Graham Davies

A lot of the subject sections in the Education Forum appear to be pretty dead. I have tried to liven up the Modern Foreign Languages section from time to time, but I don't appear to be having much luck. It seems that the only really active sections are History and Politics - including, of course, the endless JFK debate. My heart sinks whenever I click on Today's Active Topics and find a screen full of JFK and little else - I wonder if this puts people off who have no interest in JFK. I belong to several other subject-specific forums that are much more active. Is it just a case that teachers are more comfortable talking to colleagues who teach the same subject? Maybe I'm different, as I like to see what other subject specialists are talking about and stick in my oar from time to time. I find a lot in common with my colleagues in English and I take an interest in Art & Design as I have a daughter who owns a graphic design business. I have noticed from monitoring the hit counters at two websites for Modern Foreign Languages which I maintain that language teachers are more likely to be referred to my sites by language-related sites such as CILT (the National Centre for Languages) or the BBC Languages website rather than general educational sites such as BECTA or the National Grid for Learning (NGfL). Actually, I haven't seen a referral from BECTA or the NGfL for months. ByTeachers seems to be a good general source of referrals, however.

"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." (Lord Acton, 1897) I don't think that any party has a monopoly on sleeze. All politicians turn into a**eholes sooner or later. I lost faith in all politicians when I was 35 (around 30 years ago).

We get bombarded by political parties' ads on TV in the run-up to an election - and ads in every other conceivable form. From what I have seen on US TV, I would say that criticism of our politicians on TV in the UK is much more savage than in the US, and the satire can be quite merciless. There's a long tradition of merciless political satire in the UK, dating back to "That Was The Week That Was" in the 1960s. Prior to that criticism and satire were much more subdued. Other shows include "Spitting Image" and, more recently "Bremner, Bird and Fortune". The recent programme "A Very Social Secretary", focusing on David Blunkett's affair, probably would not have been screened in the US it it had been about an American politician. Sensitive issues such as the Northern Ireland situation are parodied in BBC Northern Ireland's "Give My Head Peace", which has not been screened much in Great Britain as the dialect and the allusions are incomprehensible to most people outside Northern Ireland: http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/gmhp/ Example: "Dis yous think I came up the Lagan in a bubble?" (My wife, who is from Belfast, had to explain this to me.) OK, there are critics such as Michael Moore in the US, but I find his movies a bit of a patchwork and they lack the satirical bite that we expect in the UK. More gentle UK satire includes "Yes, Minister" - which appears to go down well in the US (I have several friends in the US and Canada who love it). As for our interviewers, they make Larry King look like a pussy cat. Jeremy Paxman has given rise to a new verb "to Paxo", as in "Blair was Paxo'd last week", i.e. given a bad time by Jeremy Paxman in a TV interview. John Humphrys is a tough interviewer too.

I thought the Florida Keys referred to themselves as The Conch Republic.

Steve, You missed one important set of people. Shakespeare got it right: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Henry VI Part II, Act IV, Scene II?

Tim writes: "Graham, you see all these natural disasters are God's way of punishing mankind for blaming natural disasters on Him." So, I guess we won't be seeing many insurance agents passing through the Pearly Gates either.

I hope Andy is OK. I haven't met him, but he sounds like a survivor. Tim, I guess, is used to this sort of thing. Nature (or God) is pretty indiscriminate and, as the Tsunami in the Far East and the recent earthquake in Pakistan/India show, it's not only the USA that is getting hit by disasters. I survived a tornado in Iesolo, Italy, in the 1980s. Birmingham (UK) has also recently been hit by a tornado, and my favourite Austrian ski resort in the Tyrol was hit by a spectacular snowstorm towards the end of the skiing season this year, leaving it under two metres of snow and completely cut off for a couple of days, but this meant we had some great late season skiing in March as the snow base didn't even start to disappear before the end of April - which was unusual for a low (700 metre) resort. I'm not sure who's to blame for all this, but insurance companies seem to be pretty confident about the culprit. Have you noticed that "acts of God" always figure in their exclusion clauses?

