A-pope-collarish Now (or Never)

If you happened to pick up today's Sunday Times, you could easily develop an exciting new opinion of Richard Dawkins, author, television presenter and formerly Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

A headline in the paper declares "Richard Dawkins: I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI", which suggested to my overly-active Sunday morning imagination that when the Pontiff arrives in September, the good Professor intends do his best Bond-gone-mad impression and personally attack the Papal Plane, kick in the door, rough up a few Swiss Guards, present an arrest warrant, slap on a pair of handcuffs and then drag Benedict XVI kicking and screaming to the authorities to face charges for his alleged role in covering up child abuse by errant Catholic priests around the world.

An amusing image, but it didn't take much research to discover that the headline was, to say the least, misleading. Dawkin's own website points out that the headline did a disservice to both himself and the Times journalist responsible for the article, and unless someone decides to make the movie (& if they do, who owns the rights?) that image of Dawkins the action hero will have to remain nothing but a diverting fantasy since the rather less funny truth is only that Pr Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have been exploring the possibility of mounting a legal challenge to the Papal Visit.

Thanks to Marc Horne, the Sunday Times reporter, for not only providing a topical addition to Tuesday's Critical Thinking workshop, but also inspiring the Photoshopping which has produced an image for the summing up session.

A distinction without a difference....

After spending the day delivering a critical thinking workshop at St James Park, I've now spent nearly two hours sat on a train parked just south of Newcastle.

Apparently, we (the passengers) aren't entitled to free food and drink because it's not our locomotive that's broken down: it's the one in front!

No wonder the likes of Stephen Byers (recently discredited MP) describe themselves as "like taxis for hire", since not even the most unscrupulous of our politicial elite would be daft enough to risk association with our rail network when they behave like this.

Springing in the rain

Trying to drive back up the M1 after attending a JISC Project Assembly, I'm now parked in Leicester Forest service station due to the torrential rain which the local Midlands radio describes as "unseasonal".
As today is officially three days into spring, "unseasonal" would appear to be putting it rather mildly.
Unlike the weather, which isn't mild at all.....

Bearing False Witness is a Highway to Hull...

Watching television in my Humberside hotel room (in the middle of delivering a two-day team building workshop), I've just seen a local BBC news article about a school due to open up the road in September called the "New Life Academy", which apparently claims to be "Ofsted approved".

Now feel free to send corrections, but to my knowledge Ofsted doesn't "approve" anything; it inspects and regulates. A quick Google has produced a website promoting the "Advanced Christian Education system of individualised learning" delivered in a school which is "Ofsted approved, and with an excellent track record".

However, since it won't open until September the New Life Academy doesn't have a "track record" in anything, so it can't possibly relate to the institution and must mean the curriculum instead? Nope, Ofsted doesn't "approve" curricula either.

Therefore, the New Life Academy's Christian Fundamentalists must have considered "Thou shalt not bear false witness" to be simply an option not an instruction and decided to ignore it.

Wonder if they've considered that making false public declarations might lead the inspectors to doubt the contents of their Self Evaluation Process when the day of judgement finally arrives - Ofsted that is; not Armageddon?

The Elephant in the Room..

The Higher Education Academy has apparently been informed by the funding councils that its grant will be reduced for the forthcoming academic year, something which the subject centre workers I've spent today with think is going to significantly impact primarily, and unjustly, on them.

It's my view, and it's also one apparently shared by all the delegates at today's event (not just those representing the subject centres), that whoever makes the decisions needs to very seriously consider the educational impact and current returns on expenditure.

The HEA board will doubtless claim to look at the big picture as it considers the challenge of managing the prospective funding cut, but given the contractual position of the subject centres, reducing/stopping their activities is relatively easy to implement and representatives of the central function are hardly likely to admit that their well-documented ticking of many boxes isn't a desirable output?

However, the easiest option is unlikely to be the best one, as the subject centres are not only the most visible part of the HEA, (other than running a recognition scheme, what do all those people at York actually do?), they are also, according to 2008's interim evaluation of the HEA "valued because they tackle enhancement from the ‘ground floor’" and “widely cited as the Academy’s flagship programme”.

It is also the regular engagement with those lecturers actually delivering the HE programmes, individuals who can have a direct impact on standards, that makes subject centres so effective: extensive repositories of generic information and strategy/policy documents do not have anything like the same potential for positive change as working together within and across learning communities.

Therefore, surely either reducing the size or number of the centres before, or instead of, reducing the size (& cost) of the central "coordinating body" first, will eventually lead to the closure of the HEA anyway, as without them what's left of the organisation won't be able to deliver anything of use to any of the people who want or need it?

Anyone willing to assuage the fears of centre personnel that they won't be bearing the lion's share of the Academy's cuts while the York white elephant is protected like the endangered species it now surely is?

Kirpaning it in the Family...

I'm currently sat in Leeds/Bradford Airport reading yesterday's remarks by Sir Mota Singh QC, a retired judge who's apparently stated that Sikhs should be allowed to carry their ceremonial daggers in public places, and wondering whether he's thought about how this assertion might apply to air travel since even nail files are on the banned list?

No exceptions are proposed in the BBC article, but it does describe a case where a boy was banned from wearing his Kirpan (dagger) at the Compton School in Barnet, and that even though the school offered to compromise by offering "the option of wearing a smaller knife, welded into a metal sheath" the boy's parents declined and removed him from the school; causing me to wonder what would happen if they (or their son) wanted to fly?

Mass homeopathic overdose - none dead!

Setting off to Derby on a 10.23 train to deliver an assessment workshop has prompted me to declare my admiration for all those who took part in Saturday's mass homeopathic overdose (at 10.23am: various locations around the country). Or not as it happens, since nobody succeeded in taking their own lives despite hundreds of people downing entire packets of homeopathic pills.

Hopefully the 10:23 campaign has succeeded in raising awareness (a form of education, just by another means?) of the inefficacy of homeopathic medicine, and the double-standards of leading pharmacists who happily stock them while admitting that they don't work.