OK, I give in. After a very unnerving experience at my local FE college last week, I’m prepared to go along with the knockers and tutters, and admit that “fings ain’t wot they used to be” in the world of education.
Every summer there’s a palaver when the GCSE and A-level results are published, over whether or not standards are slipping. On the one hand there are employers and universities having to provide catch-up courses in English and Maths because they claim that the youth of today aren’t making the grade; on the other the government praises the efforts of school children who are gaining higher scores in tests than ever before. I’ve tried really hard to swallow the government’s explanation (while acknowledging that - ever fearful of slipping down the league tables - schools simply don’t enter their pupils for tests they won’t pass). But last week’s experience has called all this into question for me.
What should have been a straightforward “interview” at my local FE college turned out to be a nightmarish 2-hour session at a computer screen in a library surrounded by ‘uncouf youfs’ doing their utmost to get up the nose of the poor librarian who was trying to monitor their on-line doings, viz. “I’m sure Jade Goody isn’t part of your coursework”.
I’ve applied to take a City & Guilds course called “Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector”, as a good way to get some feedback on my teaching style before I venture forth (again) to teach copy-editing skills. I filled in the various forms, and listed my qualifications (12 O-levels including Eng Lang (A) plus three other languages, 3 A-levels, a BA, and a Post-grad Diploma). I also got a good reference from a friend who’s been a teacher for many years. Then the college called me in for an interview.
This wasn’t a surprise; it said this was standard procedure in the prospectus. They also warned that literacy and numeracy tests were compulsory. [Why does Word’s spellchecker not like ‘numeracy’?]. But the format of the ‘interview’ was certainly unexpected.
About a dozen of us were huddled in a corner of the library while the course administrator ‘explained’ the course. Then we had to sit the tests, or should I say “take the Skills Base”. (Is that really what she said?)
This took the form of two ‘interactive’ tests, where the software behind the system gauges the level of questions according to previous answers.
That was rather disconcerting! I could tell I wasn’t doing as well as I’d expected when, in the literacy test, I suddenly hit a rash of “Is the following a complete sentence?” questions.
Well, I’m pretty darned sure I know a sentence when I see one; it was the wording of the question that bothered me. I’m sure they didn’t really mean ‘complete’ which, according to my shiny new Concise OED, means : “having all the necessary or appropriate parts; entire”. The examples given were ‘complete’ under that definition, but that’s not to say they didn’t need editorial input… However, there was no tick-box for that option, only ‘yes’ or ‘no’ were offered.
The numeracy test was slightly more straightforward. There’s no other option when you’re calculating the length of the hypotenuse.
Overall I passed (though not as well as I should have done), so I avoided the Little Britain “Computer says ‘nah’” moment. But pity the other course applicants who were struggling. Instead of each of us then being interviewed in privacy, the administrator got us all back together to check through our applications and answer any questions. This meant hanging around listening to other people’s private concerns before the humiliation of being told I’m working at “Level 2, but at Level 3 in some areas” – which is enough to get me on the course, but just goes to show that in the 20 years since I graduated, the education sector has changed a lot.
Principally I’ve learnt that they don’t seem to trust anyone’s ‘previous’. Everyone had to sit these tests, regardless of how many (or few) GCSEs or Doctorates they had.
I can only draw the conclusion that the skeptics are right after all – those stunning GCSE results and all those A* grades count for nothing if “computer says ‘nah’”.
Arriving home in a froth, I wasted time searching education websites and discovered that there are plenty of practice tests out there that I could have worked on to boost my score, dammit. So if you’re ever thinking of “improving your skills base” (!), avoid the humiliation of a less than perfect score by giving these a try first: readwriteplus or TDA practice materials.
It seems a sad fact of 21st century life – you really DO have to “teach to the test”.
Thought for the day: “We don’t need no education; we don’t need no thought control!”
Monday, 29 September 2008
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Talking to the animals is not as daft as it sounds
Libby Purves (very irritating Radio 4 presenter) has just been speaking to Miranda Carey, a woman who gets people to talk (and listen) to horses as a form of psychotherapy (Midweek, Wednesday 24 September). Sitting alongside her in the studio was actor Ted Danson (ex. Cheers), who amusingly objected to Libby’s suggestion that this was all a bit “Californian wacko”. But is she right? An article I read in New Scientist (23 August) suggests this might not be quite as barmy as it sounds.
