Blimmin Blogger

Blogger has been on the Blink.

I have lost some updates to posts and I suspect you will have had difficulty commenting.

Apologies. (But blame Blogger: restricting our freedom of speech - bastards)

Offensive Spirit - An Encore

Here's the deal. It's very simple.

I say something which you find offensive. I have the freedom to do this.

In turn, you have the freedom to criticise me for being offensive.
There are two possibilties. Either I am right about what I say, but just put it rather tactlessly, or I am wrong (or just gratuitously offensive. This obviously counts as "wrong").

If I am wrong, and you kick up a stink and demonstrate WHY I am wrong, not only do I look stupid, but the rest of the world will see that I am an offensive bigot.

If I am right, and you kick up a stink, the rest of the world will think that you are denying an unpleasant truth about yourself and that you aren't really being very honest, regardless of how tactless I may have been.

If you choose to hit me instead, it is pretty clear to everyone that you have no manners and no counter-argument. I win by default. The world will believe me, not you.

Now, into which category would you put these protestors?

EXTERMINATE THOSE WHO SLANDER ISLAM

As ninme put it so delightfully in an earlier (unrelated - I just loved the quote) post:

Hey Guys: way to play to your stereotype.

Anyone still have any doubts that we need to publish these cartoons?

Colours nailed to the mast

Not very surprising that Biased BBC might take a cynical view, but then, there is plenty to be cynical about.

Good news and Bad news

The Good News:

A Jordanian Paper shows "those cartoons".

Yay!

The Bad News:

The Editor is sacked. And all copies of the paper pulled from the stands.

Boo!

UPDATE: Sun morning. The Editor is arrested. Anyone still wondering if this isn't a Freedom of Speech issue?

The Really Shocking News:

The Strawman grabs his ankles.

Danish Iman Busted for Stirring Up Trouble

Perhaps this is why this little row won't go away.

Looks like our friendly Imam (the who has magiced up some additional cartoons and inflated his support base by an order of magnitude) hasn't been entirely straight with the Danish media.

Rasmussen [the Danish PM] was referring specifically to an incident in which controversial imam Abu Laban said to television station al-Jazeera that he was happy about the Muslim boycott. Later in the day, Laban said to Danish television station TV2 that he would urge Muslims to stop the boycott immediately.

Anyone got any interpretations of this incident that show Mr Laban in anything other than a bad light?

Danes and Free Speech - F*ck Yeah!

I don't know what the Danish for the English for the American vernacular "F**k YEAH!" might be, but I think that a reprise of Second Breakfast's noble reminder of the finer qualities of this sceptred isle might be in order. We might also want to reflect on the events that caused such an outburst and in whose name they were carried out.

Mermaid Statues: Fuck Yeah!

Complicated Crop Rotation Schemes involving lots of different Root Vegetables: Fuck Yeah!

You know the score.

Where is OUR spine, damnit?

We are all Danes now.

So far, the 12 cartoons of Mohammed, published originally in Denmark on 30 Sept 2005 following a two week long debate on self censorship and the widespread fear of criticising Islam, have been printed in Denmark, Norway, Germany, France, Spain and Italy. Where is the editor in the UK with the will to do what is right and stand up for the Freedom of the Press? For goodness sake, it was the Scots in what was then the nascent UK who came up with the concepts of Freedom of Speech and the supremacy of Reason during the Enlightenment.

The BBC's coverage of this has been appalling:

• They have completely failed to report the original context behind the September publication of the cartoons, without which the Danish reaction (and that of the blogosphere) makes no sense;
  
• There is no attempt to defend Freedom of Speech as one of the fundamental foundations, an essential pre-requisite, for the maintenance of other wider freedoms and a healthy democracy in general;
• There is no attempt to question why there is a gap of FOUR MONTHS between the publication in Denmark and the protests now, and no attempt to question the motives of the Danish Imam who has embellished the 12 cartoons actually published with a collection of other drawings, which are both unattributed and significantly more offensive. The Wikipedia article on this is illuminating:

  "Akhmad Akkari, spokesman of the 21 Danish Muslim organisations which organised the tour, explained that the three drawings had been added to "give an insight in how hateful the atmosphere in Denmark is towards Muslims." Akkari claimed he does not know the origin of the three pictures. He said they had been sent anonymously to Danish Muslims. However, when Ekstra Bladet asked if it could talk to these Muslims, Akkari refused to reveal their identity. These images had however never been published in Jyllands-Posten.
  
  The society also allegedly exaggerated its membership and the hardships of Muslims in Denmark, for instance claiming to represent 200,000 angry Muslims, when the actual number was in fact fewer than 15,000.
  
  Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was shocked at the way in which some Muslims were misrepresenting Denmark. “I am speechless that those people, whom we have given the right to live in Denmark and where they freely have chosen to stay, are now touring Arab countries and inciting antipathy towards Denmark and the Danish people"

• There is no appeal to reason: is it rational to beat up an employee of an unrelated Danish food distributor who had no hand in the publication of the cartoons? Is it rational - or helpful to the cause of Islam - to issue death threats against the cartoonists? Do these actions not - oh the irony - merely prove the point of the editors of JP?

We should be with the Danes on this one, not sitting on the fence. Free Speech is no Offence, nor is it negotiable.

Which is more offensive:
1. A newspaper publishing cartoons of Mohammed
OR
2. Threatening to kill the publisher (and the cleaners in the building)
OR
3. Beating up - that is causing actual bodily harm - someone completely unrelated to the publication of the cartoons?

This is not a tricky choice. Moreover, we are (rightly) forever warned not to stereotype - not to project the vices of a few fruitcakes onto the group as a whole. What, I ask you, is item 3 if not a prime example of this heinous sin? Yet we hear only condemnation of the first not the second or third.

Without this vociferous condemnation, it appears that the group as a whole agrees with its spokesmen. (And it is almost always men.) If most of the individuals within the group represented by a spokesman, self appointed or otherwise, disagree, why are they prepared to be misrepresented, especially when such misrepresentation is so obviously harmful? Why are there no more moderate spokesmen? There are two possibilities: either most condone options 2 and 3, or most are sufficiently repressed not to be able to voice their concerns.

We came VERY VERY close to making it illegal to print these cartoons. Indeed, it appears that it was a mere totting up error on the part of the Labour Chief Whip for which we must be eternally grateful (until the next time).

As for the cartoons themselves, I will post more in due course. For the time being, let us examine the substantive issue. There is much complaint that, for Muslims, it is forbidden to show any image of Mohammed, whether flattering or not. Permit me to disagree with that premise.

But even assuming that it is forbidden, I fail to see how this applies to non-Muslims.

But even assuming that it is forbidden, and by some arcane ruling it does apply to non-Muslims, it is still nonsense in this context.

Consider this one of the 12 in particular:



Is this actually a picture of Mohammed? If I say it is, that apparently becomes a crime to be punished by death threats or savage beatings. What if I secretly think it is, but say it isn't? What if I think it isn't, but say it is? Ironically, this is genuinely the case here: the non-Stick fellow is actually a caricature of the author who could not get anyone to illustrate his book on Mohammed.

