Alex Wood
on the work of Norman Drummond
Also on this page:
CalMad
The ferry operator is at it again
Terry Brotherstone
insists the festival director is
doing a good job
Also on this page:
Hugh Kerr
who very much doubts it
Saturday 14 August
Niger is now officially facing the worst hunger crisis in its history. The World Food Programme says almost half the population – that’s 7.3 million people – now need help finding food. It ties in with what I discovered during my trip through the country just two weeks ago. The villagers told us then how much worse things were than during the 2005 famine where thousands died.
The UN’s World Food Programme has asked for £136 million in aid – but is currently 40% short of its target.
The floods in Pakistan have dominated the headlines – with 12 million people displaced it’s no surprise. The phrase ‘compassion fatigue’ has been used. People apparently can’t be concerned about more than one disaster at a time.
The threat of thousands dying in Niger is real and imminent and simply can’t be ignored.
Sunday 15 August
In the first drone attack since the devastating floods which have hit Pakistan, 12 alleged militants have been killed in a tribal area close to the Afghan border.
The strike hit a compound used by militants in North Wziristan. It’s an area which has become a stronghold for the Pakistan Taliban and groups linked to Al Qaeda.
The Americans regard such strikes as an important tool in their battle against the Taliban. The Pakistani government publicly objects to the attacks, demands command and control over the operations, but is thought privately to approve.
The problem is that many of the attacks, while killing high profile figures, also inflict heavy civilian casualties. They are a source of growing anger among ordinary people and fuel anti-American sentiment. And that isn’t easily forgotten.
Bill Boyd
Photograph by Islay McLeod
The last few weeks have seen the annual media frenzy around the publication of exam results in Scotland, with the usual accusations of ‘dumbing down’ from the usual suspects. Official results show an improvement of a fraction of 1% in most areas, which is just about what suits politicians, teachers, students and parents, as it demonstrates that kids are getting slightly smarter year-on-year.
They may well be, in terms of learning how to pass exams, but there can’t be too many percentage fractions left before ultimate perfection is reached and exam results become completely meaningless. Because, let’s face it, the whole purpose of exams is less about demonstrating knowledge and understanding than about separating the sheep from the goats, or those who will henceforth be qualified to label themselves ‘successful’ from their friends and peers who will spend a considerable part of the rest of their lives trying to demonstrate that they aren’t actually a ‘failure’.
Isn’t the whole charade just a distraction from the real issue, that school is dying, becoming less and less relevant in terms of learning, a grand, expensive child-minding scheme with elements of social work thrown in, or at the other end of the social scale, a training ground for future leaders whose role is determined before they even enter the system? Recent reports have suggested that despite half a century of comprehensive education in Scotland, despite Munn and Dunning, despite the national survey which resulted in the Curriculum for Excellence reforms (still early days some would argue), your chances of success in the current education system are much more likely to be determined by who you are and where you were born than the amount of effort you are prepared to put in.
Most of the above may or may not be an absurd caricature of the current state of education in this country. Either way, let us consider the context in which secondary school children and teachers in Scotland return to the chalkface this week, a week which sees the official launch of Curriculum for Excellence.
Almost 50% of those interviewed said that they receive their news via at least four different media in the course of a day.
Bill Boyd is an independent learning consultant, specialising in literacy and English. He has been an English teacher, principal teacher and depute headteacher, and spent four years at Learning and Teaching Scotland where he was an education manager.
