Layer 332 . . . Duncan Smith, Tory Economics, Gove, Education, Sugata Mitra and TEDGlobal

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Iain Duncan Smith at loggerheads with Treasury over benefit cuts

So says the headline over an article in the Observer. I've written about this previously, and about my support for Duncan Smith's proposals.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/18/iain-duncan-smith-benefit-cuts

Duncan Smith's central idea is to increase the "work incentive" by ensuring that there is enough of a financial gain for people on benefits to work. The difficulty is that the way to address the issue is either to increase payments to those in work – which would cost billions – or to withdraw benefits to those out of work or in the lowest paid jobs – hurting the most vulnerable in society.

Before the election, the Centre for Social Justice thinktank came up with proposals that carried a price tag of £3.7bn a year, claiming that the money would be clawed back over time and eventually result in savings.

Sources say officials at [IDS's] DWP [Deparment for Work and Pensions] are "frustrated" that the Treasury will not take into account the potential income raised from income tax and VAT as more people move into work.

Kayte Lawton, research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, said it was inevitable there would be tensions between the DWP and the Treasury because Duncan Smith's ideas depended on spending money in the short term that could be regained in the long term.

Or, putting it more simply, IDS and his DWP are saying that the key task is to get people who are living on welfare back into work, or into self-employment, and in order to do that we need to continue to pay them their unemployment and housing benefits during their first weeks of work - both as a 'reward' and as an 'assurance' that it will be worth their while to take on the available jobs.

Not surprisingly the bastards at the Treasury - the stupid bean counters and dull accountants - can only see the short-term numbers and can't see the long-term sense of what Duncan Smith is proposing.

The key to this lies with Cameron, and if he doesn't support IDS's enlightened proposals then the mystery will be why on earth he ever appointed him to the job, knowing full well, we presume, that he knew what IDS stood for and what his philosophy would be for getting people back into work. Indeed, we're entitled to assume that this is why he gave him the job in the first place.

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/09/layer-198-mansfield-empathy-duncan.html - this one from way before the General Election

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2010/05/layer-320-more-on-ids-work-pay-and.html

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2010/06/layer-322-hopper-laws-ashley-balls.html

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Further to the favourable comments about Cameron in Layer 330 - there was another article praising him and the Coalition in the Observer:

This coalition is proving to be a champion of common sense

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/11/coalition-cameron-clegg

Of course Henry Porter is mainly interested in issues centering on liberty and human rights, on policing, surveillance, civil liberties, etc. And he claims that

"these [government] actions should be given more than a grudging welcome by those who argue that cuts are the only way to assess the coalition. Let's remember that there is just 1% difference between Labour and coalition proposals on cuts."

Personally I doubt this figure. Tory economics are the opposite of enlightened and wise, as is their determination to privatise everything in sight, including health and education.

Even Jackie Ashley points out that Cameron is cutting whereas Obama understands that creating a recession or another depression is unnecessary and evil. It's making the poor pay for the excesses of the rich.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/19/cameron-us-trip-ritual-substance

So what is the kernel of the ["Special"] relationship now? What makes it so special?

Certainly not economics or domestic policy. Obama's strategy is going in almost exactly the opposite direction from Cameron's. He has been spending heavily, creating a fairer healthcare system, and regulating Wall Street with a toughness the UK government has so far shrunk from. He is worried about the depth of European spending cuts, and Cameron's are as deep as any. In most key areas, Obama has been behaving more like Brown than Cameron.

Gary Younge, as ever, also gets it:

The coalition doesn't want to heal Britain's broken leg, but amputate it

The left must show this for the elective surgery it is: cuts born of ideology, where the many pay for a crisis created by the rich

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/18/british-budget-deficit-coalition-cuts

The first point is that this situation was not brought about by excessive public sector spending in Britain, but by an almighty binge in the private sector that sparked an international banking crisis. Far from government getting in the way of business, at the point of collapse it was governments – across the world – that rescued business from itself through massive bank bailouts. Indeed, the crisis was made possible not by too much state intervention in capitalism but too little.