I can think of no better illustration of a "thought-crime". We don't do thought-crime here. Not if we can help it anyway.

This whole episode would be farcical but for the death threats flying about.

It would be farcical but for the disgusting hypocrisy of the Muslim states that have withdrawn their ambassadors. The cry goes up that we must "respect" the religious beliefs of others. This is, to be blunt obscene.

Which would you rather be:
1. A Muslim trying to practise your religion in Denmark or any other post-Enlightment, pre-dominantly Christian, "Western" democracy
OR
2. A Christian trying to practise your religion in Saudi Arabia or Iran
OR
3. A Jew trying to practise your religion in Saudi Arabia or Iran, or in fact, anywhere in the Middle East outside Israel?

It would be farcical if it weren't for the fact that this venal Labour Government seems flippant in the manner with which it discards our fundamental liberties and rules with no apparent regard for its slim, almost non-existent, electoral mandate, the centuries of precedent over which our constitutional settlement has evolved and the millions upon millions who gave their lives to defend these liberties against the onslaught of many other totalitarian systems.

It would be farcical if it weren't for the fact that we are compelled, on threat of imprisonment, to pay the Licence Fee which funds these excerable apologists for the attacks on the cornerstone of our freedom and prosperity.

Right. I'm going for a bacon roll. With lots of butter. And I'll need a stiff drink with which to wash it down...

UPDATE: Welcome to readers from TopixNet. I meant to link to my little essay on Giving and Taking Offence, but failed to do so in the body of the post. It is especially aposite, given the reference to THE BACON ROLL.

Some Light in Another Bit of Darkness

Mr Alhamedi is always pithy. Never more so than tonight. Read it all.

No Political Correctness Here - Part 4

Oh, and by way of a top quality right-wing guffaw, I couldn't help noticing that the author of the Socialist Worker article to which I referred on Monday is bylined as:

Ken Muller, assistant secretary Islington NUT (pc)

"NUT (pc)", eh? It's Political Correctness Gone Mad.

ba-boom. Tsh!

Thank you. You've been a lovely audience.

Returning the Compliment

The inimitable ninme sends me a pleasing amount of traffic. She notes today the topic of returning compliments. What better day to do so.

For any medieaval fundamentalist crackpot err... readers of a more sensitive persuasion, her link is a joke. Unusually for an American, she is displaying a well developed sense of irony.

Some Light in the Darkness

This just in.

Yet More Frankly Unbelievable Education Crassness

Just when you thought that the morons who have the lamentable bits of our education system by the short and curlies (I had wanted to put "state-run" in this sentence but it would have been tautologous) couldn't appear to be more clueless, they cheerfully serve up another truckload of evidence to show that there remains plenty more where that came from.

In the last few months we have had:

• the toys thrown out of the pram when phonics (that's "actually-teaching-children-to-read-rather-than-just-look-at-pictures" to you and me) was suggested as, errr..., a method for actually-teaching-children-to-read-rather-than-just-look-at-pictures;
• some light shed on the absurd process whereby the appointment of a teacher has to go up to the Minister to be approved;
• a generous ladling of old-style class war breaking out on the topic of selection. (A little quiz for you: if, as is very widely accepted - not to mention entirely self-evident to all but the meanest of intellect, honesty or adherent of marxist dogma, pupils respond better when streamed into classes of similar ability within one school, why would this not be doubly so between schools? If a school has a more narrowly focussed range of abilities, why will its streaming not be even more closely tailored?);
• and the confirmation that

  the state could pay for a private education for every child in Scotland for no more than it spends on its own Stalinist system.

  (via Freedom and Whisky)
  

This time, it is a ban on putting your hand up. "Questioning" is itself under question.
Let's review what is being suggested here:

Pupils have been stopped from putting their hands up to answer questions because their school believes it leads to feelings of victimisation. The head, Andrew Buck, says it is always the same children who wave their arms in the air, while the rest of the class sits back.

And? This isn't staringly obvious? This hasn't been spotted before? And isn't seen, generally, as a pretty huge issue?

I have, in front of me, a dog-eared copy of the "Students Administration Precis" from RMAS. Annex B to Precis TRG1 (Methods of Instruction - General) deals with this very topic. It is titled "Question Technique". Para 4 merits a full quotation:

4. Direct questions to the class as a whole, give time for the whole class to think out the answer and then nominate the student who is to give the answer.

POSE THE QUESTION - PAUSE - NOMINATE THE STUDENT

When I was in the habit of giving instruction on "methods of instruction", I rendered this as

Pose... Pause... Pounce

and golly it is effective. The use of this question technique on its own is enough to transform the performance of an instructor who subsequently adopts it. It reinforces the idea [pause to listen for the satisfying POP that pressages the explosion of the heads of Senior Lecturers in Education] that the teacher controls the class. Once students know that this technique will be applied, they also know that they cannot doze off at the back because that is the surest way to be picked to answer a question. They have to pay attention. That soldiers also know that persistent recidivism in this regard will usually result in a short chat with the Provost Sergeant helps a little, but I shall resist the temptation to digress onto discipline in the classroom in general.

There is, of course, more:

When teachers try to involve less adventurous pupils by choosing them instead, that leads to feelings of victimisation.

Victimisation? Asking a pupil a question to check if he or she has understood the lesson correctly is victimisation? Get a grip man.

Perhaps our Training Precis has something to say:

Questions Technique: When used well, questions generate interest, thought and learning. If used badly, they can embarrass and isolate one or two individuals while the remainder quietly relax and think of other things.

Ah, maybe someone has spotted this before. If you pick on one or two individuals, they are going to feel, err..., picked on. Trying to involve "less adventurous pupils" is not victimisation: it is called "Doing your job". Smells to me as though our illustrious Headmaster is pussyfooting around the problem.

Mr Buck believes that it can also cause panic in children who are picked but do not know the answer while others around them are straining to give it.

And? Is this preferable to have them sit monging at the back and leave the teacher quietly ignoring the fact that half the class has not actually absorbed any of the carefully-produced, culturally-sensitive, government-approved material?

Moreover, like all really obvious and sensible ideas, one can rely on the Public Sector to screw it up completely when trying to adopt it.

To spare the embarrassment of those who do not know the answer, the school uses a "phone a friend" system, allowing one child to nominate another to take the question instead.

Spare me. Please. The teacher and the child needs to know whether or not the child knows the answer. The child might have been right, but just too molly-coddled to have the confidence to try. Do you even know what questions are for? Perhaps our Sandhurst Precis can instruct us:

PURPOSE OF QUESTIONS IN INSTRUCTION

There are three purposes in asking questions:

1. To TEACH by making the class reason out answers for themselves.
2. To TEST by checking the knowledge of the class.
3. To create ACTIVITY by keeping the students mentally alert.
   