John writes: "I find Wikipedia to be a good starting point for College essays and topics." Yes, as a "starting point", Wikipedia can often point you in the right direction. But, as with any source, you should never rely on one source. I always point out to my students that they should look at a variety of sources, going back, if possible, to original documents in the original language. If one finds that there is more or less universal agreement about a topic then it is likely that the facts are uncontroversial and probably correct - note "probably". Where there are opposing views one has to be cautious. I have also noticed that some contributors to Wikipedia try to control the content. When I first amended the article on Computer Assisted Language Learning it was amended back (in part) by someone else to its original form, even though it was obvious to anyone who knew anything about the subject that it was wrong. So I persevered in making it accurate - and seem to have succeeded now.

I checked out this article on Computer Assisted Language Learning, which is my specialist area: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_assi...nguage_learning I have to give it 9/10 as I wrote most of it. However, when I first looked at this entry around a year ago it was hopelessly out of date and the links and bibliography were pathetic, and I would have given it only 2/10. The article has been added to a couple of times since I amended it. Someone appears to be giving it more of a slant towards English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) in a North American context, but they have not changed anything that I wrote. The original entry was written as if Europe did not exist. I also checked the entry for Stephen Krashen, a well-known writer on Second Language Acquisition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Krashen Sorry, this only gets 1/10. You cant' start an encyclopaedia article with "One of the more silly ideas he puts forth is common sense in science". The remainder of the article gives no idea of what Krashen is all about - whether you love him or hate him. In my training sessions on using the Web I always ask people to treat any website with caution if: one cannot ascertain who wrote it and what credentials its author(s) has/have; it does not contain a contact name and/or address for feedback; it does not contain information on its last update.

Caching is, of course, perfectly legitimate - if that's what the school in question is doing, but it sounds as if they may actually be "whacking" selected sites, and this is illegal if it's done without requesting permission from the site owners. As stated in another part of the BECTA document to which I referred: "Permissible uses with respect to ICT are: web browsers making a temporary copy of a web page or relevant files, otherwise known as caching, as it is integral to accessing the Internet and using it efficiently, etc..." I have, however, caught out a couple of schools that have downloaded pages from the ICT4LT website to their intranet without paying the required franchise fee. They took them down when I got wind of what they were doing and contacted them. I even found one school that had placed one of my articles on their own public Web page. Again, they took it down when I reprimanded them. Teachers often fail to realise that if something is on the Web it is still subject to copyright. Caches can be a bit of a pain, eating into one's hard disk space. I use Window Washer to clean up my hard disk whenever my computer boots up.

I forgot to mention the crocodiles that lurk in the Everglades and some of the strange things that swim in the sea off the Florida coast. On the other hand, you might just enjoy the sunshine and the excellent sea food. The blackened grouper in Mike Gordon’s restaurant is fabulous: Mike Gordon's Seafood Restaurant. 1201 NE 79th St, Miami. We stayed in the Holiday Inn, Key Largo, some years ago. Interesting if you are a Bogart fan. You can view the original African Queen boat there, and just up the road is the Italian Fisherman restaurant, where I believe part of the movie "Key Largo" was filmed.

Worse than sitting in an airport is sitting in a plane while the pilot tries to find a route down through or round a storm. I recall flying into Heathrow in the middle of a spectacular storm. We circled for nearly an hour, listening to the "thumps" as lightning keep striking the plane. About a dozen passengers threw up due to the buffeting of the plane in the wind gusts and air pockets. The captain and the first officer were remarkably quiet while all this was going on. I guess they needed to concentrate. When we finally landed, everyone applauded and the captain came on the PA system saying, "I am sorry you have all had a bad time. If it's any consolation, this is the worst storm I have ever landed in." I have driven through a tropical storm in Florida and walked through one in New Orleans - very wet and windy, but probably nothing compared to a hurricane. I did, however, experience a tornado while camping near Venice, Italy. Our tent was on the fringe and only suffered minor damage, but trees were uprooted and houses brought down in the centre of its path. My heart bled when I saw the devastation of New Orleans and the dreadful plight of its population in the TV news broadcasts.

The Virtual Teacher Centre (VTC), which was set up by BECTA as part of the National Grid for Learning (NGfL), is about to close. As from 19 December all the existing VTC websites will be accessible via the National Grid for Learning at http://www.ngfl.gov.uk If you have links to the old VTC site at http://vtc.ngfl.gov.uk you will need to modify them to reflect this change. I've already removed all references to the VTC at the ICT4LT website and at my personal website. Isn't the Web an unstable beast? I have an image of a big library staffed by mischievous gremlins running around removing the books from their shelves and relocating them without changing the references in the catalogue. Question: How much use do teachers make of the NGfL? For several years I have monitored referrals from the NGfL/VTC to the websites that I maintain. Only a handful of referrals have shown up each year, suggesting that the NGfL may not be the first port of call for teachers when seeking information about ICT.

