Friday, July 03, 2009

Alan Johnson vs the CIF Comment Zoo

Actually, it's Alan 'The Minister' Johnson. Some days CIF comments are hardly better than Harry's Place, but then they go and do this. Wonderful. It's like a glorious summer day or a British player in the Wimbledon semis.

ID cards look to me like being a good bet for Aaro next Tuesday. I'm hoping that Aaro writes something on ID, because he has a word count to reach (800?) which is a few more than A'TM'J uses - so he may feel compelled to put in some actual arguments or evidence. (I'm not very hopeful of this.) You know, the tricky stuff, that may convince somebody, which the minister was obviously too busy with his red boxes to include. You may say, "at least it's not old A'NTM'J", but this dreck was just as bad.

Anyway, this is your Aaro prediction thread, because we haven't had one for a while. And I can't think what to say about Tuesday's effort. I almost wrote a post with the title 'More tractors, comrade' (suggested in DA's comments by one Tim in Kingston), but, well, that's about the sum of Dave's position. I'm mostly clueless about education, but I think I can tell when DA's being selective with his facts. But if any of you wish to defend him, fire away...

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I wonder whether Aaro will go for the narrative that is presently doing the rounds "The expenses scandal is not the fault of MPs: society is to blame".

Guano

7/03/2009 05:42:00 PM  
Blogger cian said...

Well MPs help shape society, so there's a nice circularity to it.

7/03/2009 08:46:00 PM  
Blogger The Rioja Kid said...

Go for it? Aaro was Patient Zero of that one.

7/03/2009 08:47:00 PM  
Blogger cian said...

You don't really need to know much about education to realise Aaronovitch is talking bollocks in that article. Logically it doesn't hold.

Basic premise. Education was failing kids in the 70s. Fine. However, Aaronovitch concludes from this that centralised testing/curriculum was needed to fix the problem. He provides no evidence, indeed seems to think it is self-evident. That's it, that's his argument. Centralised testing could have made no difference, could have made things worse, could have affected different segments differently, etc. Could be that the solution to the problem was something completel different.

7/05/2009 10:13:00 PM  
Anonymous andrew adams said...

Well, it's up now and... it's another fucking conspiracy-theory-cum-plug-for-his-book piece!!

7/06/2009 09:32:00 PM  
Anonymous skidmarx said...

Directing education toward testing means that pupils learn how to pass tests, not to get enraptured by the subject:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/21/earlyyearseducation.sats

7/07/2009 04:22:00 PM  

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