free speech and political action.
I realised last night when my mom told me she couldnt get to the LSE lecturer's blog via the link on my post that the blog has been down since I last checked and so my brother got to work gathering information to provide some information on the actual situation:
from his blog:
since the blog has now been taken down for reasons yet unknown, I'm ripping this off various blogs to explain the whole controvesy of the lecturer's blog at the lse-
From flyingfaeries
Erik Ringmar, a Senior Lecturer at the LSE Government Department, gave a speech at LSE's Open Day (basically a day when prospective students come to LSE to find out more about the school) that incurred censure by the Convenor because it was too... honest. He blogged about being reprimanded, was ordered by the Convenor to shut his blog down, but refused and has decided to maintain his blog to defend his freedom of speech.
When he starts off with a paragraph like this, you know it's going to be interesting:
I know we are expected to ’sell’ our programme to you. An undergraduate is today worth 3000 pounds and there is competition between universities for this money. Unfortunately I don’t have a sales-pitch. In fact, I don’t even have a Powerpoint presentation. However, I will try my best to talk truthfully about the student experience at the School as I have come to understand it. When it comes to a great institutions such as ours, the truth is always the best recruiting tool.
I think the main part of his speech that upset the Convenor was:
After all, the greatness of a scholar is measured in terms of output — that is, research. It is more than anything the number of books and articles written that matters to academic promotions. If you want a high-flying academic career you have to publish.
This means that the first-class teachers usually will have their minds elsewhere than on undergraduate teaching. They might be away on conferences, and even if they are not absent in body, they may be absent in mind. This is too bad of course. In fact it could indeed be that students have more opportunities for interaction with faculty members at lesser institutions — like the London Metropolitan University, say — where research is less heavily emphasised. I don’t know.
What I do know is that the in-class student experience often differs very little between the LSE and a place such as the London Metropolitan University. This may surprise you but it something students tell me. Instinctively I rebel against this conclusion, but I have come to believe that the students who make this point are correct.
Think about it! The kinds of courses taught at undergraduate level are pretty much the same everywhere you go. The courses use the same kinds of reading lists, with the same kinds of books, set the same kinds of exam questions … The lecturers too are not that different from each other. This is easily explained. Often after all we went to the same universities
Other parts of the speech-
You will all play your respective parts in perpetuating the British class systtem, or the class system of whatever country you happen to be from. This too is a meaning of the term ‘elite’ institution.
What can you do about it? Not very much of course. Except that you can stand up for the things that we actually did teach you. You can stand up for the content of your education and not just the form. The ideas, the insights, the thoughts and the dreams. You can stand up for a human, and humane, way of living; the sheer joy of thinking and of exploring.
Employers may try to take these basic pleasures away from you. In fact, I know they will. But together we will insist on their importance. As an LSE student we will make sure that these lessons stay with you for life.''
Other selected quotes from the blog-
''They’ve sent out a pre-prepared Powerpoint presentation with the official sales-pitch which I am expected to talk over. A pre-prepared Powerpoint presentation!!! Who are they kidding??? I have two PhDs and a conscience; I don’t go into a classroom with someone else’s Powerpoints... Surely the fundamental, underlying, problem is the commercialisation of education...When education becomes a commodity, academics too must become salesmen with a sales-pitch...Such commercialisation militates against our obligation to speak the truth as we see it. I’m not a salesman and I don’t have a sales-pitch. That’s not how I was trained and it’s not what I take my job to require...What a great business idea — to turn people with integrity into salemen!''
-------------------------------------------------------
my brother also put this up on his blog regarding the teacher's union (AUT) and their strike:
The union rejected a pay rise of 5% over the next two years, when inflation in this country is 1.8%.
And here is the official policy of the university teachers' union-
"Students will be far more damaged in the medium and long term if the crisis in low pay is not
tackled decisively. An assessment boycott is the most difficult thing that academic professionals could undertake.
It goes against every instinct of dedicated professional staff. It will, potentially affect students.
For such dedicated professionals to contemplate such an act is a measure of the extent to which we have exhausted every other means and stands as a condemnation of the complacency of VCs. For years, they have taken university staff for granted, passing off the
costs of under funding onto us.
