrisy of such statutes in the face of unilateral aggression on the part of the economically dominant states. International law is mainly exercised against the weaker nations.

Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International (French: Spectres de Marx: l’état de la dette, le travail du deuil et la nouvelle Internationale) is a 1993 book by French philosopher Jacques Derrida. It was first presented as a series of lectures during “Whither Marxism?”, a conference on the future of Marxism held at the University of California, Riverside in 1993.

This is going to be a tough post to bring off because all I have to report are lovely, positive and life affirming things and let’s face it who wants to read that.

But …My bogus birthday was just great.

I have to say that 28 guests was a wonderful confirmation of just how popular and loved I am. Beat that I say all you not so popular and loved people. ha!

Yes I really believed it. For two days I was a sparkling raconteur and delightful host. My words hung like the ripening Yorkshire figs we have in our loggia – rare, sweet and definitely worth waiting for. You see that is one of the side effects of steroids – in the first couple of days, they make you think you are just sooooo great.

So apologies to all of those whose who were hosed by my over exercised gob. I do hope you have dried off by now.

The band revival was brill and I honestly played better than usual. No rehearsal seems to be strangely beneficial to the Gravityisahat groove.

A lovely lovely four days thank you, thank you, thank you everyone.

But enough of that.

I was surprised to be lumbered with another cycle of chemo on Friday. Somewhat dismayed actually because my sociability and mood is proportional to my intake of nice food as you will see below. The chemo is going well but the consultant is pushing for the tape before my trip to the Royal Free. So in part as an explanation to my guests for my deteriorating enthusiasm for eating over the weekend and in part as an opportunity to provide some dietary tips that have revealed themselves over the last umpteen cycles I posit the Newell Manage your Weight by Getting Cancer diet. Do remember though these suggestions are person and medication specific so you may need to adjust to taste.

Day 1: first dose – eat a lot as your enjoying eating days are numbered. However beware in the next day or two you will feel a compulsion for either McDonalds or Fish and Chips. I have succumbed many times with no ill effect, however transitioning to day three after McDonalds or F&S is dangerous. So if you must today, is the day. You will feel great. Much too great to allow any person with any sensitivity within a mile of you. Jokes will spin off your tongue like A Super Sized Big Mac on the griddle with similarly disastrous effect on anyone’s stomach. You really aren’t king of the world! You are loud, opinionated and arrogant. Zip it!

Day 2: sweets are about to become uneatable, so this is a good day for Rowntrees Randoms or Cadbury’s chocolate with Dime Bar. Toward the evening you will stop being able to taste either salt or sweet so now is also the time for Bovril Toast or Werthers Originals. See note above re McDonalds or F&S and the risk factors. Due to the steroids and the sweets you are now hyper. You believe you have entered space-time and taken possession of it. Hours slip by in incoherent rambling as you revive anecdotes pertaining to anyone that anyone might have heard of that you have also heard of. Lie, exaggerate and embellish your stories till your towering deeds overshadow John Snow that paltry nobody of Winterfell.

Day 3: Bread and water are both fairly disgusting so even bland is out. Sausages taste like Hoover bags. Ginger beer cuts through and some spicy stuff tickles the buds a wee bit. This is a bad day for almost all foods so just bunker down with the ginger beer and, strangely, coffee. Tea is about to cease being your friend. You stop feeling good but there is a delay before you feel bad. Enjoy the delay. Your family and friends will.

Day 4: last day of actual drugs. Tea no longer tastes of tea but of some other milky white substance used in paint production. Appetite is shot altogether. Just about everything is pretty disgusting although porridge with sugar is bearable. Retain miserable martyr face most of the day. Alienate friends with very bad temper. Just like a kid deprived of sweets. Yes just like. No known dietary relief for day four, needs more research. You are in decline.

Day 5: No dose today so momentarily feel the worst is over. You are wrong. The drugs are about to really kick in, hitherto they have just been idling. Wee about 8 times in the night. Feel faint every time you stand up but your taste buds are off the green mile and water tastes a bit like, well, water.

Day 6: Stay in bed – crap crap crap not literally

Day 7: revive better eat lots and lots of everything till you feel sick and sick and sick – joy.

Tomorrow is my Day 7.

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