Essays by AI

I heard an in interview with a head-teacher earlier. It revealed that it seems like most students' essays are AI assisted these days and it is so convincing that the teachers are unable to tell. But I believe AI is able to tell if a piece of work is original or not, pretty quickly. AI gives me a quick and helpful summary of my mood and style if I produce 750 Morning Words daily. I'm sure more detailed analyses are available.

What would help, I believe, is for the start of each term to begin with essay day. Every pupil who will expect to submit a piece of written work for assessment during the term has to provide an example of, say, 1000 words of writing. These words should be written in a supervised classroom situation without any external assistance, perhaps on a tablet without internet access to save time for the teachers in the future.

Pupils could leave as soon as they finished. Yeah. Make it a bit competitive. In fact the faster the task is achieved the more likely it is that the results will be helpful.

Very minimal instructions should be given. The writing can be on any subject. It could be a story, a stream of consciousness (as this almost is), a comment piece of journalism or a narrative. Or something else.

The point should be that AI can then bank the piece and make an assessment of future work based on whether the student can write to that standard or not.

The piece would not be marked or assessed in any way towards any examination or course work. But after a few terms a style assessment could be built up. You could see the student making progress, or otherwise (which might help with interventions in the future), and you could compare future written work with the style displayed at the start of term. Has the student made unbelievable progress in grammar, style or vocabulary?

Perhaps some teachers or IT specialists might run with this, or tell me why it's stupid. I have more kites.

Thought for the Day

Did BBC Radio Bristol's Thought for the Day today. What with pre-recording it the night before I forgot to flag it up. Anyway, here's the script. Next one, December 20th, will be my last.

'Follow me', said Jesus to some fishermen types '...and I will make you fishers of men.'

The Bible tells us that the gang - Simon, James and John - left their nets and followed him. At once.

My son asked me the other day what I planned to do when I finally retire. The words that came out of my own mouth surprised me. I found myself saying 'I don't know. Maybe something I've never done before.' But whilst that will not be golf or parachuting I do like the idea of doing something completely different to vicaring.

Today's stories. Many of our Bake-0ff contestants took it up later in life. Learning to drive is, by its nature, something we do after childhood. Community parks and gardens are often maintained by enthusiastic volunteers - many recently retired.

Being a follower of Jesus for many years is a journey. If you follow someone you must expect to move. So go on. Embrace the next part of your life's path with gusto. Be prepared to change.

But not, as one six year old once misunderstood, 'Follow me and I will make you vicious old men.' Now that would be a new career.

Thought for the Day

As delivered at BBC Radio Bristol this morning:

'We never heard a rabbi with such authority', said the people who had the privilege of listening to Jesus teaching.

'Your ideas are strange', said the people who listened to St Paul preach in Athens. 'We want to hear some more.'

We want to hear some more.

I too learn by listening. Maybe you could have guessed that from someone who is clearly friends with the radio. But it was a while before I grasped it.

Recently I've been listening to a lot of podcasts - TED talks, back editions of science programmes and radio shows. Not everyone wearing headphones is listening to music. I actually feel I'm getting smarter as I walk along. Insert your own punchline.

I love the fact that Tom Pearson, physics teacher at Nailsea school, has a chance to experience astronaut training in Alabama. Tom has a podcast. And writing about that, amongst other things, helped get him selected for his training experience which will help him as an educator. That and the NASA flight suit he will get to keep.

For all the fantastic advances in teaching methodology there is little substitute for listening to someone being interesting about something you know little about and they love. It may also explain our enduring love for John Noakes and Blue Peter.

I'm no scientist. But I enjoy listening to those who are. And maybe one of the secrets of being a parish priest for many years is enjoying hearing people's stories. We all love to listen to well-informed and passionate people. And everyone is well-informed and passionate about themselves.

A wise mentor once told me that the reason we have two ears and one mouth is so we can do twice as much listening as talking. So I'll shut up. Thanks for listening.

The Happiest Days of My Life?

Richard Garner has been the Independent's, and more recently theipaper's education correspondent for many years. He has now retired and last Thursday wrote a fascinating retrospective on the changes upon which he has reported. I put the article on one side to consider again.

Find it here.

He notes some things of tremendous interest.

I had, for instance, forgotten that the abolition of corporal punishment in schools in 1986 was passed by only one vote. Mrs Thatcher, who would have voted against the measure, was delayed in traffic. Nice to know that traffic congestion isn't all bad. And it reminds us that Thatcher was not really a reformer at heart - she was a keep-it-as-it-is conservative in oh so many ways. Had she got there she would only have delayed the inevitable. Can't imagine the Major government ignoring such an issue, especially once they had their own mandate in 1992.

