BS: Feelings = Facts

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Oct 16 - 09:05 AM

In reacting against that Steve, you are every bit as influenced by it as the most enthusiastic believer. Perhaps more so.

But that's as true in all aspects of education, and in other situations. Whatever the intended message may be - and there always is an intended message - it's quite likely to have the opposite effect.

The cartoonist Feifer had a strip I remember - a man saying he realised his son reacted against what he said, so, hoping to get him to grow up with liberal beliefs, for years he used to say stuff designed to make him react that way, racist, sexist stuff and so forth. Than when the kid had grown up he told him that he'd been thinking it over, and now he realised that his son was right in his liberal views. "We used to argue all the time - now we don't seem to have anything to say to each other..."

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Oct 16 - 08:37 AM

My IQ is very high but I know damn well that it doesn't mean a thing other than that I'm good at doing IQ tests.

I learned far more about morality by reading Aesop's Fables in the Children's Encyclopedia than I did in 13 years of Catholic religious "education," by the way.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 07 Oct 16 - 04:46 AM

No idea what my IQ is, Donuel. AFAIK, it's never been tested - or maybe it was, but we weren't advised of the results? It's a mystery to me.

Whatever, I did comparatively well at a good school and held down several jobs as an accountant for a total of 49 years, became a reasonably proficient, self-taught guitar player and singer, played in a number of bands in various musical styles (still do play and sing in a folk-trio), and still do occasional gigs as a solo performer. All good AFAIC, Apart from my wife and my dog, I need nothing more. 👍😎

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: DMcG
Date: 07 Oct 16 - 03:47 AM

Time-honoured should be time when. Autocorrect again.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: DMcG
Date: 07 Oct 16 - 03:42 AM

It may not interest anyone else, but I can tie together the original opening post, the Children's Encyclopedia, Donuel's flash memory comments and even Bill D's philosophy in a single event.

I guess many children began reading the Children's Encyclopedia with its section on stories. I certainly did, and in particular the subsection "Tales from Many Lands". So at just about seven I read one from China or Japan, concerning a time-honoured mirrors were rare and only owned by the wealthiest in the land. As a result, very few people really knew what they looked like.

One day a farmer was digging in his field and found a mirror, not knowing what it was. When he wiped the dirt off it he was astonished to see he had found a portrait of his father. Amazed at this he took in home and put it in a cupboard wrapped in a cloth. And many times he went to look at this wonderful portrait.
After a little while his wife noticed him taking something from the cupboard, gazing at it and the wrapping it back up and closing the cupboard. So one day when he was out working she went to cupboard and took out the mysterious parcel. Imagine her shock to find it was a portrait of a beautiful young woman!   So when her husband came home there was a blazing row, each arguing that it was a portrait of what they said.

Eventually the noise attracted the attention of a nearby priest who came to see what was the matter, and each loudly and emphatically proclaimed what the portrait was and how they were wronged by the other. So the priest took the mirror and looked at it. Then he told them they were both wrong and it was a portrait of learned holy man and took it away and placed it in a shrine in his temple.
------

I was seven when I first read that story. And immediately I understood several things at the same time. Firstly, it was a good entertaining story. Secondly, that was not its point: it was actually about how what we see in the world is a reflection of us; we see very much what we want to see. There are no observations that are truly independent of the observer. And even the most learned of us can fall into the trap as easily as the least learned.

So what is fact and what is feeling in this case? And more importantly and more generally, how do you know? They are not that easy to disentangle. A good teacher - and in this case it was a book reporting on a form of teaching centuries old - can open a new way of looking at things in an instant, even if most of the time it is a long slow slog. And flash memories can form from intellectual revelations, not just emotions in the more obvious sense.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 10:28 PM

journal of clinical hypnosis


Backwoodsman,


I have read about 3% of the 1,000 issues ( not much will )


Don't think I'm smarter than you.
My IQ is 42
It's only 42
but I'm not through.
I took less than half the test.
and got the ultimate answer to the universe

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 10:09 PM

When I posted the Devil's Island remark I planted the suggestion of the Dreyfus affair.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 09:59 PM

Egyptology enthusiasts:

Dr. Sarah Parka has found 99% more archeological structures in Egypt using satellite tech. Infrared combined with lidar xray etc. from 450 miles up.

Check out the Kunkle theory how the great pyramid was a public work project that irrigated the fertile land.




