Procrastination man - Part 2a blog of politics, Doctor Who, Bible and random stuff...

This presentation was made by my friend Sean from Warwick SU and gives a pretty good summary of the issues related with Higher Education funding in the England.

Are fees necessary? It would seem that the very notion of a free higher education has disappeared from the minds of the English. Simple phrases like graduate premium indicate that. There's some resentment against Scottish students who don't have to pay for their degree. So whether in form of graduate tax or front-up fees, students would seem to be expected to pay for their education.
From a French perspective, this is nigh on ludicrous. Fees for higher education? No, education should be free for all, only admin fees should be covered etc. Hidden costs are a shame. University independence is fought against and there are even student strikes (those imply blockading lecture theatres, rather than just not showing up). There are tuition fees, mind, but they're around €300 per annum. Might as well say negligible when compared with the £3k+ or even £11k+ English and international students pay to study in the UK.
But look at the state of British universities and compare them with their French counterparts. The Warwick experience is one of the best things that ever happened to me. There is some student support, including counselling services, support from the international office, and probably the best Student Union ever (this year in particular!). The buildings are in a nice state, there are ties with local schools, businesses, industries and communities. The graduate is quite desirable on the job market (although that's debatable). There's no question of just doing a degree for the kicks (well, ok, there might be, but you wouldn't stay in education for ages if you weren't motivated).
Basically, British students want value for money. This leads to a completely different atmosphere in lectures. Unionism is actually defending the students rather than the unions. And, true enough, British students won't strike or blockade lectures, or try to put some pressure on the universities but providing a service to the students is back at the heart of the university's policy, as they wish to attract more students.
Yes, I am viewing British universities in a very good way, quite probably better than what they actually are. But whilst the differences between France and England have been heightened in this account, they are real. And no, things aren't all great in England. For instance, the interest rates on student loans are shambolic in any respect - they should be equal to inflation, not a penny more.
Fees that are real for the student who comes in are a good thing. But £3,000 is more than enough to reach the desired social outcome. Bringing the cap up to £7,000 will make university unaffordable to many (regardless of extended loans). A graduate tax, as advocated both by Mr Cable and the above presentation, has the double inconvenient of looking less real and of allowing students to take free rides, i.e. go for a degree just for the kicks and then work in a non-graduate job and not paying back.
What I would probably advocate for is a mixed system of capped front-up fees (with a £1.5k p.a. cap, inflation-adjusted on a yearly basis), and graduate tax with a cap on total tax paid of 150% of the actual cost of their degree. Said graduate tax should be obviously ringfenced to serve only higher education. In parallel, alternatives like apprenticeship should be encouraged rather than being the option left to those not good enough to go into university.

BBC News report that a teacher who stripped in front of his classroom in order to regain control of it (that definitely is a new technique...) got reprimanded. Other minor incidents are reported in the article.
Beyond the amusing oddness of this story are two much more interesting points, which the BBC fails to analyse.

• A video of the teacher's exploits was reportedly posted on YouTube. Don't try to find it - typing "stripping teacher" in its search engine will presumably yield professional videos. The existence of such a video suggests that a student was filming it (either that or the even more shocking presence of cctv in the classroom). This is an indication that the teacher was struggling to maintain control over his class. I have had a student in my class once trying to take pictures; it did not go well for her in the end.
• The teacher was only reprimanded when resorting to such techniques denotes a lack of expertise (if not worse). Reading on, we find that he was actually sent to the school by a supply teacher agency. This is one major problem in England's education system: there are barely any requirements to be a supply teacher. It is enough to have a blank criminal record. You may even be asked to cover for a French lesson when you don't speak the language. This is the truly shocking element in the news report, yet it is a situation that seems generally accepted. Worse, France seems to be heading in a similar direction.

No, you don't need discipline specialists to teach - but a minimal amount of knowledge seems indicated. In any case, a complete lack of checks and balances seems harmful, as the story illustrates.

Recently, I came across this quote, which brought back the famous debate of whether thought appears before language, or the latter is prerequisite for the former. Education implications are immense, and the question is at the centre of the Vygotsky-Piaget debate. Here is the quote:

Natural logic says that talking is merely an incidental process concerned strictly with communication, not with formulation of ideas. Talking... is supposed only to 'express' what is essentially already formulated... Formulation is an independent process, called thought or thinking and is supposed to be largely indifferent to the nature of particular languages. Languages have grammars which are assumed to be merely norms of conventional and social correctness, but the use of language is supposed to be guided... by correct, rational or intelligent thinking.

