The Cult of University, Ctd "Lets stop being so snobbish about people working with their hands"

The leader of Ukip, Nigel Farage said on the Friday 30 2013 episode of Any Questions hosted by Nick  Robinson:

"Clearly we do have a problem with some of our young people and that problem is through a failure of education and through an absolute insistence that as many people as possible must go to university and get a degree in an '-ology' of some kind. I blame Maureen Lippmann for the whole thing myself. 

And it might actually be better if with more of our youngsters we encourage them, perhaps aged 16, to go and learn some trades and skills and we stop being so snobbish about people working with their hands [massive round of applause]. That to me would be a very good thing."

Matthew Syed - schools should do more to inculcate grit and resilience

On August 22 2013, GCSE results day, Matthew Syed wrote a piece in the London Times entitled, 'Dare to fail and train those mental muscles.' He said:

"Yesterday Nick Hurd, a government minister, argued that one of the most important qualities in life is grit. He is right. Grit, or resilience, is a powerful predictor of success in everything from maths to music. It is those who take risks, who keep going even when they mess up from time to time, who ultimately reach their potential. Mr Hurd argued that schools should do more to inculcate this virtue, along with other aspects of good character. He was right about that, too. 

But where does grit come from? When you speak to young people, it is striking just how often they blame their innate deficiencies when they are struggling with a subject such as, say, maths. “I don’t have a brain for numbers” is a phrase heard up and down the country. 

This may sound trifling, but it has deep effects. After all, if I lack the mental equipment to understand maths, what is the point of persevering? Surely it is as pointless as someone without hands trying to master origami. In effect, the belief destroys the grit that is essential to success. 

Quds Day - good old fashioned hatred

From Wikipedia here:

"In Iran, the day's parades are sponsored and organized by the government. Events include mass marches and rallies. Senior Iranian leaders give fiery speeches condemning Israel (which they often refer to as "the regime occupying Jerusalem"), as well as the U.S. government. The crowds respond with chants of "Death to Israel", and "Death to America". Many Iranians under the age of 30 continue to participate in Quds Day events; however, recent rallies have not shown a proportionate percentage of participation by young Iranians, with many Iranian students saying that the Arab-Israeli conflict has "nothing to do with us."

Belfast needs a gorgeously designed, non-bar

Belfast needs a laid-back, non-bar, open-minded, top-notch, gorgeously designed, cleverly catered venue that's OPEN 24 HOURS A DAY. #CNB365
— Emily DeDakis (@accidentalemily) August 21, 2013

As one Twitter-user replied, "never a truer word said." And from an American of course. The non-doms always have the best ideas.

The Cult of University, Ctd

I recently wrote an open word of warning to GCSE and A-Level students considering going to university. The message was simple: think for yourself. Engage your critical faculties and make an informed choice. Absolutely do not opt for university on the altogether and very vague notion that university is a ticket to prosperity. Because a degree absolutely is not.

Future Talent tweeted and posted the article on their Facebook and gave the following response:

The only point we disagree with is the statement - "A good apprenticeship is better than a poor degree..." In the growing market of apprenticeships, very often a good apprenticeship is just as strong as a good degree.

I actually agree with this and am a settled advocate of employer-led project learning which produces work ready graduates who are at symmetry with the market on both informational and skills terms.

Chris Dillow writing here also made an interested contribution to the debate and did so without meaning to, for he was actually writing about Jamie Oliver and free will in a post entitled, 'Limits To Agency.'' But his analysis applies readily to this topic. He said:

"There's not much agency involved when an Etonian goes to Oxford and thence to politics or the City: As Owen Jones rightly wrote, David Cameron is also "a prisoner of his background."

 And that's it. The middle-classes and socially aspirational often don't act with agency when they go to university. It is the duty of their background.

Northern Ireland - A forever Groundhog Day

 

 

John Hewitt wrote of Northern Ireland in his 1970 poem, 'Conversations in Hungary':  

"Our friends in Budapest  

days later also, puzzled, queried why,  

when the time's vibrant with technology,  

Such violence should still be manifest.  

 

Between two factions, in religion's name.  

It is 300 years since, they declared,  

divergent sects put claim and 

counterclaim to arbitration of the torch  

and sword."

We can go back even further. A timeless observartion on the state of the Orange Order was made in 1925 by W.D. Allen MP, who wrote in an essay here:

"A remarkable feudal, patriarchal, tribal, historical anachronism in these days of moderation, toleration – whine, don't fight – enlightenment."

As James Joyce said, no longer is Ireland an "outcast from life's feast." When will the mindless swamp of backwardness end? Your country needs you - stop whining, fight back.

 

Think Big!

Think Big! Believe Big!

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin It! Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
- Jon Minnis

Jullien Gordon - "Young people are competing against everyone in their age group in the entire world"

  

Jullien Gordon said two big things in his Ted Talk. The first thing:

"Your life is your vehicle to design, drive and maintain."