He records that the arrival of literacy and numeracy hours in the early days of the Blair government under David Blunkett's management was also a great drive upwards in standards. I reckon that the 1997 Labour Government (or New Labour as we must now remember not to call them again) had been sitting on its hands for so many years (eighteen in fact) that it did all its best work within eighteen months.

He applauds independent scrutiny of schools, noting in passing that the current chief schools inspector is proving too independent for Michael Gove's liking. The 'I thought we were friends' line ain't working. Academies will get just as much of a pasting under him as any LEA controlled school.

With some back-bench revolt afoot the current government, Garner says, may struggle to get their academisation legislation through.

And he ends with this:

'...treat teachers as professionals, not guinea pigs for constant change. After all, you wouldn't dictate to a brain surgeon how he or she should do their job, would you?'

Thanks Richard Garner. You have educated me.

Thought for the Day

As delivered just now at BBC Radio Bristol on the day of GCSE results.

GCSE day has arrived. Many young people around our region are waiting in some trepidation for their results.

I remember the day I got mine, although they were called O Levels in those days. I got some good results and some disappointing ones. Quickly I had to renegotiate my A level courses and, to the relief of the scientific community everywhere, became a historian and geographer for the next couple of years.

Eventually, after a short career in insurance, I went to university slightly later than most, studied theology and became a vicar - a job I have loved for the last thirty years. But not what I expected at sixteen.

If you find yourself comforting someone who is disappointed today it may help them to know that there are many back doors to success and happiness.

Who can add a moment to their life by worrying about it? Who can predict the turn their career will take? How hard it is to find someone with absolute clarity about the future at sixteen.

'Listen,' says James in the Bible, 'You do not even know what will happen tomorrow ... you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.' Realists, these Bible folk.

Disappointing results may simply be God's way of eliminating physics and chemistry from your enquiries.

As my final tip to those who are happy today - if you want to be in the papers tomorrow try and be female, standing near a water feature and leaping in the air clutching a piece of paper.

Me. I have more time for the ones hiding behind the fountain in tears. It's not the end of the world and you need to know that.

#lovereading

I had a surprise at the age of about five. It was my turn to read with a teacher, one who was covering for my regular class teacher, and I took up my book and sat with her. I started to read from the beginning of the first book I had been given. After a few seconds she asked If this was as far as I had got. I explained that I was getting better and faster and sometimes I reached further than before but she stopped me.

'You mean you start from the beginning each time?'

Turns out nobody had introduced me to the concept of the bookmark and I thought you had to read from page 1 every session. I picked up from then on and read at the appropriate speed for my age pretty soon.

Maybe two years later I was introduced to the idea of the public library. There were few books in my home. Few that looked attractive at any rate. But my Dad took out three books a fortnight from Selly Oak Library and he signed me up. I remember their smell. At first I only took one book out at a time, terrified of being half-way through and having to take it back. But once renewals had been explained, all was well.

I think Jennings, Billy Bunter and Biggles were probably my favourites.

For a while I read my books in my bedroom last thing at night and before getting up at the weekend. Sometimes I crawled out of bed and lay in front of the disappointing electric fire, an eiderdown pulled over me. We lived in a big, draughty old house.

I don't know when it stopped. It certainly slowed down. I recall reading when off sick but finding other things to do that were more fun the rest of the time. Probably football related.

I carried on with Alastair McLeans, Ian Fleming's Bond series and various other thrillers but there was often a time when I didn't have a book on the go from aged 14-20. It was odd. I liked books but didn't read them very often.

O Level English literature pretty much devastated me with Richard Church's 'Over the Bridge' seeing me off into the dull depths of a grade 8.

My twenties changed things. I met, and married, a voracious reader. But a pre-college training course set me to read Shirley and it was a step too far. I wrote an essay on it without reading it. However, when I went back to College as a mature student I found novels a good balance to theology. Robert M. Pirsig's 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' fascinated me and I read it in the college library when I should have either been reading for an essay or at home helping with two small children.

After ordination I specifically asked a new friend about improving my reading - I had attempted self-help with a P.D. James. Heather, the friend, lent me some stuff she and her husband had enjoyed and Penelope Lively was one of the authors I discovered.

I began to read book reviews in papers and, with a little money available, to enjoy purchasing books to read and keep (or lend). Aware that an English teacher had once challenged me on my current reading and I couldn't remember anything (interrogative teachers have often made my mind go blank) I began keeping a record of my reading in a journal from about 1987. I also, influenced by some College colleagues, swapped my Daily Mail for the Times.

Some of my book shopping was influenced by covers. I loved the simplicity of the design of Faber and Faber paperbacks and found Peter Carey's 'Illywhacker' and Kazuo Ishiguro's 'An Artist of the Floating World' this way.

