The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
To teach another day
Being a failed pedant (i.e. I think I know what is grammatically incorrect when I see it but don’t always get it right myself), I came across a wonderful piece of jaw-dropping idiocy this week, thanks to no less an august source than the good old BBC.
Now, for some time – decades, in fact; you’d think they’d have come down on one side or the other by now – our educators have been tussling with the existence of calculators in the teaching of arithmetic, maths and other such arcane subjects to our unsuspecting young. Spawn of the devil to some (the calculators, not the young) that encourage laziness, laxity and sloth; let us go back, they chorus, wheezing, to the days when you had to know the 98 times table off by heart and be able to recite Milton’s Paradise Lost while you were working out how many beans made five. Political and ministerial bans have even been put in place to discourage dependency on these infernal machines among the young and impressionable. And bone idle.
On the other hand, step forward those allegedly enlightened academics who argue that, used properly, calculators (which have, after all, existed in some form or another for some time) can be an aid to understanding and problem-solving. Thus, their use ought to be taught properly so that they can take their place in the pantheon of great inventions of humanity.
So it was with interest (I am old enough to have done the times table thing but also to remember being allowed to take books of logarithms – remember those? Thought not – into exams) that I noted the following, as reported by the aforementioned BBC. Boffins from the Education Endowment Foundation have come out fighting in favour of the not-so-new discovery that calculators can be a boon and a blessing to those who are shown how to apply them in the correct manner. I am sure this is true. After all, where would we former and present journalists now be if we were not allowed to access the wonders of th ’Interweb, instead of having to know things for their own sake or know where to look them up in crumbling and disintegrating ledgers and reference books stored in cobwebby rooms reminiscent of the worst excesses of Miss Havisham? Or have an efficient filing system?
I have no argument with any of this; my number, as they say, was up long ago. Where I found myself falling down and foaming at the mouth was not about the numbers but the words. This, remember, is the BBC and I am enough of a sweet, old-fashioned thing to believe passionately, that, for the most part, they get it right. Then they come up with this.
“Academics”, the text on the TV screen said, “from the Education Endowment Foundation found that when taught properly, calculators can help students become better at problem solving.” Excuse me; how do you teach a calculator anything? Aren’t you supposed to teach the living, breathing students, not a largely inanimate mechanical aid? It’s like an academic version of the driverless car and, tragically, we’ve seen recently what that can lead to. It’s enough to put the “Grrrr!” into grammar.
Then, as if that were not enough, this alleged report went on blithely: “Calculators were most useful, they said, when weaved into teaching materials.” Weaved? WEAVED? No wonder the past is tense. I was positively stiff with indignation.
There are, undoubtedly, areas of expression and communication that can and should move with the times and getting stuck in the past never did anybody much good.
But when it comes to clarity and getting correct, properly presented information over to the listening and watching public, surely it can’t be that difficult to get it right? Never mind the maths; maybe we should lobby for a calculator that comes up with correctly calibrated English. In these days of virtual reality, virtual education and virtual everything else, do you think there might be an outside chance that, especially in the written reports of a public service broadcaster, there might just be some virtual English to be had?
Bond, James Bond...
Don’t you just love the story this week that a “mysterious, armoured train” made its way from North Korea to China, supposedly transporting the Great/Dear leader (delete as applicable), Kim Jong-un, on his way to a clandestine meeting with China’s Xi Jingping, no doubt to furnish Mr Xi, whose loyal colleagues have just voted him into more-or-less lifetime leadership of his nation, with a few neat tips on Dictatorship for Beginners.
On the basis of life imitating art, I would recommend a rewatch of that James Bond movie, Die Another Day, where a sinister black train chugs sedately through a sombre Asiatic landscape, carrying rogue Korean colonels, scenery-chewing Russians and crazy plastic-surgeried billionaires who have invented invisible cars. Doesn’t sound so implausible now, does it?
And, unlike Southern Rail, I bet North Korean Railways Inc had very little difficulty in agreeing to the presence of a guard (or two) on this particular train…
On the basis of life imitating art, I would recommend a rewatch of that James Bond movie, Die Another Day...