This is the information age. Now, more than ever, info
abounds, the truth is out there. This may not apply to every subject under the
sun and you can be sceptical about some things you may read online but dig deep
and you can learn.
I was sidetracked in my last post
by a rage of differing thought when what I’d meant to simply say was that we
need not listen to the ill-informed or those who skew a message for their own
purpose, we should be able to see the truth somewhere.
These thoughts were prompted by two issues. The first was
the differing views of politicians and pundits upon the austerity measures and
benefit changes wreaked by the ‘honourable’ Gideon Osborne. The fact that both
sides were able to argue and claim polarised opposing views was anathema to me.
Someone, I thought, must be able to do the sums and calculate which parts of
society are now better and worse off – to settle the argument. As it happened I
was fortunate to catch a BBC news bulletin where they attempted to do this
(sadly I can’t find it online) and as it turned out we were all worse off to a
large degree – if not now then very soon.
Quite often the data is out there, generally it’s the case
that there’s some vested interest that prevents it being shared with us. In the
situation above you may argue that the best evidence would be in the
calculation of the difference expressed as a percentage of previous household
income. The fact that I know this – when I barely passed maths at school –
means that it can and should be calculated and always shown as evidence when
this debate rages.
The problem may be that the news exists not just to share
what happened and when, but to demonstrate those ‘occurrences’ as a form of
entertainment, they have to illustrate rather than state. If they were to just
say ‘this is how it is’ then the opportunity to have two differing political
viewpoints debating it would be irrelevant.
It has been suggested this week that news is bad for us and argued alternately of course,
either way we know that the quantity of information available to the average
person is far in excess of that than has been available previously. It is said
that there’s more info in an average Sunday Newspaper than a Victorian person
would’ve seen in their lifetime. Maybe there's too much?
Not all news can be boiled down to simple detail of course;
it just bothers me sometimes when they don’t even try. Yesterday it was the turn of the apparently
(if not evidentially) intelligent Michael Gove. The education minister reckons
that our school days should be longer and school holidays shorter.
This is to apparently make us compete with the Asian market. Naturally it was
widely condemned as non-evidence based grand-standing or ‘policy-making on the
hoof’ but what was really needed (in my view) was a complete overview of how
schools in Asia/Europe/America compare, probably expressed as hours at school
vs results.
I don’t have the energy to look for this but I imagine the
data is there somewhere. If you have the faculties – mental and metaphysical –
then the information is at your fingertips. If you care enough then you can
find it.
I don’t know if the school day is long enough but I do know
that my children are harder workers than I was at their age. I also know that
many schools differ in the way they attack the curriculum (particularly in the
quantities of homework set) but that this curriculum is evidence based and
schools have statistics to back it up. Successive Governments have made a big
deal of this – need I mention Blair’s “Education, education, education”?
What Gove didn’t say is where the money was going to come
from to keep schools open longer and teachers working more hours. This money is
not currently in the public purse I presume? Even though he’s a Tory I would
generally welcome these bigger ideas and the opportunity to debate them, it’d
be better though if we all had the evidence visible so that we could at least
analyse it.
I did computer studies at GSE level at school; I parachuted
into it after not being competent enough at Technical Drawing. Although this
was a ‘mere’ 30 years or so back our version of computer studies was purely
theoretical with not a computer in sight. Now there are computers everywhere,
so that in the space of thirty years we’ve gone from not having one computer in
an entire school to having three in my house. These provide access to a world
of information, far more than we can ever use – it’d be nice to be using some
of it though.
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