Monday catch-up

Some articles found on the web that I think you should read..

1. Boris Johnson on "Why is literacy declining". An excellent article, do read it all, here's an extract:

'I commend an excellent pamphlet by Miriam Gross, published today by the Centre for Policy Studies, in which she examines some of the difficulties with improving literacy in London. She takes aim at some familiar targets of conservative wrath: child-centred learning, by which children are invited to “discover” the meaning of the printed page before them, rather than being taught; the hostility to academic selection that has bedevilled the teaching establishment; the lack of discipline in some schools; the time wasted in considering the “emotional well-being” of the child, rather than good old instruction in reading and writing.

Some of these complaints will no doubt infuriate many hard-working teachers, and some educationalists will be outraged at what they will present as a traditionalist and downright reactionary approach. At the heart of Miriam Gross’s argument is the story of one of the greatest kulturkampfs of the last century. It is like the dispute between the Big-Enders and the Little-Enders, or the war that raged between those who thought Christ was homoiousios and those who thought he was homoousios in his relation with God the Father – except that this argument matters.

Ask yourself what happens when your powerful Daily Telegraph-reader eye skitters effortlessly through this article. What cognitive processes are going on in your head? With incredible speed you are decoding clutches of letters into sounds, in order to identify the words; and those words are being virtually simultaneously converted into sense; and the reason you can do this so fast is that hard-wired into your reading brain is an understanding of how the alphabet generates the 44 sounds of the English language; and the best way to reach that instinctive understanding of how letters make sounds is a system known as synthetic phonics.

That is the system that rescued me after the appalling verdict of my grandmother. I remember going to primary school and sitting cross-legged as the class learned C-A-T, and how each sound helped to make up a word, and after a while I had cracked it; and I find it unbelievable that so many children are not given the opportunity to learn by this simple and effective means.

It was about 100 years ago that the split began, and some educationalists began to argue that phonics was too dogmatic, too authoritarian. It was demoralising for children who couldn’t spell out every word in their heads, they said. Perhaps they should be encouraged just to recognise the words – and so was born the system of “whole word recognition”, intended partly to bolster those who found phonics a strain.

And yet the result, say the phonics proponents, is that children are not being given the basic all-purpose deciphering tools they need. That is why literacy has declined in the past 50 years, they claim, and that is why we face a skills shortage caused very largely by the inability of one million working Londoners to read and write.'

Well said Boris, do you think that the oleft don't want people to be able to read and think for themselves? Do they want people to be reliant on state media (the BBC) for all of their information?


2. All the fuss at the BBC about 'banning the Burkha' in France and the possibility of the same happening here, but not a word about the news that

'Syria has issued a directive banning women who wear full-face veils from attending public and private universities, the state-run news agency Sana reported on Sunday.

...

The full-face veil, or niqab, that is worn by some Muslim women is “inconsistent with the values and ethics of academic traditions,” he said.

The ministry had received requests for the ban from a large number of university students and their families, Sana reported.

The ban applies to women wearing full-face veils, not those who only wear headscarves.'

Any comment on the BBC? Or are the claims that anyone wanting to ban the burqa are Islamaphobic just hot air?

For those confused by the different types of Islamic attire to repress women, here's a handy guide...


3. The FT's Alphaville explains what may be behind the recent cocoa trade

'Et voila, the most rewarding ‘have your chocolate cake and eat it’ trade in all of history may have become the consequence. For, if you have the means to go physically long the commodity and short the paper, you can quite literally have it all.

You can gather contango yield (which is attractive in a low interest rate environment), whilst also speculating on the appreciation of the underlying price.'

The rest of the article I found somewhat tricky to digest, unlike some decent 80% cocoa chocolate.


4. The New Statesman attacks the left's latest 'right wing' hate figure - Michael Gove - for daring to criticise the left-wing BBC for being biased. I think my view of the BBC is well enough known to not repeat again!


5. News Biscuit report that:

'Prime Minister David Cameron led condemnation of tributes to ‘a dangerous self-pitying sociopath with a persecution complex,’ found on the Facebook fan page ‘Gorden Brown u Ledgend’.

The man, known affectionately to his admirers as Mopey, is described on the social networking site as ‘a gent’, ‘the iron chancellor’ and ‘a really a nice bloke once you get to know him’, in contrast to the more widely accepted image of a man who emerged seething with resentment from a long spell of incarceration inside 11 Downing Street and immediately went on a rampage to settle scores.'

The logical problem with this article is are there really any people who 'admire' Gordon Brown and think he is ‘a really a nice bloke once you get to know him’; I thought the consensus was that he was a total git.