Merlin John Online

There is something about the world of education that seems to lend itself to the raising of particular ideas to almost divine status – often well beyond what the original creators of those ideas intended. Something is given the fatal hallmark of “common sense” and a bunch of people who have probably only read an abstract or a review in The TES feed it to teachers who don't really have the time to question it, but who are always really glad of simple answers. The whole digital native thing has been used to justify all sorts of initiatives – some of them still good by the way – and further a lot of careers. The same was true of emotional intelligence, the Initial Teaching Alphabet, Synthetic Phonics, learning styles, VLEs, the whole shebang. We don't seem to be capable of devising a system that filters this out – though the socialist in me can't help thinking it's got something to do with privatisation, tendering etc. This is really just an extended sigh from someone who saw this begin 30 years ago and has been ducking and weaving to try and find little islands of sanity in the educational asylum ever since – pay me no mind :O).  Marshal By the way, Merlin (hi – been a long time) your spell-checker generates an error and this text box doesn't allow Firefox's own checker to work – just sayin' :O)