Mailwatch(ed) Forum

That all sounds very sane. I suppose academy chains can contract people like that (thought he geography might be a problem in some cases). I don't see how standalone academies can.

On the elite athletes as teachers thing: We're all familiar with the "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach" line. Now that's an anti-academic trope suggesting teachers are inferior to people with 'proper jobs'. But it does, inadvertently, make a valid point. Being able to impart knowledge, to teach or to train others requires a specific skillset. Being highly skilled at some task, trade or profession does not automatically mean you have the ability to effectively pass on those skills, equally a great football coach is probably not the most skilled player at the training session. Two different roles requiring different skills.

Kemi apparently still going this morning with "integration".

Laura Kuenssberg pointed out that his Mum was involved in the church and that he went to drama group, so what was her logic that it was about integration?

“That I believe is one of the elements. My evidence is my personal experience.
“I am saying this as someone from a similar African Christian background, born in this country, that the country we make to make people feel a part of the whole is very limited.”

Mind blowing stuff. And there's more.

“There are a lot of people, like Rudakubana, who – despite being here from childhood – are not integrating into the rest of society. They hate their country.

“And they are being told that everything about the UK is terrible.”

They're being told that by you, Kemi, that's for sure. Doubtless where all this is going is that trendy academics are the real guilty ones, because I don't think she's going to blame her party's (disappearing) base for not having enough Muslims round for lunch.

I can't believe the recklessness of this position. Doesn't she think "he lived in fucking Southport, not in Tower Hamlets" at some point? In Tower Hamlets the apparently unintegrated kids like such English things as football. My evidence for that is my own experience as a long time Tower Hamlets resident.

There are actually even worse bits than that. Kemi's suddenly a fan of personal experience "as a black Christian" and she won't shrink from the hard truths. She actually said that.

Not the main point, but that first sentence is a horror. "Every time... often". Probably the fault of her teacher in Morden.

I'm sorry, but what on Earth does that first quote mean?

For fear of repeating myself, John Prescott used to be routinely pilloried for his speaking style. He was just ahead of the curve, apparently.

It's the "you can't talk about immigration" thing, except with integration.

She was the Minister of Equalities. What did she say? Maybe it was one for the Communities Secretary- who was, er, her one time mentor, Michael Gove.

Perhaps Syeeda Warsi and David Lammy stopped them from speaking these brave truths. Or maybe she's going to shit on Rishi Sunak again. Yeah, do that. Say it was down to him because it was a whole society issue, nothing her or her mate Gove could do.

I thought that the beef was with "Every single time" being tempered to the point of redundancy by "there is often".

It's the kind of disingenuous bollocks that can sail past Kuenssberg without raising a flicker of interest.

Yeah, that was the thing I was referring to initially.

Oboogie wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2025 5:55 pm On the elite athletes as teachers thing: We're all familiar with the "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach" line. Now that's an anti-academic trope suggesting teachers are inferior to people with 'proper jobs'. But it does, inadvertently, make a valid point. Being able to impart knowledge, to teach or to train others requires a specific skillset. Being highly skilled at some task, trade or profession does not automatically mean you have the ability to effectively pass on those skills, equally a great football coach is probably not the most skilled player at the training session. Two different roles requiring different skills.

For example:
* Glen Hoddle - Great player, far less successful coach.
* Jurgen Klopp - Modest player, outstanding coach.

Bones McCoy wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2025 10:45 pm

Oboogie wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2025 5:55 pm On the elite athletes as teachers thing: We're all familiar with the "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach" line. Now that's an anti-academic trope suggesting teachers are inferior to people with 'proper jobs'. But it does, inadvertently, make a valid point. Being able to impart knowledge, to teach or to train others requires a specific skillset. Being highly skilled at some task, trade or profession does not automatically mean you have the ability to effectively pass on those skills, equally a great football coach is probably not the most skilled player at the training session. Two different roles requiring different skills.

For example:
* Glen Hoddle - Great player, far less successful coach.
* Jurgen Klopp - Modest player, outstanding coach.

