I think some people aren't really getting what it is all about (in my opinion, anyway).
So, a day or two ago, an organisation called The Invisible Children released a video detailing their mission to make an African rebel leader named Joseph Kony more well known, and described plans to use social networking to make the subject a matter of public interest, forcing governments and other people in high places to make meaningful actions against him.
This video has become instantly popular and its viewing figures on youtube are already at 4.5 million and raising fast, after two days: that's Justin Bieber/Rebecca Black territory. Obviously the popularity has caused the internet to go crazy, I give it one or two days before the news picks it up.
As there are many, and they make for a much more interesting debate, I shall start with the negatives of the Invisible Children/Kony 2012 campaign:
The Accounts of the organisation look like a scaled down corrupt oil company. The main complaints are that only 30% of the money raised is going directly to Africa and the groups leader is taking home an $89,000 salary, the majority of money going towards publicity. If the charity's aim was to directly help Africa, then this would of course be absurd, but actually it isn't, the whole aim of the charity is to raise awareness and get the government to intervene, the money is justified. And as for the $89,000, I wonder how much the head of Oxfam earns? Oh wait, its £75,00, which is about $120,000 dollars, who looks corrupt now?
People are just 'jumping on the band wagon' to be popular, because everyone is doing it, and these people are ill-informed, attention seeking hipsters. Again, the anti-kony (well the anti-anti-kony crew, the kony crew is the anti-kony crew) crew have missed the point. Even if the pretentious hipsters are jumping on board the point is to make it a discussion point and make Joseph Kony a well known name. Of course the youth of today were not aware of a corrupt Ugandan rebel leader until they saw a video of him on youtube, thats how things work these days.
Invisible Children is aware that young people are not often able to give any large monetary or time contributions, so they have made it easy to be involved and have exploited the internet in the best was possible, this is why the Kony 2012 initiative is already so popular and will surely grow until the people in power notice. So who cares if the pretentious hipsters want to put pictures of kony on their facebook pages, as long as people are seeing his face and it continues to be a talking point, sparking debate and conversation, then Kony 2012 is working.
If you're not in agreement yet, think about what this has started. When a person is on the run from the police or escapes from prison, his face is normally on tv for a day or two until he is found or until he disappears and then news stops. Imagine if when a person is wanted by police, his face instantly appears on every social network and people everywhere are sparked into looking for him, people are going to be found faster and more efficiently than ever before because of huge sweeping campaigns which appear, do a job then leave.
The Kony 2012 movement has huge repercussions as to the way world events are handled in the future, forcing the government to make changes caused by direct public demand, rather than the choices of one or two politicians People are being heard and words of good are being spread, even if you don't like the person who is spreading the word, stop trying to deny them their right to campaign against evil, even it is in the smallest way.
Kony 2012 video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc
watch it, read as much about it as you like and form your own opinions.
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Tried and Tested: The Most Effective Way Of Getting Away With Late Homework
1. Don't Panic, the worst thing you can do is be the first person who mentions the homework that is due in, about 1 time out of 4 the teacher will forget to collect it in from you or will think the work is due in on a later date than he/she had originally said.
2. Wait until it is personally asked from you, if the teacher asks to you put the homework in a pile at the end of your table or put it at the front at the end of class, just keep a low profile in the lesson then hand in the wrong piece of work or a different book or nothing at all, then hand the real work in the next day saying you forgot to put it on the pile: teacher is non the wiser.
3. If the situation occurs when the teacher is looming over you directly asking you for the work, follow the rules:
Take out your book/folder and start leafing through it, as if you remembered exactly where you put it. Do this once or twice
Pull out some random piece of work which looks like a similar length to what everyone else has done and ask, 'this isn't it, is it?'. then instantly put it away and in the most matter of fact yet relaxed tone, say, 'I must have left it at home, is it alright if I get it to you by tomorrow morning?'.
This method does work, unless you have a mega evil teacher, you should just get an, 'ok then' back from them. The method of just going, 'Oh I not done it sir' or, 'It must be in my other folder' really doesn't fly and it will lead to teacher evils.
Another trick is to throw in the line, 'I've just been really busy with [insert any other subject here] at the moment, it must have slipped my mind'
The trick really is to look genuinely confused then talk to the teacher as if you were another teacher, not as if you're a guilty student.
Although it is probably best to do the work that night, some teachers will completely forget the event, as long as it is handed in before the next lesson with that teacher, they probably won't even notice that you turned up two days later instead of one.
This method keeps you on the same level as the teacher, the worst thing you can do is claim it was never set or try and laugh at the fact you don't have it, doing this is completely pointless and just pisses the teacher off, unless that's what you're trying to achieve, in that case, I admire your audacity.
2. Wait until it is personally asked from you, if the teacher asks to you put the homework in a pile at the end of your table or put it at the front at the end of class, just keep a low profile in the lesson then hand in the wrong piece of work or a different book or nothing at all, then hand the real work in the next day saying you forgot to put it on the pile: teacher is non the wiser.
3. If the situation occurs when the teacher is looming over you directly asking you for the work, follow the rules:
Take out your book/folder and start leafing through it, as if you remembered exactly where you put it. Do this once or twice
Pull out some random piece of work which looks like a similar length to what everyone else has done and ask, 'this isn't it, is it?'. then instantly put it away and in the most matter of fact yet relaxed tone, say, 'I must have left it at home, is it alright if I get it to you by tomorrow morning?'.
This method does work, unless you have a mega evil teacher, you should just get an, 'ok then' back from them. The method of just going, 'Oh I not done it sir' or, 'It must be in my other folder' really doesn't fly and it will lead to teacher evils.
