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Post by fascinating on Aug 3, 2016 8:13:10 GMT 1
You just don't know how deep you are in la-la land do you? Don't be silly. You do realise Marchesa has access to your IP address, don't you? I have something even more certain. You are "louise" - why lie about it? Oh you are CERTAIN are you? Certain of what is FALSE! I am not lying, I am not Louise. |
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Post by jean on Aug 3, 2016 9:26:02 GMT 1
I wonder if the 'something even more certain' he 'has' is as incontrovertible as his evidence that I am A sad failed comprehensive latin teacher, sacked from her profession for misconduct... Lies like this pronounced as fact on a public messageboard are upsetting at the time, but they're all of a piece with the fantasy life Nick has constructed for himself. He has no formal academic qualifications. There's nothing wrong with this of course - and perhaps one should admire the independence of mind that led him to walk away from academic institutions because he believed they had nothing to teach him. But the problem is that such a person never has to test his ideas against other thinkers, except in forums such as this, where most of the (few) contributors don't claim to have scientific qualifications, and where he proceeds by bombast and insult rather than anything that could be called reasoned argument. It's a bit sad really, because in spite of his rejection of academia, he craves recognition from it - remember that bizarre claim that he'd been awarded the best philosophy degree in the entire country? As if you know anything about philosophy as a subject! I have two degrees in the subject, thankyou, and in my first received the highest marks of any degree in the country. A meaningless claim, given the independence of British universities from each other. |
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Post by fascinating on Aug 4, 2016 7:44:49 GMT 1
You forgot to mention "complete absence of evidence".
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Post by mrsonde on Aug 4, 2016 16:17:33 GMT 1
Ooh-er! Don't he talk la-de-da? And all them science-sounding words! It's called being educated about science, Alan. Thinking about it, trying to understand it, not just going through the (very easy, in most science's case, especially Physics - easier than earning a Media Studies degree, that's for sure) motions of earning a certificate. No bollocks whatsoever - completely true, incisive, and thoroughly explanatory. Or perhaps you would deign to point out where it's in error, in the slightest? Leave aside your usual manner of thinking for the moment if you could - the one where you think being scientific is being "convinced" of something on the basis of no evidence whatsoever - and give us the benefit of your superior wisdom. |
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Post by mrsonde on Aug 4, 2016 17:39:38 GMT 1
Don't be silly. You do realise Marchesa has access to your IP address, don't you? I have something even more certain. You are "louise" - why lie about it? Oh you are CERTAIN are you? Certain of what is FALSE! I am not lying, I am not Louise. Yes, you are. Oh dear - I think the Boston Strangler tried this one, didn't he, with similar success? Perhaps you've forgotten that you've pm'ed me under both names?  |
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Post by mrsonde on Aug 4, 2016 17:58:33 GMT 1
I wonder if the 'something even more certain' he 'has' is as incontrovertible as his evidence that I am A sad failed comprehensive latin teacher, sacked from her profession for misconduct... Lies like this pronounced as fact on a public messageboard are upsetting at the time, but they're all of a piece with the fantasy life Nick has constructed for himself. Nothing about my life is "fantasy", sadly. If my observation was inaccurate, it's certainly no more so than yours. At least I had a reason to make it, a report from one of your employers. What's yours? Apart from two degrees. Not that that matters a jot, about anything. Ahhh - you're referring to me telling you I left Wales in my fourth year, I surmise. Leaping to conclusions from incomplete information, a perennial fault of the incurious and uneducated. I test my ideas all the time - it's vrtually all I do, these days, twenty hours a day. That's science - in philosophy, I've done it since my twenties. And now - tell us, Athene, how exactly do you do it? Apart from canvassing your ludicrous Green manifesto on the doorsteps of Liverpool, that is? Though that does remind me - did you ever get around to asking Nay for his help in "testing" your ludicrous insults about the foundations of music? Just happy to be told what to think, I forgot. Anything else would be an "existential threat" to your cosy little world-view, your total disregard for the value of learning, I guess? , Bombast and insult rather than reasoned argument, eh? You really do have a chronic case of psychological projection, don't you Jean? As with most of your unsupported claims, completely false I'm afraid. I couldn;t care less for "recognition" of academia! Wtf? I know academia inside out - it's of no interest to me whatsoever. True. Degree standards are not independent at all, as it goes. They're all submitted and evaluated. Any university that gets out of line is very firmly reined in. Not that I care a toss about this either. Try harder, jean. Your insults aren't even making a mild itch. Though, I tell you what. Henceforth I'm starting a scoresheet against you, as well as Louise. We'll start from scratch and forget all your hundreds of other examples of vile abuse, and just call this 1-0. We'll be able to start a League soon, if Aqua and Alan want to join in? |
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Post by mrsonde on Aug 4, 2016 18:03:04 GMT 1
You forgot to mention "complete absence of evidence". 8-0 |
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Post by jean on Aug 4, 2016 19:23:11 GMT 1
I haven't time to deal with the whole post now, but while you're waiting, read the article below, which is all anyone needs to know who is even remotely tempted to take this claim of Nick's seriously: True. Degree standards are not independent at all, as it goes. They're all submitted and evaluated. Any university that gets out of line is very firmly reined in.
