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School-University

  • An education system not to trust
    26 October 2008 par (Open-Publishing)

    The THE has published a survey in which 77% of lecturers denounce that they are pressurised to award higher grades to students than deserved. There are some important perversions of interest underlying the publication of such data by the THE.
    If the THE, the universities, the QAA, the government, the pseudo-unions, or anyone else in the elite caste architecting the direction of British HE, wanted to really ensure meritocracy and student-centred learning in academia, they would first (…)

  • Stop elite research now!
    11 October 2008 par (Open-Publishing)

    Research in universities across the globe is becoming more and more privatised.
    This must be stopped because it will centre power in the hands of a few who will inevitably ask for the payment of very high university fees and will not give access to research which does not support their speculative interests.
    Berlusconi in Italy is trying to privatise most of the public university research. This should be stopped!
    Italian students and universtity professors are united in a "line of (…)

  • A reason to Stay: Still Crazy After All These Years
    27 September 2008 par (Open-Publishing)

    I came across this piece while shuffling through some old papers. I wrote it over 16 years ago, and it struck me how essential its central message still is today, perhaps even more so than when I put dot-matrix inkjet to side-perforated paper. My natural tendency as a writer was to try to fiddle with it, to "update" it and make it better. I’m resisting, mostly, except to say that one of my first thoughts was that we must be crazy to still be doing this 16 long years later, having weathered (…)

  • A case of disciplinary action against a university academic
    5 September 2008 par (Open-Publishing)

    A case of disciplinary action against a university academic is presented on COBAS UK. In the analysis a case for managerial discrection and union passivity is presented highlighting how disciplinary procedures are internalised within the system in order to extend managerial control.
    http://www.cobas.org.uk
    COBAS UK

  • Schooling: Liberation or Mind Control?
    3 September 2008 par (Open-Publishing)

    Schooling: Liberation or Mind Control?
    BY RICHARD HEINBERG
    If there were no age-specific and obligatory learning institution, “childhood” would go out of production. The youth of rich nations would be liberated from its destructiveness, and poor nations would cease attempting to rival the childishness of the rich. If society were to outgrow its age of childhood, it would have to become livable for the young. The present disjunction between an adult society which pretends to be humane and (…)

  • Rank and file - Part 3
    17 July 2008 par (Open-Publishing)

    The institution of tighter job regulation for workers accompanied by greater discretion for managers in universities to make decisions over employment issues, represent an irrational postmodern transformation of universities into capitalist corporations, while the ideological neoliberal project driving such developments, functions to alienate academics and other university workers.
    Academics find themselves working involuntarily in the interests of the capital imperative; for institutions (…)

  • City Hall Scandal Hits Baltimore After “The Wire” Exits
    28 June 2008 par (Open-Publishing)

    “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” - Oscar Wilde
    Baltimore, MD - A corruption scandal recently surfaced at City Hall. It centers on the Mayor, Sheila Dixon, and charges of bribery. Fur coats and a couple of trips out of town as gifts are supposedly involved, according to published reports. The dollar amount doesn’t seem significant. (1) We’re not talking about a Jack Abramoff-Let’s-Buy-a-Congressman-scheme here, folks. (2)
    I’m sorry that the HBO show, “The Wire,” just (…)

  • Blonde ambitions
    23 June 2008 par (Open-Publishing)

    The recent league tables hitch of Kingston University has made the round of the national news. I cannot understand why. Just practical things, a VC would say. From a point of view of a marketing manager in the University UK PLC it would be ridiculous to provide evidence of such collusions between students, lecturers, senior management of the university up to the government. It is something that is intended to be there already: an intricate network of interests bum-to-bum as nobody knew (…)

  • Alienated at work? Don’t sell yourself.
    15 May 2008 par (Open-Publishing)

    Alienated at work? Don’t sell yourself.
    Legislation since the 1990s has introduced a focus on mass education , performativity and marketisation in British Higher Education, whereby reduced public funds are allocated against student numbers and performance indicators, forcing reliance on market mechanisms to differentiate institutions based on the quality of education, which is essentially treated as a commodity.
    A technocratic and instrumental view of knowledge is adopted, leading to (…)

  • David Boren Dusts Off Oklahoma’s "Criminal Syndicalism" Law
    27 April 2008 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    By Michael P. Wright — Norman, Oklahoma — mpwright8@aol.com
    April 2008
    According to Webster, a political revolution does not have to be violent:
    It says (2b) that a revolution is "a fundamental change in political organization; especially : the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed."
    According to this Oklahoma law (paragraph B), it is a felony crime for anyone over the age of 18 to advocate revolution on a college or (…)