Going back even more the Saxon Kings did not treat Jews prejudicially. The rest of the post is quite knowledgably and as an abstract, accurate. However what Tom Lehrer said in National Brotherhood Week is true. "Everybody hates the Jews"

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 07:55 PM

I hate her so much that I can't even bring myself to spell her name right.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 07:53 PM

Jaysus, so they are, but just think. You got me thinking so hard about it all that I had to modify. Halcyon aspects then. Bugger. But what I've described was more good than bad. But we had more passion in us, somehow, and less cynicism. We thought we really could change things. And we did have punk...

Then we had Thstcher.

You got me there though, no messing. But wotchit. I'm on your case...😂😂😂

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Raedwulf
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 06:51 PM

Ummm... No, Steve. "Halcyon days by any measure." Those are YOUR words. Not mine. Go back to 5/10/16 7:58PM and go "Oh! Bugger..." ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 06:42 PM

The anti-Catholic spin was precisely the reason it didn't rub off on me. We wee Catholics were well trained to resist even the merest hint of proselytisation from any other quarter.

As for halcyon days, that's your characterisation, not mine. I had plenty of struggles whilst employed by ILEA, I can assure you. We had the fact of drastic education cuts perpetrated by a LABOUR government, we were castigated, nay threatened, by the establishment in the NUT when we threatened industrial action over cuts and compulsory teacher redeployment (I have two threatening letters addressed personally to me from Fred Jarvis, if anyone remembers him), we had struggles over asbestos in schools (one of my former colleagues, a much-loved one at that, died of mesothelioma several years ago - in 1978 I had a sample from our decaying staff room ceiling analysed which was found to contain blue asbestos - as they say in the US, go figure). My friend Blair Peach, one of the very finest people it was my good fortune to call a mate, was bludgeoned to death for no good reason by a police truncheon. Plenty more stuff like that. Clear cases of child abuse glossed over. I won't go on. Happy days and sad days in many regards, but halcyon? Your word, mate, not mine!

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Raedwulf
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 06:32 PM

Yes Don, quite right. WWI is one of my "fascinated" periods of history. The "stab in the back", Senoufou, really is a complete myth, perpetrated by the right wingers (not just the Nazis, it was just that they won the political battle) to explain Germany's defeat.

The notion that their post-war economy was dominated by Jewish financiers is a new one on me (I admit, I start getting a bit hazy about the inter-war years!). The "stab in the back", blamed on Jews, was about what happened during WWI. It's all nonsense, of course. Germany lost because it couldn't beat Britain & France combined. And the Yanks finally turned up to the party & the rest was inevitable.

What Hitler did was not to "hypnotise" or to tap into any particularly racist or anti-Semitic sentiment. Yes, there was a long under-current (and sometimes over-current) of anti-Semitism in Europe. It isn't terribly controversial to say that Jews contributed to that & always had done. If you insist on looking different, sounding different, being different... You are always making of your community a target, however inoffensive & well-meaning you may consider yourself. The real irony here being that the financiers who might have been complained of had been doing their best to be more English than the English, more German the Germans, etc, for a good 50 years or more. Oh, and look up the Dreyfuss Affair some time. Germany had no monopoly on anti-Semitism!

But what really happened is that Hitler tapped into a current of despair & resentment. Germany had lost. It had lost in such a way that people could pretend they hadn't *really* lost. Some of their prominent military leaders, such as Ludendorff fed the "International Jewry" (which was a notion that had also been around for 50+ years), "stab in the back" psychosis. And the Nazis, the majority of whom believed in it too, took advantage.

But the key factor is despair & resentment, not anti-Semitism. Many were undoubtedly attracted to the National Socialists who might not have been had the French been less inclined to grind Germany's face into the dirt. It's also worth remembering that when they won their election, I've forgotten the exact figure, but if memory serves, in a rather suspect election, the Nazi's shenaniganed their way into power on about 28% of the vote...

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 06:16 PM

We had the Childrens' Encyclopedia, and I must have read most of it. In fact it generally had an anti-Catholic spin much of the time, but that didn't rub off on me either. The enthusiasm that ran through it, and a sort of equal opportunitiy policy for all kinds of human knowledge and activity, may have to some extent.

Perhaps there needs to be some kind of Childrens' Wikipedia.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Raedwulf
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 05:45 PM

Steve - "The Children's Encyclopedia made me what I am." But... but... Yer old!! ;-)

Re the earlier comments, I wouldn't then have had the perspective to think about what was what or why it was. I was more or less happy with the education I was getting, whilst I was getting it, I think. But with hindsight I suggest two reasons for the "halcyon days" notion.

