Aug 06 2008
You don’t fatten a pig by weighing it.
A little channel hopping last night caused me to stumble upon a very interesting discussion on our impending curriculum and exam reform on Newsnight Scotland.
You can watch this on the BBC iPlayer by clicking on the image above (up until the 12th Aug).
It featured two professors who I’ve already enjoyed hearing speak on these matters, Brian Boyd & Lindsay Paterson.
The two features of the piece which disappointed me most (not that I’m a grumbler!) were the presenter/interviewer who seemed to have a very limited grasp of what this was all about. His stumbling attempt at a question about spelling to the Labour MSP was awful! Also, where was the SNP? I can see why they wouldn’t send someone to discuss a policy the programme claimed could fail, but I would have been very interested to hear their perspective.
Finally, I was quite pleased when Brian Boyd stated that a literacy examination is unlikely to improve literacy as this was a sentiment I had expressed not that long ago myself. I particularly enjoyed my wife’s (who’s also a teacher) expression which encapsulated this point in a way far superior to my own: “You don’t fatten a pig by weighing it”.
It was a truly awful question from Gordon Brewer, within a disappointing discussion. I thought the earlier pre-recorded piece with Lindsay Paterson, the EIS and the Herald Chief encapsulated the current political/policy climate well.