Given its global nature, it defies logic to blame any one government or even country for this crisis, let alone a single party. And while it can be argued that Labour made the country vulnerable to the fallout through its deficits, it is not an argument David Cameron can honestly make. For most of the time he was opposition leader he was committed to matching Labour's spending plans. Only when the crisis was in full swing did he abandon them.

In their place he has introduced an agenda that is, by any standards, extreme. Osborne has floated cuts averaging 25% across almost all departments. In Germany, the eurozone's primary deficit hawk, the government department taking the steepest hit will suffer an 8% cut.

Far from being economically necessary, these particular cuts represent an ideological choice. The Conservatives want to shrink the state to a lower proportion of the economy than Margaret Thatcher did. Not even the markets are demanding austerity on this scale, or at this pace.

This is elective surgery. The trouble is that the country didn't choose this. True, Labour lost. But no party won. There is simply no mandate for such an extreme agenda. Opposition to this agenda represents not the reflexive response of malcontents but the considered appraisal of a broad swath of the economic community. The US, France, the Financial Times and the Economist have all argued against such a scale of fiscal tightening at this stage. Even the IMF earlier this year said: "For most advanced countries, some fiscal and monetary stimulus may need to be maintained well into 2010."

It is also widely acknowledged and easily proven that, for all the talk of fairness, these measures will have a disproportionate effect on the poor. "The looming cuts to public services are likely to hit poorer households significantly harder than richer households," said Robert Chote, the director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies the day after the budget.

Not only are these measures not necessary, there is every chance they will make matters far worse. "The historical precedent," argues John Philpott, chief adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, "would suggest that the application of stronger fiscal discipline to an economy in too weak a state to bear it will both slow the rate of economic growth and stem the pace of job creation."

It was not those with low-paid final salary pensions who got us here, but those raking in multimillion dollar bonuses. The wealthy created this crisis, and now the coalition is making ordinary working people pay for it by playing politics with the livelihoods of millions. These are cuts of choice from a government we didn't choose. A softer landing is possible; a crash landing is imminent.

Even Ed Balls has something sensible to say on the subject:

Don't repeat the 30s folly

Those rushing to cut the deficit have not learned from the past. Labour has to set out the alternative

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/18/deficit-cuts-dont-repeat-30s-folly

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Gove was back on the radio this morning, sounding as chipper as ever. Clearly ministerial life and the trappings of power agree with him.

Of course he's rushing to legislate to get all schools turning into 'Academies' (bloody hateful word) and effectively abolish local authority governance and responsibility - also known as interference -  which, as I've said before, many times, many of them thoroughly deserve, and good riddance to all their useless bureaucrats. It's not difficult to make the case for giving schools the money and letting them employ their own advisers and 'consultants'. LMS in the early '90's effectively started this trend, and it's only in the New Labour years that bureaucrats have again grown in numbers and fat-cat salaries.

What's still not completely clear is whether Gove really does want to liberate schools from outside interference and imposition, or whether he simply wants control of schools to be effectively direct from Westminster.

A couple of weeks ago he took part in a radio discussion about the merits of 'reviving' the art of 'deep thought', which seems to suggest we used to have it but somehow lost it.

In terms of curriculum reform, there was general agreement that narrowness and specialisation in the curriculum does not promote creativity and originality - and in fact tends to work against these things. We can't make connections between disparate things if we're not aware of disparate things.

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Back in March Oxzen picked up on an article in the Guardian about the work of Sugata Mitra:

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2010/03/layer-266-teach-yourself-everything.html

In yesterday's Observer there was another reference to him in a two-page article about TEDGlobal:

TEDGlobal conference: where ideas have sex

What happens when one idea meets another idea? They have idea sex. And, when the conditions are right, they conceive and spawn little baby ideas, which go on to have ideas of their own. Or at least that was the theory proposed by science writer Matt Ridley, speaking at TEDGlobal in Oxford last week.