I wasn’t convinced by all the arguments put forward by Miranda Carey. She uses horses that have been traumatised (e.g. racehorses who’ve been stabled too much when they should have been out running in a herd in the fields), and gets her patients (one example was an abused and confused former prostitute) to work with the horses in a form of mutual therapy.
I could see the point of getting ex-cons to work with horses as a way of boosting their confidence. Why should a horse (or any other animal for that matter) care about your criminal record? They take you as they find you, and if you treat them right, you’ll be a friend for life. But I’m not so sure about the work she does with people who have more serious mental health problems. Even Libby expressed some concern (albeit in her infuriatingly jokey way) over the question of whether the animal needs to have been traumatised in order to fully appreciate the human’s worries… (Thank goodness Paul O’Grady – a well-known animal fanatic who apparently takes a sheep for a walk through the woods near his home in Kent – was in the studio to lend a bit of Northern commonsense to the proceedings!)
But there is something in Carey's argument. Kate Douglas, writing in New Scientist (23 August, pp33–35) says that over the thousands of years we’ve lived alongside dogs, the human-canine relationship has had a significant impact on dogs’ mental skills. If you think your dog’s trying to tell you something, you’re not just anthropomorphising.
Dogs, it seems, have developed an acute sense of right and wrong; they also have a repertoire of barks to tell us different things; and researchers in Cambridge (UK) have found that dogs can use human-like gestures to get their message across (e.g. pointing or staring at the thing they want). Dogs even learn in the same way as children – watching others complete a task, then copying and experimenting until they achieve the same goal.
None of that is really new to me, as a dog owner. I’ve learnt as much from my dog as he’s learnt from me (that’s why he can wind me around his paw to get what he wants). And if it’s true for dogs, why not also for horses, who’ve also been close companions to Homo sapiens for millennia?
And, if Paul O’Grady is right, why not sheep too?
Yet again, I’m glad I’m a vegetarian.
I wasn’t convinced by all the arguments put forward by Miranda Carey. She uses horses that have been traumatised (e.g. racehorses who’ve been stabled too much when they should have been out running in a herd in the fields), and gets her patients (one example was an abused and confused former prostitute) to work with the horses in a form of mutual therapy.
I could see the point of getting ex-cons to work with horses as a way of boosting their confidence. Why should a horse (or any other animal for that matter) care about your criminal record? They take you as they find you, and if you treat them right, you’ll be a friend for life. But I’m not so sure about the work she does with people who have more serious mental health problems. Even Libby expressed some concern (albeit in her infuriatingly jokey way) over the question of whether the animal needs to have been traumatised in order to fully appreciate the human’s worries… (Thank goodness Paul O’Grady – a well-known animal fanatic who apparently takes a sheep for a walk through the woods near his home in Kent – was in the studio to lend a bit of Northern commonsense to the proceedings!)
But there is something in Carey's argument. Kate Douglas, writing in New Scientist (23 August, pp33–35) says that over the thousands of years we’ve lived alongside dogs, the human-canine relationship has had a significant impact on dogs’ mental skills. If you think your dog’s trying to tell you something, you’re not just anthropomorphising.
Dogs, it seems, have developed an acute sense of right and wrong; they also have a repertoire of barks to tell us different things; and researchers in Cambridge (UK) have found that dogs can use human-like gestures to get their message across (e.g. pointing or staring at the thing they want). Dogs even learn in the same way as children – watching others complete a task, then copying and experimenting until they achieve the same goal.
None of that is really new to me, as a dog owner. I’ve learnt as much from my dog as he’s learnt from me (that’s why he can wind me around his paw to get what he wants). And if it’s true for dogs, why not also for horses, who’ve also been close companions to Homo sapiens for millennia?
And, if Paul O’Grady is right, why not sheep too?
Yet again, I’m glad I’m a vegetarian.
