It is a bit like water of a duck's back now. The UK government assures us
that it believes in evidence based policy making but really they believe in
belief based policy making - their beliefs about what is politically
expedient. But we have to keep going and working with practioners rather
than policy makers is one way of making some progress by subverting the
policy intentions, and directing our focus towards thinking about the
genuine role of schools/colleges/universities in preparing a diverse group
of young people for their lives after educational institutions. For us this
involves thinking hard about the meaning of educational practices (and
personally I take my lead from John Dewey on this in order to avoid
unhelpful dichotomies such as vocational - academic) in relation to work
practices.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Cole" <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2002 11:34 PM
Subject: school-work
>
> Like Phillip, I was really depressed by Geof's description of the scene
> in the UK and hope that Helena will point us to something with more of a
> future.
>
> I actually worried about these issues directly more than 30 years ago,
too,
> and it is horrendous to see the basic skills, measured by paper and pencil
> tests, and the notion that such skills are supposed to be autonous and
> infinitely retrievable, still around.
>
> The wastage in human lives and company time that such policies entail is
> so tremendous it seems impossible that it could remain in place so
> firmly. Yet it does.
>
> Might this bespeak the possibility that creating such wastage, like
creating
> school failure, is central to the enterprise? If not, of what does it
speak?
> mike
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Mar 01 2002 - 01:00:20 PST