First, Time & Motion, metrics, and other such things (that ultimately lead to bloody league tables) had scarcely been thought of, if it all. Across the whole country, no-one was thinking about "efficiency", "share-holder value", and all that crap. I suspect that, in general, you were assumed to be at least OK at your job, provided you didn't screw up, so were mostly left to get on with things.

Second, from the political angle, the left have always been into education. "Only by lifting the blinkers from the proletariat's eyes!!!" Etcetera... ;-) But I've always been of the opinion that back in the day, the left were more interested, in education anyway, in being able to control policy, rather than in proselytising on the shop floor, if you see what I mean. It was an achievement to be able to direct budgets, set curricula, etc; to influence more subtly, rather than to browbeat.

The two factors combine with the result that you were not subjected to the micro-management of metrics & league tables that seems to be the norm these days. There's a third factor, too - no blame culture back then. If the kid was unruly, the teacher / school wasn't automatically blamed for it. Management didn't permanently have half an eye on "will I / we be blamed for something going wrong" which pervades absolutely every industry these days.

Not so much "halcyon days" as just... A simpler world!

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 05:34 PM

There were 3 international Jewish financiers.

Of course losing WWI may have had something to do with the huge reparations France wanted from Germany.

What Senofou said was 87 year old racist propaganda in which a feeling = fact in the same way Trump facts go virtually unchallenged.
It is an example of not thinking for yourself.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 04:57 PM

The Children's Encyclopedia made me what I am. I devoured it, all ten volumes, cover to cover, from the age of about seven onwards. Looking back, there was an awful lot of God-squaddery in it, but that didn't rub off as I was being thoroughly indoctrinated by Catholicism anyway. There was also a lot of the Great British Empire saving Darkest Africa, but, somehow, that eluded me too. It was definitely a tome of its time. But it was beautifully pitched at children and it imbued a sense of wonder and an enthusiasm for knowledge. Interesting man was Arthur. I raise a glass to him, in spite of his inveterate temperance!

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 04:35 PM

My parents bought me 'NewnesPictorial Knowledge', ten volume encyclopaedia, which I loved. Superbly written for a child of eight or nine and upwards, and with fabulous illustrations. I read it constantly.

I was enthralled by the section on Egyptology, and I was thrilled when I visited the Cairo Museum in 2002 (at the age of 55) and recognised exhibits which I'd seen in photographs back in the 1950s.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: DMcG
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 01:47 PM

Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia was one of my main books from about 7 to around 10. Loved it and must have read about 90% of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 01:28 PM

I remember in the 4th grade wanting to take home a library book on butterflies that was designated "library only". Somehow, there was a discussion (I suppose with my 4th grade teacher) and I was allowed to borrow it for 2 weeks.
   That teacher also sold The World Book Encyclopedia in her spare time, and she convinced my parents that I would 'benefit' from it. It was one of the best decisions they ever made on my behalf. I devoured those books for many years. Although it had limitations,it showed me how many things there were to BE fascinated with. I ended up being the first known person in my extended family to actually go to college... and graduate....
   By the time I was a senior in high school, I had decided on a Philosophy major, because it allowed me to meddle in everyone's business. ☺ I didn't have a full career, but the basic concepts about "how to think" have made a huge difference in my life.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 01:18 PM

"The Journal of Clinical Hypnosis is available to all.

But do we all have the will to read it, or the intellect to understand it? I don't have the former, and I suspect I may not have the latter!

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 01:11 PM

Obviously we are born with a love of learning. Otherwise we wouldn't have learned anything. Look at the incredible amount of things we learn to do in the first three years of our lives. The wrong kind of education (in the home, the school and elsewhere) can go a fair way to suppress that.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 11:04 AM

Having spent so much time on the subject, hypnosis is a word like the weather is a word. There are many types of weather from fair weather to hurricane weather. The Jesuit church was profoundly interested in my views of the phenomenon as it pertained to religious applications, pro and con. The CIA had an agenda of their own. Etc.

The Journal of Clinical Hypnosis is available to all.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 10:52 AM

I think a person's 'love of learning' might depend very much an his/her parents' attitude to learning. If a child is discouraged by parental antipathy to 'school' (and, having been a youth-worker attached to a school, I've seen a great deal of evidence of that!), that child might never find him/herself 'loving learning'.