Giving the class a "phone-a-friend" option means that each pupil has a get out clause and destroys purpose 1. Further, the teacher cannot be certain that the pupil does NOT know the answer - the pupil may be passing the buck. There goes purpose 2. Get out clause allows a pupil to switch off: nothing for purpose 3 then.

Gaahh! A perfectly sound and well articulated idea is trashed by a vain attempt to avoid hurting people's feelings. When will these morons learn that allowing children to pass through our education system (such as it is) without touching the sides is infinitely more damaging to their usefulness or sense of pride or self-esteem.

Mr Buck says the ban on putting hands up has improved attention levels because pupils never know when they will be called on.

Oh for Heaven's sake. What did he think would happen?

But of all the changes to teaching methods decided when the school opened four years ago, that policy had proved the most difficult to implement. "It is every child's instinct and every teacher's instinct as well because it is ingrained in us," Mr Buck said.

There are a lot of things that are "ingrained in us". If one is a pupil, ingrained behaviours such as "doing anything to avoid work", "not eating our vegetables", "preferring to gossip at the back about Eastenders rather than pay attention to a lesson on the solutions to quadratic equations" spring to mind. From my hideously white, middle-class perspective, I fondly imagined that it was part of the role of teachers to confront and change these "ingrained behaviours", rather than meekly to accept or encourage them.

I suppose, to be fair, teachers - like all adults - have some ingrained behaviours of their own. "Taking the Easy Option" and "Not Confronting the Uncomfortable Truth that you are Failing to Control your Class" might be illustrative examples of this.

You are supposed to deal with this stuff you monstrous waste of taxpayers' money.

There are others who never put up their hands because they have decided that they do not do that bit of the lesson, so they stop listening. If you don't use hands up, the pupils don't know who you are going to choose and they all have to think about the question.

Sorry, but do you expect any of us to think that this is radical new thinking? Someone does:

Mick Brookes, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said it was the first time he had heard of such a policy.

Just hold that thought for a moment. This is 2006.

Those of you who are more astute (keep up at the back there: I shall be asking questions later.) will notice the use of a monospaced, or fixed width, font for all of the references to the Sandhurst Training Precis. I have used this because it is an accurate reflection of the font used in the document itself. Because the document itself was typed on an old fashioned typewriter. Which means that it is a damn sight older than the revision date of

May 1988

given at the bottom of the page. So the technique of a teacher controlling a class and ignoring hands raised has been standard practice in the Army for at least the last 18 years. I would venture to suggest that this method is used by all three services - and possibly the Police, Fire Service, Coastguard and probably in fact any organisation that actually needs to have students learn a specific skill or technique, as opposed to ignoring the problem and wasting everyone's time - and has probably been in force for a very great length of time. The "Pose, Pause, Pounce" method is drummed into the lowliest form of life ever to be tasked with instructing private soldiers. This is basic stuff. Really, really, really simple.

Yet Mr Brookes has NEVER HEARD OF IT. One wonders what on earth they teach in Teacher Training Colleges.

The habit will be hard to break

No it won't. It just takes a teacher with a grip of his subject and his pupils.

but when you listen to what the head says there may be method in what at first appears to be madness.

There may be method in what first appears to be madness. Give me strength.

DK is Cross

No change there then.

In other news, DK is also wrong (as I demonstrate below). No change there either.

Further, and since we all like threesomes, I shall not deviate from my chosen calling and offer some pedantry.

1. DK claims that
   

   The Royal Bank are shit
   

   Without prejudice to the other lot, "The Royal Bank" is, ahem, a "singular institution". Repeat after me, DK:
   

   The Royal Bank IS shit.

2. As is often the case (rats - that's a FOURTH "no change there then"), DK's intemperance causes his prose to lack the biting wit, the fatal stab of precision, that others demonstrate so beautifully:
   

   After being charged £20 for a £10 overdraft, 30 year old Michael Howard [No relation presumably] of Leeds changed his name by deed poll to Yorkshire Bank PLC Are Fascist Bastards. The bank has now asked him to close his account, and Mr. Bastards has asked them to repay the 69p balance, by cheque, made out in his new name. (The Guardian)

That, DK, is how to be rude to your bank.

UPDATE: Link fixed. (this was only a problem due to DK's poor spelling in the first place. [/Grumble])

It is also just possible that DK is, cleverly, aping President Bush. But I doubt it.

Go Canada!

Your grizzly Pedant-General is this morning resplendently be-decked in maple leaves and desires earnestly to be a lumberjack.

He is also chuffed to bits to have pipped that great lover-of-all-things-Canadian, Mr Seat, to the post to bring you the excellent news of the General Election over there.

It would appear that the demise of the Liberal Party on that side of the pond (not to be confused with the demise of the Liberal Party here - snigger) also prompts some childish horseplay. (via ninme)

Why Children should be taught how to interpret Venn Diagrams

Mathematics is what we need. Not sociology. Specifically, we need Set Theory and Group Theory. Whilst this is particularly pertinent if one happens to a RDBMS designer - an occupation in which your muddled and innumerate Pedant-General dabbles - it is perhaps a little less clear why we should ALL need a thorough grounding in this noble pursuit.

Not any more it isn't:



There have been so many times when I have been talking to foreigners - especially our cousins across the pond - when I have needed this diagram. Ah well. At least we do now.

Marching Bands dispatched in the direction of Things of Interest.
Prizes will be awarded for an adaptation of this that successfully includes Gibraltar, Monserrat, the EU, EFTA and NATO.

UPDATE: A very warm welcome to visitors from Harry's Place. I was wondering where all the extra traffic was coming from. (And you may safely ignore my categorisation of HP under the heading "Other Riff Raff and Trouble Makers". At least you are in good company there...)

Uh?

Tim Worstall has been bemoaning the lack of sub-editors at the Times of late, but I fear that there are other forms of stupidity at play here:

Rock heavy
Sir, Are the Rolling Stones the greatest heavy rock stars in the world? The sight of a convoy of 70 lorries, each carrying 4,000 tons of stage equipment from one of their gigs to the next (report, Jan 18), must certainly put them in that category, regardless of their undoubted and ageless talent.

HARRY WHITHAM
Tingley, W Yorks

4,000 ton lorries? I rather doubt that.

Palloway and Gollard

I had been meaning to write a little tiny something on the various topics of Pollard and Galloway.

Following this little ennui, which neatly combines the two, I am stirred into action.

Firstly Pollard. He has taken the Political Compass test and published his results. Very surprised to find myself rather to the "left" of an old labour party stalwart. Indeed, given his Fabian background this is clearly a man following Churchill's view of life:

If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.

Over 35? Not a conservative? No brain? A fairly accurate description of The Honourable Member for Bethnal Green and Bow. Mr Kamm sums it up nicely:

The description doesn't prepare you for the sight of a bald middle-aged man nuzzling the cupped hands of an aging actress. It is physically repellent. I went on Sky News this evening to debate Galloway's antics with John Rees, national secretary of the Respect 'Coalition' and a leading member of the Socialist Workers' Party which controls it. For some reason Galloway himself was unavailable. I confess I didn't listen to a word Rees said, I was so engrossed by the body language: shiftiness scarcely covers it.

