« June 2004 | Main | August 2004 »

July 28, 2004

Poor standards in commentary

I'm really disappointed in the commentary on the Victorian [Australia] governments release of the "On Track" survey showing the paths that 2003 Year 12 students have taken this year. Not surprisingly the survey has found that a greater proportion of students from private schools go on to university than students from state schools. In fact nearly twice as many students from private schools followed this path than their counterparts in state schools. I am deeply saddened that this has been the headline datum reported from the survey. Even worse, the figure has been reported as showing that state schools are failing.

For an example of this commentary see We need to lift the standard of state schools Green's article is only half bad. He makes some good points along the way. But the last line is a shocker.

Posted by chriscurnow at 11:14 PM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2004

Scribblingwoman on tour

Scribblingwoman has been writing about her trip to England.

This entry is worth it just for the dialogue right at the end with 'Jinker Boy'.

Posted by chriscurnow at 11:39 PM | Comments (0)

Fuzzy thinking is just fuzzy thinking

Kevin Donnelly demonstrates just how fuzzy is his own thinking in Fuzzy thinking leads to failure in The Age Education Supplement today.

His opening few paras aren't too bad. He's spot on when he quotes Ken Rowe's research that the main determinant of success at school is the quality of the classroom interaction. But then, instead of following Rowe's lead and discussing what good classroom interaction might look like, he branches off into the quality of schools - which is exactly what Rowe is saying is NOT as important.

In his final para he launches an attack on "whole language and fuzzy maths" as fads with no evidence whatsoever to back up the claim that these 'fads' will lead to school failure.

I personally believe that the whole language approach is good pedagogy for a large majority of students. It may well be the best pedaggogy we have for allmost all students. This is a vexed issue with seemingly just as many people arguing that the traditional 'phonics' approach is better and certainly better for students with reading difficulties.

If I read Rowe correctly, what he is really is the distinction is not as important as the actual quality of teaching. (See Quality Teaching Matters Most.)

It takes me back to a Mathematics Conference I attended many years ago when Doug Clarke read an article from Mathematics Teacher entitlted "Cypher in the Snow". It was a moving story about repeated failure by to identify a students progessive disengagement first from school, the society and finally life. There wasn't a dry eye in the lecture theatre when he finished. The writer finished by telling us the promise she made to herself after the incident to walk up and down every aisle and look every student in the eye and ask herself "am I doing as much for this person as I possibly can?"

That, in my mind is good teaching. Teachers need support and professional development to continually develop better skills at doing as much for each child and young person as they can. But we must value the love that's necessary for that to happen.

Terms like accountability, under-performing schools, and fads get in the way of us remembering what is really importat in schools.

Posted by chriscurnow at 11:32 PM | Comments (0)

I'm back did anyone notice I was gone?

The heading says it all.

I got involved in a project last week and found myself exhausted at the end of each day. Just no time for writing - the thing I love most.

Hope I can keep it up. Let's see how it goes.

Posted by chriscurnow at 10:42 PM | Comments (0)

July 20, 2004

Fast Company on Whole Foods

Check out this Fast Company article on Whole Foods which, in Jason Kottke's words, "[is a] successful blend of hard-core capitalism and social responsibility."

(via Kottke)

Hopefully we will get around to some more commentary on this article a bit later today.

Posted by chriscurnow at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2004

School is the worst years of your life

Michael Carr-Gregg has a thoughtful piece — Making Schools more Boy–Friendly — in The Age this morning. I value Carr-Gregg's ten suggestions. I note that most of them apply equally to girls. Perhaps he could have titled it "Making schools more student–friendly."

Back in the mid 80s, while I was studying a post graduate course in education, I did some research into the Quality of School Life at a girls' school. I asked students a number of open ended questions to which I received a broad range of responses. Here's a sample:

Posted by chriscurnow at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)

OPUS International Conference

International Perspectives from Group Relations, Psychoanalysis and Systems Theory

For Detailed Information, go to: the Opus Conference website.