Having said that, I also believe that damage to a child's attitude by parental negativity can be reversed by a good teacher. And I've seen that too.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Senoufou
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 09:14 AM

Ha! My feisty and feminist sister refused categorically to 'do' cookery and needlework with the girls. (Same grammar school, but six years later than I) She boldly confronted the ferocious Head and got her way. She did Woodwork and Metalwork (the only girl amongst all the boys) and came top in both! I reckon the Head was terrified of her (I certainly am). She later studied Medicine, and has progressed far with it. (She also cooks, knits and sews like a dream!)
Do you think one is born with a 'love of learning'? Can it be kindled in a pupil who isn't a bit interested? If it depends on excellent teaching, will it die once the person leaves school?
My poor father was offered a place at grammar school, but his parents flatly refused to consider it, and chucked him out to work. But his love of learning never left him, and he gained numerous qualifications in Telecommunications, which gave him an excellent career. I was much moved to see his surreptitious tears when the letter arrived offering me a place at grammar school, and later at my graduation at Uni.
Days before he died, he was beginning a course in French and was learning to play bridge. I think he was just born with the urge to learn.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 08:52 AM

Sorry - I left out an "end italics" there.

"Is the aim of education to engender a love of learning, or is it to produce young people who are literate, fit for work, and can perform a useful role in society?"

I'd see those two as the same thing, especially in a world changing as fast as it is.

Maybe it depends on whether you see "love of learning" as meaning focussing on the corpus of existing "learning", or as meaning the act of learning itself, which is a defining quality of our species.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 08:49 AM

Is the aim of education to engender a love of learning, or is it to produce young people who are literate, fit for work, and can perform a useful role in society?

I'd see those two as the same thing, especially in a world changing as fast as it is.

Maybe it depends on whether you see "love of learning" as meaning focussing on the corpus of existing "learning", or as meaning the act of learning itself, which is a defining quality of our species.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: DMcG
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 08:45 AM

I was "severely looked at" by the school when I insisted that amongst all the scientific and mathematical subjects I took I also studied woodwork.

The practical exam was a nightmare: only two of us passed and we both scraped through with the lowest pass grade. I ask you, make your first ever concealed dovetail in wood about 0.75cm thick under exam conditions. Practical exams were insane in those days: the chemistry exam involved heating paraffin using a Bunsen burner. Several fires in our lab, and I am sure in every school laboratory across the country...

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Senoufou
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 08:31 AM

The very early Comprehensive I mentioned earlier had an excellent reputation for getting pupils qualifications in more practical subjects such as shorthand and typing, metalwork, woodwork, cookery and so on.

In Middlesex in those days there was a very traditional middle-class grammar school for girls. They taught Greek and Latin, and the school was under the aegis of the Church of England. Luckily my father chose the more modern grammar school for me. I'd have stuck out like a sore thumb in the very posh girls' school. And imagine me at Benenden! (Princess Anne went there.) I spoke with quite a Cockney accent in those days. And you had to board too.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: DMcG
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 08:20 AM

My school was also a grammar with 11+ selection and my experience was similar to the others here. But I don't think anyone is arguing grammars did not help their attendees (most grammars anyway). The problem is almost entirely about what happens to the people who don't pass the exam.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 08:18 AM

<"I don't think it's hypnotism so much as opportunism."

I think you're right.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Senoufou
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 08:09 AM

Regarding Hitler, I think he tapped in to a racist, anti-Semitic feeling in Germany at the time. Their economy was to some extent dominated by Jewish financiers. By harping on about it, and whipping up the population to desire the removal of Jews, he built on this racism, using 'Aryan stereotypes' to reinforce it, until The Final Solution was tacitly accepted. He then proceeded to promote the creation of a Roman Empire-type Reich, which obviously appealed to the people, as they embraced it wholeheartedly, and armed for War with enthusiasm.

Parallels can be seen today. A politician can only persuade his/her adherents to believe what they already have in their minds.
I don't think it's hypnotism so much as opportunism.

In Cote d'Ivoire recently, President Gbagbo took power by tapping into the people's despair at their poverty, and the corruption rife among the rulers. He didn't hypnotise them so much as promise them vast improvements. Sadly, he was extremely corrupt himself, and the poverty merely continued or increased. Luckily, he was eventually booted out after a civil war.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 07:50 AM

But was/is it hypnosis in its true sense? Seems far closer to the phenomenon we call 'brainwashing' to my comparatively simple way of thinking.

