Chalk and cheese?

When I was digging around recently, with a view to choosing a suitable course to further my study of Italian, one of the things which struck me was how diverse study opportunities have become over the years. When I took my A levels, it was with University in view, and it was the Careers Masters at school who were supposed to guide your choice of subjects to fit whatever ultimate aim or aspirations you had in mind. I remember the then-newish General Studies A level wasn't counted as a 'proper' one towards the required grades which an offer of a university place might specify.

Alternatively you could go to college - colloquially 'Tech' - to get qualifications in engineering, or 'Night School' for commerce and business studies, which I think were in many cases sponsored by employers. Colleges didn't in most cases run O levels or A levels apart from English or possibly Maths. But then as colleges became polytechnics and then Universities in their own right, and NVQs with their levels started being equated with GCSEs and A levels, quite a bewildering array of choice has built up, with in some cases students doing courses because they look interesting (or dare I say it, easy to get on) rather than with any particular employment prospects in mind.

I don't want to sound élitist, but one of the things I noticed when I was checking around was that a qualification such as a GCSE or A level was being equated to x hours of study. Even as a crude measure of the amount of work required to attain it, it's of very limited value: it's far too dependent on things like what the study actually consists of, how well information is used and retained, not to mention whether the student has any innate ability to start off with. It just seems to me to be in danger of becoming one of those 'lowest common denominator' things which seems to plague many aspects of modern education. I can't really see much point in offering a choice unless the options are significantly different. Or maybe I'm just old-fashioned?

Flash bang wallop

Poor Raggs decided she needed to keep a low profile over the last couple of nights, avoiding the fireworks and bonfire night celebrations. It's odd in a way, because in previous years I've sometimes had to go out with her, and she seems far less bothered when she's out amongst it all than when she can only hear it from indoors.

This year, in contrast, there's seemed to be much less of a build-up to the actual night: I daresay the increasing cost of fireworks in a recession is curtailing some of the more prolonged activity - though last night in the sports ground across the way from us, I could see a quite spectacular display above the rooftops at one point. There are a few disembodied bangs and crashes around tonight, but most of it seems to be finished.

We went for a walk in the park this morning to make up for it. The weather was dry and quite sunny, but there was a distinct autumn chill in the air, and as we walked back through the woods afterwards, I noticed most of the trees were fast shedding their remaining leaves.

Homework!

As part of the Italian course I started on Friday, I had some homework to do. It may seem a little incongruous to refer to "homework" in the context of a course at Uni, but given that it consisted of three pages of written exercises doing things like conjugating verbs and inserting articles correctly into sentences - much like I'd done when I was learning languages at school - it certainly felt like homework as I'd remembered it. I even did it the night before, as I always used to, though having to get up early enough in the morning to do a piece of biology homework due to be handed in that same day lurks distantly in my memory (and may well partially account for why I failed O level Biology!)

It took me about an hour and a half, which was a lot longer than I used to spend on my school homework, but then I'm very much out of practice, of course, and I had to spend quite a few minutes doing a bit of hasty revision from the course textbook which as luck would have it arrived in the post this morning. (Unlike when I was a pupil at school, this time I had to buy my own). But I plodded on and was quite heartened when I wrote one answer which I thought looked wrong, and when I checked again, found that it actually was wrong. Instinct can be a very good sign of innate ability, I've always found.

I don't know what the tutor's going to do with the answers: it's probably very 'politically incorrect' to mark homework nowadays - some wonky theory about it being more important to do the work than actually getting it right, I daresay. Pffft.

Time zone

I remembered last night (or more accurately, my PC did it for me automatically) to alter the clock back to GMT or winter time. I must admit I was getting just a little peeved at having to get up while it was still dark in the morning and watching through the windows as the light slowly turned into day - more so than the difference between getting dark now at just past 5 in the evening as opposed to 6.

I remember the ill-fated experiment in the late 60s of a 'permanent' summer time: I was at college in Birmingham at the time, and in December it didn't get light till about 9.30 some mornings - halfway through the first lecture. And in the evening by the time I caught the train home it was almost five and already dark, so I couldn't see any benefit from the scheme at all and I was glad when it ended. "EU harmonization" or not, I hope it isn't resurrected!

Practice, practice

This morning, I made a start on my new blog - written in Italian! Having started the course on Friday, if I'm to regain any sort of proficiency at all, I've got to practice in between lessons, and so I thought that a bit of writing - even if only a few words - is going to help. I struggled and had to look up quite a few simple words in a dictionary, as well as not remembering how you form the future tense, so I had to refresh my memory on that as well. However, considering the last time I wrote anything in Italian was forty-five years ago, I don't think I've done too badly. I deliberately kept it simple, and resisted the temptation to compose an entry in English and just translate it. No doubt it's more than just a bit stilted, and it's going to come across rather obviously as a first-form beginner practising tenses and simple nouns with articles - but hopefully it'll grow into something a bit more substantial as time goes on.

Back to skool school!

Maybe it's because I've been reminiscing an awful lot just lately, and maybe it's because the nights are really starting to draw in... but I started getting the vague feeling I ought to do something a bit more useful to occupy my time, and maybe even my brain cells as well. Without really thinking consciously about it, I started to feel drawn towards the idea of picking up the study of languages once again. Having already got A levels in French German and Latin, there seemed limited mileage in progressing any further there: I'd never really done much more than dabbled with either Spanish (which I'd done as a General Studies 'extra' for a term or two in the sixth form) or Portuguese (which I'd looked at many years ago on a BBC TV series which I don't even recollect getting to the end of). Which left Italian. In the two terms I'd spent briefly at Uni straight after leaving school, I'd got up to O level standard - or so I was told - but I'd got nothing to show for it, or at least not "officially".

So over the weekend I did a bit of ferreting around. I felt attracted to the idea of a proper class or course as giving perhaps more in the way of motivation than just doing something online - and found that Warwick University have a 'Post Beginners' course on Friday afternoons, which sounded just what I was looking for.

As this afternoon approached, I was looking forward to it - albeit with an odd butterfly or two - and once we got underway I was surprised how easily I slipped back into the old routine. It's been thirty-odd years since I did my degree, and another fifteen previous to that since I last studied Italian (or anything else full-time), but while I'd be exaggerating to say it all came flooding back, there was definitely more than just a trickle. And I certainly didn't feel anywhere near as self-conscious as I thought I might.

Benissimo!

Those who can, do: those who can't, teach

I was rather touched this week to read about the poor guy who gained the dubious honour of being the first teacher "banned for life for being useless". Part of me feels to compelled to say that some of my old schoolmasters were regarded as pretty useless, but largely escaped the consequences of it - apart from being played up by us all the time! And that was the main yardstick by which we all judged a "good" teacher, basically because if the teacher couldn't keep order in lessons, no-one learned anything. Or at the very least, it was an uphill struggle.

And I'd therefore argue that it's every bit as important for today's pupils as it was for us... and for the same reason. However, that doesn't seem to have featured in the General Teaching Council's reasoning, perhaps because it's a tricky thing to measure or quantify. They cite poor lesson planning (which for us was a non-issue: all the teacher had to do was remember where we'd got to in the textbook and carry on from where we'd left off) and delayed marking (which a lot of our Masters were guilty of, although we did always get our homework back eventually).

But then - and it isn't clear what standards prevailed at the school concerned here - teaching an O-level stream or A-level set in a Grammar School would at least in theory have attracted a high standard of applicant, as well as giving our Headmaster an incentive to do something about anyone who didn't come up to scratch.