The second thing:

"You are competing against everyone in your age group in the entire world. So what are you going to do to stand out?" The world is now flat because of globalisation and the expansion of the internet."

W. D. Allen MP's 1925 critique of the Orange Order

An 1925 essay penned by the Ulster MP W.D. Allen on an Orange demonstration in Tyrone paints an eerily contemporary portrait:

"Under the streamers in the long and wet and narrow cobbled streets, in the early afternoon they are forming columns. They are marching in ragged line – that great nuisance of today – the Protestants of Ulster. Where are they marching along the muddy road, solemnly and ponderously, and fixedly . . . ? You may laugh, you overeducated, you supercilious, you townbred froth of things. The signpost says ‘to the asylum’ – their muddy hobnailed boots go splashing into a wet and peaty meadow bordered with rich, green, swaying trees, cut by a savage wind, needled with driving rain, grey cloud looming over. Cheerfully, quickly, methodically, they roll the banners, for they are expensive banners . . . bought with the weekly threepences and sixpences of working men. Four men . . . noticeable for their gaunt and bitter aspect, maimed and bemedalled, roll out a banner, bordered in black crêpe, Thiepval 1916 it reads. So comfortably remote, remoter even than the ‘relief of Derry’ [in 1689] they are celebrating. Silently, humorously, doggedly, they mass around a dripping platform, a remarkable feudal, patriarchal, tribal, historical anachronism in these days of moderation, toleration – whine, don’t fight – enlightenment." 

Frank McGuinness’s play Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme also hit on the Orange Order. 

When it's cool to be dumb, Ctd with Matthew Syed

Matthew Syed spoke on Radio 4's series Four Thought, Original Thinkers and made a very insightful comment on how young people see hard work. He said:

"It was an eye opening experience for me at university. Just before going into a tutorial I would say to a fellow student:

"Have you done much work this week?"

And they would reply:

"No, none at all. Been in the bar the whole time."

And I would think after the tutorial, "how on earth did you write such an insightful essay on Plato, when you haven't read anything about him?

And of course the reason is that often young people see hard work as an indictment."

Read the original source here.

Matthew Syed - The Growth Mindset

The author of 'The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice,' Matthew Syed (@matthewsyed) recently spoke on Radio 4 about 'the growth mindset' and his philosophy on how to succeed in the world.

Boiling things down, his belief is that we as a society have vastly overstated the talent-effort continuum to the point where our view is that success all comes down to talent. This has huge implications for our behaviour. On the episode, 'Original Thinkers,' on the Radio 4 series, Four Thought, Matthew Syed went into more detail and began with a probing question. He asked:

"Where does excellence come from? How do we get better at stuff?"

He responded bullishly that challenges the very basis from which we look on the world:

Dale J Stephens - Education's Skills Asymmetry, Ctd

Dale J Stephens explained his position on university and the 'Skills Asymmetry' problem:

"That is a notion that is put into our brains from a very young age. The notion that if you want to be a happy, productive person and want to contribute to society, you have to have a college degree. And the fact is college isn't actually training individuals with the skills the job market actually needs.  

In the US for example, there are about the same number of jobs in 2008 before the recession. But they're taking twice as long to fill. Because the graduates don't have the training to meet the needs of the job market."  

Dale was then asked: What skills does the job market want?

"The market wants self-direction, creativity and people who a life-long-learners, able to adapt, able to be flexible. Those aren't things you learn in a traditional college degree or in any school for that matter. What you learn in school is how to memorise facts, follow instructions, meet deadlines. Those skills are very important but they are not unique, everybody has them."

Katie Glass - leaving feminism

My 2nd favourite tweet of all time

Original source here.

An Englishman's view of loyalism

A comment made in response to an article written by Brian Rowan on eamonnmallie.com by an Englishman:

"I am an Englishman and the fag nonsense has to stop as do those Orange marches. How can you want peace and then march through your former enemies town taunting about a victory hundreds of years ago. The insecurity of the unionists has no basis in this day and age and prevents peace in Northern Ireland."

Original source here. Alex Kane said it again, as he has said many times before:

Will Self - "Eventually the relationship between words and money will be reconfigured, I can be sure of that."

Robert McCrum recently ran a series on Radio 4, 'Sins of Literature' and in the episode, 'Thou Shalt Not Steal' discussed with Will Self the very pressing, monetisation of words question. Will Self explained his position on the matter:

"I personally feel that the big impact of electronic reproduction and dissemination on print has got a long way to go yet. You talk to people in the industry and they seem to my way of thinking, bizarrely calm. They seem to be like people in the phoney war in 1939/40. They don't seem to have quite realised what very possible will happen. They don't seem to see an equivalence between the music industry and print; whereas I certainly do. And they don't even seem to see an equivalence between news print and book print, but I think there certainly is. That yes we're in the interregnum between the print era and something else and I think the publishing field have yet to really understand that there will necessarily be a period between which the relationship between words and money is going to become very problematic and tenuous." 