We have been driven to this action by our refusal to withstand any more and by our commitment to education. Students have nothing to gain from being taught by a diminishing band of demoralised, overworked and underpaid lecturers.
Students will support us. If we make our case to students they can understand our position and will support us. Nationally, NUS supports us and we have formed a close relationship with them. We support their campaign against lifting the cap on fees and they support our
campaign on pay.
In making this stand, we are not simply after more money; we are making a stand for the Sector. Higher Education is a huge and vital part of any civilised, developed and prosperous nation. But VCs have shown that they no longer represent the interests of UK Higher Education. They have forfeited their right to our trust, demonstrating that they are unconcerned about the plight of the staff who conduct research, the staff who teach our students or the students themselves.
Only we can now speak for the interests of Higher Education as a whole. The voices of staff and students together, represent the best interests of the Higher Education sector and together, we can persuade VCs to take our needs and our views seriously. But we can only do this by being willing to undertake the most serious action.
Other professionals, such as secondary teachers, have only seen their needs addressed when they have reached the point of being willing to take action and have done so. We have to be able and willing to make our stand too and to say enough is enough, pay us a decent professional wage.
Industrial action and assessment boycott are our only options now and we have to be ready to use them."
----------------------------
It's stupid shit like this in the UK (the strike I mean, ) that make me glad the PAP government in Singapore has effectively broken the power of unions to strike. And my experience in the UK has made me more and more convinced of the evils of socialism.
Long live the free market, I say.
hmmm... i actually dont agree with what he said about unions. in fact, i think the AUT has valid claims to reject the 5% pay rise and campaign for something higher than 5% because of the low pay that teachers here are given anyway. come on, you would not have problems like this in Singapore because teachers are respected and paid pretty well, especially university lecturers. the government offers scholarships to bright students who wish to teach as a career and asian culture ensures that teachers are honoured by society. i do agree that the pay for teachers here in the UK is dismal and universities should be putting their money into paying the teachers rather than building fancy buildings (which in itself is a controversy - especially in Warwick when the money-spinning departments such as Math get very nice new buildings but only Math students have access to while the Arts Faculty has the oldest building but houses the most number of teachers and is most used by students). nationally, the government wants to raise university fees and i personally dont see a problem with this because yes a university needs money and with more money, your university experience will be enriched since you are getting better teaching/facilities. but apparently, teachers are not going to be beneficiaries of these top up fees because universities are planning to use the money to improve facilities in universities when the first thing they should do is improve the welfare of teachers. what is the point of having a beautiful campus when you have crap teachers (and crap because they are overworked and underpaid/appreciated). teachers are commodities in the equation as well, and should be considered when planning how to spend the increase in fees!
so while i do believe in free market (and thus an increase in university fees for local students - they pay a lot less than local students back home if you consider the disparity between their fees of £1,500 and international students' £8,700 a year), staff welfare concerns are justified and strive on AUT!
-------------------------------------------------------
in a conversation with my brother after initially publishing the above, he said:
"i think my comment on unions was taken out of context. i was talking about extreme action like this that is totally unreasonable that destroys all credibility that unions may have with an increasingly abject and angered population. it's like what people felt abt the hock lee bus riots in 1957. the stupid thing is that the AUT assumed that the students will be 100% behind any action they take."
i said:
"but considering how long this has gone on for and the steps the gov is taking, perhaps this is what it has to come to."
he replied:
"which is why i am thankful for the PAP in this respect. the point is that the union also refuses to allow universities to make individual deals with its own staff. the LSE is perfectly happy to offer their teachers very lucrative contracts but the lecturers are bound by union rules not to accept when their "comrades" in other universities continue to suffer. the LSE cannot afford to pay its professors shit pay because these people will just go to america where there is lots of money to be made."
we then talked about how the AUT thinks that because some universities are willing to strike deals that the rest will crumble soon, and also how the AUT is disengenous because they oppose the lifting of any cap on local students' fees but want more money from the university and not all universities are rich like LSE and Oxford.
my brother thinks the universities are itching for a showdown because exams are coming up soon and things dont seem to be moving as fast as they should. (in case i havent mentioned, the AUT forbids its members to set exam papers and/or mark assessed work)
*tumbleweed rolls across the screen*
from his blog:
since the blog has now been taken down for reasons yet unknown, I'm ripping this off various blogs to explain the whole controvesy of the lecturer's blog at the lse-
From flyingfaeries
Erik Ringmar, a Senior Lecturer at the LSE Government Department, gave a speech at LSE's Open Day (basically a day when prospective students come to LSE to find out more about the school) that incurred censure by the Convenor because it was too... honest. He blogged about being reprimanded, was ordered by the Convenor to shut his blog down, but refused and has decided to maintain his blog to defend his freedom of speech.
