Rentboy Raid
This is worth reading and most certainly worth thinking about. Like Chris said, this exercise of State Power brings into sharp focus that there is much still to be fought for. The raid was wrong and by reblogging Chris’ post I guess I am signalling my agreement with what he said and adding my voice to what is hopefully a growing number of people speaking up.
The US DHS website describes how it came into existence:
‘Eleven days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge was appointed as the first Director of the Office of Homeland Security in the White House. The office oversaw and coordinated a comprehensive national strategy to safeguard the country against terrorism and respond to any future attacks.
‘With the passage of the Homeland Security Act by Congress in November 2002, the Department of Homeland Security formally came into being as a stand-alone, Cabinet-level department to further coordinate and unify national homeland security efforts, opening its doors on March 1, 2003.’
In recent days, you could be forgiven for thinking that ‘the terrorists’ have changed tactics. Bombs for dildos, atrocities for blow jobs, and random attacks for an overnight ‘boyfriend experience’. One day, you’re plotting how to kill ‘the infidels’ and the next you’re popping on a new…
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The NSS – a pet hate
I have been so wrapped up in Clearing and preparing for the new academic year that I missed a recent Guardian article about the National Student Satisfaction Survey (NSS) completely until it appeared in my Facebook timeline. The article claims that the Survey should be abolished before it does any more harm. I couldn’t agree more.
The NSS is one of my pet hates (I have many), one of those utterly stupid games we feel we must play in HE. The articles captures its uselessness for actually telling us anything well. I won’t add to that here but I do want to reflect on how the NSS and all that comes with it plays out for me. The NSS is a game, unfortunately it is a game with high stakes with the results heavily influencing university rankings and rankings heavily influencing student recruitment and with student recruitment heavily influencing the institution’s bottom line… You get the drift. Just leaving students to complete the survey, or not, as they wish is thus a risky strategy. Students must be encouraged to complete it, cajoled or bribed into completing it or, dare I say it, forced into completing it. We didn’t force anyone to complete the survey here – at least not that I am aware of but the university offered prizes/discounts etc when certain completion rate thresholds were reached.
Of course completion is not enough – we need positive scores. The survey is a ranking tool, not a tool through which universities genuinely seek feedback from students. So how do you ensure your students give you the ‘right’ score? Well I would argue you don’t. You let them get on with it and if they mark you down you should have a think about it – they may have a point, they may not! But that’s not how it works in HE anymore. We are constantly asked to think about student satisfaction. What can we do to enhance it, what can we do to make sure we get high scores in the NSS? These are entirely the wrong questions to ask in education. Education is not about being satisfied. Higher education is about learning to cope with uncertainty, about being pushed out of your comfort zone and to your intellectual limits, it’s about confronting your own prejudices and ideals, it’s about thinking deeply and critically about everything you thought you knew. That is a lot of things but it probably isn’t ‘satisfaction’ – particularly if you find it difficult.
I am all for seeking and listening to student feedback and students’ views. I am open to having some really challenging debates with students about what they want from their higher education. I will challenge their views and expect them to challenge mine but I don’t pay much attention to the NSS. It doesn’t tell me anything about how to make our programmes better or how to engage students. It doesn’t tell me how to be a better teacher or how to help students learn. The higher the scores go and the less variation there is, the more depressed I get. There are so many things wrong with higher education at the moment, programmes and universities vary so much, it is absurd to think that the scores across the sector could genuinely vary so little. So the results tell me this: – we are teaching our students to tick boxes in a stupid game that tells us nothing. That’s not why I’m an academic, don’t know about you.
Where do you write?
I have 3 writing projects at various stages that I need to finish/move on next week. I can write quite quickly when I put my mind to it but I am also the world’s best at putting it off and procrastinating as well as drafting and redrafting and then going back to the original draft, not liking that and starting again… When other people edit, I have a hissy fit and re-write. I often end up with what I started with in the first place! There’s a lesson there.
Anyway I have been reading Alawuntoherself ‘s reflections on where the best place to write is with interest. She’s tried her kitchen, a cafe and the university library and all seem to have their pros and cons. I need to have a good writing week. I have a book chapter to revise, a journal article to revise and I have a set of proofs to go through. I also have a mountain of teaching materials to pull together and new VLE sites to add content to. So I want somewhere without distractions and ideally without access to anything at all to do the proofs. I want somewhere where I can sit with my books and notes and ideas for the article and chapter and I want somewhere where I can browse for online content, youtube videos as well as more traditional academic materials for my students. So – proofs sounds like a summer house job. That might also work for the article and chapter although curled up on my sofa also sounds tempting for them – at least for the initial ‘ right let’s figure out what has to change here’ phase. I might also pop down the hill to my mum’s place – change of scenery sometimes gets the brain working and she has a breakfast bar which I like sitting at. As for the teaching materials – library would be good but I’d need headphones for the videos or podcasts I want to check. Chances of me remembering them are slim!
I do think where you write best depends on what phase of writing and thinking you’re in and what mood you’re in. I actually think variety is probably best for me. I get bored easily so I couldn’t rock up at my local cafe every day for a week and have a productive day every day. I’d get distracted and interested in other things. So, my writing plans are concentrated on Tuesday to Friday as I am in the office tomorrow and am likely to get sidetracked with post exam board queries and other pretty dull admin stuff. I’ll let you know how I get on but in the meantime do let me know if you have any writing tips and I’d love to hear your favourite writing locations.
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