Teachers and students.

Last night, an ex-student and friend of mine and I got together for a pint and a chat about our summer holidays and the three-week language course he did in Dublin. As he was feeling rather nostalgic about his Irish experience, we drank, yes, you guessed: Guinness.

Between sips, it was very interesting to hear his reactions to the course and he has agreed to write something on this for my other website. However, what struck me was his response to a question asked by one of his summer course tutors. The question was ‘What is more important, a highly motivated student or a highly motivated teacher?’. The teacher was expecting an answer that indicated motivation levels to be about 50:50, whereas my friend said 40% student, 60% teacher. This apparently left the teacher a little flummoxed, although I don’t really know why. As my friend pointed out, well motivated teachers can motivate their students, but well motivated students cannot really motivate a teacher (and should not be expected to). Hence, in part, the 60% weighting towards the teacher. The other part of the 60% reflects the students’ perception of a teacher. A teacher, especially when dealing with adult learners, needs to be able to, almost, give off an aura of confidence and competence, otherwise the students’ will question whether they can really learn something from this person. In street terms, it is this ‘respect’ thing and it is understandable. And this is why my friend wants to be taught by someone who appears to be worth learning from. This sounds perfectly logical to me.

Good teachers who are obviously interested in their subjects, come across as being well-motivated and motivating. I know this from my own learning experiences. But there is also a collateral effect, if you like, in that well motivated teachers can create well motivated students. Well motivated students may even develop a greater level of interest in subjects being taught and go off and read up on these things. Bingo, job done. The students are teaching themselves, or at the very least learning how to learn.

Generating enthusiasm and interest is something I attempt to do in my own teaching. This is the teacher as a facilitator thing. It does seem to work and attention levels in-class are higher as a result and I continue to be asked for advice on how to develop language skills outside the classroom. This is encouraging.

Alas in the majority of the real world, teachers are not valued highly enough by society – which translates into them being poorly paid and thus possibly poorly motivated. Then there is the fact that poorly paid professions do not good people attract. And you have a big problem. Mix this with disciplinary problems at secondary school level and the problems are magnified considerably. Not good. Our youth are our future. They are an investment. Invest well and positive yields are more likely. Do not invest and you get no return on equity.

The point of all my blathering? Good teachers are worth their weight in Platinum. Good students know this. Our leaders, in general, do not, or do not want to know. After all, there is no profit in teaching, is there? Er, well, ever heard of something known as ‘research and development’, Mr Politician, sir? Or would you rather just add a nice new set of missiles to your country’s armoury?

Short termism ain’t good.

Digital exploits.

I took quite a few photos this summer.  Some were good, some were not so great.  I’m still very much learning and experimenting and making lots of mistakes.  Sometimes I understand where I went wrong, other times, I’m not so sure.  Not a problem, although it can be frustrating at times, especially when I find out that I did not manage to achieve a clean focus on my subject matter.  I put this down to lack of experience and I’m not going to blame my EOS 400d, because I’ve seen so many examples of just what this camera, in the right hands, can achieve.

I shall persist because I want to improve and because I’ve received a few complements about some of my efforts, even though I have not always considered them to be that note worthy.  Digital SLRs are complex beasts, of that there is no doubt and at times, someone with a less complex point and shoot camera can get better results, most probably because there is less to think about.  Would I ditch my DSLR in favour of a point and shoot.  No way, because when you do get something right, the difference is visible and you have so much control that, with experince and a little knowledge, you can get results that point and shoot owners can only dream about.

If you like photography, have the cash and the patience, then a DSLR or even a film SLR is one of the best ways to go.  Of this, I have no doubt.

Oh, and don’t get conned into the number mega pixels thing.  Lots of pixels mean large images that most of us just don’t need.  I seem to be spending lots of time simply re-sizing my efforts for the web etc and then there is the fact that if you have the latest 10 mega pixel camera, you better have one of the latest PCs to go with it and a big hard disk, because speed and space are essential IMHO.

Added some photos to my Flickr collection.

Yes, I’ve got round to adding a few more photos.  I spent the summer hols playing around with black and white.  Whilst I love colour, there is something about black and white pictures that captures the mood of certain scenes very well.  Maybe it is because the absence of colour forces you to focus your attention on the subject rather more, so you are not dazzled by a sea of colour.  Just my personal theory, but, whatever, I like black and white images, and they certainly can look stunning.

Why Italy is the way it is.

My Tuscan vacation gave me a few more clues as to why Italy is the way it is and why really it is not as united as it could be.