Presenter Robert McCrum then said: "That's the key: until we work out how to monetise that relationship, we're going to be in this limbo." Will Self responded bullishly, saying:

"Eventually it [the relationship between words and money] will be reconfigured, I can be sure of that." 

Northern Ireland - The Generational Cycle of Extremism and Pacifism

Churchill is well know for the following quote:

"If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain."

In a video here, former IRA volunteer Eamonn O Buadhigh said of the Provisional IRA campaign of the 1970s and 80s:

"Terrible things happened in the 70s and 80s. Awful things happened that in no way could I condone, but I do understand. I personally couldn't have anything to do with them, or approve in any kind or way."

Fellow former IRA member Tony Meade said in the same video:

"Were things worthwhile since 1969? No. Too many people died. Too many people died needlessly. Too many innocent people killed in the whole struggle. It's very hard to justify it in terms of what has now been achieved."

The reason I quoted Churchill was because just as Eamonn O Buadhigh denounced the dissident republican insurgency f the 70s and 80s, now a more senior Martin McGuinness (leader of the IRA in the 70s and 80s) is now denouncing the most current generation of republican dissidents, who he called "traitors to the island of Ireland." 

"These people are traitors to the island of Ireland, they have betrayed the political desires, hopes and aspirations of all of the people who live on this island. They don’t deserve to be supported by anyone.”

BBC correspondent, Peter Taylor provided a fascinating analysis on the latest generation of extremists. He said of his interview with Assistant Chief Constable, Drew Harris:

"I wondered if there was intelligence that other groups were contemplating joining the 'New' IRA? "We would watch very carefully for that," he (Drew Harris) said."    

On 'Radicalisation' it was said:  

"All these groups say to themselves that they are in this for the long run." His other concern is that a new generation of young people is being attracted to the dissidents and he described the process with words that I have come to associate more with Islamist extremists than Irish republicans. "Radicalisation is happening," he said. "Young men, even in their very early 20s, are being charged with serious terrorist offences who must have only been very small children at the time of the Good Friday Agreement.  

"They don't have any buy-in to the [peace] process and almost a nihilist response in terms of what a united Ireland would be like. That's worrying." Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has not pulled his punches in confronting the so-called "dissidents". There is no doubt about his visceral loathing, having steered the Provisional IRA from "war" to peace and power-sharing at Stormont. To call the dissidents "traitors to Ireland" with the PSNI's then chief constable, Sir Hugh Orde, standing at his side, was about the most damning insult that he could pay them, many of whom are his former comrades in arms.  

Nor was he daunted recently when the PSNI warned him of a serious death threat and his house was daubed with paint."

Peter Taylor feature in full, here. Here's what Fintan O'Toole said of McGuinness and his peers in their youth in 1998 in the New York Review of Books:

"Most of the current leadership of Sinn Fein is made up of men who were, in the 1960s, angry young Catholics."

Dale J Stephens - University's Party Curriculum

Dale J Stephens quit college and started a movement to break the college as the default career path mind-set called UnCollege. He appeared in Wired Magazine (March/April 2013) and said of his university experience:

"Going to college is meant to be the culmination of 12 years of hard work, determination and study. You're told that if you get good grades, ace your tests and do lots of extracurriculars, you'll get into a good university. The reasoning seems solid when you're at secondary school - after all, everyone tells you that university graduates earn more and are less likely to be unemployed.  

I enrolled... However any idealism was quickly squashed. For the most part, people weren't there to learn - they were there to party, and hangovers permitting, learn something along the way. I started asking questions."

Specifically he asked:

"If the best experiences happen outside the classroom, why was I paying $42,000 to sit inside one?... Is it worth getting into serious debt just to get a degree? Will your degree even get you a job when 35% of grads in the UK are working in roles that don't require one?"

 Stephens then said:

"[College] Rewards conformity rather than independence, competition rather than collaboration, regurgitation rather than learning and theory rather than application."

Loyalist - "Respect Are Culture"

Via L.A.D. 

Northern Ireland - Peace, it's up to us

Thatcher said even decades ago: "this must be for the people of NI to solve" http://t.co/TZScBLXLKz cc @AlexKane221b @bartoncreeth
— Brian John Spencer (@brianjohnspencr) August 22, 2013

Obama said the same: "We need YOU [people of Northern Ireland] to get this right." pic.twitter.com/WScUlEkeY5
— Brian John Spencer (@brianjohnspencr) August 22, 2013

And @AlexKane221b has said the same: "The only people who can solve our problems are ourselves." http://t.co/IL4SR9un9f
— Brian John Spencer (@brianjohnspencr) August 22, 2013