Milton Friedman

The consumption function

polemic

–noun

1.

a controversial argument, as one against some opinion, doctrine, etc.

2.

a person who argues in opposition to another; controversialist.

Source: Dictionary.com

Stan Cohen - Folk Devils and Moral Panics

A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order.^[1] According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests."^[2] Those who start the panic when they fear a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are known by researchers as "moral entrepreneurs", while people who supposedly threaten the social order have been described as "folk devils."

Gresham's law

Bad money drives out good. Hence, it is unprofitable in the long term to sell bad goods.

creativityaccelerators.org

Ken Robinson 1999 all our futures
National foundation for educational research 2008 creati
ve partnerships.
Ideas foundation 2004

Politics - First Past the Post

Key terms:
Disolution of Parliament
A constituency with a Party with 10 000 votes clear of the competitors - safe seat.
Small majority - a marginal

Advantages of First Past the Post:




Key Elections:
1945 Atlee takes over from Churchill - Six years of setting up the Welfare State
1979 Thatcher (The Iron Lady) Privatisation, breaking the unions, lower taxation
1997 New Labour - After 18 years of the cons UK wanted a change. Landslide. Even at its most popular New Labour only enjoyed 43% of votes cast.

A

Key Points of Interest from the LTUC Project 2012: The Prospectus

Formal transmissive lectures are increasingly replaced by active, problem-based learning through seminars; lecture theatres have interactive technology; powerpoint is used sparingly and combined with video on the web; classrooms are less crowded and have much more flexible furniture.

Use of moodle is standard and increasingly interactive and imaginative; it is more normal to use multi-media authoring software as write a lecture for transmission of information.

Forms of assessment are designed for learning and for development of future professional skills, such as presentations and printed posters.

There are fewer assignments – reducing marking loads but engendering higher performance because they are more challenging and higher stakes - although there are opportunities to practise, make mistakes and gain formative feedback.
• Students need to be doing much more rather than the emphasis on the lecturer goldplating “delivery”.
• But challenge is hard to sell when evaluated by students preferring comfort zones
• We must not reinforce passive behaviours, perhaps carried over from school.
• Graduateness is a kind of charter of certified qualities in the learner - rather than charter of provision and delivery.

The following text is adapted from a section in the prospectus for Lancaster University.

"The fundamental element of study in higher education is your individual reading and research; formal contact time with lecturers and fellow students is designed to guide, consolidate, apply, practise and test out your understanding gained through private study".

and...

"Formal lectures are diminishing in frequency and significance; powerpoint slides crowded with text to copy are being hunted to extinction. You will spend much more effective time accessing online materials on our virtual learning environment (moodle)".

The sheer neuro-physiological inefficiency of learning from lectures is well shown in What’s The Use of Lectures [Bligh, Intellect Books, 2004]

“The formal lecture is a refuge for the faint-hearted, both lecturer and students. It keeps the channels of communications closed, freezes hierarchy between lecturer and students and removes any responsibility on the student to respond..." Barnett, R [1999] Realizing the University in an age of supercomplexity. SRHE/OUP