When he starts off with a paragraph like this, you know it's going to be interesting:
I know we are expected to ’sell’ our programme to you. An undergraduate is today worth 3000 pounds and there is competition between universities for this money. Unfortunately I don’t have a sales-pitch. In fact, I don’t even have a Powerpoint presentation. However, I will try my best to talk truthfully about the student experience at the School as I have come to understand it. When it comes to a great institutions such as ours, the truth is always the best recruiting tool.
I think the main part of his speech that upset the Convenor was:
After all, the greatness of a scholar is measured in terms of output — that is, research. It is more than anything the number of books and articles written that matters to academic promotions. If you want a high-flying academic career you have to publish.
This means that the first-class teachers usually will have their minds elsewhere than on undergraduate teaching. They might be away on conferences, and even if they are not absent in body, they may be absent in mind. This is too bad of course. In fact it could indeed be that students have more opportunities for interaction with faculty members at lesser institutions — like the London Metropolitan University, say — where research is less heavily emphasised. I don’t know.
What I do know is that the in-class student experience often differs very little between the LSE and a place such as the London Metropolitan University. This may surprise you but it something students tell me. Instinctively I rebel against this conclusion, but I have come to believe that the students who make this point are correct.
Think about it! The kinds of courses taught at undergraduate level are pretty much the same everywhere you go. The courses use the same kinds of reading lists, with the same kinds of books, set the same kinds of exam questions … The lecturers too are not that different from each other. This is easily explained. Often after all we went to the same universities
Other parts of the speech-
You will all play your respective parts in perpetuating the British class systtem, or the class system of whatever country you happen to be from. This too is a meaning of the term ‘elite’ institution.
What can you do about it? Not very much of course. Except that you can stand up for the things that we actually did teach you. You can stand up for the content of your education and not just the form. The ideas, the insights, the thoughts and the dreams. You can stand up for a human, and humane, way of living; the sheer joy of thinking and of exploring.
Employers may try to take these basic pleasures away from you. In fact, I know they will. But together we will insist on their importance. As an LSE student we will make sure that these lessons stay with you for life.''
Other selected quotes from the blog-
''They’ve sent out a pre-prepared Powerpoint presentation with the official sales-pitch which I am expected to talk over. A pre-prepared Powerpoint presentation!!! Who are they kidding??? I have two PhDs and a conscience; I don’t go into a classroom with someone else’s Powerpoints... Surely the fundamental, underlying, problem is the commercialisation of education...When education becomes a commodity, academics too must become salesmen with a sales-pitch...Such commercialisation militates against our obligation to speak the truth as we see it. I’m not a salesman and I don’t have a sales-pitch. That’s not how I was trained and it’s not what I take my job to require...What a great business idea — to turn people with integrity into salemen!''
-------------------------------------------------------
my brother also put this up on his blog regarding the teacher's union (AUT) and their strike:
The union rejected a pay rise of 5% over the next two years, when inflation in this country is 1.8%.
And here is the official policy of the university teachers' union-
"Students will be far more damaged in the medium and long term if the crisis in low pay is not
tackled decisively. An assessment boycott is the most difficult thing that academic professionals could undertake.
It goes against every instinct of dedicated professional staff. It will, potentially affect students.
For such dedicated professionals to contemplate such an act is a measure of the extent to which we have exhausted every other means and stands as a condemnation of the complacency of VCs. For years, they have taken university staff for granted, passing off the
costs of under funding onto us.
We have been driven to this action by our refusal to withstand any more and by our commitment to education. Students have nothing to gain from being taught by a diminishing band of demoralised, overworked and underpaid lecturers.