Cole and Scribner, quoted as 1940a, 207-208 (reference not found) in Hasan, Ways of saying: ways of meaning, Cassell (London), 1996, p. 19

The arguments are there - language requires thought, be it only because of its grammatical-rational conventions. Logic is natural and shared by everyone, language may inform the way to express logical thought.
However, I ask the reader: how many times have you found that you understood something more clearly after trying to explain it to someone else, or putting it down to paper? Language not only informs the way we express our thinking, it informs our very thinking. As a consequence, Cole and Scribner's first argument is a fallacy. Secondly, though I am no expert on language development, I believe it does not come entirely formed with grammatical structure. Piaget's development stages give a very strong case for a pre-language thought; however, I hold the child's perception of objects and shapes as a language, even though it is not an oral language: there are syntagms and, slowly, a grammar builds up with adjectives (such as colour, or other similarities between syntagms). Verbs come when action comes into play, and only then can any logic develop. An article in Brunner's Making Sense explains how children can start reasoning from the moment they realise their own influence on their environments, and thus a causal system.
That language was entirely embodied before words were formed does not make it less of a language. And it does come before thought.

A BBC News page about a Warwick Uni study is fairly interesting on its own. However, the related articles seem to show a contradiction:

The facts are these, seemingly: behaviour is better than in the 70s, but worse than five years ago. Concerning the latter article, have a look at the photograph chosen to illustrate bad behaviour: a fuzzy image, cut so that nothing above the waist is seen. While BBC News usually prove to be excellent journalists, this association between bad behaviour, violence, and people's legs, is poor at best.

... it creates this beautiful quote by C.S. Lewis, in his address from 1941 The Weight of Glory.

There are different kinds of rewards. There is the reward which has no natural connection with the things you do to earn it and is quite foreign to the desires that ought to accompany those things. Money is not the natural reward of love; that is why we call a man mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money. But marriage is the proper reward for a real lover, and he is not mercenary for desiring it. A general who fights well in order to get a peerage is mercenary; a general who fights for victory is not, victory being the proper reward of battle as marriage is the proper reward of love. The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation. There is also a third case, which is more complicated. An enjoyment of Greek poetry is certainly a proper, and not a mercenary, reward for learning; but only those who have reached the stage of enjoying Greek poetry can tell from their own experience that this is so. The schoolboy beginning Greek grammar cannot look forward to his adult enjoyment of Sophocles as a lover looks forward to marriage or a general to victory. He has to begin by working for marks, or to escape punishment, or to please his parents, or, at best, in the hope of a future good which he cannot at present imagine or desire. His position, therefore, bears a certain resemblance to that of a mercenary; the reward he is going to get will, in actual fact, be a natural or proper reward, but he will not know that till he has got it. Of course, he gets it gradually; enjoyment creeps in upon the mere drudgery, and nobody could point to a day or hour when the one ceased and the other began. But it is just insofar as he approaches the reward that he becomes able to desire it for its own sake; indeed, the power of so desiring it is itself a preliminary reward.

Published (between others) in C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, HarperSanFrancisco 2001. (buy it, it is very good). The emphasis is mine.
This quote, even though lenghty, is believed to fall under fair use. Copyright holders may obviously request for it to be taken down.

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This excerpt shows in clear term the difference (in educationalist terms) between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. Now, amongst the interesting ideas that slip through, is the fact that C.S. Lewis insists on the process of the task, when talking about intrinsic rewards. His examples are admittedly different, as it would be fairly difficult without sounding naff to say that students do the task for its own sake. These are more than just intrinsic, they are internal rewards.
The search for knowledge is seen as an intrinsic reward (and rightly so), as it is linked to the task itself. However, it is larger than the task, and is an external intrinsic reward. If we hastily assimilate motivation and rewards, we can see that there are different kinds of motivations. External intrinsic motivation exists! I believe it, however, to be different from engagement. The third kind, is possibly the most intriguing - and I will leave you to comment on it! I believe it falls under external intrinsic socially induced motivation.
Apologies, this is quite poorly constructed - it is just jotting down different ideas, and seeing where they lead you! ;-) Now comment!