I was actually thinking of two former FE colleagues of mine:
1) An accountant who, aged about 55, sold his successful accountancy practice and retired. Then, out of a mixture of boredom and civic duty, decided to give something back by teaching accounts part-time. After 35 years as an accountant who knew his stuff backwards, he found he just couldn't cope with students who found the subject hard and needed repeated explanations of aspects of basic accountancy practice. He was sufficiently self-aware to realise that the failure was his and packed it in after a couple of years.
2) A 25 year old with a First in Law from Cambridge who had planned a stellar career at the Bar who drifted into teaching Law after he'd proved multiple times that he was shit in court. Specifically, not quick enough thinking on his feet under pressure, I believe, leading to panic and his mind going blank.
Turned out, in a classroom, he was brilliant. Students loved him, he got excellent results and sprinted up the promotion ladder faster than anyone I've ever seen. So he really was someone who taught because he couldn't , "do".

Story.
When I was at the DfE we commissioned some (expensive) research into the characteristics of elite athletes. We were very interested in David Beckham at the time, because a generation of small boys were growing up believing that elite athletes were lucky, or somehow supernatural, and this isn't a good thing.

The research found that a true elite athlete had three characteristics: a natural athleticism (ie a body plan that suited their sport, so a jockey and a front-row forward had to have both the right body type and the right characteristics in terms of metabolism etc); task commitment - like D Beckham practising for 8 hours a day, making sacrifices etc; and passion or enthusiastic commitment to the particular sport or sports.

The point being that you have to have all three attributes, or you are just another amateur.

The same applies in other creative fields, such as music, I believe.

For a teacher, different criteria. Those skills of the athlete are not transferrable (though their methods are).

The main reason cited as to why magnificently-skilled footballers fail in coaching is that they can't teach what they can do. It comes so naturally to them that they can't comprehend being less able.

Just watched Kuenssberg. At the top of the show she asked Reeves and Badenoch to name their favourite Beatles song (context, McCartney was also a guest, talking about AI and copywrite). Rachel Reeves went with Hey Jude a predictable but popular choice. Badenoch claimed her favourite was Yellow Submarine.
This is such obvious bullshit.
Nobody over the age of six would choose that.
Nobody with ears wants to hear Ringo sing rather than any of the other three.
I strongly suspect it's the only Beatles song she knows and that's from a kid's songs car tape when she was small.
Bollocks to her.

Favourite album of course is the Best of the Beatles.

Give that a look as Apple have been using AI for their own copyrighted material, McCartney should be a good witness on the subject.

Oboogie wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2025 2:56 am Just watched Kuenssberg. At the top of the show she asked Reeves and Badenoch to name their favourite Beatles song (context, McCartney was also a guest, talking about AI and copywrite). Rachel Reeves went with Hey Jude a predictable but popular choice. Badenoch claimed her favourite was Yellow Submarine.
This is such obvious bullshit.
Nobody over the age of six would choose that.
Nobody with ears wants to hear Ringo sing rather than any of the other three.
I strongly suspect it's the only Beatles song she knows and that's from a kid's songs car tape when she was small.
Bollocks to her.

There is one other possibility- she has absolutely fucking terrible taste.

Bones McCoy wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2025 10:45 pm
For example:
* Glen Hoddle - Great player, far less successful coach.
* Jurgen Klopp - Modest player, outstanding coach.

Football is a good source of 'your common sense stuff only takes it so far, you know', in great big multi-billion pound centre-of-all-attention lights. This, and see things like Mo Salah praying to Allah in front of adoring fans. Nobody gives a shit he's a Muslim (of course, it shouldn't take being a footballing genius to engender that respect, but...).

Anything to do with intelligence?

Don't have a problem with a woman in her early 40s being more familiar with Beyonce than the Beatles but it's Kemi that's just been finger wagging about the need to integrate into a common British culture.
Can you think of a better example of a British popular culture reference that transcends age, race, background etc. than the Beatles?

When a politician is asked this question, or so many others like it (what's your favourite biscuit?), the immediate thought will be to give an answer that will connect with as many voters as possible, to seem as normal as possible and to be as in-tune with the national psyche as possible.

Hence 'Hey Jude' - which I think was the most popular Beatles number in a poll a while back.

I think that Badenoch has not yet reached that rather basic level of political sophistication.

There's a saying that pop culture as depicted on TV is always about 20 years behind pop culture as is happening right now. What we see on screen is what TV people - particularly writers - remember from their own formative years. Other things get recycled down the generations - Blue Peter's shitting elephant being a great example. Who saw the original and is still around today? But we all know it, even if we don't know the context.

I've said before that when people invoke Monty Python, they mean Holy Grail, half of Life of Brian, and about 15 or so sketches. Same applies to the Beatles. I'd wager that not many people have seen their films, or are familiar with much of the musical output beyond the core work.