I expressed sympathy for Rees for coming on the programme when his party had previously condemned Big Brother as 'sewer-dredgingly awful', and I said that Galloway's appearance had the merit of not being the least creditable thing or most egregious debasement of public office he had done. After George travelled to Damascus last July to tell the Syrian people, who had had no say in the matter, how fortunate they were to have Bashar al-Assad as their leader, there were few ways open to him to lose his dignity further, and he at least showed imagination in finding one of them.

Snigger.

A tipping point

I have professed my disdain for the generally execrable Nu-Labour editorial toadying of The Times over the past few years. Permit me, however, to detect a change in the mood at Murdoch's lair.

Three leader columns today and none of them exactly favourable.

First up, economic competence:

In the 1980s the belief that Britain was doomed to decline lingered for some time after the Thatcher reforms had paved the road to economic recovery. Labour, by contrast, has benefited from revived national confidence that Britain had rediscovered the secrets of market-led success. That confidence appears increasingly misplaced.

Not very encouraging reading for the Jelly-bellied Flag-flapper.
How about education, education, education then?

In fact, the figures for the bulk of the nation’s pupils are even worse. If the exam results from independent schools, which focus relentlessly on core subjects, are excluded, the percentage falls further, to 42 per cent [of pupils achieving C grade or better at GCSE in Maths and English]. For boys the picture is even more dismal: only 37.8 per cent of those sitting English and maths last summer achieved a C grade or better.

UPDATE: Bartholomew has more. For the "most improved" school,

Its 75 per cent of pupils achieving five or more GCSEs drops to 22 per cent when maths and English are included. The survey also shows that no pupil gained a double science GCSE, only three per cent gained at least a C grade in a modern foreign language or history and eight per cent in geography.

By contrast, 85 per cent passed the vocational GNVQ in ICT and 48 per cent the GNVQ in science, both of which count for four high grade GCSEs.

Staggering.

Finally, a little bit on the tax take:

After paying their own tax, the nanny’s tax, the nanny’s national insurance contributions and another £3,000 in employer’s national insurance contributions, parents in Central London are spending, on average, £43,850 a year on nannies.

Of this, barely £20,000 is the nanny’s to spend. The rest goes to the Exchequer, where the Chancellor is the only happy party to the transaction.

Ouch.

To paraphrase, this feels to me more like the beginning of the end...

Girls don't do Science

Your prejudiced, patriarchal and profoundly patronising Pedant-General takes a leaf out of the school jotter of his 7 year old nephew when he declares:

Boys are best and girls are rubbish.

Specifically, girls are rubbish at science. Even those terrifically nice girls at InkyCircus. Some of you, stuck in your lefty-liberal dogma, may think this a little harsh.

On the contrary, it is entirely fair. Proof? Try this:

The US Environmental Protection Agency is celebrating it's 35th birthday today. This means that the EPA is a Capricorn.

Indeed, it would appear that girls struggle with any logical/rational rules-based system: There is a misplaced possessive apostrophe in that quote as well....

P-G Prescription: This sort of transgression usually merits a sound thrashing to be delivered on the steps of the perpetrator's club. Unfortunately, this won't work as no decent club - it has be a decent club upon whose steps the thrashing is to be administered in order to have the correct deterrent effect on the populace at large - will admit girls as members. In any case, it would be frightfully ungentlemanly to strike a lady.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I fear the collapse of Western Civilisation.

Ooops

Someone appears to have sat on Pollard rather heavily...

No Political Correctness Here - Part 2

Another outing of an occasional column.

There remains no Political Correctness at large in the UK. There is nothing to see. Nothing whatsoever. Move along now.

Mick Taylor, chairman of the Nottinghamshire branch of the Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, said: “There has been an accusation that some words have been said that may have caused offence to a career criminal if he had been present, even though he wasn’t.

“This is a man of the criminal fraternity who has a number of convictions. So it does seem ludicrous that we have to go to these levels, but that is the way life is now.

“This was a private conversation between colleagues and surely people have got a right to that? A personal view is that if no members of the public or work colleagues have made complaints, then I question the need for disciplinary action.”

This is possibly not strictly true: if an officer has done something badly wrong, there should be no need for a complaint to trigger disciplinary action. The question here is more pertinent: Did any officer actually do anything wrong?

To put it another way, in order to be offended, the pondlife, err...

man of the criminal fraternity who has a number of convictions

would need to show that the moniker "pondlife" is unreasonable or somehow not fair. I would also suggest that he would need to show that he has suffered a real loss as a result. I suggest that that is going to be rather tricky, given that this

man of the criminal fraternity who has a number of convictions

has, err....,

a number of convictions.

Indeed, an application of common sense would suggest that this whole disciplinary process is ludicrous. I should have thought that the factually indisputable description - "a man with a string of convictions, a career criminal" - is about as damning as you can get. This is not denigration of a group. It is not bigotry, because it is not an unreasonable assessment applied unfairly on the basis of a warped view of group characteristics. It is an objective assessment of one individual and does not apply to anyone else.

Thus, the only possible way that a disciplinary process could be worth the effort is if we ignore completely the objective fact that our "victim" is a career criminal, and as our favourite baby-eating fascist bastard says:

To the politically correct, truth is no defence; to the politically incorrect, truth is the ultimate defence.

that would require the rules of politically correct truth to be in force.

But that can't be the case because there is no Political Correctness in the UK at all. Anywhere. Just a figment of our fevered neo-con warmongering racist imagination.

Update:

How galling that it should be AN AMERICAN to tell us all that this is a load of tosh.

Step forward the inimitable ninme in the comments below:

I can't get over how hilarious it is that everyone's so wound up over the word "pondlife". I kept thinking "pondlife" was a euphemism used to hint at what he really said, then when it started to dawn on me that that really is what he said... Well. Raise your hand if you've seen the Simpsons where they go to London. Way to play to your stereotypes.

I couldn't agree more. Except that I don't because PC doesn't exist.

I do like a Threesome

Your twisted and deviant Pedant-General would be permanently barred from any form of employment that might bring him into contact with small children if anyone were to discover two of the topics that are chiefly to blame for making him tick, viz Satire and Threesomes.

Today, however, I must come clean. (you might want to rephrase that, ed)
Today, we have a threesome of satires. How can I resist (lacking as we all are, any meaningful moral agency or free will)? That they all have a bearing on the libertarian viewpoint is an added fillip.

First up: A Modest Proposal from Samizdata. This had many readers fooled. Even your sharp-witted Pedant-General remained only suspicious until the last line.