The golden standard of any piece of scientific research is, in the current value system, complete objectivity. In hard sciences, it goes all the way to the supression of the researcher in the finished article.
Coming across the first person, in a maths article, feels weird. Mathematicians will usually prefer, when needed, to use the passive form ("A is defined as ..."), or when there is no choice, use a general plural ("we"). In languages where it is permitted, indefinite pronouns (like the French "on") will usually be chosen.
The use of the first person is in direct opposition to the sacrosanct objectivity. What the reader wants to find out about is the object of the scientist's research, and he probably feels more comfortable when that object is already detached from any enunciative situation.
However, this approach has many inconvenients - on the research validity side, and on the reader's side. It also brings in a heavy dose of hypocrisy. This is why I am putting a case for first-person science forward.

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The advantage of first-person science to the researcher
When producing a piece of academic work, the researcher usually tries to distance himself from his research. Some will refuse to say "I" and will talk of themselves in the third person, in order to put that distance between themselves and their object of research.
This behaviour is based on a confusion between subjectivity and bias, or partiality. I believe it is important, for the research's validity's sake, to avoid bias and prejudice as much as possible. It is always possible to "see" trends where they're not, just because the original research hypothesis was going in that direction - and this should indeed be suppressed.
However, suppressing the researcher himself, goes in the same direction as negating his role and influence in the research (the direction the research is taking, but also his direct influence on the topic). By admitting that he has a role in the research, the researcher can take his influence into account. He becomes, in a way, more accountable - which greatly improves his work's external validity.
In which ways does a researcher influence his work? Well, the obvious issue is that of the questions asked. Research will be made in a certain direction - depending on the researcher's preconceptions. It may seem to be more important in social science than in natural science, however, even the representation that one has of, say, a function (be it a graph, a process, etc.) will have an influence on how research is conducted. Of course, in the case of maths, it will not have any influence on the validity of the result, but it will explain how concepts come to tie in together, and may justify new definitions.
Then, there's the influence on the work itself. Not only which questions are asked, but also their phrasing has an influence, especially in social studies. The effect of the researcher on education has been studied at length - between others, the Hawthorne effect may play a significant role. In quantum physics, researchers have to deal with the influence of observation on the observed phenomena.
Saying "I" allows to take in, and acknowledge all those side-effects of research, improving both internal and external validity of the piece of work.
This is why I believe that researchers in education place randomisation far too high in their esteem. Choosing subjects at random goes in the direction of negating the researcher's role, for very little gain. Indeed, choosing samples completely at random allows for very disproportionate (in terms of ethnicity, gender, achievement, ...) groups to be compared. This is why researchers have come up with the most half-arsed form of randomisation ever: stratified randomisation. The idea is to divide the population into groups, see in which proportion each comes, and then draw at random within those groups accordingly. The problem this poses is that it hides the researcher's choice of criteria, or how far the division into subgroups goes. It does not provide more external validity either, in so far as having a disproportionate group is just as likely as having any other group. The law of large numbers can only be applied if the study is repeated a number of times, on different cases (considered individually), not if you consider one case of a group (treated as such), no matter how randomly people in the group were chosen.

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The advantage to the reader
I am placing this discussion within the framework of legitemate peripheral participation (don't go to the wikipedia entry), introduced by Jean Lave. The basic idea is that learning is only one facet of a social process. It happens when the learner can legitimately participate in an activity that is accessible to him (a refined, social-oriented version of Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, as it were).
Now, if research is presented as distanced from any situation of enunciation, and particularly from the researcher, it is far from being addressable by the learner. There is no room for challenging what is being read, and there is no two-way social process. Participation on the learner's part is not legitimate, and learning becomes more difficult.
It also prevents critical thinking on the part of the reader, as - again - there is noone to challenge, and the researcher is not accountable. Finally, the process leading up to the results becomes hidden - preventing any identification to the researcher, or researcher training.
I'd like to thank Dr Candia Morgan (from London's Institute of Education), as her seminar yesterday completed my previous thoughts on the matter.

Those of you who do maths - by "do", I mean study/research/work in a field related to maths - are probably familiar with the fallacy that "maths are hard". How many times have you heard, as a reply, when you mentioned your speciality, "Oh, I was not good at maths" or "Oh, I never got on with maths", "That's a hard subject".
Of course, maths is not the easiest thing in the world. But then, neither are arts, literature - well, anything, really. Yet only hard science seems to be deemed "hard". When, quite frankly, GCSE maths and even A-Level maths is not that hard.
Have a look first at this video where people are asked to do a long division on the street. (Note that the Brits have a far more sensible way to write them all out, as there is no space issue should you wish to go to decimal places). Now, there are two things of interest here - firstly, even taking into account obvious editing, people have managed to finish the long division; and secondly, the lady that gives it a go at around 1:12 (the last one to get quizzed) has a very interesting reaction, both on being asked, and then on realising she could do it.
The surprise at being able to work out a problem that, even though it is fairly simple, still requires computational skills and looks complicated (e.g. you couldn't do it without a piece of paper, and if encountered, you would go straight to the calculator), shows the problem maths teachers are facing. That people don't expect to manage, and that as a result, failing is "alright" for them. It's the aeons-old idea that some people are good at maths, and some are not; and that nothing can be done about it.

