Interference

The furore in the UK this week about Prince Charle's apparent anti-meritocratic views on education that 'admits no failure' and some of the remarks over on the Speak Up site about how (I wildly paraphrase) 'a teacher's job is to tell students how crap they are because that's the only way they'll learn that life is hard' made me think long and hard the past few days.

Criticisms of 'politically correct' teachers and teaching methods piss me off, as they tend to be made by people unqualified to make them except that a) they once went to school/university/whatever and b) they have kids or at least the physical ability to have them one day.

Compare that with the people they criticise, I mean what are a few professorships, PhDs, CertEds and years of experience of teaching in the way of expertise?

Might it not be the case that methods of teaching are arrived at through years of research and discussion rather than someone waking up one day and deciding suddenly that (to use the Speak Up example) we should mark students' work in purple because red is 'too negative'?
I actually think questioning the fundamental purpose of giving students feedback by focusing on the automatic use of red and its negative connotations is bold and creative, but to listen to some of the comments that (rare) context-missing article provoked you wonder why anyone should bother being creative when the world is generally so blinkered and unwilling to accept that they are not experts in everything.

Unlike me ;-)

But anyway - I made a throwaway comment to someone this week which ties in to this quite neatly. Design and teaching, I said, are the two professions where everyone thinks they know better than the experts. Design decisions are regularly criticised in the media ('this rebranding cost x million and all they did was change the typeface') as are educational ones ('you can do degrees in David Beckham now'). Both these comments display a complete lack of understanding about the processes and the facts. Only politics gets a worse press than design and education.

Oh, and estate agents.

Makes me wonder why I chose to get involved in both. If I ever feel the need to sell a house I'll get myself certified.

Talking of degrees in David Beckham studies I may be setting myself up for something of a fight after Christmas as, all being well, I am starting a ten week 'extension study' for second year students at Brighton which I've (wittily?) entitled 'Worst Course Ever: The Simpson's Family Guide to Cultural Studies'.

It should actually be quite thought-provoking and academically rigorous but I wouldn't be surprised if The Sun runs a story about how you can get a degree in The Simpsons and how low educational standards are falling.

That's okay, next year I'll do one on tabloid culture and see if they run a story about you being able to get a degree in themselves - will they criticise it or boast about it? Should keep them confused for weeks,