Deputy Head (Academic) at Radley. Formerly Michaela and @TeachFirst. Interested in theology, philosophy, politics and education.
Oxfordshire, UK
Joined October 2012
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I've written about our new government's plans for education. And why I'm really worried.
'The broader worry is that our new government isn’t capitalising on, or even curious, about what works.'
✍️ Jonathan Porter
spectator.co.uk/article/im-w…
Jonathan Porter retweeted
I don't think the average viewer understands how deeply the famous line in Terrence Malick’s 2011 film The Tree of Life, "The nuns taught us there are two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace, you have to choose which one you'll follow," hits on basically the most hotly contested question in all of theology in the past 100 years. I spent three years discussing De Lubac's Surnaturel in a reading group around the same time the movie came out.
Jonathan Porter retweeted
A classicist makes the atheist case for Christ
compactmag.com/article/the-a…
Jonathan Porter retweeted
Peter Hyman, who is writing Burnham's ten year plan, says we should move schools into "zoos" and "forests".
Hear me out for a second - what if we put them in "classrooms" with "books"?
Jonathan Porter retweeted
When I started researchED, I began with the principles that the empirical method, truth, evidence, and honesty were good tools to assess what worked in the classroom, when, and why. After all, surely claims about the world required evidence from that world?
Almost immediately I was repeatedly dismissed by impeccably respectable educational academics and their societies who snootily dismissed this project as 'mere scientism/ positivism.' This baffled me: were we supposed to make claims about the external, physical world without tangible evidence bases? Should we rely instead on introspection, internal experience, or purely aesthetic standards of enquiry?
It took me a while to realise that for many in the academy the answer was yes: that was exactly the standard of the field, and I could take my pesky questions about falsifiability back to the gutter with the oiks.
I realised then that for some people in the field of educational academia the discourse had been reduced to fashion; a cultural shibboleth; a password enabling entry into a world of manufactured status. For some, education was an article of faith, and if you could repeat the dogma and cant you earned membership to high rank, and demand the sole right to interpret the holy texts.
(Which is one of the reasons why historically, a lot of university based teacher training was so useless. It had forgotten its raison d'être - to train competent teachers- and leaned into a perverse corruption of its purpose, wasting countless hours on Freire, progressivism, and inane cargo-cult parlour games.)
The fact that even someone as dull as me could spot this was a scandalous proof that things could and should be a lot better, and that teachers and children also deserved better.
It has been the delight of my life to see the emergence of a new evidence-informed impulse in education that has spread slowly and internationally. The profession I see in England and elsewhere is not the one I slaved away in. Now there is a burgeoning consensus that consensus alone is not enough to support any old fantasy or hobby-horse, however strongly held. Now there is a scepticism and also a confidence that I don't remember in 2003. In short, we are starting to see the emergence of a profession; flawed, but recognisable in its elegant imperfection.
This toothpaste does not go back in the tube, no matter how hard you try. The seen cannot be unseen.
And there are green shoots in the colleges of teacher training too, a maturation of purpose and practice that gives me hope for the future.
eventbrite.com/e/19870110996…
“Education academics whose work is embedded in postmodern sociology are focused on rhetorical activism, not on the basic scientific foundation of falsifiability. Findings they don’t like are cast into the moral wilderness with slurs like ‘positivism’ or ‘neoliberal’ - no more discussion needed. This is not academic rigour”.
From my new blog post:
Edu-sociology: a sad but important time of reckoning.
share.google/BdylOCnSOnKBhdB…
Ping @ProfAliceS, @JohnHMcWhorter, @RichardDawkins
@JoshMacAlister
Jonathan Porter retweeted
Because uniforms can help construct the cultural norm that school is a special place, and staff/ one another are worth dressing specially and smartly for. They aren’t the only way to do this, but they are a way. It conveys the status of the environment. Who cares what bankers do?
Not even bankers wear ties and blazers any more. So why should schoolchildren? | André Spicer theguardian.com/commentisfre…
Best thing I've read on Nolan's Odyssey here from @johnehrett.
theopolisinstitute.com/chris…
Jonathan Porter retweeted
Activist: "Farmers are millionaires sitting on land worth a fortune. They can afford the inheritance tax."
Farmer: "How much did I earn last year?"
Activist: "I don't know. A lot, surely."
Farmer: "Twenty-two thousand. Before the tractor broke."
Activist: "But the land's worth millions."
