Well hello
Peeps, here is my report for October. After the September holiday its been
pretty busy, I have been to Chertsey, Chipping Norton, Biddeford, Bristol, Nottingham, Gwent,
Royston, Bexleyheath (London) and Grantham. Whilst
reporting my travelling it brings back to me a certain point – aren’t hotels in
the UK crap! They mostly refuse to pay out for the cost of air conditioning so
rooms are sweltering hot in the summer and during the winter rooms are freezing
cold. “In order to reduce global warming your room thermostat is set to a
maximum of 23°C”. Well, if that room gets up to
23°C then a part of my anatomy is a fish. Paying homage to the great god Eco
has been a brilliant cop-out for so many industries. How about the other crack
“To help us save the planet put only the towels you have used in the bath for
the laundry” Yes and help us reduce our laundry bill. With regard
to training material, you will see from my website that I am a great believer
in having good quality learning aids. I obviously use powerpoint a lot and do
try to avoid the “Death by Powerpoint scenario”, but we inevitably have to use
something like powerpoint or equivalent. I must say that I am not a great fan
of “Smart” boards, as in my experience this is just another gadget that is
likely to break down. But most of all, I like my students to have fun and enjoy
the experience. Learning shouldn’t be boring. However, I firmly believe that
the students themselves must want to learn. When I taught in FE we were
constantly being told “We need to retain students so we all need to make
lessons more interesting”. Well, I could have cycled round the classroom on a
uni-cycle wearing a tutu and still not gained the attention of many students. I
firmly believe that students should be of the right calibre for training. If
they are not interested, they are in the wrong job. What was
happening in colleges of FE was that students who were not actually interested
were being signed up to ensure funding. Further education in UK colleges of FE these
days is just a numbers game, these institutions that citizens could once look
up to are now only interested in making money. I noted
with some amusement and amazement about the news this week that “Male Hate
Crime” is about to be built into some new law. Well that’s fantastic. The only
benefit I can see from that is a counter-challenge to any spurious claim of
racism/sexism/etc – “You’re only saying that cos I’m a bloke”. What are our
lawmakers thinking of? We need to strip away these ridiculous PC laws and get
back to reality. The whole thing is becoming like something out of Monty
Python. And now for something completely different: Welcome to the ministry of
Naughty Words, If you say a naughty word to somebody you can end up in jail.
Other nationalities coming to this country must think we are simple. Lets check
it out; It’s against the law to insult someone regarding race or religion yet
you can call someone a bald-headed fat bastard and that’s ok? We don’t
need these stupid PC laws. We could replace the lot with one: “Insulting Behaviour”.
There, job done. In the UK
in November we have “Remembrance Sunday” where we say prayers and pay homage to
those who have fallen in war to preserve the freedom that we enjoy today. It is
our tradition to hold two minutes silence at the 11 minute of the
11 hour on the 11 day of the 11 month. This
is in recognition of when the Armistice was signed between Germany and Great
Britain at 11 o’clock on November the 11th in 1918. Some people claim this is a
jingoistic throwback to the days of Empire, others claim its racist and you
will find all kinds of stupid protests. But as stated above, it is simply our
recognition of those who gave their lives in many conflicts to give us our
ongoing freedom. We will remember them. |
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