John writes: Downloading someone else’s website without their express permission onto an intranet or a CD-ROM constitutes breach of copyright. See the following document at BECTA’s website (extract follows). We make a very clear statement at the ICT4LT site (which I manage) that downloading the site or individual pages of the site to an intranet is only allowed subject to the payment of an annual franchise fee of £250. Copyright involving electronic materials: advice and issues for schools http://www.ictadvice.org.uk/downloads/guid..._electronic.doc “Can I save web sites to my network in order ensure that my pupils are only accessing sites with appropriate content? Saving entire web sites for use off line, otherwise known as webwhacking, does breach copyright because it involves copying the web site to a local drive, either a network server or a computer’s hard drive. As well as the straightforward legal issue that copying has occurred without the copyright holder’s consent, there are other issues. The site content will only be as up to date as the last time it was saved; it will not reflect updates and new content that may be available via the on line version. By accessing the site off line, you are also depriving the on line version of visitors, which may have funding and advertising revenue implications for the site’s owner. From a practical point of view, to have a fairly good selection of web sites saved would require a significant amount of memory and, compared to the resources available on line, it would not reflect the size and diversity of the Internet.”

I was lucky. I took early retirement in 1993 at the age of 51, with an enhanced package that credited me with 31.5 years of service instead of the 25 years that I had actually served. I was then Director of the Language Centre on the Ealing Campus of Thames Valley University (TVU), enjoying much more comfortable working conditions than teachers in secondary education. But life began to become unbearable due to the bloodbath resulting from the merger that brought TVU into existence. I was working a 12-hour day and often burning the midnight oil when I got home. So I took the early retirement package and began to enjoy life again. I continued to keep myself as busy as I wanted to be by doing consultancy work - and I still do so at the age of 63. 65 is a late age for retirement for men. I often walk my dog on a route that takes me through the graveyard of a country church. The inscriptions on the gravestones indicate that many men didn't survive long after their 65th birthday - although things have probably changed in the last generation. Pensions are paid for through taxes. What we pay into retirement funds never covers what is drawn out, and the imblance will get worse as people live longer.

Feel free to use the "Guarantee of originality" clause. Copyright is an issue that teachers seem to try and avoid, but it's most important to get it right now that so much material is freely available on the Web and shared resources are becoming more common. However, just because something is on the Web it doesn't necessarily belong in the public domain, and teachers who spend a lot of time creating useful materials need to have some assurance that their work is duly acknowledged and not handed out willy-nilly. I publish most of what I write on the Web these days, and I have found it cropping up in all sorts of places. without my permission having been sought and without my authorship having been mentioned. Universities often use JISC's plagiarism detection service these days - which will trace unreferenced material in students' assignments. I could cite several cases of students having been caught out in this way.

I agree 100% with John's last posting. I think the experiment was a failure. Beadle is a great performer, but I'm not convinced that the children learned much English from him. However, one of the science teachers seemed to be making some progress in capturing the children's attention in a lesson on the human heart. Being excluded from this cosy little experiment was hardly a serious threat for the students who were shown the door. Maybe they were just trying to prove a point in front of the cameras that they were indeed "unteachable". I wonder what will happen when this group seeks employment. Employers are pretty good at not accepting anyone who comes across as sullen or stroppy in an interview and they are also pretty quick at throwing anyone out who does not knuckle down in training sessions.