Given that TEDGlobal is a conference at which 60 speakers have 18 minutes each to explain their big idea to an audience of 750 individuals, all of whom have had to apply and provide evidence that they are ideas-type people . . .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jul/18/tedglobal-ideas-conference

One of the most stunning presentations came from the educationist Sugata Mitra, who has discovered that children are capable of teaching themselves almost anything, up to and including biotechnology, in a language they cannot even speak.

Education, he says, is a self-organising system and learning is an emergent phenomenon. What Mitra has so brilliantly demonstrated is that children actually like to learn. If they can figure out how to do it among themselves. And adults, too, it turns out. They're having idea sex online. With an Oxford professor in quantum physics. The net's dirtiest secret yet.

See also this piece from the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10663353

Using computers to teach children with no teachers

It really is about learning . . .
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Layer 266 . . . Teach Yourself . . . Everything

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The movement away from force-feeding children on didactic teaching and a system of so-called education based on passing tests and exams began in Europe in the early part of the last century. Many enlightened British educators contributed to re-thinking the aims and methods of schooling throughout the last century, and achieved worldwide recognition for their efforts to make learning more interesting, more relevant and better matched to the developmental needs of children.

Sadly, Britain now lags way behind other countries in offering education that's geared towards the real needs of learners rather than the needs of academia and the prejudices of the 'traditionalists'. Here and there, however, there are signs that our more enlightened educators, entrepreneurs and even politicians are beginning to see the light.

Last year The Guardian was involved in promoting a DVD called "We Are The People We've Been Waiting For" - http://www.guardian.co.uk/we-are-the-people/welcome-to-the-real-world .
http://www.wearethepeoplemovie.com/

Elsewhere in the world, education systems are being redesigned along the lines of the ideas expressed in Dryden and Vos's book 'The New Learning Revolution'. The Guardian has also reported on this educational revolution.

http://www.newhorizons.org/future/dryden.htm

Lucy Tobin's story in this week's Guardian Education is another piece of good news, and Professor Mitra's work will be embraced by all who care about better education and the rights of children to schools that motivate, inspire and engage their creative energies.

This work is a development of initiatives that began long before microcomputers were even invented, and were put into practice by teachers who saw the need to promote collaborative learning and to enable children to use their creativity and initiative in becoming more autonomous and self-directed learners, through which they could also develop creativity, social skills and emotional intelligence. It is NOT essentially about IT and computers, as such, although the use of the Internet offers tremendous benefits for independent lifelong learners of all ages.

Slumdog reveals learning treasures

The education project that inspired an oscar winning film is now being tried in schools in the north-east

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/mar/16/slumdog-millionaire-education-online-independent?

In the most destitute slums of India, many children lack any formal education. Where schooling is available, the classes are enormous, spanning young and older pupils and offering little one-to-one attention. It's an unlikely source of inspiration for a teaching method to boost attainment, self-confidence and behaviour in Britain's classrooms. But, then again, Professor Sugata Mitra has never been one to follow established educational philosophy.

It's a year since Education Guardian exclusively reported Mitra's Hole In The Wall learning project, in which he installed computers with internet connection in Delhi slums for local children to discover. He found that the children began to teach themselves English, computing and maths, just a month after starting to use the PCs. The project inspired Vikas Swarup's Q&A, the novel that became the film Slumdog Millionaire.

Like the film, Mitra's project has since found massive success: there are more than 500 PCs in walls across India and Africa. Now, as professor of educational technology at Newcastle University, Mitra is turning his eye to Britain. Working with eight- to 12-year-olds at schools across Tyneside, he is helping them to use computers to carry out "self-activated learning" in the classroom.

"Having watched hundreds of Indian children learning without teachers at the Hole In The Wall computers, it became obvious that all children can work by themselves, if they want to," Mitra says.

