Posts by Emma Hart
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That would be interesting. Anyone else?
Loved them. Multi-guess tests are a bunch of fun.
Gotta be careful how you colour in those little circles, though.
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It was one of the things I enjoyed about writing my Listener columns -- the challenge of relating something important, but complex and jargon-ridden, in as clear a way as possible.
You're a geek translator, my man, and a top-flight one too.
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Gives a nice bit of alliteration (though that's vowels only, damn, what)
<geek>
Alliteration is either. Consonance is specific to consonants (compare and contrast). When it's vowels it's called assonance.</geek>
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All this talk of wagging has made me wonder: are truants more likely to end up self-employed?
I dunno if my self-employment is down to my truanting, my weird sleep patterns, my protracted illness, or having a special-needs child. I have never been very comfortable working in a hugely structured environment IF those structures don't make sense to me. One of my jobs is as a technical writer and involves codifying and constructing structure - making and explaining rules. I think having someone who's a bit of a rebel in that job is well handy.
I find contract work suits me because I'm prone to fits of intense activity followed by fits of intense arsing about. I can put up with any amount of ridiculousness in the short term.
My partner (also not the most devoted to his schooling) and I both have a problem with not understanding when things are 'not our job'. We're both too prone to tell higher-ups that what they're requiring us to do is dumb and should be done differently.
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I got very little out of school academically except a counter-productive faith in my own cleverness and a profound mistrust of authority. In retrospect, I feel very sorry for my teachers.
What Stephen said.
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I'm trying to figure out how one would stop a kid who was ready to learn to read from doing it themselves.
I asked my mother (who btw was a teacher) how to teach my children to read. Her response was 'good god, how do you stop them?'.
I was determined that my son was going to be able to read, write and count before he started school, as insurance against him not actually getting taught. He's of a temperament that delights in knowing all the answers (and obeying all the rules), so he's never been bored. It did nonetheless take his new entrant teacher two months to realise that he could read.
He's been lucky enough the last couple of years to have a teacher who'll work to extend him and give him interesting, thought-provoking work, and a peer group who can match him.
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A sonnet can be an absolute joy to write even though it can be hard work.
When I was looking at ways to present the crossbow story, someone suggested setting it as Shakespearean drama, given the elements of melodrama inherent in it. As a result, I have a couple of scenes of that written entirely in iambic pentameter. I love doing stuff like that.
Sixth and Seventh form, I don't remember writing much of anything at all, even essays. We did a lot of recognising different registers and types of languages and being able to pull out features - this is legal language, because it has these phrases - because that was what was on the test. We read plays aloud and then were fed Cliff Notes for them so we could answer those Cliff-Note style questions.
So there goes any anecdotal correlation between wagging / bunking and high grades.
Never said there was one. But the focus of the new education bill is that the problem is truancy, and I don't think it is. I think it's a symptom. The problems are disengagement in the capable, and a lack of learning at the other end of the scale. Those things can happen whether or not your body is actually physically present at school.
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With my luck you would have been abducted the very day I didn't report your absence. Or your mother would have made a complaint to the school in the middle of the year because I HADN"T rung up and informed her of your frequent unexplained absences.
I'd like to think, Cecilia, that if somebody had taken a minute to explain it to me like that, I might not have been quite such an enormous git.
In the 5th form, I was the chair of the divisional council, and thus able to conjure excuses to be out of classes I was bored with.
Due to my constant stirring and questioning and general arse-ness, in sixth form I was sent to the guidance counsellor. Once he discovered that my father had died the year before, he just adored me. Kept trying to 'recover' memories of childhood abuse. Gave me endless excuses to bunk just physics.
I thought we might discover a fair number of high-achieving trouble-makers here.
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giving due respect to authority figures whether they deserve it or not is mandatory
Um, ew.
It just gives me Paranoia flashbacks.
ha! ok, Sorry for misconstruing events, like I said Emma, it's more the general trend that concerned me'
Thanks Mark, I appreciate the change in tone.
When the children realise that the teacher is everyone's lacky, parents, administrators, students, then they lose the respect necessary to enable a good learning environment. there are also (unfortunately) the types of teachers who will continue that cycle by taking that out on the students. This is a cycle to break.
I am aware that there are parents taking this way too far, and good teachers on the end of crap they don't deserve. Dissent often isn't constructive.
But. Back when I was at high school there was very much a sense that the kids had no power at all, that they were completely at the mercy of the whims of the staff, some of whom clearly abused that power. When we were mistreated, we had no recourse. This didn't lead to constructive obedience, but non-constructive rebellion.
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Hence Emma had her mum pwn her teacher
Except she didn't. I know you've told me to get over it, Mark, but this simply isn't true. When my mother went to the Parent-Teacher evening, I still hadn't got out of bed from the glandular fever. I only found out about it after the fact. I was incredibly ill.
But... how should we then "respond to their failings"? If parents aren't allowed to protest on their children's behalf, and the system provides no opportunity at all for students to provide feedback on their teachers?
I also think we might be dealing with different concepts of respect. To me, it's something that can't be demanded, only earned, and is not 'due' to anyone. My former boss disagreed.