Nice site, Doug! Resources sites are a great idea, but a degree of caution is advised. Just a couple of questions, based on my experience in (a) setting up a teaching/training resources site, ( producing digital resources for a major DfES training project: 1. How do you ensure that the work submitted to you by teachers is original and that all copyright clearances and other permissions, e.g. for reproduction of texts, photos, recordings, have been granted? 2. How do you protect original work submitted by teachers, e.g. so that it doesn't end up, for example, on someone else's website or, worse still, in a commercial training pack? Re (1): This is important, as the creator of a resources site (i.e. the publisher) carries the can in the event of any copyright infringements that may emerge. As manager of the ICT4LT site, I get teachers to endorse the following declaration when they submit materials to me: "Guarantee of originality: The Author warrants that the Work is an original composition and that it in no way infringes any existing copyright either in whole or in part and that it contains no material which may be considered libellous or defamatory. The Author shall indemnify the Publisher against all actions, proceedings, claims and demands made against the Publisher by reason of anything contained within the Work constituting an infringement of copyright or being libellous or defamatory and against all costs, damages or expenses in respect of such action, proceeding, claim or demand." Re (2): I can cite a case where a teacher had produced a very good website of original resources that she had created, only to find that some of them had found their way into a commercial training agency's pack of handouts. I advised her to display a prominent copyright message at her site indicating that her resources could only be used for non-commercial purposes in educational institutions. She took my advice. The ICT4LT site displays the following message: "© ICT4LT Project 2003-2005. The materials contained at this website are subject to copyright. The materials may be downloaded, printed and used for non-commercial purposes in a teaching or training environment. If these materials are reproduced in any form in whole or in part the source of the materials and the authors must be acknowledged. Mirror or intranet versions of the ICT4LT site may be set up on payment of an annual franchise fee." BECTA's ICT Advice site contains useful guidelines on copyright in an educational context: http://www.ictadvice.org.uk/ Enter "copyright" in the search box. See also: http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_copyright.htm

Ah, Kelly! Now there's a name to conjure with. Probably the most disastrous education minister that I can remember. As Ted Wragg put it (The Guardian, 21 June 2005):

Here's what I wrote elsewhere in this Forum: I have been following the series with interest. Phil Beadle is impressive - although his "high energy" approach is not unusual. As a teacher of modern foreign languages in secondary education, I recall doing almost as much jumping around - and so did many of my colleagues. This is fairly typical of many teachers of modern foreign languages. I am not convinced that Phil Beadle is really teaching anything, but he is a great entertainer. A couple of points: 1. Most of the children selected for the series do not appear to come from families that are financially badly off, but they seem to have developed behaviour problems as a result of bad parenting. I spent several years as a school governor and occasionally had to sit on committees involving discipline problems. Most of the problem children came from families that were financially very comfortable, with both parents bringing in a good income. This was probably the root of most problems. Both parents were so busy earning money that they had no time for their children. I spent a lot of time with my two daughters as they grew up, and so did my wife. My daughters often referred to me as a "Victorian father". I did not tolerate answering back, tanturms etc. They grew up into two well educated, charming young women, and my wife and I always enjoy their company. 2. Children are being excluded even from this select group. So even Phil Beadle and the headteacher in this series have their limitations and give up on some children. Most children are teachable, but some probably need to be taken out of the mainstream and given special attention.

John writes: “For example, racism is always worse in areas which are virtually exclusively white.” I disagree. It can be even worse in areas where the mix of the local population is rapidly changing. I can think of a couple of towns not far from where I live that have this profile and where racism is rife – and racism that manifests itself in different ways: white v. black, Indian v. Pakistani, Asian v. Afro-Caribbean. Racism is also not the exclusive preserve of the right-wing or the white middle class. I know quite a few Labour voters (working class and members of trade unions) who express blatantly racist views. Remember the dockers who went on strike in support of Enoch Powell’s 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech? Regarding the issue of neutrality, I remember an inspiring teacher of mine who used to set up formal debates in class, where he selected proposers and seconders to put forward opposing views and not necessarily (or even preferably not) the views in which we believed. A friend and I were selected to put forward the pro-Apartheid argument. We both hated the idea of Apartheid, but it forced us to research the beliefs of those who did support it and to try and sound convincing. We lost the debate, but it was a valuable learning experience. By the way, I think that our teacher was a Socialist, but he never let on…

I have been following the series with interest. Phil Beadle is impressive - although his "high energy" approach is not unusual. As a teacher of modern foreign languages in secondary education, I recall doing almost as much jumping around - and so did many of my colleagues. This is fairly typical of many teachers of modern foreign languages. I am not convinced that Phil Beadle is really teaching anything, but he is a great entertainer. A couple of points: 1. Most of the children selected for the series do not appear to come from families that are financially badly off, but they seem to have developed behaviour problems as a result of bad parenting. I spent several years as a school governor and occasionally had to sit on committees involving discipline problems. Most of the problem children came from families that were financially very comfortable, with both parents bringing in a good income. This was probably the root of most problems. Both parents were so busy earning money that they had no time for their children. I spent a lot of time with my two daughters as they grew up, and so did my wife. My daughters often referred to me as a "Victorian father". I did not tolerate answering back, tanturms etc. They grew up into two well educated, charming young women, and my wife and I always enjoy their company. 2. Children are being excluded even from this select group. So even Phil Beadle and the headteacher in this series have their limitations and give up on some children. Most children are teachable, but some probably need to be taken out of the mainstream and given special attention.