Monday, 22 September 2008
Battle of the Dictionaries: Collins vs the OED
Collins is stepping up its PR in an effort to win the ‘battle of the dictionaries’. Today’s ‘stunt’ caught my attention via Radio 4’s Today programme. Meanwhile the Oxford English Dictionary is keeping a lower (but more thoughtful?) profile, by sending one of its key researchers to talk to editors at the recent SfEP Conference.
Collins have issued a list of words that they want to omit from the lexicon and have lined up the usual household names to champion a word each. Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, for instance, has chosen ‘skirr’; and Steven Fry has chosen ‘fubsy’. Their challenge is to get these words mentioned in public places as many times as possible between now and January, in order to merit a place in the Collins’ corpus.
Good stunt*; but should we really take this seriously?
My recent experience of teaching newby copy-editors suggests that many people really don’t understand how dictionaries, and the English Language itself, work. Does this matter? Well, it certainly does if you’re an editor. If you never go further than GCSE, it should, in theory, be acceptable to use a dictionary to check your spelling and not to worry too much about the origin of words and where they might be going. But use of English (or more to the point, mis-use) is a ‘Class Issue’ – not just because of the all-too-familiar debate over ‘political correctness’, but because so often a person’s use and mis-use of English is seized upon by the snipers and gripers as a stick with which to beat those who persistently fail to conform to “the rules” (whatever they may be!).
[John Prescott springs to mind. His political opponents (and sometimes even his friends) ridicule his linguistic jousting, and pick over his words like vultures would a carcass – reveling in every malapropism and mispronunciation, claiming his inability to string together a coherent sentence makes him unfit to govern. Whereas anyone who’s seen him speak at a Party Conference will know that it’s the passion he puts into his speeches that pulls him through every time (and I’m sure he’ll be sorely missed this week in Manchester, if they don’t let him on the podium).]
But if you’re a professional word-smith, you will know that English is ever changing, and in fact you have more influence than most over which words actually make it into the dictionaries, because the best are evidence-based rather than rules-bound, and we editors are the ones who are tweaking the words of the great and the good, and checking their usage: “Did you mean ‘disinterested’ or ‘uninterested’?”.
Both Collins and Oxford (and other publishers too, I dare say) collect examples of usage from all sorts of media, and record that information for posterity.
As Charlotte Brewer, Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford, told SfEP Conference, the Oxford English Dictionary now runs to 20 volumes. Originally it set out to provide historical evidence of usage, but that meant it was not helpful on matters of ‘correctness’. This, says Brewer, has been an on-going dilemma for the editors of the OED. For example, in the 1890s there were two different meanings for ‘disinterested’: not interested (with an example from Donne; 1612); and impartial, unbiased (dated to 1659). Despite this evidence some modern readers will feel the former is ‘wrong’.
First Murray and then Burchfield wrestled with their consciences when it came to ‘editorialising’ (ouch; I’m sure neither would like that word!). These acclaimed OED editors were particularly troubled by pronunciation and profanity:
“It is a free country and a man may call a vase a vawse, a vahse, a vaze or a vase…” said Murray, who then contradicted himself by insisting that the silent p in pneumonia should be voiced because it helped people understand the origins (etymology) of the words.
Burchfield, working on a supplement to the OED in the 1960s and 70s, faced controversy over the definition of the word Jew (including death threats!), and dilemmas over which ‘rude’ words should be included (as Brewer pointed out, the literati were still reeling from the Lady Chatterley case).
He couldn’t resist the temptation to have his say on some of the ‘new-fangled’ words that were suggested: insinuendo (“tasteless”, said B); opinionnaire (“of doubtful usefulness”… well, he was spot on with that); and prioritize (“a word that at present sits uneasily in the language” … but which we’re now quite content to use!).
So next time you’re ‘embrangled’ in a debate over usage, remember that the greatest minds in the linguistic world are similarly troubled – and they don’t have all the answers either!
As for who wins the battle, don't ask me! I bought a new Concise OED after Brewer's talk (so the PR worked on me!) but I don't care for its design which is goes for legibility over detail. So I'm still dipping into my trusty old Chambers for the meatier stuff (favourite: paragoge/paragogue ns. an addition at the end of a word, as t in against, amidst, amongst, whilst).