"Most British children grow up with the internet and have the means to learn what they want in minutes, and this challenges the traditional idea of school being about learning things that will come in handy in the future. They become disengaged."

Mitra is not alone in noticing this problem. John Dunford, head of the Association of School and College Leaders, last week told the group's annual conference that computer games and websites have made children impatient and harder to motivate.

But Mitra thinks he has found a solution, with Hole In The Wall. "It proved that if you encourage individual learning, and give children interesting questions to look into independently, the learning process is sparked by curiosity."

Mitra asks students to divide into small groups to answer GCSE-level science questions on topics such as how animals adapt to their environments, and how the human body works. The children can change groups at any time, look at what other groups are doing, chat and freely use computers. The effects, as recorded by the teachers, are astonishing.

"If you give children time to investigate an answer, it's surprising what they can learn," Mitra says. "Instead of guessing, they do their own research, and acquire an advanced, university-style of learning. The children have a common goal, and bounce ideas off each other."

Emma Crawley, a year 4 class teacher at St Aidan's, confirms the scheme's success. "I'd seen footage of children using the computers in India," she says. "The children were learning things far beyond their years in a short time, without a teacher. It made me think we should give it a go here."

Perhaps because it seems like fun, the knowledge seems to stick. Three months after one session, Crawley gave the children a surprise test. "I was shocked when I marked the papers: they had all remembered everything, even though the test was a surprise."

Mitra acknowledges the well publicised dangers of the internet, but tackles the problem in the same way as in India. "In the slums, I put the computers in highly visible places. If using a computer is public, there's very little danger of children visiting inappropriate sites. Because they are working together in groups, on screens that everyone can easily see, the children stick to the task in hand."

He hopes to develop the project so that all schools will put autonomous learning in the timetable. "It could be a whole new way of schooling and will help people who have been excluded, or can't attend school, or are just struggling with homework," Mitra says. "Technology has given children the potential to be far more independent at learning, and we should embrace that."

Crawley now uses the method every time she introduces a new science topic to her class. To other teachers she advises: "You have to let go a bit and trust the children. At first, they get excited and move around a lot, and noise levels rise, but a calm atmosphere will develop."

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In the Letters section underneath the above article is a letter from Michael Rosen -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/mar/16/ofsted-participation-education-letters

Ofsted is the problem

Rachel Williams reported that one in seven secondary schools inspected last term were graded inadequate by Ofsted under its new regime. A comment from our website:

Ofsted is part of the problem and not part of the solution. Ofsted is predicated on the Henry VIII principle of government and social life. If you don't like it, chop its head off. The repeated utterances of education ministers in league with Ofsted directors are of a kind: education can be improved by making loud aggressive noises about failing schools and failing teachers.

What is the philosophy behind this? That telling people they're crap improves them? After more than a decade of this approach, where's the evidence that this kind of approach gets results?

I would suggest that if all the time, money and effort expended on this useless and painful way of going on had been expended instead in assisting teachers and schools, and facilitating dialogue between the most experienced, successful teachers and the least experienced, weakest teachers, we would have progressed enormously.

Ofsted is merely the police force that enforces this state of affairs.

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What we then end up with is a state of affairs which is summed up in this Observer piece:

Sacking of school headteachers 'rises by 75%'

Tougher line adopted on heads who struggle to raise exam results, claims ASCL general secretary

by Jessica Shepherd

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/mar/07/sacking-school-headteachers-rises

Record numbers of headteachers were sacked last year for failing to boost their schools' GCSE grades, it will be claimed today.

At least 163 heads or their deputies were fired in 2009 – 75% more than in 2007, the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) will reveal at its annual conference in London.

Ministers and local authorities are adopting a tougher line on heads who struggle to raise exam results, John Dunford, the association's general secretary, will say, adding that other heads have been told to quit even if exam results have improved, because their schools have turned into academies and sponsors want new leaders.