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Still, it does not stop the Brits from trying. BBC News has it that, as a measure to counter the lack of numeracy skills, the government will hire maths "specialists" in primary schools. Quoting the article

The aim is to counter the prevailing culture in which, Sir Peter says, the UK remains one of the few advanced nations where it is socially acceptable - even fashionable - to profess an inability to cope with mathematics.

Will the admission that maths needs special skills lead to that change? It is quite doubtful. Still, having someone around school who likes maths and gets on well with them, might just give the children a "role model", and - eventually - get around the problem of maths hate.

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Now have a look at the video that was featured in the article. Change of focus here - the maths get contextualised. It is no longer a school exercise, it is a routine task. Obviously, the editing has a different bias here, and shows more people failing than succeeding to work out what 20 percent of £2 is.
Now let's overlook the simple "20% off/20% of" grammar problem (the lady that gave £1.60 for an answer shouldn't have been scoffed at - actually, no-one should have!). The approach is fundamentally different. The problem is presented as something "simple" - but yet again, it is contextualised. Ask the same question without the £ sign, and I am certain that more people will manage to get the right answer.
Regarding contextualised maths, the last answer, again, is of some particular interest. The man claims ignorance, and yet gives the right answer. Lucky guess, one might say (as the journalist does)? Not quite - and this is the centerpiece of contextualised maths. Contrarily to what most exercise books ask us to do (i.e. set the whole maths machinery running) he intuitively knew - not guessed - the answer; yet not having done the proper formalised maths, says he does not know. He strikes me more as someone whose mathematical skills are good.^[1]

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Finally, there comes the question of the assessment. Patronising in both videos, the first one gives praise at solving a problem that, after all, was only mechanics; whilst the second one merely laughs at people who give the wrong answer.
Now - a, there is nothing to be ashamed of when you don't manage to get the right answer (the French Minister for Education could not solve a simple year-4-level proportionality problem!); on the contrary, nurturing that shame will only lead to the aforementioned problem of "hard" maths. And b - praise needs to be carefully gauged, as too much praise for little accomplishments will only reinforce the fallacy that maths is hard.

Normally, bringing in a new technology to the classroom/lecture theatres should only open up new possibilities. Thus, OHPs allowed for complex schematics to be shown, even modified at times. Then came the days of digital video projectors, a new medium available in class. And because of this, the number of slides-led lectures just went off the scale, whilst the good old-fashioned chalk tended to disappear.
The problem with a medium like PowerPoint, as opposed to OHPs, is that it seems to allow for everything - even for an entire lecture, whereas OHPs were always thought of as supporting material. As a result, the slides issue tends to be an all-or-nothing choice - either one uses PowerPoint for lectures, and goes all the way with it, actually stopping using the blackboard. Or, they only use the blackboard. Nowadays, in my opinion, it is quite rare to use OHPs when PowerPoint is made available.
Now, PowerPoint offers a whole lot more than blackboards in terms of variety of media involved. You can put graphics, or videos, even nice little fun animations (whose interest is debatable). If cleverly thought of, the whole slides thingy can, 'in discussion-led lectures', put the stress on what lecturers think is important. But it also changes the scope of the lecture.
The main inconvenient of the new medium is that it is, first and foremost, what didacticians would call written expression. As in, non-evolutive. It does not prevent interaction or didactics situations - but the interaction is based on what the author expects the reader to understand/believe, and therefore might go in the wrong direction. Admittedly, questions can be asked; but if the slides replace the use of the blackboard, the lecturer will tend to give an oral answer - and using PowerPoint actually limits the quantity of medium available!
One may ask, though, whether lectures at university level are not already interaction-free. Obviously, with lecture theatres of many hundred, one-on-one interaction is virtually impossible, and thus little interaction seems to happen on the visible level. When the lecturer asks a question, students may not dare answer out of social status reasons, or because they deem the answer to be too obvious; but interaction does not only happen on the oral level. Nods, or looking utterly lost, helps the lecturer inflex his material so that it is understood by the largest numbers. Conversely, when a lecturer looks at his students, he engages with them and an interaction situation is started - which does not happen when he's looking at his slides!