The second requires a suitably humble doffing of cap in the direction of the big (though expat) daddy of the UK blogosphere and his 48th weekly roundup. I have commented on unsupportable contradictions, but not nearly as savagely skeweringly as this:

'living her entire life within the confines of a cardboard box frees the Uttabollux women from the tyrannies of the male-dominated hegemony. Unlike in the West where a woman is paralysed by having to live up to the so-called freedoms of choosing motherhood, career, independence, her own life, husband and so on, the Uttabollux woman is free within the confines of her cardboard box to be a total absolute woman, free from interference.True, her husband is free to beat, kill, rape, sell or mutilate her anyway he sees fit as long as he can claim that the Skhighhibhoss says its fine by him, but that is far better than the so-called 'freedoms' of the so-called 'liberated' West.'

Sublime. Just sublime.

And for the third, Neil Harding - whom I have, in the past, accused of being a moron - produces an exquisitely crafted satire, in which he appears content flippantly to discard nearly a thousand years of legal precedent.

We can tell it is satire, because it is - hilariously- titled

Why Tony is right

He then leads us gently up the garden path with

A man found with 10,000 in cash late at night with no reasonable explanation DESERVES prosecution regardless of whether the police can actually PROVE it is the result of wrongdoing.

and then, just to show he has been pulling our leg all along, delivers the punchline:

In terms of low level punishment [he is talking about £100 on the spot fines] for low level crimes, it is BETTER to punish the innocent than to let the guilty go free.

The way he leads us to this conclusion is evidence of a truly brillant comic mind. It is a consummate spoof. Really, really excellent.

Oh, Ok. I'm sorry, I'm pulling your leg. This was just an excuse to broadcast one of the best put-downs I have heard in a long time. This, in the comments to a rebuttal of the moron by MatGB, has that mathematical precision of language which is so dear to my heart:

"On religion and philosophy, he comes across as fractally ignorant - no matter what distance scale you're using, the image of complete absence of knowledge is identical."

Ouch...

Vote for Boris!

Those poor misguided fools that can count themselves as regular readers of this blog, will be well aware that your fiendish and dastardly Pedant-General has an underling tasked solely with tracking the movements and prognostications of that most notably foppish OE, Boris Johnson.

So, although delighted to be in receipt, this morning, of a missive from that nice Mr Eugenides, I am thus mortified to discover that I am several days behind the curve:

As you may or may not be aware, Boris Johnson MP has put his name forward for election as Rector of Edinburgh University. He will be opposed by such as John Pilger and Mark Ballard (a Green MSP, apparently).

I am not a graduate of that establishment, and not involved in Boris' campaign, but a friend of mine, who is, has asked me to "put the word out" about the candidature, and as my own poor blog is clearly inadequate for such a task, I have taken the liberty of a group email (albeit with a somewhat random address field).

All most welcome and a very great improvement on the Jelly-bellied Flag-flapper.
I shall get my politico-lobbyist-rottweiler on the case. He should be able to sort this out.

Except.... Except...

Isn't there just a teeny weeny hint of a conflict of interest?

No Political Correctness Here. Nothing to See.

As we all know, all this rot about a sinister plot in the form of Political Correctness is just tosh. This idea that there is an underground cabal of PC stasi undermining the enlightenment tradition of reason is fanciful.

The rich and powerful are still rich and powerful and there is no detectable change in the way that our institutions serve us at all.

Dr Crippen thinks otherwise.

The Problem with Inherently Contradictory Systems

... is that they don't withstand rational scrutiny.

Those sinister chaps at Samizdata provide a spectacular commentary on one typically bizarre outcome of such a system:

For decades, every school and university in the West has been teaching that the feelings of the protected classes trump rights of free expression.

The media are ruled by it, politics is in thrall to it, and each and every citizen of all these great, free, democratic societies knows in the back of his or her mind that if you dare say the wrong thing, you will be keel-hauled.

We've all watched it happen. We've complained and objected and had various hissy fits. The PC crowd just shrugged and found some more terms that were offensive, some more victims that needed to be protected, some more ideas that demonstrated a depraved, sexist, racist, whatever-ist mind and needed to be cast out.

I don't care who this guy is, or how ironic it all is. What difference does it make. The suppression many predicted, and so many others played down, is here.

Did you think they were kidding?

There is much in this topic that is of supreme importance to us all. To take a few quotes from their original analysis:

You can always find someone who will be offended by anything.

Quite. The correct response is to ignore them and they will go away.

But more disturbing than the law - the existing law, before Tony Blair gets to work on arbitrary extension of summary powers - being used to interdict opinion, is the certainty that it will not be open to anyone to have those expressing opinions that offend them investigated.

...

This adumbrates a world in which officially approved opinions may be expressed freely, but those that are not officially approved will be deemed offensive, and suppressed therefore. Whatever it is, it is not freedom of expression.

Someone else made a similar point along these lines, but his thoughts weren't very well received.
Which sort of proves his point really.

Naked Google Page Rank Whoring...

... is about as good a title as any for this topic, given the likely impact on Google search terms for this post.

I promised to give you a little insight into the goings-on at the Grace and Favour Apartment over Hogmanay.

Part the First:
What do you get when you cross:

• Adolf Hitler;
• Maria Callas;
• Popeye and;
• Nigella Lawson ?

Click here for the answer...

Very scary indeed.

Respect my authority

That would appear to be the command issuing from the lips of the maximum Tone.

Your pre-Enlightenment, nay antediluvian, Pedant-General has other views. Only a Philosopher King can save us from the Hobbesian jungle into which large chunks of the population have descended.

Thankfully, there is one on order. Your dastardly and scheming Pedant-General has been secretly training up the youngest master P-G. He is coming along nicely and should be ready to take control in a decade or so.


And my goodness he is a Leviathan....

Unintended Consequences Part 94

Your regular and reliable Pedant-General is beginning to feel like a bus: No posts for a month, then three come at once.

Go and read this. Snort!

Weird. Just Weird

Barely into the new year and... bosh! I've been tigged (again). It was tigging wot got me into this ghastly mess in the first place. Never mind.

This time, it is about weirdness, which is, naturally, something your upright and sober Pedant-General does not do.

The blimmin' Devil, whose fault all this is, moans:

"... although I'm sure that others would have a much easier time listing five weird things about me than I will."

Speak for yourself sunshine.

UPDATE: I have misinterpretted this. I hadn't spotted the "about me" qualifier. Alright I admit it - I was sloppy and didn't read it carefully enough. He is correct. He definitely needs a haircut.

To business then:

1. Neither of my little toes touches the ground. At all. They poke upwards at such a strange angle that I am constantly going through shoes because they crease unnaturally at that point.
2. Lady P-G isn't a Lady (but purely in the aristocratic sense, in much the same way that Mr Seat isn't a Mr) and she doesn't know about this blog. Perhaps I ought to tell this lot.
3. Having interviewed a chap who was exceptionally well qualified for the job but who appeared, even to me, to be just a teeny-weeny bit almost entirely hatstand, I sent the Chief Exec in to have a chat with him. He (the Chief Exec that is) came out 15 minutes later and wandered over to my desk. He leaned on it for support and said:

   "When Greg and I started this company, we made a very clear decision that we would only ever hire ONE lunatic"

   and then he wandered off. I have no idea what all that was about.
   