Are UK degree standards comparable?
Without a system for sharing assessment practice, it’s nonsense to assume that a 2:1 is the same everywhere, says Chris Rust
"Is a 2:1 in history at Oxford Brookes worth the same as a 2:1 in history at Oxford?”
Five years ago, this question was posed by a parliamentary select committee to the vice-chancellors of both of those universities. Their rambling and convoluted responses were considered so unsatisfactory by MPs on the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee – which was conducting investigations for its report Students and Universities – that they were accused of “obfuscation”, and of giving an answer that “would not pass a GCSE essay”. And the committee’s final report included the damning conclusion: “It is unacceptable for the sector to be in receipt of departmental spending of £15 billion but be unable to answer a straightforward question about the relative standards of the degrees of students, which the taxpayer has paid for.”
The correct answer to the committee’s question was, in fact, a very simple one: we just don’t know. We do not have the necessary systems in place to tell us. The traditional reliance on the external examiner system to mediate standards within the system is misplaced, as a number of studies have shown. However experienced an individual examiner may be, their experience across the sector can only be limited and they have no opportunity to calibrate their standards within their disciplinary community. This was emphatically recognised by the Higher Education Academy’s 2012 document, A Handbook for External Examining: “The idea that a single external examiner could make a comparative judgment on the national, and indeed international, standard of a programme has always been flawed.”
The naive outsider might think that assuring comparability of standards is surely the role of the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education – the independent body set up to monitor standards across the UK sector – and something addressed as a matter of course within its institutional review processes. But in 2007, two years before the select committee hearing, the QAA made the brave public admission, in a Quality Matters briefing paper, that: “Focusing on the fairness of present degree classification arrangements and the extent to which they enable students’ performance to be classified consistently within institutions and from institution to institution…The class of an honours degree awarded…does not only reflect the academic achievements of that student. It also reflects the marking practices inherent in the subject or subjects studied, and the rule or rules authorised by that institution for determining the classification of an honours degree.”
In other words, local and contextual assessment practices make it impossible to make objective comparisons. This should not, in fact, have come as a surprise: certainly not to anyone up to date with the research literature. For at least the previous 10 years, especially through the work of the Student Assessment and Classification Working Group, an informal body of academics and administrators who share an interest in assessment, a series of papers and studies had demonstrated the distorting effects of central university systems that treat all marks the same regardless of the nature of the assessment task or the subject discipline.
It had been shown, for instance, that students consistently score better on coursework tasks than in examinations and in the more numerate disciplines than the arts and humanities or social sciences. Research had also shown that, given exactly the same set of assessment results, students at different institutions could end up with awards that vary by up to a degree classification simply because of the idiosyncrasies of the different institutions’ algorithms... |
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Post by mrsonde on Aug 4, 2016 19:49:56 GMT 1
I haven't time to deal with the whole post now, but while you're waiting, read the article below, which is all anyone needs to know who is even remotely tempted to take this claim of Nick's seriously: True. Degree standards are not independent at all, as it goes. They're all submitted and evaluated. Any university that gets out of line is very firmly reined in.