Senoufou - my experience of Grammar School education parallels yours, a good standard of education for my peers and I, all comparatively poor working-class lads, and grateful for the opportunities it gave us.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 06:06 AM

I have witnessed the sacrifice and caring of teaching from afar.
My dad was a teacher. It was exhaustive and rewarding. Fro the early challenges to the goodbyes for Mr. Chips. I bow to teachers, especially my music teachers.

In my early hypnosis lectures I was often asked did Hitler hypnotize the German people. I used to say no. I now have to atone and answer yes because of what I have learned and the Trump threat.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Senoufou
Date: 06 Oct 16 - 04:51 AM

I'm sorry Donuel; you're right, we haven't particularly stuck to the subject of the thread title, and I've been very bad at digressing and rambling on about my own experiences, for which I apologise.
However, I'm afraid forums are like this (as are conversations in real life) Old biddies like me (and others :) ) come along and burble on.

My grammar school was led by a Headmaster described by my very right-wing father as a 'Red Hot Labour Chap'. A very young Shirley Williams actually presented us with our GCE O level certificates. We pupils were all working class, and not well-off, and we were (and are) extremely grateful for the opportunity and benefits our education offered.
Our teachers were amazing, many were Oxbridge graduates, two of which I knew had First Class degrees in their subjects. They were very enlightened for their times, and dedicated to their profession.

Our grammar school was one of the very first 'Technical Grammars', and offered many practical subjects as well as classical ones. Middlesex had also one of the very first comprehensives. Mellow Lane. And nobody sat an 11-plus. We were assessed by a series of intelligence tests and evaluation by the teacher. I was incredibly lucky to have been born when and where I was!
My primary school headmistress recommended me to sit the Benenden entrance exam, but my father decided against it, I'm thankful to say.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Oct 16 - 08:01 PM

My last post was directed to Raedwulf.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Oct 16 - 07:58 PM

Well that's a very interesting post from several perspectives. I'd point out that, if you read my posts in other threads relating to various contexts (please don't torture yourself by looking back...), you'll find that I never, ever defend the New Labour record on anything. New Labour's only achievement was to keep the Tories at bay for thirteen years as far as I'm concerned (discuss...).

Interesting that you were a pupil somewhere in ILEA at precisely the same time as my missus and I were teaching there, 1973 to 1980. Halcyon days by any measure. Teachers left alone to get on with their jobs, free periods to mark and prepare and lunchtimes and breaks free to banter with the other teachers, or just to have a fag and a coffee. The way it should be. We appreciated the space and worked our arses off. What a difference to today.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Oct 16 - 07:53 PM

Well, It was mentioned that a fact, once learned is in there.
It is and it isn't when compared to an emotionally charged memory.

HERE IS THE CLINCHER !

In the thread 'have you witnessed weird car accidents?', you will see how perfectly clear a detailed memory is preserved even after 3 decades when the experience was emotionally charged.

This is something any layman can understand.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Raedwulf
Date: 05 Oct 16 - 07:00 PM

Hmmmm... Whilst I'm broadly in agreement, Steve, I wouldn't be quite so quick to bang the "Tories have screwed up education" drum. When did Labour do it better? Labour had a decade or so in power. It didn't remove league tables. Now, unlike two or three of you, I am not an heddi prurfeshnul (sic). But league tables are, as far I'm concerned, the root of all (alright, most) modern heddicaishnul evil. And health service, and wherever else they're shoehorned in.

A league table rarely measures anything useful; it's just a bunch of artificial metrics that are a limited subset (but easily measured) of what organisation X does. And what they do do is soak up a deal of resource that could be better utilised doing what the organisation SHOULD be doing. Either the people who should be DOING are sidetracked into justifying their existence, or any extra layer of pointless bureaucracy becomes a non-productive drain on limited budgets.

As for the Good Old Days before all this nonsense...My education happened in the 70's & early 80's. In ILEA schools. When I was 18, I found out that there had been talk of getting me assessed, age 12, and sent to a special school. Not because I was thick, but because I was exceptionally bright. I was messing about with A-level nuclear physics & explaining it to the teachers, frex. Nothing happened, because Labour doesn't (or didn't) believe in spending extra resources on bright kids. You were expected to shift for yourself. Not a level playing field. The Labour ideology certainly was not to give every kid the opportunity to maximise their potential. It was to concentrate any spare resource on thick kids, educationally challenged kids, "special needs" kids, to try to get them to a level that, frankly, very few of them were capable of achieving. So it was wasted.