The revelation on Friday that the number of schools judged to be "inadequate" has almost doubled in the last six months to one in 13 will further fuel the rise in sackings, Dunford told the Observer. Schools placed in this category are put in emergency "special measures" and risk being reopened as academies under new leadership.

Dunford said: "We have lost a lot of talented schools' leaders who are unlikely to return to another headship after such a bruising experience. When a school is put in special measures, the local authority is under pressure from the government to be seen to be taking action and this could lead to a head being sacked. Some local authorities think sacking a few headteachers is evidence that they are vigilant and active in school improvement."

Meanwhile, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, promised heads the freedom to "transform" the national curriculum if his party came to power.

Speaking at the ASCL conference, Clegg said: "We will allow teachers to innovate for the good of their pupils. We will cut the reins and expect you to reinvent and transform the curriculum. The majority of what you teach will be at your discretion."

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Iconoclasts

Dr Maya Angelou describes herself as a teacher and a writer. She was on Sky Arts 1 this week.

I've said some pretty harsh things about Sky and the Murdoch empire in my time, but I'm a real fan of Sky Arts 1. The quality of their programmes is often superb, and the fact that they're uninterrupted by adverts is  . . . unbelievable.

Robert Redford is the Executive Producer of a series called Iconoclasts. In this week's programme there was a filmed meeting between Dr Angelou and a young black comedian called Dave Chappelle.

"You have to develop courage - the most important of all the virtues - because without courage you can't practice the other virtues."

"If you're not angry . . . you're either a stone or you're too sick to be angry. But don't be bitter."

"Human beings are more alike than we're unalike."

"A person who's well raised knows to respect the elders, even if they disagree with them. Just for having survived."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xEu8MAgOgM&feature=fvw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelou

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Chappelle

http://mayaangelou.com/

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/maya_angelou.html

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And talking of elders . . .

Kathlyn Hotynski, writing in the New York Times, says,

Aging, and Still Thriving

The specter of aging is ominous: wrinkles, memory loss, mortality. But fears of the inevitable can obscure the upside of getting older: being at the top of your game. As baby boomers age, many of them are realizing that life after retirement is not merely a long, slow decline. There is still wisdom to be gained, work to be done and adventure to be had.

Work keeps many baby boomers going. Some workers 55 and older are even seeking out new careers.

Others are taking decades worth of skills and contacts and striking out on their own. The number of selfemployed Americans ages 55 to 64 climbed 52 percent from 2000 to 2007, according to the federal Small Business Administration. Cinde Dolphin started her own marketing firm at 55 . “I’m having a ball,” she told The Times. “I can set up my own hours and work schedule, and do other things I enjoy.”

New research shows the mind keeps developing into late adulthood. “The brain, as it traverses middle age, gets better at recognizing the central idea, the big picture,” Barbara Strauch wrote in The Times. “If kept in good shape, the brain can continue to build pathways that help its owner recognize patterns and, as a consequence, see significance and even solutions much faster than a young person can.”

Another benefit of the leisure years is having time to travel . . .

“This is an emerging market phenomenon based on tens of millions of longer-lived men and women with more youth vitality than ever imagined,” Ken Dychtwald, a psychologist and author who has written widely about aging, told Kirk Johnson of The Times.

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Who the fuck is Jude Law? Some kind of dipshit actor? He was on Jon Stewart's Daily Show last night. Big mistake, Jon! Not interesting. Not funny. Just promoting his latest film, which shall remain nameless.

JS asked him whether people in Britain were happy with the NHS. About 60%, said JL. Rubbish! How would he know anyway?

JS asked him whether doctors in Britain were happy with the NHS. No, said Jude. Why not? They're not well paid, and they have to work very long hours.

Fucking idiot. Anyone who knows even a little about doctors knows that since their last contract and pay award they're, if anything, OVERpaid. £100,000+ per year for being a GP is NOT underpaid. And they can now even opt out of doing home visits.

Here's a guy being given an opening to say something positive about a National health service, and the ignorant tit talks complete crap.
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