Farmer: "On paper. I can't eat the field or spend it. The only way to turn it into money is to sell it, and then I'm not a farmer, I'm a bloke who used to have a farm."
Activist: "So sell a corner of it."
Farmer: "A corner doesn't work as a farm. You can't run a suckler herd on the bit that's left after the taxman's had his slice. You sell one field, then the next bill comes, then another field. It ends one way."
Activist: "The land only costs that much because you won't sell it."
Farmer: "It costs that much because a hedge fund three counties over wants it for carbon credits and a footballer wants it for the view. Neither of them has ever calved a cow at three in the morning. They set the price. I get the bill."
Activist: "It's still an asset."
Farmer: "It's a workplace that happens to be expensive. You've decided the value of the shop is the same as the wage of the shopkeeper. Come back in February and watch me not be a millionaire in the rain."
Jonathan Porter retweeted
For most of the seventeenth century, Amsterdam kept catching fire. It was the richest city on earth, which meant its houses were stuffed with curtains and furnishings and its warehouses with tar, hemp, rope, sugar and spices.
Then, in the 1680s, the city government beat fire almost completely. From 1682 to 1687, fire losses were under one percent of what they had been in the twelve years before.
worksinprogress.co/issue/how…
Part of the credit belongs to a new fire engine. In 1672, the painter Jan van der Heyden designed a much better machine, with a leather suction hose, the first long, flexible delivery hose, and an air chamber that produced a continuous, high-pressure stream.
But the real story is one of better institutions. In 1681, the city's merchant government passed new firefighting regulations. These professionalized some aspects of the service, establishing district companies consisting of thirty-six conscripted residents under two fire master and a network of professional trumpeters who sat in towers and sounded the alarm.
The regulations created new incentives: under the new rules, lamplighters who reported fires and the first three fire companies to arrive at a blaze received cash prizes, while watchmen who failed to notify firefighters and homeowners who fought a fire themselves before raising the alarm were given fines.
Amsterdam's citizens were known throughout Europe for gladly paying high taxes, and encouraging a culture of 'useful invention'. In the case of firefighting, they certainly got their money’s worth. New from @vpostrel in Works in Progress.
Jonathan Porter retweeted
Unsupervised assessed work is dead. This cannot endure. You can't manage a system like this.
First student’s paper had quotes from unassigned readings and all the text had been pasted into Google Docs and then slightly tweaked. Pangram flagged as AI with strong confidence.
He flatly denied using AI. Offered a dubious account of pasted text (“I wrote it in Word on a different computer and then copy-pasted it”).
More notably, he couldn’t explain the meanings of the quotes from unassigned readings or explain the meaning of his own prose.
VERY suspicious.
Unless he can provide that word doc and it somehow clears him, I will almost certainly have to report him to the dean.
Jonathan Porter retweeted
Interesting. James Flynn (discoverer of the Flynn effect) arguing that screens were responsible for declining IQ back in 2009:
Jonathan Porter retweeted
We want to believe that technology is a neutral container for ideas. It isn’t. It changes the way we think and engage with content.
open.substack.com/pub/daisyc…
Jonathan Porter retweeted
Analysis of US college syllabi by the Open Syllabus project shows that bell hooks is assigned more than Aristotle, Judith Butler more than Plato, Edward Said more than than Kant, and Foucault more than everybody. (Thanks to Jon Shields for these comparisons.) analytics.opensyllabus.org/r…
Relatedly, one of the things I don't think we know enough about is how typing and hand-writing affect thinking differently. Seems obvious to me that knowing you can more easily edit/move text changes the thinking process as kids learn to write.
Jonathan Porter retweeted
Yes.
Writing is not a second thing that happens after thinking. The act of writing is an act of thinking. Writing *is* thinking.
Students, academics, and anyone else who outsources their writing to LLMs will find their screens full of words and their minds emptied of thought.
Just need to find 23 days of spare time to rewatch this.
20 years ago today the iconic 2005 Ashes began.
This week across @BBCSport we’ll be marking the anniversary.
“How to win the Ashes” @BBCiPlayer & @BBCOne 2310 tonight.
And DON’T miss “Settling the Score” from Wednesday where we set the drama of 2005 to
Music!
#bbccricket
Jonathan Porter retweeted
What an incredible collective achievement! Well done team #SlowWays!
Our latest newsletter mailchi.mp/slowways/newslett…