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Now, PowerPoint has its advantages - it prevents lecturers dirtying themselve with chalk, or felt-tip markers. As I said before, it allows to show more different types of media; and on a practical level, it comes up with a solution to lecturers' shabby handwriting. It speeds things up when it comes to showing quotes etc. that are relevant but not crucial to the lecture. But in lectures that are not just an outlook on a situation - one where the student has to understand the material, not just see it exists, i.e. any non-introductory course or non-discussion led course (which by the way implies smaller groups); then it is a hinderance to the actual lecture, insofar as it does not work alongside the blackboard but instead of it.
Good lectures are lectures which know how to take advantage of both the PowerPoint possibilities and what the blackboard has to offer. Maybe interactive whiteboards are the solution, as they let both media live alongside one another? But I must admit that I have never been entirely convinced by interactive whiteboards, though I fail to give proper reasons here. Maybe another solution would be to give access to a video projector that projects on a screen not behind the blackboard, but on the side of the theatre. This would lead lecturers to actually use the blackboard (more central) but still give access to other medium.
More thoughts on this: Andy's blog

So I stumbled upon this nice little video, made by a friend of mine. I'll let you watch:

A really classy idea. In my opinion, it may not be a major breakthrough in maths (obviously), but as an educationalist, I see it as a breakthrough, as it will give people a new way to think of complex functions. Indeed, graphs are quite intuitive for real functions; and 3D graphs work more or less for complex-to-real functions; and those representations, and more importantly switching from one to the other (other representations include a process, or the definition-based set of relations...), will allow for a better understanding of the mathematical object.
Ultimately, it would be interesting to see how usual properties (smoothness, continuity, ...) translate into Reflex. Sadly, to my knowledge, there is no topology on coloured planes, so it might be a long way to go still before breakthroughs are made via Reflex. Usability in schools depends highly on new technologies, but would be well cool.
And then, there's the Arts side. They do look nice, as fractals do. Maths can be nice!
More info on Reflex here

Rising tuition fees in the UK, despite the perverse side-effects of enforcing a de facto selection based on wealth not on capacities, are a win-win measure for the state. Students are to become more serious in their studies and less focused on partying. They are, at the same time, to find part-time jobs to finance/survive university, which means they will get experience for so-called real life.
How this is a win-win situation for the state's finances, is easily seen. On the one hand, a huge amount of money is saved through less subsidies to universities. On the other hand, it supports economy by making an entire new workforce available - one that is relatively energetic (one of the advantages of being young), not so experienced with work, and more importantly barely has a choice. Little wonder that student jobs are the most precarious ones. In increasing the amount of people in need of such a job, the rise of the tuition fees also makes worse work conditions more acceptable.
At this stage, one may still be hopeful that the government does not see things just that cynically. However, BBC News has it that "most of the institutions surveyed did not think students would start major protests - as long as the increased financial rewards benefited them directly, for example, through improved student services." Just how this works, is apalling. That the extra money goes to improved student services, is a) not a consequence of good sense, but an attempt to avoid protests and b) means there is extra money to be spent, thus betraying the actual lack of need for such an increase in fees.

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What would be the consequences of the increase, in the long term? That only people from richer backgrounds will have access to higher education, without burdening themselves with over £20k debt when starting active life; that the choice of the university will no longer be depndent on academic excellence, as was somewhat the case earlier; but on the amount asked. University will be seen as the privilege it is; however, less people gaining further education will mean, in the long term, weaker research and altogether slower progress. That is, unless a move (like the dropped Diplomas move) is made to make professional training more attractive, and university less the default choice. Mind, this will happen de facto after universities get more and more expensive; but if professional training is not improved, it will be a downgrade instead of a simple change of perspective.
For those who still choose university - because, in a country where academic diplomas are required to get "good" jobs, you don't get much of a choice - the burden will be high already during the study period, leading to such extreme cases as this.

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Now even though this measure touches the UK only, it is quite worrying that university reforms in France are following in the British footsteps. As it stands now, university - once accessible to everyone with ridiculously low fees of the order of about £100 per annum - is allowed and encouraged to manage its own budget, and even though fees have not been introduced in the reform, it is clear which path is taken.