4. I sneeze with sufficient force to make my feet leave the ground (including the two little toes that weren't touching it anyway). When Lady P-G saw me sneeze for the first time (I suffer from hayfever), she thought I was joking. She continued to think I was joking - and was beginning to think that the wind up was wearing a little thin - until she saw my father sneeze. Indeed, when the young masters Pedant-General see me warming up for a blast of the foghorn, they put their hands over their ears and run from the room.
   
5. I can sit on the floor with my legs over my shoulders. I challenge Mr Free Market to do that, even when drunk....

That's enough embarrassing nonsense from me. Upon whom should this be inflicted?

1. Mr Seat. Need to get him back anyway and I bet he has skeletons in the cupboard by the bucket load.
2. Thersites. Doctors aren't exactly normal either.
3. Deogolwulf. This thing isn't really his style, but maybe he needs to relax a little.
4. ninme. It is always important to get these things across the pond. ninme, FYI the weirdness is by UK standards not US. We still can't get enough of the stuff you consider to be normal over there....
5. The Moai. I have owed him a link for such a long time. Not sure if this counts, but it's a start.

Happy New Year!

A Missed Scoop

Your eagle-eyed Pedant-General keeps his ear firmly pressed to the ground in order that he may be the first to bring to your attention the analysis and commentary without which we would all be lost.

We know this because ninme tells us and she is never wrong either.

However, some of you may have noticed that there was a very slight hiatus over the festive period on this blog and for that I must apologise. Indeed, I am kicking myself, largely because this swum into view (marching bands duly instructed to report to the surgery of fellow doc-blogger Thersites) and, whilst I meant to do a little broadcast and failed spectacularly, practically everyone else jumped on the bandwagon .

No matter. The Pedant-General in Ordinary has sufficient humility not to let these things get him down.

P-G Prescription: Seems a bit churlish to be issuing "prescriptions" really. After all, that is what Dr Crippen does. He is indeed a very, very good read.

The Correct Answer

Here, graphically presented, is your eminent Pedant-General's view on life.

I think this is about right.

You are a Social Liberal (61% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (68% permissive) You are best described as a: Libertarian Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Phonics Once More

Phonics arises once more.

I am less concerned with the differences between Conservative ("traditional", chalk and flying blackboard dusters) and ZaNu-Labour ("discovery", "all shall have prizes", reading should be a joy") education policy and more with what is right and what works.

If Conservatives are pursuing synthetic phonics because it is "traditional", there is a danger thatn they are doing the right thing for the wrong reasons and they will fail. If the policy is not supported by principle, the morons at the DfES will not have to suffer the ignominy of seeing their cherished dogma challenged by irrefutable evidence.

Happy New Year

My goodness: it has been a little while.

I have been hoping to produce some follow up to my little rant at the Sharpener last month and to try to flesh out some of the weighty issues raised there.

I mused in particular that relentless political correctness....

"– which undermines the enlightenment values of reason as the arbiter of men and sees criminal and unpleasant behaviour as the unavoidable result of self-inflicted social deprivation"

.... had a great deal to answer for. It would appear that Anthony Browne has something substantial to say on the matter. 108 pages in fact. Read Pollard, or j0nz as a taster then download the whole 375k pdf here.

Report of Hogmanay at the Grace and Favour Apartment follows when the Gentleman Usher of the Cat-o-nine-tails has unravelled the instructions for the CCTV system he secretly installed.

Your Pedagogical Pedant-General goes walkabout

... at the Sharpener.

Who could ever have thought that your mild and self-effacing Pedant-General would have such a rant inside him?

The WikaBlog Strikes

The great Tim Worstall supplies, via his piece at Open Democracy, a new vernacular for the clichéd "hat tip":

"... a full-throated cheer with mass tossing of headgear and marching bands."

Marching Bands are duly despatched in the direction of Squander Two - give or take the tricky Northern Irish connotation - for his discovery on the WikaBlog of InkyCircus.


Looks like a good read.

Told you so

Cameron wins.* Just as I predicted. And quite some time ago at that...

* Explanation of exactly what it is that Mr Cameron has won is given here.

The result of the Conservative Party Leadership Election is....

.... not announced yet.

So we will have to make do with this remarkably succint status report from my correspondent in the "Big Apple":

" the new water meters have everyone in an uproar, the new library will not be built, and the piles of leaves I was going to pick up this weekend are now all covered with snow, so I won't have to worry about them again until April. Other than that, there is no news on the Rialto: Natalee Holloway is still missing, the war in Iraq is still raging, and Brad and Angelina are still together. All is well."

Carry on.

Phonics Roundup

So where are we?

I got very cross here and here.

ninme was so staggered by the idea that children might not be taught how the alphabet works that she missed the point. This is entirely understandable.

Unity followed up with a lovely little insight into where all the research has gone wrong:

"All the research which describes the psychological process of reading is based on assessment of people who can already read - ergo, it tells us quite nicely how people read once they've learned to read but next to fuck all about the process of learning to read itself."

Brilliantly simple.

Timmy puts his customary free market view on things here.

The site administrator at the Reading Reform discussion board picked up on this and linked to me, prompting the delightful "Lesley" to intone with a sigh:

" What a very, very, very satisfying read.
I only wish I'd written it myself!"

Well, Lesley, the feeling is mutual. This is superb:

"Bethan is nothing more than a whole language dinosaur whose time has come. One can sense the desperation in the plodding predictable prog-prose of a creature who knows the show-case in the museum beckons.

Cue David Attenborough in hushed tones..

"And here we see a group, found together in late 2005, reassembled in its natural habitat, the education department of a prestigious university.
There, by the glow of the searchlight, the mighty psightvocabodon is devouring whole words. Beside him the smaller, but equally ferocious guessisaurus and predictoraptor search for clues amid the bushes. And last, but not least, the superficially alluring picturedactyl, seducing its victims into its welcoming arms, lies in wait for small humans."

"We shall not see their like again."

"the superficially alluring picturedactyl": Absolutely top notch.

More On (Moron?) Phonics

I see today an illustration of spectacular, almost divine, clarity of the correctness of my decision to drop the Times from my regular reading matter in favour of the Torygraph.

Following on from my little rant yesterday, both have letters and both have Leading articles, but only the Telegraph seems to make any sense, so I shall start here.

From the leader, the money quote is:

"the life-chances of up to four million children could have been harmed by the abandonment of synthetic phonics as the means of teaching reading."

FOUR MILLION CHILDREN. I think we deserve to know how this came about. Who recommended dropping phonics? Why?

From the letters to the Editor:

Having a non-photographic memory, I could not have learnt to read using the "look and say" method. If I had been born later, I could have ended up illiterate.

A recent visitor at my manifesto would be delighted to see the subjunctive mood used correctly here.