Mike writes: My contributions have been anecdotal. I'm not a political scientist and I don't believe in ideologies. My political views - like those of most people - are coloured by my background and the kind of life that I wish to enjoy. They are also coloured by what I see I see as essential for the development of our nation, namely a population that is properly housed, well educated and in good health. This is why my priorities are Housing, Education and Health and which I believe should be properly funded through taxation - which I am willing to pay. I believe in regulated capitalism, not centralised socialism, so I guess I can be classified as a Social Democrat if you have to pin a label on me.

I’ve studied for four months at the University of Hamburg in 1963 and for one month at Karl-Marx University, Leipzig, in 1976. I have visited Germany virtually every year since 1958, just after I passed O-level German and took part in a school exchange. I taught German for 25 years. West Germany had its negative side, but you did not get shot trying to get out of West Germany. My first sight of the Berlin Wall in 1963 was a traumatic experience. There were numerous wreaths on the West Berlin side, commemorating the deaths of people who died while trying to “escape”. Leipzig in 1976 was dull. The shops never had enough of anything, and my landlady would get up at 5am in order to queue for meat, fruit, vegetables and coffee. I saw oranges appear in a fruit shop just once in the space of four weeks. I met a young electrical engineer and his wife in Leipzig and visited their “home” in Bitterfeld. Their “home” was a single bedroom in a nurses’ hostel – the young woman worked as a nurse in the general hospital. They had been on a waiting list for a flat for four years. Bitterfeld was an awful place. It was dominated by a huge chemical factory that poured out pollution, covering the leaves of the trees in the park with a sticky green-black deposit, which also found its way into people’s lungs, reducing their life expectancy by around five years. On the whole people were nice, but there was an absence of a work ethic compared to West Germany. Everyone was “employed” even if there was no work to do, e.g. it was quite common to find restaurants where the staff always outnumbered the customers. The customers weren’t there because there wasn’t much on the menu – or rather there was a huge menu but most of the dishes were not available. If you had relations who sent you West Marks you could buy goods in the "Intershops", which stocked items that were unavailable in "HO" shops. e.g. detergent powder that worked! I visited the GDR again in 1989 in order to check on my students at the Frei Uni in Berlin and to take part in a conference in Rostock. This just happened to coincide with the week that the Wall came down. Read about it here: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/berlin.htm If West Germany was a “fascist-ridden Yankee colony” then all I can say is that I enjoyed living there much more than in the GDR.

Andy writes: Yes, where are all the Thatcherites, pro-fox-hunting lobbyists, members of the National Rifle Association of America, et al? I suppose I am a bit of a Capitalist insofar as I own and run own my (very small) home-based business, and I might be inclined to shoot anyone who tried to take my means of production away from me (if I had a rifle), but in other respects I am quite a nice bloke. I own a greyhound but I don’t use him to hunt – although he occasionally escapes from our house and attempts to do terrible things to our neighbours’ cats. We are just about to enjoy a nice long walk in the woods… Seriously, though, this Forum is not really representative of people’s views. Consider the two following personalities – people I actually know. What is THEIR ideology? 1. Bricklayer: Trade union member. Has usually voted Labour but hates Tony Blair. Works part-time as an employee of a local firm but does a lot of work “on the side” (no VAT, no income tax). Generally believes that the government wastes money gathered in taxes, but has taken advantage of the National Health Service on several occasions over the last two years when he has fallen ill. Lives in a council house and pays a very low rent. Owns a trained labrador that he takes on shoots at local country estates to retrieve game – earning more money “on the side”. Hates asylum seekers. 2. Salesman: Has always voted Conservative. Hates asylum seekers and continually bangs on about “scroungers” in spite of the fact that he has been on benefit and “job seeking” for as long as I can remember, Doesn’t like people who talk “posh” and live in big houses. And there are dozens more that don’t seem to fit into any particular category. Most people don’t subscribe to ideologies – and neither do I, if I were honest. Most people have a pretty mixed set of often contradictory beliefs.