Practical ways for schools to become more sustainable

TOP TIPS FOR SUSTAINABILITY IN SCHOOLS

"This collection of top tips suggests practical ways for schools to become more sustainable, should they choose to, whilst at the same time saving money.

Sustainable development means meeting the needs of all people now – including protecting the natural habitats that are essential to our survival – without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable development is part of the Coalition Agreement, which states that we ‘need to protect the environment for future generations, make our economy more environmentally sustainable, and improve our quality of life and wellbeing’.

The Department for Education is committed to sustainable development and believes it is important to prepare young people for the future. Our approach is based on the belief that schools perform better when they take responsibility for their own improvement. We want schools to make their own judgements on how sustainable development should be reflected in their ethos, day-to-day operations and through education for sustainable development. Those judgements should be based on sound knowledge and local needs."

I am delighted to see this compendium updated and re-published (web only).

Source:
Department for Education (Feb 2012) Top Tips for Sustainability in Schools
http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/t/top%20tips%20for%20sustainability%20in%20schools%20feb%202012.pdf

The extraordinary becomes the everyday

The App Curriculum for 2014

Exclusive to www.mikebakereducation.co.uk by Roy Blatchford

"It is a truism of our age that the extraordinary becomes the commonplace - at a faster and faster rate. Imagine for a moment that a soon-to-be-revealed global brand donates an iPad to every 11 year-old in England. Let us say to the cohort starting secondary school in September 2014.

That brand might possibly be Harper Collins, whose chief executive has predicted that 50% of fiction sales by mid 2013 will be eBooks. Or it might be Pearson, the world's premier education publisher and, incidentally, owner of Edexcel. Or perhaps Samsung, intent on securing the mobile allegiance of a generation.

The iPad sells today for £399 in the UK. Technology giant Infosys predicts a similar portable device will sweep India within three years, retailing at $39. The extraordinary becomes the everyday."

Source: www.mikebakereducation.co.uk/articles/90/the-app-curriculum-for-2014

There is much sense in this complete article including assessment, potential for interactivity and the possible demise of the textbook.

However, it skates over the issue of knowledge: 'with slim prescribed content from age 5 - 16'.

How is this core or essential knowledge to be specified and agreed?

How much of it is deep and lasting knowledge - and how much is responsive to our times and the future?

How is it to be a slim prescription yet with age-specific milestones and progression?

Given that no-one is being paid to do this work (as a government policy), how will it come about?

And it doesn't square with this post of few days ago Curriculum review 2014 - the big anomaly

Place, image and branding

Having a clear out means you come across old stuff. This is something I wrote before blogging was underway and it deserves inclusion here. It was a response to a survey reported in the local paper and was my attempt to persuade people to see their genuine concerns in broader terms - and to make connections between local context and the bigger picture.

Living Geography

Having a memorable slogan or catch-phrase for places seems a strange mix of advertising and end-of pier comedians but the media-smart age says image is everything. No-one admits to being influenced by this pressure but visitor figures and polls say otherwise.

When places are branded the well of cliché is usually plumbed. Another source is literature where descriptive powers can be used to build reputations. Kent has Dickens to call upon and it suits the sought after heritage picture for this to be 150 years old. An advert on South Eastern Trains uses this description based on a railway journey through Kent, I suspect, without irony:

“… haystacks, sheep, clover in full bloom delicious to sight and smell, corn-sheaves, cherry-orchards, apple-orchards, reapers, gleaners, hedges, gates, fields that taper off into little angular corners, cottages, gardens, now and then a church.”

Outrage, then, at the survey that suggests top place for countryside and villages should go to North Yorkshire, and Kent was fifth after Devon, Derbyshire and Gloucestershire. The threat that the by-line ‘Garden of England’ should be removed from Kent was due to interpretation and not really part of the question posed.

In defence of her territory Kent a tourism spokesperson says ‘to compare the two counties is ridiculous they are completely different.’ However, the geography in our heads does make the comparisons. It allows us to make judgements about places and it affects all that we think and do. What questions should we ask about the opinions and images of different places?

Angus Willson

4 June 2006

A Canterbury Tale: fishy

A lovely animation set in Canterbury involving students at St Anselms Catholic School(2008).

A Fish's Tale from Animate & Create Workshops on Vimeo.

Source: http://animateandcreate.com/workshops/work/a-fishs-tale/

Curriculum review 2014 - the big anomaly

Dear Mr Gove: Michael Rosen's letter from a curious parent
Michael Rosen has some questions for the education secretary

"There's a bit of an anomaly though, isn't there? This curriculum will only apply in England and only in schools working within local authorities. So central government is going to lay down a compulsory curriculum for the schools that it's trying to turn into schools where the curriculum won't apply – academies, free schools and indeed any other kinds of schools you might invent."