Another trick is to throw in the line, 'I've just been really busy with [insert any other subject here] at the moment, it must have slipped my mind'
The trick really is to look genuinely confused then talk to the teacher as if you were another teacher, not as if you're a guilty student.
Although it is probably best to do the work that night, some teachers will completely forget the event, as long as it is handed in before the next lesson with that teacher, they probably won't even notice that you turned up two days later instead of one.
This method keeps you on the same level as the teacher, the worst thing you can do is claim it was never set or try and laugh at the fact you don't have it, doing this is completely pointless and just pisses the teacher off, unless that's what you're trying to achieve, in that case, I admire your audacity.
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
Is the Grade-Centric, Cash Pumping Education System Causing A Rift Within Comprehensive Schools?
The Heads of some comprehensive schools fear the exam hall nearly as much the students
Do the most intelligent always go to the good schools? Do the less intelligent deserve to? Was the old grammar/secondary modern configuration a cruel division of intelligence, which was judged at a far too early age, or a modernist way of sorting future employment structures?
As grades become more and more important to the movers and shakers of the education industry, the classic tale of a “rift” between state and private provision seem to have been extended to reflect a brand new gaping hole from within the comprehensive sector itself.
The terminology for the standards of schools comes and goes. Current terms from Ofsted, range from, ‘Outstanding’ to the slightly less impressive, ‘Adequate’. I am astonished when a government paid organisation appears to feel it acceptable to sum up entire schools with just one adjective, and then in most cases, have the teachers paste this word at the gates of their school, in order to show the world what a brilliant, long and complicated word it is!
This quite frankly wishy-washy way of labelling schools is leading to confusion in parent’s mind over which schools are suitable for their child, some schools are being put in the dog house, and others are appearing to excel.
Currently, schools are largely judged on academic achievement, when schools fail inspections, the facilities, curriculum and staff are all taken into account before the ability of students are even considered.
This leads nicely on to my main argument, are the barriers of achievement between state and private school as concrete as they seem?
The idea that private schools never fail, surprisingly, is an incorrect one. Those who are slightly less well informed may also be led to believe that the majority of state schools fail; this is certainly not the case. Very recently a number of failing, financially restrained private schools were given the dreaded, ‘Academy’ label by the government. Many state schools, infact, perform better than most private ones, but many more, of course, do a lot worse.
Only 46% of pupils received at least 5 GCSEs last year. For there to be a majority of pupils failing to reach the minimum standard, something clearly is going wrong where many state and most private schools go right
But what is going wrong? The education system is supposedly of maximum importance to Government (does anyone remember, “Education, Education, Education?”). Politicians are seen almost every week visiting a school or brand spanking new academy, which is shown to fail and be shut down two weeks later.
The existence of the Academies may not be the problem, but the way they are treated by the government certainly is. The government seems to think that throwing money at a problem will fix it. They need to realise that there is no correlation between the costs and achievements of schools. The errors and successes are to be found the work ethic of the students; many state schools can attach themselves to private schools in that respect and those that can’t populate the second group of, ‘failing’ schools.
The natural transition of schools across the whole board into two, quite evenly sized groups reminds me quite a lot of the secondary modern and grammar school configuration of the past. The immoral and discriminatory partition of education is back, but this time, there are no labels, apart from, ‘Outstanding’ of course!
Do the most intelligent always go to the good schools? Do the less intelligent deserve to? Was the old grammar/secondary modern configuration a cruel division of intelligence, which was judged at a far too early age, or a modernist way of sorting future employment structures?
As grades become more and more important to the movers and shakers of the education industry, the classic tale of a “rift” between state and private provision seem to have been extended to reflect a brand new gaping hole from within the comprehensive sector itself.
The terminology for the standards of schools comes and goes. Current terms from Ofsted, range from, ‘Outstanding’ to the slightly less impressive, ‘Adequate’. I am astonished when a government paid organisation appears to feel it acceptable to sum up entire schools with just one adjective, and then in most cases, have the teachers paste this word at the gates of their school, in order to show the world what a brilliant, long and complicated word it is!
This quite frankly wishy-washy way of labelling schools is leading to confusion in parent’s mind over which schools are suitable for their child, some schools are being put in the dog house, and others are appearing to excel.
Currently, schools are largely judged on academic achievement, when schools fail inspections, the facilities, curriculum and staff are all taken into account before the ability of students are even considered.
This leads nicely on to my main argument, are the barriers of achievement between state and private school as concrete as they seem?
The idea that private schools never fail, surprisingly, is an incorrect one. Those who are slightly less well informed may also be led to believe that the majority of state schools fail; this is certainly not the case. Very recently a number of failing, financially restrained private schools were given the dreaded, ‘Academy’ label by the government. Many state schools, infact, perform better than most private ones, but many more, of course, do a lot worse.
Only 46% of pupils received at least 5 GCSEs last year. For there to be a majority of pupils failing to reach the minimum standard, something clearly is going wrong where many state and most private schools go right
But what is going wrong? The education system is supposedly of maximum importance to Government (does anyone remember, “Education, Education, Education?”). Politicians are seen almost every week visiting a school or brand spanking new academy, which is shown to fail and be shut down two weeks later.
The existence of the Academies may not be the problem, but the way they are treated by the government certainly is. The government seems to think that throwing money at a problem will fix it. They need to realise that there is no correlation between the costs and achievements of schools. The errors and successes are to be found the work ethic of the students; many state schools can attach themselves to private schools in that respect and those that can’t populate the second group of, ‘failing’ schools.
The natural transition of schools across the whole board into two, quite evenly sized groups reminds me quite a lot of the secondary modern and grammar school configuration of the past. The immoral and discriminatory partition of education is back, but this time, there are no labels, apart from, ‘Outstanding’ of course!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)