First of all I believe that Italy is a relatively young country, in the sense that the unification of the country only really began with Garibaldi.  And Garibaldi’s exploits happened relatively recently and when all is said and done, did not really create one single united unit.  Then there was Mussolini, who, although he did lots of bad, did attempt to make the country more united.  He did not really succeed, fortunately, which is just as well because his vision of unity was that of a dictatorial fascist state.  Although even now, there are people who yearn for a return to Mussolini’s idea of a united Italy.  I know this because we met some people who make an annual pilgrimage to the celebrations of the man’s death, as though his passing were something of a loss for Italy.  In part I can understand such people and it could be said that basically they just want Italy to be one single united unit.

Other things I learnt while chatting and overhearing Italians while on holiday were some of the possible reasons for the lack of unity in Italy.  I’ll explain.  As some will know, Italy is littered with hilltop towns and villages.  The reasons for the high locations of these population centres were twofold.  Logically, a hilltop town was easier to defend, but also, and maybe not so obviously, these locations allowed people to avoid the malaria ridden swamps which dominated much of central Italy until quite recently.  Indeed, as I understand, Mussolini actually instigated a process of ‘bonificazione’, that is eliminating lowland swamps and thus eradicating the malaria problem.  Just think what it was like before the swamps were drained.

Communications between individual towns would have been difficult to say the least, and this is probably why these small isolated units almost became tiny countries in their own rights.  An enormously strong sense of community developed in these outposts and they became self-reliant just about to the point of independence.  Certainly their inhabitants did not feel Italian, with their local dialects and traditions.  Hence the reluctance, even today, of many Italians to feel one hundred percent Italian, and the wish of such people to maintain strong ties with their places of origin.  This is something which still obstructs the true unity of the country, in my opinion.  Yes, there is a north-south divide in the UK, but it is nothing like the ocean-sized gap which exists between north-south and to an extent central Italy.

Will the country ever become fully united?  Not with the current crop of politicians, I fear.  You almost wonder whether an new Mussolini could emerge and attempt a form of unification through indoctrination, as is generally the way with dictators.   I believe, and really hope, that the chance of such a thing happening is quite slim.  However, hearing Umberto Bossi’s virtual calls to arms the other day, does make you think.   Nope, silly idea.  It could not happen in modern Italy, even though it has to be said that one of the reasons why Italy maintains two similar police forces is supposed to be to reduce the likelihood of a coup occurring.

Change, if it happens at all, happens at walking pace in the Living Museum.  At least I am starting to understand why Italians are so individualistic.

Darwin v the Bible

I seem to be hearing more and more about the conflict between the Darwin’s theory of evolution and how the Bible describes the way in which we were created. And it has to be admitted that Darwin’s ideas theoretically discredit the biblical version of how we came to be. Recently, for some reason that is not entirely clear to me, a newish bunch calling themselves intelligent-designers have come on to the scene, particularly in the US. This is very odd. Darwin wrote about his famous theory many years ago, but only relatively recently have the aforementioned and other similar American groups become all hot under the collar regarding his theories, which, I’ve discovered, are some of the least contested scientific theories in existence. Not a surprise – the theory of evolution seems to be eminently logical to this here non-scientist.

Having read a little more about the ‘intelligent-design’ movement, I’ve come to understand that while Darwin’s work is a major target, this movement blames scientists in general for making the world such a materialistic place. A curious idea. Personally, I think if I were one of these itel-des fellows, and I wanted to identify the source of materialism, I’d take a good look at marketing men, well before having a go at poor scientists.

In any event, Darwin or not, there still remains that great unanswered question, which is ‘Who set the big bang off?’ (Ok, sorry then you would ask ‘Who created the being that set off the big bang? etc etc, ad infinitum. For the moment scientists cannot answer this, so everyone can continue to believe in a supreme being. There, religion is safe, and will be for a long time yet, I imagine. And it may be a good idea to remember that the bible was written by human beings, who are fallible and that this fallibility could be used to explain away a few aspects of the great book that do not agree with scientific points of view.

On the subject of imagination, I have this rather nutty idea that we form one of those huge self-developing empire-building type computer games. You may know what I’m on about. These game have little cities that grow almost automatically and all the little inhabitants do almost everything that ‘real’ people do. That we could form part of such a game is a frightening thought in some respects because it could mean that our supreme being is not much more than a spotty fourteen year old kid who does not get out much. This could, however, explain the mess that this world manages to get itself into. Not sure how the intelligent design bunch would deal with this scenario, though.

A black and white portrait of our son.

I love this photo, which I shot this summer, whilst playing with black and white settings and the sepia on-camera filter.