The end result was, in my case, a kid who was bored with school by the time the 4th year (senior) mock exams had passed. I was bored with having to wait for almost every other kid in my classes to catch up with things that were beautifully simple and / or blindingly obvious. I was bored with listening to the teacher explaining something for the third time that I'd understood halfway through the first explanation. Arrogant? Perhaps, but this is a (long ago!) 14-15 year old I'm talking about! ;-) I wanted out of school, to be earning money. My imagination died for want of fuel, if you like (yes, I love "Dead Poets"). Left wing educational policies failed me badly, and I can't see, from the outside, that they've improved. Education remains a political football, with the left as bad as the right.

I never learnt to *think* in school; I never learnt to *learn* in school. I learnt that afterwards by raiding the local library for the likes of Edward de Bono and, later, Tony Buzan. In my opinion, the primary two functions of education should be to teach young people how to learn (I believe some schools do include such things as mind mapping in their curricula these days), and to teach them how to think i.e. how to assess evidence, how to spot flaws, holes, how to be not so bloody certain that you're *right*! ;-) Facts come a distant third. It's that "teach a man to fish" thing. Again, I realise that the UK examination system has changed, that there is more emphasis on coursework, but still... Passing an exam only really proves you've been taught to pass an exam (which certainly was true in my day!). I may or may not have been "stuffed" with facts, but I'd be hard pushed to tell you one single thing that I remember learning in school...

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: DMcG
Date: 05 Oct 16 - 06:48 PM


There has not been a single reply to the neurological and psychological aspects of political science

I guess it is just we were just concentrating on the education angle. I think we have reached a natural limit on that because while it affects the upcoming voters and a small percentage of current voters, the majority of voters are not in education so changes to teaching methods won't help. For those over, say, 25 we need to be following a different tack.

I would be a bit wary of a claim that Republicans and Democrats are using different parts of their brains: it is more that the candidates speak in different ways and the voters respond in whatever way the speeches appeal. I would say that Obama's first campaign with its slogan of "Yes we can" was also driven by feelings, albeit far more positive ones. So it is not really a Republican/Democrat divide; it is more the campaign of today.

There is a lot of neurology around emotions and endorphins and such like, but my knowledge of it is definitely layman's. Nevertheless it is clear the effect of a strictly logical and factual argument does not deliver the same chemical "high" than an emotionally driven one can.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Oct 16 - 04:41 PM

There has not been a single reply to the neurological and psychological aspects of political science.

There were responses to mentioning the holocaust on the last day of Rosh Hashana. Mostly a change of subject and a cessation of any replies thereafter

What's this I hear about returning to Devil's Island?.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Senoufou
Date: 05 Oct 16 - 12:49 PM

I had quite a few HM Inspections during my early years of teaching. The Inspectors were usually older, quite stern (especially in Scotland) but very competent, and always fair. I always felt they had long experience behind them.
I do so wish I'd had one fall asleep at the back of my classroom Steve! I love a good laugh.
We had some very good Subject Advisors. I was given The Humanities to handle (Geography, History and RE) and also The Library. And Fundraising. And I supervised a Yeargroup. And took assemblies. And mentored new staff. The Advisors were very helpful with sourcing the equipment and choosing textbooks for all this and easing my transition into managing staff. There was even a Sewing Advisor. But the National Curriculum Ofsted lot were truly pathetic.

I liked the film 'Dead Poets Society'. It showed how important it is to fire the imagination of one's students.

I often wonder if the Internet has helped the young to see many sides of an issue. There is unlimited access to practically the entire world on there, so it must extend their experience and knowledge. (If they're not too busy gaming, sending pictures of their genitalia to eachother and viewing porn that is.)

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Oct 16 - 11:39 AM

And that was an absurd spelling.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Oct 16 - 11:38 AM

The language I use always draws a very clear line between education about religion (crucial) and religious instruction and enforced worship (one of the greatest evils). It would be good if you actually paid more careful attention to what people actually say before churning out your next batch of absudities.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Pete from seven stars link
Date: 05 Oct 16 - 11:15 AM

Interesting that Steve calls religious instruction pseudo facts . I was under the impression that comparative religion was the order of the day in state schools and the facts therefore consisted of information as to what was believed and practised by whatever religion in question. It is a shame the same method is not used in teaching other stuff that is presented as fact but actually is rather interpretation of data that cannot be evidenced to be anywhere near conclusive.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Oct 16 - 10:23 AM

An elderly gentleman inspector of large girth and ruddy complexion once fell asleep on the back row in my science lab. One of the Year 8 lads rushed up to the front, interrupting my carefully-prepared (for once) spiel, to inform me that "that man on our bench is making snoring noises, Sir!" Indeed he was. I later discovered that he'd been staying at the Falcon Hotel in Bude, which has an excellent bar at which he'd been liberally indulging himself the night before.