Friday 19 and Saturday 20 November 2004

Keynote Speakers: Gordon Lawrence who will be speaking from an
organisational perspective; and Fakhry Davids who will be speaking about
Institutional Racism.

In addition there will be 28 Parallel papers to select from. These include
presenters from Germany, USA, Australia, Israel, Holland, Norway and Ireland.

Please feel free and encouraged to copy this message on to whoever you feel
may be interested, thank you.

Lionel Stapley. Director OPUS

(via Orgdyne)

Posted by chriscurnow at 11:14 PM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2004

The Beautiful American

For some time now I have been thinking about a notion I like to call "The Beautiful American". I came back to it when I came across this article:

The Empire of Fear: The American Political Psyche and the Culture of Paranoia

from the online journal of Psycho-Social Studies. (via Orgdyne)

A quote to give you the flavour:

"The point about all this is that this very idealisation of America by Americans, its self-identification with virtue, contributes enormously both to its innocence and to its arrogance. There is often a real generosity of spirit and a friendly naivete which strikes the non-American (at least the English ones) when encountering an American citizen. One thinks of the countless jokes about the American as an `innocent abroad

We have heard a lot about "The Ugly American" in the prisoner abuse scandal in Abu Graid. But Clarke and Hoggett's article, encapsulted to some extent the quote above, shows that the "Ugly" and the "Beautiful" Americans are two sides of the same coin. All of us in the West who have been exposed to American culture at all (and that is the vast majority of us) have been exposed to "The Beautiful American". The American who is generous, friendly, polite, thoughtful, considerate and well versed in internal American and World affairs. Walter Cronkite comes to mind.

This psyche is born of the humbling awareness of the privilege of being born in such a great land. It is the greatness and the successes that American society has experienced that leads also to the arrogance. The belief that American society is "the end of history". It is the ultimate expression of western liberal democracy to which all other peoples on the earth would, given sufficient knowledge, naturally aspire.

Many of us in the West outside America struggle to contain both sides of the coin. At one time we see the ugly and think all America is ugly. At other times we see the beauty and are overwhelmed by it.

I wonder if America could recognise its "ugliness" just a little bit more, that the rest of the world would be more able to see its "beauty".

Posted by chriscurnow at 6:51 PM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2004

The Wisdom of Crowds

This is something we will definitely come back to, but for the moment, take a look at Kottke's piece on this book by James Surowiecki

Posted by chriscurnow at 10:10 PM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2004

Birnbaum talks to James Wood

We were really quite taken by Robert Birnbaum's recent interview with Michael Lewis.

Birnbaum continues his series on authors with this piece where he talks to James Wood...

about his professional dilemmas, what makes for appealing style in fiction, and which stings more, getting panned as a critic or as a novelist.

From The Morning News.

Posted by chriscurnow at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)

Alexander the Great - What makes a leader great?

Anil Behan runs a great site over at Orgdyne as well as the Orgdyne mailing list. Orgdyne is the place to go for discussion about the often hidden, unspoken and sometimes, ugly, dynamics in organisations.

Anil's latest posting is an interview with Manfred Kets de Vries entitled What makes a leader great? published in Strategic Direction Vol. 20, Number 8, July/August 2004. In Anil's words "It is a fascinating account of the leadership style of Alexander the Great". Kets de Vries also looks at several other modern leaders and anilyses their style by reference to Alexander the Great.

This is a must read for anyone truly interested in the nature of leadership in modern corporations.

The first lesson Kets de Vries would like us to take away is

One of the clear warnings here is of course that power corrupts... You also find young leaders use many principles of leadership in order to become really effective but then, as they get older and attain more power, narcissism takes over and they start to self-destrcut.

Kets de Vries goes on to describe the styles of several leaders in the light of their background and often how their driving force is not success as such but what they are trying to prove to the world. He examines the need for these leaders to become reflective, put people around them who are prepared to challenge them and telling them "in a constructive way, how things are."

