TheBanyanTree: NEVER turn your back!

[Barb Edlen]

I do so love how you entertain yourself, Peter. It makes the world a better place. 

> ✿*ﾟ‘ﾟ･.｡.:*


> On Aug 19, 2018, at 10:31 PM, peter macinnis <petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au> wrote:
> 
> You know how in monster/thriller movies, when the Evil One is slain, the goodies turn their backs, and it springs to life and has to be killed all over again?  Yeah, well, I turned my back on 'Australian Backyard Earth Scientist' (a book for ages 10 to 14, give or take a few score). Done and dusted, game over...
> 
> Nope.  Teachers' notes to do!  First up, this isn't a designed-for-school book, but marketing say we have to have notes.  No probs, I can reel off 45 or so activities...
> 
> Snag: the activities have to be keyed to the National Curriculum, which I have been battling all the first half of this year. I have a bleeping Master's degree in curriculum and assessment, and I assess this alleged curriculum as a fail where science is concerned. Trust me in this, I'm a bleeping scientist.
> 
> Just to take two test words that I applied, the "national curriculum" doesn't mention atoms, and it doesn't mention rocks. Instead, it's full of sociological aspirations like "Science knowledge helps people to understand the effect of their actions".
> 
> True, that stuff is important, but this theory business comes after there's a corpus of knowledge and understanding. If they get their hands dirty, they pick up neat and important ideas like that as they go along. If the Olduvai people had worked from that hymn sheet, forget osteodontokeratic culture: they would never have made it to banging the rocks together.
> 
> It's just lucky I spent the first six months of this year subverting the National Curriculum, weaseling real science into the interstices for microscopy. With that experience I've been quiet (aside from profanity, obscenity, blasphemy and blood-curling oaths) and after 70 hours, I have 10,000 words of subversive, science-packed stuff, all ready to send off.
> 
> If the editors were alert, they might notice that any perceived link between the sociologists' BS and the fruits of my BSc can only be called amazingly tenuous, but given that nobody can read the sociology without their eyes glazing over, I reckon I'll get away with it. The teachers will leap to the practical stuff.
> 
> When I was subjected in a Master's seminar to two hours of hogwash about an obscure Dutch philosopher by somebody who had never been in a classroom, there was silence at the end, but as I was there, the hush didn't last. Those who knew me looked at me, waiting.  Well, I'm a slave to duty, and a glutton for punishment, so long as I'm dishing it out.
> 
> Draining the last of my dry sherry, I asked in my best sepulchral tones: "And what does X (the unmemorable Dutchman) suggest for somebody teaching a double period of science to 40 Year 8 boys in the lowest stream, some with little English beyond obscenities, some fresh from a war zone, most of the rest recently let out of the reformatory, last two periods on a hot Friday afternoon?"
> 
> I love the sight of rabbits transfixed in the headlights.
> 
> Dick the Butcher was wrong. Shakespeare should have had him say "First, let's kill all the sociologists!"  We could have kept the lawyers, and they would have made the killings a legal, as well as a moral, obligation.
> 
> peter
>