Ofsted has been an unmitigated disaster. There's even a suspicion that inspectors were deliberately downgrading schools that were showing reluctance to become academies in order to pressurise them to do so. Teachers don't need constant threats of no-notice inspectorial swoops and publicly-judgemental reporting. They need critical-friend support. In the ILEA we had excellent teams of advisory teachers of proven accomplishment, experts in your subject area, not just any old Tom, Dick or Harry ex-teacher. They would observe lessons, look at the children's work and offer friendly support, advice - and criticism. A proper professional collaboration, supported by a fairly hands-off inspection regime that you'd have been unlucky to encounter more than once or twice during your career. Not up Thatcher's alley at all, of course. Teachers needed beating up and she had just the handbag for it.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Oct 16 - 10:06 AM

Dedicated teachers are influential for a lifetime. Far more than a Hollywood depiction of the coach who changed lives.


"To get beyond a "shopping list" you need to move beyond the strictly factual into the interpretation: why was the battle on that date, why were there that number of participants, did the battle have a long term effect.... these interpretations are affected by belief systems in the widest sense."
DMcG

To me this draws the distinction between information and knowledge.

Victorian education was aimed at the clerk and the manufacturer to manage the education those jobs required. Today the needs of wealth production is far different. State education is more or less told what those needs are.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Senoufou
Date: 05 Oct 16 - 07:25 AM

By the way (and I couldn't resist being Post 100!) I take a great interest in my neighbours' two children, both at High School. They often visit me with homework difficulties, French composition and so on. (Or just for a chat!) They're both delightful people, and in my view intelligent and able. But oh dear, the standard of their work is truly appalling. Handwriting, spelling, presentation, poor grammar; I don't think much of the education they're receiving. And their school has been judged 'excellent' by Ofsted. If that's excellent, heaven help the 'poor' ones.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Senoufou
Date: 05 Oct 16 - 07:21 AM

My goodness Steve, what you've just written chimes with everything I felt at the time (and still do). The mountains of paperwork, non-productive 'accountability', the stultifying Curriculum, the inadequate Inspectors. It was one of the reasons I finally retired.
I suppose it was the increasing 'liberality' of the seventies that caused this knee-jerk reaction.
I had always tried to be courteous and fair with Inspectors, and co-operated with them as far as possible.But oh my Lord, some of them were completely inane, hadn't a clue, and suggested such ludicrous 'improvements' I was hard put not to burst out laughing. After thirty years' experience, I couldn't stomach a young chap with a couple of years' teaching behind him telling me my methods were unacceptable or ineffective. I suppose this sounds terribly arrogant, but there it is. I learned to cultivate the response of Mrs Brown's Boys - "That's nice..."
As a true Libran, I think the solution is a balance. But being at the mercy of political tub-thumping, a balance is what we shall never get.

Subject: RE: BS: Feelings = Facts
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Oct 16 - 06:57 AM

Well, I was a teacher at the time the National Curriculum was brought in, and I said then that it was a blunt instrument intended to beat teachers into submission following a decade of what the government characterised as our "militancy". All content, all fact-stuffing and no scope for teachers to be imaginative. To be assessed by a massive tick-box programme that has been shown to be corrupt for decades (I could regale you for hours with the inconsistencies, the cheating and the massaging of assessments I saw). Note that Thatcher excused public schools (independent schools, yanks) from having to adopt it Oh yes, only those toffs were "responsible" enough to be trusted. Same for those ideologically-driven "free schools" today. Impose on that a bureaucratic nightmare of form-filling and ludicrously-complex preparation and marking regimes for every state school teacher in the country and a draconian and utterly unsupportive inspection regime that was, initially at least, peopled by failed teachers or those who couldn't take the heat who had had three days' training. I'm afraid that education has always been a political football in this country. It wouldn't be half so bad if any of it had actually led to better standards, would it?