Are UK degree standards comparable?
Without a system for sharing assessment practice, it’s nonsense to assume that a 2:1 is the same everywhere, says Chris Rust
"Is a 2:1 in history at Oxford Brookes worth the same as a 2:1 in history at Oxford?”
Five years ago, this question was posed by a parliamentary select committee to the vice-chancellors of both of those universities. Their rambling and convoluted responses were considered so unsatisfactory by MPs on the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee – which was conducting investigations for its report Students and Universities – that they were accused of “obfuscation”, and of giving an answer that “would not pass a GCSE essay”. And the committee’s final report included the damning conclusion: “It is unacceptable for the sector to be in receipt of departmental spending of £15 billion but be unable to answer a straightforward question about the relative standards of the degrees of students, which the taxpayer has paid for.”
The correct answer to the committee’s question was, in fact, a very simple one: we just don’t know. We do not have the necessary systems in place to tell us. The traditional reliance on the external examiner system to mediate standards within the system is misplaced, as a number of studies have shown. However experienced an individual examiner may be, their experience across the sector can only be limited and they have no opportunity to calibrate their standards within their disciplinary community. This was emphatically recognised by the Higher Education Academy’s 2012 document, A Handbook for External Examining: “The idea that a single external examiner could make a comparative judgment on the national, and indeed international, standard of a programme has always been flawed.”
The naive outsider might think that assuring comparability of standards is surely the role of the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education – the independent body set up to monitor standards across the UK sector – and something addressed as a matter of course within its institutional review processes. But in 2007, two years before the select committee hearing, the QAA made the brave public admission, in a Quality Matters briefing paper, that: “Focusing on the fairness of present degree classification arrangements and the extent to which they enable students’ performance to be classified consistently within institutions and from institution to institution…The class of an honours degree awarded…does not only reflect the academic achievements of that student. It also reflects the marking practices inherent in the subject or subjects studied, and the rule or rules authorised by that institution for determining the classification of an honours degree.”
In other words, local and contextual assessment practices make it impossible to make objective comparisons. This should not, in fact, have come as a surprise: certainly not to anyone up to date with the research literature. For at least the previous 10 years, especially through the work of the Student Assessment and Classification Working Group, an informal body of academics and administrators who share an interest in assessment, a series of papers and studies had demonstrated the distorting effects of central university systems that treat all marks the same regardless of the nature of the assessment task or the subject discipline.
It had been shown, for instance, that students consistently score better on coursework tasks than in examinations and in the more numerate disciplines than the arts and humanities or social sciences. Research had also shown that, given exactly the same set of assessment results, students at different institutions could end up with awards that vary by up to a degree classification simply because of the idiosyncrasies of the different institutions’ algorithms...I haven't read through this usual guff you post, but, yeah, as I've said, I'm not bothered. I never was. It was just something I was told, that apparently pleased my tutor at the time. Does this face look bovvered? Who cares? As it gos - I'll tell you the truth. I went to college as a mature student, after at least ten years of intensive study of my subject. I wasn't ever in the least affected or concerned by any marks I ever got. I was mildly chuffed to be given the maximum ever given, and somewhat embarrassed to be treated as a sort of celebrity, I must admit. But I am a natural outsider - it didn't really affect me, though I confess it bought me a certain range of advantages. I simply wasn't concerned by the opinion of my tutors. Sorry if you find that outrageous - but the truth is I knew more than they did, in the specific areas that I was particularly interested in at any rate (and why I'd gone to college in the first place - the result being very much to my disappointment.) I could have easily become an academic - it was there for the plucking, if I'd been remotely interested. I wasn't. I saw what they did, I saw what they were concerned and preoccupied with. Read Lucky Jim, or The History Man - Nothing's changed, it's just got worse. My interests are in understanding what is going on. There are problems to be solved. The most serious are in Philosophy, and probably always will be. There are urgent ones to be solved in science, specifc to this period in history of course, and I'm interested in solving those too. I don't give a tinker's cuss for "recognition" - this is your conventional value system, based on your own interests and abilities. My reasons for writing on this and other messageboards are very different from yours. |
