TMO Tags: education
Religion for Atheists – Alain de Botton Interview
Tuesday, June 12th, 2012When religion and atheisim collide, at least in the columns of most newspapers and magazines, the arguments usually boil down to the essentials of faith vs reason; to whether religious belief has a place in secular society; to the supposed intolerance of the ‘new atheism’ or to whether atheism is in itself merely a sophisticated [...]
I Fell For It In Battle
Saturday, October 24th, 2009It looks like I took a bullet for the team. That quarter-page ad for a college that guaranteed an MA degree in two years was a cunning Gazeta Wyborcza hoax. They say the interest generated by the ad was enormous, with people from all corners of Poland. I’m not exactly sure what GW thinks this [...]
Today in the Trenches – dispatches from the war on free education
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009Gazeta Wyborcza sent in the foreign legion today in a lack lustre affair which could hardly be described as a decisive victory. They found a handful of obliging foreign students to complain about Poland. One said that the backup facilities in Poland were much worse than in Portugal, “doubtless because Poland values education very lowly [...]
It’s War
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009Gazeta Wyborcza launched its latest offensive – and it is often quite offensive – on Polish lecturers on Monday, Oct 19th in the year of Our Lord 2009 with a big splash on the results of a survey which showed, among other things, that university lecturers think university lecturers are capable and clever and – [...]
The School of Hard Knocks
Thursday, September 24th, 2009I hold in my hand a circular concerning the Poland-wide “English Olympics,” a competition they hold every year to reward exceptionally good schoolchildren. As far as I know, these Olympics are held in all subjects, not just English. It’s not a terribly exciting document. It gives the closing dates for various stages – school, regional [...]
Standards
Saturday, September 5th, 2009I came across this in an e-mail circular that circulated so much it’s hard to tell exactly who wrote it. It seems to be from either the Dean of Graduate Studies or the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies in Trinity College Dublin, the oldest university in the known universe: “… all guidelines are [...]
What’s News
Monday, June 22nd, 2009After the revelations about the government’s plans to privatise higher education there was a storm of debate on the pages of Gazeta Wyborcza – no, not about education, about something called the Hausner plan. Unless I miss my guess this is the second plan to be named after this Hausner person. This one concerns public [...]
Going, going…
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009Yesterday Gazeta Wyborcza announced plans by the government to stop paying for students to do two degrees – one’s your limit. Today’s paper lets the cat well and truly out of the bag. There’s an interview with professor Kazimierz Stępień, chairman of the Rada Nauki (Education Council, more or less) at the Ministry for Privatising [...]
The School of Life
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009Another year, another disaster. I mentioned before how the answers to some mock school exams leaked last year, thus giving pupils ideal preparation for the vicissitudes of life. April 2009 rolls around and – yes – exam answers leaked. I don’t know which subject(s), which paper(s), which precise exams (“gymnazjalne”, I think) and also, in [...]
Cheating at exams
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008While still in school I and most of the other children realised that cog notes (okay, “crib” notes if you must) were not really much help even if it was common to brag about how much writing you could fit on the back of your tie. You can write “Famine: 1845-1849, million dead” on the [...]