All good stuff. Now let's look at the Times. The Leader is generally OK:

"... it has permitted a “pick and mix” approach in which rather too many teachers have plumped for the fashionable but flawed “whole word” or “look and see” formula. As its critics have noted, “sit and hope” would be more accurate."

"Look at the pictures" might be another passable description of this method.
This is admirably followed up with:

"One in five children is falling short of the level desired. Only 60 per cent of children obtain these scores in each of the modern “3Rs”. A sharp gender gap is becoming embedded, with boys falling behind girls at a young age and never quite recovering. [My emphasis]"

We will return to this, but there is more that is laudable in this leader:

"One of the many mistakes that the “whole word” lobby makes is in insisting that children be allowed to learn to read at their own pace and that it should be a labour of love, not a chore. This is patronising, destructive nonsense. Children need to learn to read as soon as is possible. Until they can, they are left in a state of academic limbo. To teach them to break words into key sounds is not to return to Victorian schooling. It is to liberate them to enter a world of learning."

Nicely put.

But then the ball is dropped. That which is given with one hand is deftly taken away with the other. The Letters Editor must be having an off day. I shall, naturally, take the second letter first:

Sir, It is a big mistake to order all children to be taught to read by the phonic method. Much research has shown that the method is best suited to girls, while boys, with superior visuo-spatial skills, are best taught by the look-and-say method because of their ability to recognise the shapes of words.

"Much research", indeed? Doesn't really fit with the Leading Article, does it? If boys have such an innate "ability to recognise the shapes of words", why does that not apply to individual letters?

Grrrrr....

But then we have to deal with this moron:

Fifty years ago the battle raged in the opposite direction. The phonic synthesis method used by most teachers was decried as “barking at print” by proponents of look-and-say (whole word recognition) and the Sentence method.

The "Sentence" method!!!!

He [David Bell, Ofsted Chief Inspector] is equally right to insist that it should not be the sole method, since it does not get one very far with a word such as “laughter”.

Quite so. English is indeed full of irregularities. So what? A child of two is able to cope with this irregularity - the verb "to be", the plurals of "man" and "sheep" - with little difficulty: you just don't expect them to deal with it before they have burbled "dada" for the first time.

What our correspondent does NOT tell us is that he is talking total tosh. A child taught with phonics WILL be able to decode

Antidisestablishmentarianism

Try doing that with "look and say". Indeed, if the same child came across a picture of our intrepid letter writer in a newspaper, he would be able correctly to decode the caption that reads

MORON

and will understand the full force of the meaning of the word to boot.

Someone Needs a Sound Flogging

And that someone is Dr Bethan Marshall, quondam "Senior Lecturer in English Education" at King's College, London.

Before I set out the details of this case, I might add that your clairvoyant - almost mystical - Pedant-General worked himself into a frenzy just yesterday on this very topic. I suggested that it might be a good idea to...

Ask every single teacher, LEA administrator, teacher training college troll and DfES troll one question:

"Do you now or have you ever AT ANY STAGE since you were out of nappies agreed with or advocated anything other than the Synthetic Phonics method for teaching children to read?"

Any one that answers "yes" to be relieved of whatever position of responsibility into which they may have connived themselves, then rounded up and put in a field where all pupils leaving primary school without the ability to read should, accompanied by their parents, beat them with big sticks.

So to the Today programme at 0810 this morning and the publication of Jim Rose's report on the use of phonics for teaching to read. (Listen again here) First up, we had a little explanation of the difference between Synthetic and Analytic Phonics, nicely done by Aunty's reporter.

In a nutshell, when trying to read the word "street", analytic phonics would break this into a beginning - "str" - and an ending - "eet". Synthetic Phonics first teaches children the 44 distinct sounds of each letter of the alphabet plus key combinations of letters. These can then be used to render "street" as "s", "t", "r", "ee", "t".

So far so good. Let's see what issues are raised by this relatively non-contentious discussion of the topic:

Question 1: How does analytic phonics teach a child the beginning "str" without an understanding of the sounds of the individual letters? i.e. How does analytic phonics work if you have not already covered synthetic phonics?

Question 2: Given the inevitable answer to question 1, what is the purpose of analytic phonics at all?

The BBC (aren't they nice?) has an excellent little page on their website if you want to read more. It contains this quote:

"[Synthetic Phonics] also helps children to break down unknown words, experts say."

I bet "experts" would say that. Indeed, we can now ask some more questions:

Question 3: How on earth would you expect a five year old to read a word he had not seen before unless he can identify and sound out the individual letters?

And:

Questions 4, 5 & 6: Errrrmmmm, we use an alphabetic (as opposed to symbolic) language. Isn't this the whole point? Why - for goodness sake this is incredible now that one thinks about it - on earth do we ditch the whole advantage of an alphabetic system to try and teach children as though our language were symbolic? Are these people mad? (actually - don't answer that. Particularly if you have children of primary school age)

Fast forward to 0850 and we get the accused on the blower to discuss this tricky topic.

Jim Naughtie: "Do you think that the Govt has got it right to make Synthetic Phonics central to the teaching of reading?"

The Accused (Dr Bethan Marshall): "No I don't. I think that what they have listened to is a very very powerful lobby group with enormous commercial interests that are set to make enormous amounts of money out of schools having to change their reading schemes."

She then goes on to say that a survey by the National Reading Panel the US shows "absolutely no difference in success rates between synthetic and analytic phonics."

The press release for this survey is here. It dates from April 13th 2000. The first paragraph of findings might - just, at a pinch - support her claim.

The panel's review focused on the following areas: alphabetics (phonemic awareness and phonics instruction), reading fluency, reading comprehension, teacher education, and computer technology.

Phonemic awareness is knowledge that spoken words are made up of tiny segments of sound, referred to as phonemes. For example, the words "go" and "she" each consist of two phonemes. Phonemic awareness is often confused with phonics, which refers to the process of linking these sounds to the symbols that stand for them, the letters of the alphabet. ...

The panel found that the research conducted to date strongly supports the concept that explicitly and systematically teaching children to manipulate phonemes significantly improves children's reading and spelling abilities. The evidence for this is so clear cut that this method should be an important component of classroom reading instruction.

This would appear to support some analytic phonics. The problem is that the VERY NEXT PARAGRAPH blows her out of the water:

"The panel also concluded that the research literature provides solid evidence that phonics instruction produces significant benefits for children from kindergarten through 6th grade and for children having difficulties learning to read. The greatest improvements in reading were seen from systematic phonics instruction. This type of phonics instruction consists of teaching a planned sequence of phonics elements, rather than highlighting elements as they happen to appear in a text. Here again, the evidence was so strong that the panel concluded that systematic phonics instruction is appropriate for routine classroom instruction.