Students will support us. If we make our case to students they can understand our position and will support us. Nationally, NUS supports us and we have formed a close relationship with them. We support their campaign against lifting the cap on fees and they support our
campaign on pay.
In making this stand, we are not simply after more money; we are making a stand for the Sector. Higher Education is a huge and vital part of any civilised, developed and prosperous nation. But VCs have shown that they no longer represent the interests of UK Higher Education. They have forfeited their right to our trust, demonstrating that they are unconcerned about the plight of the staff who conduct research, the staff who teach our students or the students themselves.
Only we can now speak for the interests of Higher Education as a whole. The voices of staff and students together, represent the best interests of the Higher Education sector and together, we can persuade VCs to take our needs and our views seriously. But we can only do this by being willing to undertake the most serious action.
Other professionals, such as secondary teachers, have only seen their needs addressed when they have reached the point of being willing to take action and have done so. We have to be able and willing to make our stand too and to say enough is enough, pay us a decent professional wage.
Industrial action and assessment boycott are our only options now and we have to be ready to use them."
----------------------------
It's stupid shit like this in the UK (the strike I mean, ) that make me glad the PAP government in Singapore has effectively broken the power of unions to strike. And my experience in the UK has made me more and more convinced of the evils of socialism.
Long live the free market, I say.
hmmm... i actually dont agree with what he said about unions. in fact, i think the AUT has valid claims to reject the 5% pay rise and campaign for something higher than 5% because of the low pay that teachers here are given anyway. come on, you would not have problems like this in Singapore because teachers are respected and paid pretty well, especially university lecturers. the government offers scholarships to bright students who wish to teach as a career and asian culture ensures that teachers are honoured by society. i do agree that the pay for teachers here in the UK is dismal and universities should be putting their money into paying the teachers rather than building fancy buildings (which in itself is a controversy - especially in Warwick when the money-spinning departments such as Math get very nice new buildings but only Math students have access to while the Arts Faculty has the oldest building but houses the most number of teachers and is most used by students). nationally, the government wants to raise university fees and i personally dont see a problem with this because yes a university needs money and with more money, your university experience will be enriched since you are getting better teaching/facilities. but apparently, teachers are not going to be beneficiaries of these top up fees because universities are planning to use the money to improve facilities in universities when the first thing they should do is improve the welfare of teachers. what is the point of having a beautiful campus when you have crap teachers (and crap because they are overworked and underpaid/appreciated). teachers are commodities in the equation as well, and should be considered when planning how to spend the increase in fees!
so while i do believe in free market (and thus an increase in university fees for local students - they pay a lot less than local students back home if you consider the disparity between their fees of £1,500 and international students' £8,700 a year), staff welfare concerns are justified and strive on AUT!
-------------------------------------------------------
in a conversation with my brother after initially publishing the above, he said:
"i think my comment on unions was taken out of context. i was talking about extreme action like this that is totally unreasonable that destroys all credibility that unions may have with an increasingly abject and angered population. it's like what people felt abt the hock lee bus riots in 1957. the stupid thing is that the AUT assumed that the students will be 100% behind any action they take."
i said:
"but considering how long this has gone on for and the steps the gov is taking, perhaps this is what it has to come to."
he replied:
"which is why i am thankful for the PAP in this respect. the point is that the union also refuses to allow universities to make individual deals with its own staff. the LSE is perfectly happy to offer their teachers very lucrative contracts but the lecturers are bound by union rules not to accept when their "comrades" in other universities continue to suffer. the LSE cannot afford to pay its professors shit pay because these people will just go to america where there is lots of money to be made."
we then talked about how the AUT thinks that because some universities are willing to strike deals that the rest will crumble soon, and also how the AUT is disengenous because they oppose the lifting of any cap on local students' fees but want more money from the university and not all universities are rich like LSE and Oxford.
my brother thinks the universities are itching for a showdown because exams are coming up soon and things dont seem to be moving as fast as they should. (in case i havent mentioned, the AUT forbids its members to set exam papers and/or mark assessed work)
*tumbleweed rolls across the screen*
posted by ade at
9:15 pm
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