--- layout: post status: publish published: true title: ! '2012: Year of the PhD Completion / Guardian Higher Education Top 10 posts of 2011' wordpress_id: 1714 wordpress_url: https://www.martineve.com/?p=1714 date: !binary |- MjAxMS0xMi0zMCAyMDoyODo1MyArMDEwMA== date_gmt: !binary |- MjAxMS0xMi0zMCAyMDoyODo1MyArMDEwMA== categories: - Politics - Academia - Output - Media tags: - academia - Publications - Vanity comments: - id: 6589 author: '' author_email: claytonburns@gmail.com author_url: '' date: !binary |- MjAxMi0wMS0wMSAxOToyNTowMCArMDEwMA== date_gmt: !binary |- MjAxMi0wMS0wMSAxOToyNTowMCArMDEwMA== content: ! 'The Ofsted rating system is pure bureaucracy at its inept worst. It is a pointless exercise. It is a nothingness at ground zero 2012.  What I would recommend is that for all of 2012 the media, beginning with The DT and Guardian, stop taking this Orwellian nonsense in education seriously. A good beginning would be to get rid of generic illustrating photos. Is there an asymmetric and realistic way to approach these Kafkaesque problems? Start with Sussex and with Kipling, for example. I call on the University of Sussex to lead in helping set up a system for teaching "The Jungle Book" with the COBUILD Student''s Dictionary, and with its elementary grammar. Reading "The Jungle Book" out loud recursively with students in years one to three, having them develop an intent and tactile relationship with the dictionary, and introducing them to some grammar, would be the best grounding in English for both native speakers and learners. It is critically important to bridge this intractable divide.  The geography-geology of Sussex is fascinating (see Kipling and Sussex). So is the history, allowing for good integration of literature with these subjects.  Instead of Ofsted''s hammering mediocrity, we want genuine skills development. We want standardized tests to be based on graduated curricula only. (As it turns out, University of Sussex doctoral student Martin Eve has written a perceptive Guardian piece on the failures of the schools in teaching argumentation.) To create true graduated (step-by-step) curricula leading into advanced critical skills, the inception has to be sound. Where does phonics fit in? That should be a subject for discussion, especially in relation to the development out of phonics into a mature phonetics and phonology lyric database, and a similarly mature "Macbeth." ' - id: 6590 author: '' author_email: claytonburns@gmail.com author_url: '' date: !binary |- MjAxMi0wMS0wMSAxOTo1ODowMCArMDEwMA== date_gmt: !binary |- MjAxMi0wMS0wMSAxOTo1ODowMCArMDEwMA== content: ! 'It is fine to be angry, Martin Paul Eve. I congratulate you on that. However, the quite horrible year of 2011 was The Year of No Traction.  What I suggest for 2012 is a different approach.  We have in front of us a painful and confused two years of Gove-mandated study to try to determine changes to the National Curriculum. If he is going to take two years just to get out of the starting gate, then you know what kind of horse you will end up with.  Another broken-down bureaucratic, anachronistic faker. He puzzles his way into the main stretch. He flops over dead. He gets taken away to the glue factory again.  Just to drive the point home, we have the hapless, if not deranged, Ofsted website ratings, featured today so as to start the year just right, on the note of permafrost senility.  The University of Sussex should assess its resources in psychology, language and literacy education, linguistics, and English, and integrate them, so as to produce a prototype of a national Kipling program, in conjunction with the churches and the scouts in Sussex. What we hear in Canada is that despite the lip service paid to "The Jungle Book" and "Kim," scout leaders do not have powerful programs where they would habitually read the books out loud, with scouts taking their reliable turns.  A measure of traction is responsiveness. In 2011, Sue Wright of Austin, Texas wrote an important letter to The Wall Street Journal on English in the state. She may as well have saved her breath. In Australia, there was much discussion, stimulated by the Ombudsman in the state of Victoria, of IELTS testing. As if nobody had ever heard of tests based on graduated curricula. As if nobody had ever heard of reporting on the pathology of English by covering the world.  In England, we have proof of education systems in disarray, yet relentless proliferation of Kafkaesque and Orwellian bureaucratic "solutions." As if they had never read Mark Ashcraft''s "Cognition." Never heard of the corpus revolution in English linguistics. The great COBUILD English Grammar. Never heard of anything. Condemned to repeat preposterous, deadening, factitious bureaucracy.  ' ---

A quick, perhaps egotistic, documentary post to note that the Guardian have published their top 10 posts of 2011 and the piece I wrote with Jennifer M. Jones made the cut.

Indeed, 6 months after it was written, "Angry Young Academics" has returned to being the most read item on the site with 366 Facebook "likes" and 77 unique mentions on Twitter. If you're interested in reading the unadulterated version, don't forget that it's available on this site.

We also received an extremely kind email, recently, from Janice Newson, whose "Academic Callings: The University We Have Had, Now Have, & Could Have" deals with similar problems.

In the meanwhile, I'll also use this post to wish all readers the best for 2012. Or as I like to call it, the Year When I Will Finish My PhD.

Martin

Featured image by Monika Ciapala under a CC-BY-NC license.