For children with learning disabilities and children who are low achievers, systematic phonics instruction, combined with synthetic phonics instruction produced the greatest gains. Synthetic phonics instruction consists of teaching students to explicitly convert letters into phonemes and then blend the phonemes to form words. Moreover, systematic synthetic phonics instruction was significantly more effective in improving the reading skills of children from low socioeconomic levels. Across all grade levels, systematic synthetic phonics instruction improved the ability of good readers to spell. [my emphasis]"

Synthetic Phonics doesn't improve success rates? Not from my reading of this survey.
Whatever. I'm sure this is a minor point.

JM: Why use a study from the States when we have a more recent study here that shows the opposite?

BM: No it doesn't show the opposite. The Clackmannanshire study was an extremely small study and used schemes such as the Oxford Reading Tree which relies very heavily on analytic phonics rather than synthetic phonics, so it was a very blurry study and a VERY VERY small one."

Errr... My eldest is being taught entirely using Synthetic Phonics (and he is at a private school. How odd...). He is also using the Oxford Reading Tree.

There is then some largely uninteresting discussion about the motivations of the various lobby groups etc.

JM then brings in Nick Gibb, the Shadow Education Minister for Young People.

NG: The Reading Reform Foundation are a group of teachers who have been volunteering to campaign for phonics in their own time because they know that it works.

JM: Just to be clear: they do not have a financial interest in this.

NG: Not the Reading Reform Foundation. There are those like Ruth Miskin and Chris Jolly who do.

"A powerful lobby group with enormous financial interest"? Shove off. NG continues:

The Clackmannanshire study wasn't a small study. It followed 300 children, divided into 3 groups. One had pure synthetic phonics, one had analytic phonics and the third used a combination of methods and the results were staggering. [His emphasis] In fact they were so staggering that they had to move the other 200 children onto the synthetic phonics programme [My emphasis] and they had a reading age 3 years ahead of their chronological age by the time they were 11.

JM: I haven't read the study in detail, but the interesting thing about it is that it did follow them over a long period.

NG: Yes, it was a longitudinal study. Children were followed over seven years. It was very powerful. When you look around the country at the schools that have used phonics, such as St Michael's in Stoke Gifford, they went from 78% of children achieving level 4 in English at age 11 to 95%. These are staggering results [His emphasis] and often in the most deprived parts of Britain.

The Accused is then allowed back in and mutters some piffle about real comprehension versus "sounding the word out". She also moans that the Clackmannanshire study had only 300 pupils versus 5000 used in the US study.

NG responds superbly:

"The US study doesn't say what you say it does. ... Of course you have to have comprehension and all those other things, but it is easier to comprehend a word if you can actually decode it."

He then summarises the enormous body of reports and reviews that have come out in favour of synthetic phonics before the Accused sums up with this:

"If you come across children that do not respond to this method and you [as a teacher] have no other strategies in order to encourage them to help them to read then you will disadvantage as many children as you advantage."

So let's summarise Dr Marshall's arguments against a "first, fast and only" use of synthetic phonics:

BM View:	Rebuttal
"government has been knobbled by a powerful lobby with huge financial interests at stake"	This is her first objection. It is an ad hominem attack. Read from that what you will. In any case teachers volunteering doesn't sound like a "powerful lobby group" to me, particularly when they are proposing to drop a system that has completely failed a generation of state school pupils.
National Reading Panel study in the US shows absolutely no difference in success rates between synthetic and analytic phonics."	From the press release to the report itself: "Moreover, systematic synthetic phonics instruction was significantly more effective in improving the reading skills of children from low socioeconomic levels. Across all grade levels, systematic synthetic phonics instruction improved the ability of good readers to spell."
On the Clackmannanshire Study: "[the study used] the Oxford Reading Tree which relies very heavily on analytic phonics rather than synthetic phonics, so it was a very blurry study and a VERY VERY small one "	The Oxford Reading Tree scheme is not tied to analytic phonics at all. Ergo, this blurry accusation is wide of the mark (if not a desperate cling to dogma). 300 children in a well designed study (i.e. including a control group) followed for SEVEN YEARS is small? Compared to the US Study which although bigger (5000 pupils), did not follow those pupils for long: the study ran for less than 2 years. [Study announced on March 28, 1998 here, and results announced April 13, 2000. Not much time for studying in between... ] More importantly, said study does not support her refusal to accept synthetic phonics anyway, so its longevity isn't really an issue.
"Synthetic phonics only teaches you to sound the word out. It does not improve comprehension "	HOW THE F*&!@*% DOES SHE THINK A CHILD CAN UNDERSTAND A WORD IF THE CHILD CANNOT ACTUALLY READ IT? YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO READ THE WORD ON THE PAGE FIRST. Besides, Clackmannanshire showed reading ages of 14 for pupils aged 11. You cannot have a reading age of 14 without comprehension.
"Synthetic phonics is taught mechanistically. There is no joy in reading "	HOW THE F*&!@*% DOES SHE THINK A CHILD CAN ENJOY READING IF THE CHILD CANNOT READ? We know what happens with "discovery learning" and that related fashionable nonsense: you get children who look at pictures.
"If you come across children that do not respond to this method and you [as a teacher] have no other strategies in order to encourage them to help them to read then you will disadvantage as many children as you advantage."	You want the US Study? You can have the US Study: "Moreover, systematic synthetic phonics instruction was significantly more effective in improving the reading skills of children from low socioeconomic levels. Across all grade levels, systematic synthetic phonics instruction improved the ability of good readers to spell. " So your chosen study reveals that the most disadvantaged children show the greatest benefit from the use of system that you don't like. Right.... And your balance of probabilities? Condemn every single child in the state system (apart from those schools brave enough to ignore you) to appalling levels of failure OR 95% of children achieving the required levels of reading and comprehension, with the most disadvantaged children having the most to gain. Sod off.

Proof that the state run education system is in the hands of unreconstructed wreckers who care more about their dreams of a socially-engineered utopia than for the children in their care is embodied in this woman.

I have VERY strong views on this topic. It is insane that teacher training and policy-making appears still to be in the hands of total morons. The knock-on affects are huge:
Poor teaching and poor teaching methods affect those at the bottom end of the scale the most;
Without the ability to read, children will fall behind very quickly;
A child that falls behind feels excluded, frustrated and bored at school;
Child that are excluded, frustrated and bored misbehave, disrupting others;
Misbehaving children who have fallen behind are ripe for exclusion from school, particularly if they are the bottom of the heap anyway and have little support or encouragement at home;
Children who get expelled are more likely to find other ways of occupying themselves;
Once beyond school age and without the necessary schooling (or attitude or commitment or self-esteem) will find it all but impossible to find (or sustain) decent paid employment;
Those with a bad attitude, who have been variously failed by then rejected by authority, and who have no jobs are not exactly going to stay on the straight and narrow.

We end up picking up the tab.

P-G Prescription: I think Dr Bethan Marshall needs to spend a bit more time in the classroom. In a sink estate. Where none of the children have been taught synthetic phonics. I'm sure her classmates will be only too happy to adminster a synthetic phonic flogging.

UPDATE: A very warm welcome to visitors from the RRF discussion board on this topic. You may wish to have a little look at my next post for a little follow up.