Brilliant. What we have all been thinking...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/feb/06/michael-rosen-gove-curriculum-schools

Rock and choc: two books with global perspectives

I have read two books recently with an unexpected connection. Well, the thought is common as filtered through my geographical mind.

It is not news to me that Keith Richards is a genuine co-credited songwriter and that he resents what he calls lead-vocalist syndrome. In Life he lays his love-hate relationship with Mick Jagger on thick  The other key point he repeats is on his drug abuse: 'don't try this at home'. It is also very interesting on the importance of the record producer, other musicians involved and the studio. In this, he is generous to others.

What really struck me was the globe-trotting. Keef is known for news stories in particular locations such as the drug busts in his home-base called Redlands in Sussex and on tour in Toronto. He also de-bunks the press version of when he was seriously injured from a tree fall on Fiji which required brain surgery in New Zealand. It is also a feature of the creative jumble of recording of 'Exile on Main Street' (in 1971) that the Stones were tax-evaders living in different areas in the South of France. His respect for the American blues musicians is poignant.  He also makes frequent references to the ordinary beginnings in Dartford, Kent as he moves home-base to Switzerland and Jamaica. Not to forget Chelsea, New York and Los Angeles, of course.

Being seriously rich affords a rootless existence in the modern era if you travel in comfortable style between four or more luxury homes on different continents and earn your living travelling the major cities. However, what does it mean in terms of gaining a world view?

The other book is Chocolate Wars by Deborak Cadbury. This is largely set in the nineteenth century and involves the global confectionary industrialists of Cadbury, Rowntree, Fry, Hershey, Lindt, Suchard. And this means the named people not just their companies. It is fascinating that in a pre-railway era these entrepreneurs travelled the countries of Europe to find out about the new processing techniques being developed by others. Industrial espionage, if you like. It also involves transatlantic journeys.


Ripe cocoa pods Flickr CC
Originally uploaded by IITA Image Library
 
It is also mind-boggling that the cocoa pods which is only grown in specific climatic conditions and, to this day, has little or no consummer value in those countries. When William Cadbury heard rumours in 1901 that a small percentage of their cocoa source came from two Portuguese colonies where slavery was still taking place he headed off to find out for himself.

Also in 1901, George Cadbury said "Just now it seems to me that speculators, trust mongers, and owners of enormous wealth are the greatest curse of this world and the cause of most of its povertY!"

Overall it is a fascinating story of highly principled and wealthy power-brokers with much of it speaking to our times. It spans morality in supply chains, factory villages, a range of social concerns, responses to war and political newspaper ownership.

Two books: worlds apart, yet universal concerns.

Both recommended.

Richards, Keith (with James Fox) (2010) Life, Phoenix/Orion.
Cadbury, Deborah (2010) Chocolate Wars: from Cadbury to Kraft: 200 years of sweet succes and bitter rivalry, Harper Press.

Also
The third wave of globalisation, Alex Glennie and Will Straw, IPPR. 26 Jan 2012
www.ippr.org/images/media/files/publication/2012/01/third-wave-globalisation_Jan2012_8551.pdf

Funding precipice: baby and bath water

I attended two different development education conferences last week. Both were interesting in their own way but confirming two sides of the coin of what development education means to me.

The first was a big university event: 120 people. Intro-lecture-lecture. Good stuff. Only a few questions which are treated by the audience as ‘look at me’ opportunities. Break into five large groups for two more presentations. Little dialogue, no conversation. Lots of academic language. The panel session at the end had a bit of verbal sparring (but less than half the attendance of the morning session). It wasn’t exclusively about formal education and there were few teachers in attendance but it was mostly opinion (sorry, research) about what other people should do.

The second was the project finale by a small local organisation with information about the project and the evaluation process in a group of schools. It had a reflective and modest tone. The real purpose, though, was to hear the young people (Year 9) involved in the project give their presentations. These were very impressive, confident and articulate, with one group of five delivering off-by-heart. It deserved a much larger audience.

I feel the first category is still being indulged with funding while the second type is seriously under threat throughout the country. I feel the first has only slight impact on the second but could not exist at all without the genuine hands-on support and guidance work at a grass roots level. I know which is most important and which is most under threat from the lack of funding.

But how is this vital local work to be sustained?

Development Education Research Centre (DERC), University of London Institute of Education
Development and development education conference
www.ioe.ac.uk/research/150.html
See also
London Global Teacher Network www.lgtn.org.uk/

World Education Development Group (WEDG), Canterbury
"My Dad says..."
www.wedg.org.uk/index.php/news/111-qmy-dad-saysq-conference-and-student-competition-final