In an interesting side line, he advises "Never hire a hungry coach or consultant as they will tell the executive what he wants to hear and I don't think that's in the best interests of anybody."

In typical Kets de Vries style he combines wisdom, experience and deep thinking with an ability to communicate to all of us.

Posted by chriscurnow at 8:32 PM | Comments (0)

Some US Political Trivia

Just came across Taegan Goddard's site. For those of you who like to keep up with trivia from the US political campaign, here are some recent comments he attributes to Democrat nomination Kerry's daughter Alex:
Top three things said by Kerry's daughter, Alex, and overheard by our correspondent:
  1. "I

    Posted by chriscurnow at 5:31 AM | Comments (0)

    July 13, 2004

    The Dangerous Organisation

    This PBS Frontline program re-broadcast on the Australian ABC program Four Corners on Monday night is chilling viewing.

    It follows on from our commentary on NASA a few days ago where we observed that an organisation can become poisonous. NASA, at least has high ideals - although the practice is a little different. The Mc Wane Corporation on the other hand is portrayed as simply profit hungry and dangerous.

    The real question we would like to explore here is not whether Mc Wane was portrayed accurately or not but rather to what extent do each and everyone of the organisations we work for parallel the Mc Wane described. How often do we all take shortcuts - maybe not to the physical peril of others but certainly to the detriment of their emotional and spiritual health? We dare say that every Australian CEO and board chairman you speak to would, if asked, publicly condemn the alleged work practices of Mc Wane. However, how seriously do we really take the health and safety of our workers?

    The sting in the tail of the program for me was the comparison with the American Cast Iron Pipe Company - ACIPCO also based in Birmingham, Alibama. As one commentator noted "I would like to know why it is possible for one iron foundry company in this community to make a profit, have a safe workplace, and have a clean environmental record, and why they can't."

    Time and time again we see organisations that take shortcuts in the name of profit only to erode their profit.

    ACICPCO is another example that looking after your workers isn't only good morally - it's good economically. Interesting to note in these times that ACIPCO was founded by a devout Christian who rigorously applied the rule "Do unto others as you would do unto you." and on his death bequeathed the company to its employees.

    We believe as a matter of deep conviction that the real reason companies don't look after their workers is not profit. Rather the real issue is just how difficult it is for CEOs, board members, managers and supervisors to confront their own inadequacies and to just put all the responsiblilty for problems onto 'the lazy workers'. On the other hand unions and workers do the same with management.

    Maybe we could all do with some devout Christian humility. A deep awareness that we are all imperfect and yet all bound by a common humanity.

    Posted by chriscurnow at 8:24 PM | Comments (0)

    July 11, 2004

    Images of Organization

    Images of Organization - Gareth Morgan

    cover

    Morgan presents a methodology for analysing organisations using the notion of metaphor. He argues strongly that developing metaphors "create ways of seeing and shaping organizational life."

    After a brief overview of the concept of metaphor, Morgan jumps right in and gives some concrete examples of how it can be applied to understanding. He devotes a chapter each to a number of classical metaphors, developing a case study around each one and demonstrating how action can be informed from the analysis. He pulls no punches in the issues he addresses in choosing metaphors to explore:

    Continue reading Images of organization

    Posted by chriscurnow at 3:38 PM | Comments (0)

    July 9, 2004

    Lessons from the Columbia Disaster

    If you haven't caught up with it, BOSS magazine has a nice roundup of news from the journals each month. Unfortunately they don't put the roundup on the website which is a pity.

    Also unfortunately, one of the articles that caught my eye this month Lessons in organizational ethics from the Columbia disaster: Can a culture be lethal? Organizational Dynamics vol 33, issue 2 is also not easily available online. I did some searching around and found I could get if for a $30 (US) download fee. Seems like a lot of money for one article.

    Reading Malcolm Rimmer's BOSS review of the article tempts me though.

    I have long been interested in the culture of NASA and the way that there seems to be an unwritten rule that certain potential problems don't get reported up the chain.

