Hard News: The Demon E-Word
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Oh please, no names on papers and the marker didnt teach the course, of course.
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All we are asking is for the government and bureaucrats to trust us and let us get on with the job.
Ooh, hold on, I completely misunderstood your original posts. You're libertarian, right?
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...I meant that "no child left behind" because I thought you were promoting excellence in education for everyone.
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Kevin, with every line you write, I understand you less.
Though I did appreciate this brilliantly Joycean piece of imaginative wordplay:
"they reworded their countires a thousandfild"
And Kevin, as for the fact that your co-workers have great memories, well so do I and my colleagues. However, I suspect that their internal memory banks didn't come from chanting HTML entity codes in some Victorian classroom, but from coding on a day to day basis: the dreaded "active learning". And that starts with the confidence and imagination to seek out your own sources of information, experiment, look at the source, ask questions on fora and, most of all, understand the fundamental reasons why you're doing it in the first place.
The best people have memory/knowledge plus problem solving ability.
I don't doubt it for a moment, but with the best people, their knowledge and memory have come through the day-to-day application of their problem-solving ability, not from rote learning of disconnected and uncontextualised facts.
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I am really enjoying your comments Tom Beard
totally agree :-)
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Oh please, no names on papers and the marker didn't teach the course, of course.
In my limited understanding of how the academic world works, this would be increasingly hard above second year university level. I believe that in most cases the lecturer giving the course would be the only one with enough understanding to set and mark a paper in it. No?
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Ok I am really confused about Kevin's posts.
On the one hand he says we should invest in excellence, but on the other he appears to be saying that we have a two tier system that is leaving people behind.
However he also says that we shouldn't pour/poor more into one child's education than another, in order to re-balance things. Assumedly this would apply equally to investing more in those at the top, as at the bottom?
And then there's appears to be the position that a) Govt should fix the system BUT b) the problem isn't the system it's the MINDSET and c) Govt should get out of the way and leave it to the bright people. Where did these bright people come from, I thought according to Mr Hicks they had all fled the country?
And please, please, no one take up the mention of Churchill, I had quite enough of that in that other thread!
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In my limited understanding of how the academic world works, this would be increasingly hard above second year university level. I believe that in most cases the lecturer giving the course would be the only one with enough understanding to set and mark a paper in it. No?
We don't do double blind marking here at my university, though single blind marking is an option for the student.
But we do do external marking at the honours level. Material is sent away to another department at another university where it is either marked by an external (the internal and external marker have to agree on a final mark), or 'boundary cases' (high B+, low A+ etc) are looked at to ensure peer review of both the students and the lecturers.
The small size of many NZ departments would mean that you would need to send it to another NZ university to accomplish double blind. His suggestion that there be one elite university would make it impossible, as there wouldn't be another institution of sufficient quality to send your material to.
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Yes to a certain extent thats right obserevationz, all I'm saying is that scholarships should go on merit and that merit should be assessed in a non-corruptable way. You may have a better idea. But we need to send a message to our brightest people that they are valued.
""University educator" my arse."
Slipped through the net eh? Better put a dozen policy analysts onto finding our how first thing!
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I lecturer in Sociology at Auckland, and I think it would be very hard for someone else to mark my paper, unless they had sat through the course, done all the readings, and attended the tutorials I give.
In the humanities, I'd argue that marking exams or assignments, is a mixture of art and science - you can't say exactly if the student has interpreted Bourdieu with utter precision, but you can easily see if they have no idea what they're talking about, or how they are creatively applying theory to data and interpreting concepts.
Marking the good ones is so much easier than the bad ones.
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His suggestion that there be one elite university would make it impossible, as there wouldn't be another institution of sufficient quality to send your material to.
I'm sure an elite university would have no trouble coming to an arrangement with a similar overseas institution.
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So what did the other university lecturers think of the bollox, oops new curriculum?
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all I'm saying is that scholarships should go on merit and that merit should be assessed in a non-corruptable way
Kevin...would you be so good as to indicate how scholarships are awarded currently...and why those who assess them and the system are corrupt?
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Kevin
So what did the other university lecturers think of the bollox, oops new curriculum?
Dunno, but I am hoping that they will apply a lot more rigour to their arguments for and against than you seem able to muster.
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Kevin, my comment was intended to suggest that you're either not the "university educator" you claim to be or that you're a far more damning indictment of education than anything you're railing against.
Generally speaking I would expect somebody making pronouncements on the topic of education to know the difference between "can't" and "cant", "poor" and "pour" etc.
Similarly, I'd expect anybody claiming to educate people in a university to be able to form a much more balanced, coherent and rational argument than you've managed so far today.
Would you care to give a little more detail on your position as a university educator? Institution and subject, perhaps?
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Margaret, I'm sorry if this is confusing but there are several interscting threads I am responding to. And also I am disappointed with myself at missing the opportunity to given the goverenment a good bolloxing during the "consultation phase".
Much of the problem lies in people's attitudes - and many people are of the attitude that the eduction system should proceed at the rate of the slowest learner because they can't bear the idea that it might be their poopsy ooops child left behind. The government tries to respond to this attitude, usually by spamming its website with discussion documents until the problem goes away, but of necessity bringing in a system where children are treated like templates onto which they can stamp a character.
Some people opt out and go for unlimited (not for me sorrry) while some like me would prefer all kids got a more tailor made deal in a fiscally neutral way (because there really aint no more where that money is coming from).
so (c) I think it is, is just the logical outcome where you tell the government to give us (the people) the money they spend on bureuacrats spamming about the problems and let us have a go at solving it for ourselves, since they are incapable.
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To give Kevin the benefit of the doubt, some people deliberately choose to ignore the finer points of English usage when typing posts, or are unable to spell due to dyslexia.
I think it's a good idea to state that in advance, otherwise people will naturally assume that a traditional education at a top NZ school has left them unable to spell and punctuate.
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Peter, that question depends a great deal on how you define corruption, for example whether you think EEO is corrupt. I don't think the current system is corrupt (thats why I said non-corruptible) but I do think that if you were giving out doses of $50K to the top undergraduates there would need to be a careful process involved because there is potential forr individuals to take it upon themsleves to tinker, even if their motive are well intentioned.
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I am a concer researcher and Veterinary surgeon and my professional CV can be here.
Below I reproduce some of my CV and put in some political commentary.
That was from the CV section of Kevin's site (I know I have too much time on my hands, I am not proud......)
I hate to throw the "T" word around, but are you a T.R.O.L.L?
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I'm well known as the typo king when I get up a head of speed.
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Oh fun, you guys are quite harder task masters than kiwiblog.
No I'm not a troll and on kiwiblog its usually only the idiots who call people trolls. I'm interested in why finding out from ground zero why the dumbing down of the education system is a good thing for NZ (other than civil rest). I focus on the economy because that is an important reason for having a good education system but as one poster said above the education system is much braoder and more useful than that.
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as a vet I thought maybe Kevin would lecture at Massey - his name is not on their staff register though
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Welcome to my blog where I hope to discuss rational approaches to governance in this country. [However I freely admit I will use laughter and ridicule to show up irrationality].
Also from Kevin's site. Again, I don't like to throw the "T" word around (well maybe I do, but apparently it isn't polite).
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https://www.fmhs.auckland.ac.nz/faculty/staffct/staff_details.aspx?staffID=6B686963303034
should have googled first :-)
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I stand corrected. My apologies. I personally still find the tone very troll (due to the spelling) but I will withdraw that.
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