We inhabit a university system in which Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) policies proliferate. Each university must have one and, apparently, to ensure these policies are followed, there is also a requirement for Universal Design (UD). Together, these ensure that lecturers do not populate their lecture series’ according to their own prejudices and biases which, …
Tag Archives: Education
A Digression: Universal Design
This is connected with my first blog on the Technical University and the businessification (pronounced business-ify-cation…couldn’t resist it) of education. I read three ‘corporate’ documents yesterday, all glossy pages, colourful graphs and photographs of happy smiley students, or ‘learners’ as the businesspeak that permeates the things insists on calling them. Strange that, our children’s primary …
The Fragmentation of the Subject
Art comes, as I’ve said, from dissatisfaction and conflict, so how does it end up promoting what it critiques? Put another way, how does capitalism repurpose and weaponise artefacts which are profoundly at odds with its ideology? By historicising these, then incorporating them into the system of “educational metrics”, coupled with the idea that developed …
Valuing Academics
The value of universities has become increasingly dominated by metrics – staff publications, learner completion rates, graduate earnings etc. As metrics become more important (despite the notion of “measuring education” being entirely bogus), those wanting to attend universities, and their parents, have been encouraged to base their ‘choice’ on these metrics. Degrees are chosen on …
Murmurs from the Forest 