Hello 
I'm Siobhan Curran/Kisa Naumova, and this is my weblog. I tend to write about stuff like crossdressing, Macs, code, cats, wine and Second Life, but in general it's just an ongoing conversation about all sorts of stuff. If you'd like to know a little bit more about what this all is, I recommend starting on this page which has a little bit of info on who I am, and what I'm trying to do — or you could dive into my five years worth of archives if you like.
Otherwise, feel free to close this box and explore...
Note To Self: Erin Should Not Be On The Floor
I mean really. She's my pride and joy. Years of my life are archived in excruciatingly detailed, um, detail on her — and to keep her on the floor, by my feet is Cruel And Heartless™
I will move her in the morning. Therefore this site will go down.
Go look at pretty pictures of me in the meantime.
[...]
On seconds thoughts — in the cold, sober light of the morning — it's completely obvious why Erin is on the floor.
It's because there's nowhere else in this tiny house for her to go 
Oh The Humanities
There's a really interesting little piece by Aleks Krotoski in The Guardian's Games Blog from last Thursday (What they can't teach you at game design school ) about "games-related degrees" — courses set up to focus specifically on computer game design and development.
While Aleks concentrates specifically on the games industry, I think the point she's making applies to many more fields — not least the television industry.
In most creative industries, the people from the outside have the brightest ideas and the cleverest approaches to solving problems.
A while back, one of my students was adamant that she needed to be taught "skills" — she insisted that because everyone in the TV industry that she knew used Final Cut Pro, it was my job to teach her how to use it so that she could get a job.
As it happens, I did show her how to use it — at least, in the kludgy, self-taught way that I use it — but I had a long chat with her about the very thing Aleks is talking about.
See, I firmly believe that if you focus purely on learning skills, then you effectively render yourself defunct and obsolete within a couple of years. This student had obviously set her heart on a career in TV — but she was restricting herself to a position within that industry which, with a little effort at the time, she could reach much higher.
Rather than learning how to use Software Package A on Machine B — and being stuck with that for the rest of her life, I tried to encourage her to develop her ability to teach herself things.
...
Travelling back from Sainsburys last night, I found myself stuck behind a bus that had an advert for one of the local colleges around here. It was promoting itself on the basis of being "The UK's No. 1 college for graduate employment" (or words to that effect).
Whether or not that's the case, or some clever manipulation of statistics, I think is irrelevant. What's important to me, is that the focus of "getting prospective students to come to your institution" seems to be all about "getting a job".
And whilst I admit that it is (obviously) important to get a job after leaving university, I can't help but think that turning academic institutions into 'training centres' is a Bad Thing™
The focus, I feel, of a university should be about developing an individual's ability to think, to question, to discover, to invent — not about learning how to push the right buttons in the right order, or how to function within already-established norms.
I worry sometimes, that Higher Education is becoming a glorified YTS scheme. Call me biased if you like, but I really think more emphasis should be on Humanities.
Because without us, there'd be no-one left to think.
the business students could only cope with problems they had previously encountered. The maths and philosophy students [...] could apply their thinking and creativity to the new and the unexpected.
That reminds me very much of an argument I had with the English tutor when I was training to be a teacher. We were discussing how to teach children to read, and I — having learnt through phonetics — naturally assumed that that was the best way to go.
"But these days, we think it's better to teach children how to read on a word-by-word basis", he said.
That made no sense to me — and I challenged him on it. How, I asked, could we possibly hope to teach children every single word? Wouldn't it be better to give them the building-blocks of reading and let them learn themselves?
He used an analogy...
"If I'm stuck up Kirkstone Pass in my car, and it breaks down, when the AA man comes to fix it, I want him to just fix it — not explain to me what he's doing"
(or something like that)
"But wouldn't it be better if he did? Then you could fix it yourself next time, and not have to wait for hours half-way up a mountain covered in snow", I retorted.
Cant remember what he said after that 
It was probably something along the lines of "grr grumble mumble tut tut smart-arse grumble grumble".
There are two things that have been mulling round my head since earlier on. Firstly that I feel this is symptomatic of a shift in — for want of a better word — power within teaching. The implications of competition within teaching establishments (league tables and the like) effectively mean that schools and colleges and universities are falling over each other to give the public what they want.
And what the public want — or think they want — are skills. It's very similar to the 'purchasable lifestyle' pattern of consumeristic behaviour — "I want to be like this, therefore I need to buy that".
"I want to be an X, therefore I need to learn Y".
worth studying for their own sake — for the pleasure of it. It seems that notion is quite taboo nowadays.
And that's the second thing. Intelligence seems to be — as you rightly point out — a taboo.
I remember watching that Test The Nation thing on telly a while back — that thing with Anne Robinson and Philip Scholfield — and getting really annoyed how stupidity was elevated into some kind of 'desireable' quality.
You could see people really proud of getting low scores, whereas the ones who were doing well were ridiculed. Even when someone did well, they invariably put it down to "being a fluke" or something.