____
* Actually, not such a good stunt. Despite wasting a fair few minutes surfing and Googling, I can only find one primary link to this ‘news’ apart from the Radio 4 prog. – an article in the Times (online). What’s up with the Collins press office?
Collins have issued a list of words that they want to omit from the lexicon and have lined up the usual household names to champion a word each. Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, for instance, has chosen ‘skirr’; and Steven Fry has chosen ‘fubsy’. Their challenge is to get these words mentioned in public places as many times as possible between now and January, in order to merit a place in the Collins’ corpus.
Good stunt*; but should we really take this seriously?
My recent experience of teaching newby copy-editors suggests that many people really don’t understand how dictionaries, and the English Language itself, work. Does this matter? Well, it certainly does if you’re an editor. If you never go further than GCSE, it should, in theory, be acceptable to use a dictionary to check your spelling and not to worry too much about the origin of words and where they might be going. But use of English (or more to the point, mis-use) is a ‘Class Issue’ – not just because of the all-too-familiar debate over ‘political correctness’, but because so often a person’s use and mis-use of English is seized upon by the snipers and gripers as a stick with which to beat those who persistently fail to conform to “the rules” (whatever they may be!).
[John Prescott springs to mind. His political opponents (and sometimes even his friends) ridicule his linguistic jousting, and pick over his words like vultures would a carcass – reveling in every malapropism and mispronunciation, claiming his inability to string together a coherent sentence makes him unfit to govern. Whereas anyone who’s seen him speak at a Party Conference will know that it’s the passion he puts into his speeches that pulls him through every time (and I’m sure he’ll be sorely missed this week in Manchester, if they don’t let him on the podium).]
But if you’re a professional word-smith, you will know that English is ever changing, and in fact you have more influence than most over which words actually make it into the dictionaries, because the best are evidence-based rather than rules-bound, and we editors are the ones who are tweaking the words of the great and the good, and checking their usage: “Did you mean ‘disinterested’ or ‘uninterested’?”.
Both Collins and Oxford (and other publishers too, I dare say) collect examples of usage from all sorts of media, and record that information for posterity.
As Charlotte Brewer, Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford, told SfEP Conference, the Oxford English Dictionary now runs to 20 volumes. Originally it set out to provide historical evidence of usage, but that meant it was not helpful on matters of ‘correctness’. This, says Brewer, has been an on-going dilemma for the editors of the OED. For example, in the 1890s there were two different meanings for ‘disinterested’: not interested (with an example from Donne; 1612); and impartial, unbiased (dated to 1659). Despite this evidence some modern readers will feel the former is ‘wrong’.
First Murray and then Burchfield wrestled with their consciences when it came to ‘editorialising’ (ouch; I’m sure neither would like that word!). These acclaimed OED editors were particularly troubled by pronunciation and profanity:
“It is a free country and a man may call a vase a vawse, a vahse, a vaze or a vase…” said Murray, who then contradicted himself by insisting that the silent p in pneumonia should be voiced because it helped people understand the origins (etymology) of the words.
Burchfield, working on a supplement to the OED in the 1960s and 70s, faced controversy over the definition of the word Jew (including death threats!), and dilemmas over which ‘rude’ words should be included (as Brewer pointed out, the literati were still reeling from the Lady Chatterley case).
He couldn’t resist the temptation to have his say on some of the ‘new-fangled’ words that were suggested: insinuendo (“tasteless”, said B); opinionnaire (“of doubtful usefulness”… well, he was spot on with that); and prioritize (“a word that at present sits uneasily in the language” … but which we’re now quite content to use!).
So next time you’re ‘embrangled’ in a debate over usage, remember that the greatest minds in the linguistic world are similarly troubled – and they don’t have all the answers either!
As for who wins the battle, don't ask me! I bought a new Concise OED after Brewer's talk (so the PR worked on me!) but I don't care for its design which is goes for legibility over detail. So I'm still dipping into my trusty old Chambers for the meatier stuff (favourite: paragoge/paragogue ns. an addition at the end of a word, as t in against, amidst, amongst, whilst).
____
* Actually, not such a good stunt. Despite wasting a fair few minutes surfing and Googling, I can only find one primary link to this ‘news’ apart from the Radio 4 prog. – an article in the Times (online). What’s up with the Collins press office?
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