This is just fantastic. Geeky linguist gold!
I read this today, and it made me think a little about my own situation. Basically, a report has said that Universities and businesses should be working closely together, resulting in more courses like Loughborough’s BSc in Car dealership management… Erm, am I the only one who wonders about this? What does that mean? Do they write essays on persuasive sales techniques? Courses on fiddling the speedometer? And that’s the bit that confuses me. I’m not against vocational training, really, it’s a great idea, I just question whether university is the place for that kind of thing. Law and Medecine have an awful lot of content – things that have to be learned before the student can become a professional – but what is there to learn about car dealerships? The history of car selling? Call me old fashioned, but to me University is about acquiring knowledge and studying something deeply and academically. You know, writing essays or scientific reports, attending lectures and having academic discussions. This is not the way I would choose to learn to manage a car dealership. If I was looking for someone to manage a branch of, say, a peugeot dealership, I would look for someone who had worked in a similar company for at least a year or two, had experience of managing people and dealing with numbers. You can get this by getting a job in the local dealership – and guess what – you get paid for it! If you go to university you have to pay them for the privilege, get yourself in debt and then probably find yourself out of work when the someone the same age as you who left school at 16 gets the job.
This is the problem with degrees – my other half has an Oxbridge degree in a maths based subject – yet when he looked for a job in accountancy no one would even interview him, because he has no experience. He is super intelligent with a degree to prove it, very competent, learns quickly and works hard, yet this appears to make no difference – he just hasn’t got the relevant experience. He was told, just like the rest of us, just like I’ll be telling my students, that a degree from an elite university means the world will be your oyster. This has turned out not to be the case.
So, vocational degrees. Useful? I’m not convinced. If you want to be a car dealer – get a job at 16 washing the cars on the forecourt and work your way up from there.
As a PGCE student I’m expected to spend a lot of time at Uni and doing academic work. At the moment I’m writing an essay on something important, but as I’m spending ages looking at the theory behind it rather than learning it, I’m not convinced of the usefulness of it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really enjoying my course, and I know it’s important to know about the theory of education and about the newest and most important changes in education – but I can’t help feeling that I might learn a lot more if I spent less time writing essays and more time actually teaching.
I’ve had another bash at teaching today – a listening exercise in this case. And once again I got some very good feedback. I’d love to take all the credit, but I definitely feel that I wouldn’t be experiencing as much success as I am if it weren’t for the excellent support I’m getting from staff at school. Not to mention the fact that this school (which a recent ofstead rated as ‘outstanding’) contains some of the nicest, politest and cleverest boys you’ll ever see at school. I still find it difficult to believe that when I tell a boy to sort his tie out, and say it in German, they do it! I give them an exercise to do, and they do it! I’m not sure I’ll ever really get my head around it.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to do a starter for a key stage 3 class, and it actually went well. I got some great feedback and the boys actually joined in and seemed to learn what I wanted. I’m not sure I was prepared for how good that would feel! Every experience I have makes me more certain that this is what I want to do.
I also had some experience of observing a sixth form class – I’ve never seen such a hormonal eruption! Acne, acne and more acne! I forgot how spotty teenage boys get at age 17! Also, Ranting Teacher’s assertion that high achieving teenage boys would respond well to competition proved to be entirely correct, because the testosterone was definitely flying during a game which pitted one side of the room against the other.
Well knock me down with a feather – Balls is starting to make some popular decisions! As a linguist, SATS at 14 were never going to affect me directly, but as far as I’m concerned any opportunity to free children and teachers from the stress of teaching and learning to test is a good thing. They just have to get rid of the tests for year 6 pupils and we’re halfway there.
Yesterday I had a lecture confirming Ranting Teacher’s assertion that education is full of BSAs. ECM (every child matters), NEET (not in education, employment or training) and BSF (building schools for the future) were among the ridiculously long list thrown at me during this lecture, along with a lot of nice words about the ‘core entitlement for 2010′ – that schools will have to be open all day every day for adult learning and community activities, there will have to be a variety of activities offered and there should be lots of support for young people, meaning that teachers will no longer be expected to deal with everything themselves.
Edublogs has been down for days – and I’ve been very frustrated! I’ve had things to blog about but I’ve long since forgotten them. Perhaps they’ll come back to me.
Get a Voki now!
This is really fun and probably a useful tool for language teaching, especially if there are pupils unwilling to speak in front of the rest of the class.
I think I’m going to enjoy this teaching malarkey!
OK, so this school is spectacular. The boys are sharp as buttons and very polite. I’m very much looking forward to working with them. I don’t anticipate any major problems with behaviour, even bottom set year nine are pretty well behaved, so my main concerns will be making sure that my lessons are very well planned out and stuffed with activities (because they need something new every 2 minutes) and that my subject knowledge is completely up to scratch – I’ve already spotted a few holes in my subject knowledge that some of these bright lads will be able to spot.Overall, though, I think it’s a challenge I’m ready for and will enjoy.
Bring it on!!!