It seems, to me, that it's perfectly socially acceptable to say "I'm thick me", yet to say something like "I'm quite clever" deserves being brought down to earth. It's like being intelligent is something to be ashamed of — and that can't be right. Can it?
...
Oh yeah, and the third thing (sorry) is that I think this is quite dangerous. You could, I suppose, say something to me like "Ack Siobhan, does it really matter? If people want to do vocational-specific course, then why shouldn't they?" — and you'd have a point.
But if it becomes the norm, then that's a real problem — because it shifts attention, resources, staff, money away from the humanities. For every "BA (Hons) Blogging" that gets set up (and it wouldn't surprise me if that happens), more valuable resourses are diverted away from abstract (and useful) courses.
This is a favourite rant of mine BTW — can you tell?
'"But these days, we think it's better to teach children how to read on a word-by-word basis", he said.'
I knew someone who tried to learn to play the piano this way. He would laboriously memorise a piece of music note by note. It was a tremendously ineffective way of going about it because he was having to relearn things — how to place his fingers on the keys or whatever — over and over again. At the end of it he knew one piece of music. To learn a second he would have to go through the whole process right from the beginning.
"effectively mean that schools and colleges and universities are falling over each other to give the public what they want."
The trouble is, you don't know what you want — that's why you need educating. I could not have predicted that I would be interested in the things I am interested in now. Education is supposed to change you — in some way or other you should be a different person at the end of it. Skills training is all about adding something to the person you already are. It's as if people think they don't ever need to get better.
From what I can gather in some schools it is considered "non-inclusive" to display any knowledge not immediately available to every other member of the class. Being thick is almost a value — at least you are sympathetically connecting with other people, not excluding them because you know something they don't!
While Aleks concentrates specifically on the games industry, I think the point he's making applies to many more fields — not least the television industry.
Assuming this is the same Aleks Krotoski (and how many can there be living here) as hosted BITS, the only truly good video games show to come out of the television studios of this island since Gamesmaster. You'll find that, much like the co-hosts, Aleks is female.
(mutters somethings about the dangers of assuming 
)
Ah. My bad. Thanks Lauren ... I'll go fix that. Normally I wouldn't go back and correct something earlier on (it makes comments pointing it out look odd for a start) — but that's a pretty big slip up on my part.
God, I'm thick me.
Our entire economy (here in the states at least) would fail if it's people were truly educated. I would explain that in more detail, but it's impossible for me to do that without going off on a 4 page rant, and you've covered it pretty well anyway, so I'll spare you. 
Phonetics versus Look Say
My primary school used phonetics to teach us to read, but because of my dyslexia it didn't work for me I actually read and spell using a version of the look say that I worked out for myself. If I had been taught look-say I would have found it easier to learn to read.
My learning to read was a huge trauma for me (so much so I can't remember about it, at all), my teachers and my parents who had to deal with my schools complaints about my extremely disruptive behaviour in the classroom.
Thing is I agree that phonetics is the better way for most children but not all and it shouldn't be the only way to teach children to learn, there has to be flexibility in the system.
Give a hungry man a fish and he'll not be hungry again that day. Teach a man to fish .... and he'll sit in a boat and drink beer all day
M
I can't even begin to comment. Anything I would say would be very ranty. Just imagine some decisive pollitical comment that makes the current lot in power look manipulative and moronic in equal measure. 
But they don't care — they've got the statistics to prove they're doing an excellent job and that's all that counts.
We've (the UK) celebrated being stupid for quite a long time now. It certainly was going strong back in the 70's when I was a nipper (and learning not to appear to be smart). It was around in the 40's (read some of the children's books of that time). I'd be willing to bet it came from the class war thing: don't go outside your class, so don't be different and stand out, so don't be intelligent/beautiful/a tranny (who are the all three at the same time ).
I've had this argument so many times — especially at the JobCentre. I like to quote a study that was done about 15 years ago. A group who train graduates for management careers decided to produce a test to see if they could predict what kinds of student would make the best managers. They found out that those who had studied relevant subjects — like Business Studies, Management Studies and so on — performed only averagely well. Far out in front were mathematicians and philosophers. The reason was obvious to them — the business students could only cope with problems they had previously encountered. The maths and philosophy students — because they had studied abstract, "useless" subjects — could apply their thinking and creativity to the new and the unexpected.
Cardinal Newman said it 150 years ago or so: "... the man who has learned to think and to reason and to compare and to discriminate and to analyse, who has refined his taste, and formed his judgement, and sharpened his mental vision, will not indeed at once be a lawyer, or a pleader, or an orator, or a statesman, or a physician, or a good landlord, or a man of business, or a soldier, or an engineer, or a chemist, or a geologist, or an antiquarian, but he will be placed in that state of intellect in which he can take up any one of the sciences or callings I have referred to... with an ease, a grace, a versatility, and a success, to which another is a stranger. In this sense, then,... mental culture is emphatically useful."
Of course there is also the other point that art and maths and philosophy and computing and so on are worth studying for their own sake — for the pleasure of it. It seems that notion is quite taboo nowadays.