What am I saying to our beloved Secretary of State for Education? I think my reading set-backs were all in the classroom and my progress when I was in charge of my own destiny. Victorian novels may well be massive improving tomes but Harry Potters have done more for literacy in this country. As have Fifty Shades and Dan Brownes for adults. I don't think Michael Gove, an English graduate I believe, has the first idea what it is like not to be Michael Gove.

I love now having an eclectic reading habit. I am currently enjoying Bill Bryson's '1927'. My last five books read for pleasure were:

Life After Life - Kate Atkinson
Harvest - Jim Crace
The Last Juror - John Grisham
Politically Correct Bedtime Stories - James Finn Garner
Who I Am - Pete Townsend

I like reading, read well, fast enough and like talking about books. Because I can read I thank a teacher, maybe one of my parents too, but my memory of reading is that it was helped by freedom of choice and hindered by syllabuses.

My old friend John Dexter, a science teacher, has written an interesting blog on the subject of literacy. I commend his work.

Gove

'A clock that strikes thirteen is not only wrong once: it also casts doubt on all further teaching from the same source.' One of my College Principal Colin Buchanan's favourite put-downs, usually delivered to the very soul of its victim.

I'm going to be a bit rude in this post but the death threats will all be metaphorical. I'm not that kind of enemy.

Now, onwards. I doubt very much if there are many in front of me in the queue to deliver darts to the heart of our Education Secretary. If there are they can probably hear my voice saying 'Let me through I'm a vicar.' I want, at least, to deliver the last rites: 'Get out of the way.'

So I vaguely dismiss comments Michael Gove MP is reported as saying. They wash over me. I expect them. They may be misquotes but that smoke, fire thing has some truth to it.

And yet sometimes I notice. Can't help it. Could an Education Secretary really be that obnoxious?

So here is my question. When he slags off School Governors as becoming a '...sherry pouring, cake slicing exercise in hugging each other and singing Kumbayah' (Source - Daily Telegraph of all places), to whom is he speaking? And which ones has he been observing?

There won't be many wanting to become school governors if that is how they are to be summarised. There won't be many currently serving who will want to extend their stay. I conclude that he is speaking to his friends. How small an audience is that?

The man is a disaster. A barely sentient, unobservant, rude, selfish mate of some important people who has been allowed to play at schools. I have never despised an Education Secretary as much.

You may like to know that my spell checker changed my poor attempt at spelling Governors to Gove errors. I rest my case and am off for a lie down with cake, sherry and some 1920s spiritual music. Yeah right.

Thought for the Day

As delivered at BBC Radio Bristol this morning.

 

I have two eyes and most of my own teeth.

 

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? A simple statement going back to the Law of Moses. When it first appears in the Bible it is suggesting that the punishment should equal the crime. It is there to stop the escalation of violence and limit vengeance. It says 'This is where the matter ends.'

 

But if we took it literally today then the mugged would be invited to give their apprehended assailants a free punch; the burgled would pop round to the villain's house and help themselves to some booty from the stash and the relatives of the murdered would get to open the trapdoor and watch the guilty swing.

 

I don't think this is the sort of society most of us want. Tempting as revenge might seem, rehabilitation is surely the better route. Whilst there are a few hardened criminals out there a vast amount of crime is either opportunist - a failure to resist temptation when a wallet is left unattended on a pub table maybe - or desperation - shoplifting food when hungry for instance.

 

The suggestion today that we might treat those arrested for being drunk and disorderly with education, the same way as a speed awareness course for the same cost as a fine can save three more points on a driving licence, deserves consideration. It is not my place to solve the administration problems of the scheme, but I think it is my job to applaud thinking differently when observed.

 

So a small cheer for an idea worth pondering. Let's all give it some thought and see if it might work.

Living Life the Right Way Round

Mrs T tells me that some research she just heard reported on Radio 4 Today said that if men fidget in an interview it is seen as a good thing but if women do it will jeopardise their possibility of being employed. Hard to work out why that might be and what deep-rooted prejudice that is tapping in to.

I may have been blessed with a genetic tendency to fidget. I also like interviews and interviewing. One to one conversations with an audience are a great way of teasing out truth and entertaining at the same time.

I also had an ability to pass exams at a higher level than I achieved at coursework without ever understanding my subject or caring about it. Lucky me.

I applauded the changes in education over the 1990s and 2000s, anticipating Google almost, that taught people how to learn rather than what to learn. The tendency to revert that Michael Gove is bringing in is disappointing. You learn facts and figures from pub quizzes these days. I know the kings of England from 1603 - 1688 because of A level history in 1973 but cannot hold a long discussion about the significance of those eras.