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Post by jean on Aug 5, 2016 0:00:30 GMT 1
I haven't read through this usual guff you post... Oh but you should! I'm not surprised you don't, though. But it's there for anyone who might find the Times Higher Education Supplement's 'guff' a bit more persuasive than yours. Evidently you do, very much; or you wouldn't have boasted about it on this board. Now, as to what you claim to know about me: I wonder if the 'something even more certain' he 'has' is as incontrovertible as his evidence that I am "A sad failed comprehensive latin teacher, sacked from her profession for misconduct". ...I had...a report from one of your employers... Well that gives us something to go on, and it narrows it down nicely, as I had very few employers. We need to establish which of them it was who made such a 'report' to you. And of course it's crucial to know what status you enjoyed that would make it likely that they would release such a 'report' to you. I take it you can supply this information? Though since they appear to have told you that I was a 'comprehensive' teacher when I never taught in a comprehensive school in my life, you'd be advised to treat anything else they told you with extreme caution. Or shall we just assume you made it up, like almost everything else? |
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Post by jean on Aug 5, 2016 9:49:33 GMT 1
...I wasn't ever in the least affected or concerned by any marks I ever got. I was mildly chuffed to be given the maximum ever given, and somewhat embarrassed to be treated as a sort of celebrity, I must admit... |
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Post by fascinating on Aug 5, 2016 16:19:01 GMT 1
Oh you are CERTAIN are you? Certain of what is FALSE! I am not lying, I am not Louise. Yes, you are. Oh dear - I think the Boston Strangler tried this one, didn't he, with similar success? Perhaps you've forgotten that you've pm'ed me under both names? Eh? What PMs were these? Show us the PM that was written by me under the name "Louise". |
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Post by mrsonde on Aug 5, 2016 19:07:50 GMT 1
Should? What's that supposed to mean? I should read all the guff you post, selected from the infinity of garbage on the internet that happens to support your own bizarre opinions? No, I don't think so. If you're unable to make a reasonable case yourself, for any of your wacky opinions, I'm not going to waste my time ploughing through some other lefty bozo's turgid claims. I simply don't have the interest, the time, or the patience.
Gospel, is it, if it's printed in the TES? Like the OED?
No - you chose to read it as a boast, that's all. It was a simple statement of fact, stated to refute an unfounded and ignorant insult.
Is this the Royal We? No one else is interested in your past pecadilloes, Jean.
I just happened to be there, and fell into conversation of a very passing kind. One of those bizarre coincidences that novels turn upon. My "status" was merely one of a designated chauffeur, as it goes, at a retirement bash of a CEO.
But I do. As I said, a bit of passing gossip. It might also be the case, of course, that there are any number of other Latin teaching Jean H***s, forced to leave the "profession" due to her lack of restraint of her predilections, shall we say, at the height of their earning power - at the value of their superannuated pension at any rate - who then had to resort to being a TEFL teacher in Poland, or privately tutoring immigrants on how to speak English. It happens all the time to all sorts of Jean H***s from Liverpool, surely.
No, we'll assume you were very lucky to have union protection behind you. Or, rather, your unfortunately over-aggressive namesake was. Shall we say.
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Post by alancalverd on Aug 6, 2016 0:58:59 GMT 1
for the simple reason that there are right answers in the "numerate disciplines", so it's possible to get an A by knowing what you are talking about. In the other so-called disciplines, getting an A depends on guessing what the examiner had in mind, or, rarely I suspect, blowing his mind with an original insight into a longstanding mystery. In principle it's possible to come up with a brief, novel and entirely rigorous proof of Pythagoras' theorem, but convincing anyone that Shakespeare was actually a consortium of three lefthanded lesbians would I think take more than a 3-hour essay.
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Post by fascinating on Aug 6, 2016 8:41:54 GMT 1
Oh you are CERTAIN are you? Certain of what is FALSE! I am not lying, I am not Louise. Yes, you are. Oh dear - I think the Boston Strangler tried this one, didn't he, with similar success? Perhaps you've forgotten that you've pm'ed me under both names? Oh dear, still no evidence at all presented to back up your allegation that I am/was Louise. Another example of complete absence of evidence. |
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