---
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. 


'
---
<p>A quick, perhaps egotistic, documentary post to note that the Guardian have published their <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2011/dec/28/top-higher-education-blogs-2011">top 10 posts of 2011</a> and the piece I wrote with <a href="http://jennifermjones.net/">Jennifer M. Jones</a> made the cut.</p>
<p>Indeed, 6 months after it was written, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2011/jun/15/univeristies-radical-academics-jobs-training">"Angry Young Academics"</a> 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 <a href="https://www.martineve.com/2011/06/22/angry-young-academics-the-directors-cut/">it's available on this site</a>.</p>
<p>We also received an extremely kind email, recently, from Janice Newson, whose "<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1551303698/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=2bitpienet-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1551303698">Academic Callings: The University We Have Had, Now Have, & Could Have</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=2bitpienet-21&l=as2&o=2&a=1551303698" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />" deals with similar problems.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Martin</p>
<p><i>Featured image by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/merdesigncouk/">Monika Ciapala</a> under a CC-BY-NC license.</i></p>