I have had to learn how to learn and which learning style best suits me since leaving school. School was hopeless at getting me to be enthusiastic about my subjects. I now love maths, physical geography, economics, philosophy, theology, English language and literature and think I would enjoy doing a GCSE or A level (again) in any of those.

You understand your life backwards but have to live it forwards.

Good Teaching

I was interested to discover from The Observer that Tim Martin named his Wetherspoons pub chain after a teacher who told him he would never make a businessman. Of course we are robbed of the context of the remark by a brief piece of journalism.

Teachers can use lines such as 'You'll never succeed...' but in my experience often follow them up with '...if you carry on the way you are.' It can be the catalyst for change.

Whether you consider you got your results because or despite of your teacher, good teachers don't care. They like it when others win. That's why they are teachers.

Revisited Quotes 6

The assumption that accumulation of knowledge signifies intellect is outmoded.

Independent on Sunday 29/10/00

Teenagers and self-awareness

Teacher David Buckley, writing in the Guardian's education supplement yesterday, tells the rather sad story of how he visited the Facebook site called 'The Dave Buckley Appreciation Society' and got a bit of a shock. Perhaps we could have done more to warn him.

He found himself described as patronising, disorganised with ill-fitting shirts and coffee stains on his clothes. This appears to have come as a shock to him after thirty five years of teaching.

He's had the site closed down, arguing rightly, that he signed up for scrutiny from a small audience not an international one. Fair point.

My concern is this. How did he fail to notice his standards slipping over thirty five years? What systems were in place to allow that small audience to gently let him know these things. Not for nothing does the old (therefore non-inclusive) bumper sticker say, 'Ask a teenager while he still knows everything.' Anyway, did his peers not notice the stains?

In another piece in the same paper Peter Wilby profiles Ruth Miskin, phonics champion, who says that her choices in later life were limited by teachers not intervening to pull her back when she opted out of learning. Her photo suggests she is not of a very different age to me. I can think of no intervention by a teacher at my school that made, or would have made, the slightest difference to me. At school meaningful contact with teachers outside lessons was non-existent. If bollocked I simple stood through it and waited for it to end, then took no remedial action. I was far more bothered by peer recognition. I learnt in lessons from teachers; not outside.

My own motivation to behaviour correction, discovered after I left school and through a church youth group, was the only thing that worked.

Facebook sites for appreciating teachers may contain demotivating content but the useful parallel, 360 degree feedback, is to be encouraged. If you are working with people, find out how to find out what they think of you.

Read David's piece here and Peter's here.

Education

Liz is away for the night so imagine my joy at dicovering I had forgotten to unset the alarm clock from its usual 6a.m. At least that enables me to catch up on a few things.

One of the difficulties a liberal, chattering society has is chattering with the poorly educated. We have to learn to jettison our assumptions that others will respond to rational argument. Yesterday I was talking to someone about a suggestion made in a meeting of a large Christian organisation. It was a suggestion that everyone thought was great until someone delivered a quality speech against it and then everyone agreed the idea was rubbish. That is fantastic and the way liberal, chattering democracy works. We all listen and are willing to change our minds. Job done.

But how do you change the mind of a Lancashire mother who, complaining that the newly nourishing food in the school canteen is of 'insufficient quality' for her child, smuggles fish and chips through the rails of the boundary between the school and the cemetery, backed up, wouldn't you know, by the local fish and chip shop owner, who is publicly quoted as saying that this argument is about the right of mothers to feed their children? It isn't feeding if done daily, it's assisted suicide. Trust me. I had fish and chips last night and today it's killing me.

Jamie Oliver has won the argument about nourishing food in canteens and demonstrated that, with the right will, minds can be changed. But it took passion, demonstration and hard work. I think he succeeded because his roots aren't liberal chattering class. He knew how to change the minds of the sort of people whose minds needed changing.

How can we make it easier for the poorly educated to change their minds without feeling they have lost?

And how, more complicatedly, do you change the minds of the entire nations, differently educated, who now want to demand an apology from the Pope for daring to quote an ancient, anti-Islamic source in an academic lecture. Before half a day had passed the whole Parliament of Pakistan, most of whom would have been unfamiliar with anything by then except populist reporting of the matter, had passed a motion calling for him to recant.

On the streets effigies of his holiness were burning

The Pope may have some unpleasant, illiberal views, and certainly in his position he should be guarded, but I'm beginning to think reporters shouldn't be allowed in such academic lectures unless they have a proven background in anti-inflamatory writing.

Of course it is the chattering, liberal(ish), democratically elected government (for whom I voted and to whom I can speak) who are responsible for education in this country so I'm not blaming anyone except myself here for the first problem.

The second scares me. Can we talk about it?