    Rimmer notes:

    A disregard for safety was no secret to its employees, but they feared for their jobs and would not speak up.
    Because a culture of production at all costs can be lethal, [author] Mason proposes an antidote: the "highly reliable organisation" (HRO), based on the concept of "mindfulness". Designing an HRO is not difficcult, but finding the desire to build one may be tougher - until it is too late.

    The list of organisations that poison themselves goes on and on.

    Looks like I might subscribe to Organizational Dynamics. I note that they have a sample issue which is currently vol 33 #1. Maybe in a month's time it will be vol 33 #2 and I'll be able to get the article. I can only hope!

    Posted by chriscurnow at 6:09 PM | Comments (0)

    Crooked Timber one year old

    Congratulations to Crooked Timber. One year old on July 8.

    There is a certain culture of blogs that started about one year ago. Can't quite put my finger on it but there is something about them.

    Posted by chriscurnow at 5:24 PM | Comments (0)

    July 4, 2004

    The fate of the corporate executioner

    Accordng to this weekend's Australian Financial Review, corporate executioners have a tough time [payment required]. On one level, chriscurnow.com finds it pretty hard to work up a lot of sympathy for people who wield the axe in corporations. They take the money, they suffer for it. They don't have to do it. (Well perhaps someone does have to be responsible for layoffs in many instances. However, at least if it was done with real human concern for and connection with the victims it would be a totally different experience for all concerned.)

    The AFR piece does show that people can't behave in subhuman ways without affecting themselves. It shows that the modern culture of downsizing negatively affects everyone involved - including the donwsizers themselves.

    chriscurnow.com argues that in at least most cases it also negatively affects the downsized corporation as the survivors feel both guilt at surviving in place of the victims and an increased and ever present sense of their own corporate mortality.

    Sure, we've learned that the sharemarket will generally appluad the CEO who is prepared to make "the hard decisions". But can anyone argue that the sharemarket is a rational being capable of discerning even the medium term impacts of today's actions?

    It's going back a while now, but Jerry Harvey wrote a powerful piece about downsizing in 1988 in The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management. He devotes a chapter of his book to this topic, comparing downsizing to the holocaust. Harvey argued that it could only occur because otherwise decent people allowed it to. People were afraid to stand up to the Nazis and often, even Jews became collaborators.

    chriscurnow.com believes there are times when downsizing is necessary. When a company's market collapses it can't continue to pay people. However we can't agree with corporations who bring in the army of 25 year old management consultants to show them how to remain competitive and simply accept their advice to 'reduce labour costs'.

    If it is the very last resort after every other avenue has been explored, when any necessary reductions are kept to an absolute minimum and when departures are handled with all compassion and dignity we can find, well maybe. But then, when was the last time you heard of a downsizing effort that looked like this?

    Posted by chriscurnow at 6:58 PM | Comments (0)

    Rubik's Cube online

    For all those times when you just need 10 minutes break from work...

    (via Crooked Timber)

    Posted by chriscurnow at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)

    Scribblingwoman one year old

    Congratulations to Scribblingwoman on reaching her first anniversary.

    Makes you reflect anew how recent the blogoshpere is and how rapidly it has grown. Kottke recently noted that "A Google search for "blog" returns 46 million items". "0 - 46 million in five years. Not bad."

    While we're at it, Scribblingwoman has some commentary about the nature of blogs and the blogosphere comparing this phenomenom to 18th century coffeehouses. The following quote comes from one of her links:

    The blogosphere seems less to me like a close-knit community (there isn

    Posted by chriscurnow at 6:35 AM | Comments (2)

    July 2, 2004

    Pool Rage

    Sometimes the things we do to protect our health don't work out exactly the way we expect.

    Today didn't start out that well for me. As I have attempted to do every weekday morning for the last 22 years, I turned up at the local swimming pool this morning. I went through the usual routine. Queued up at the desk for a spa tag and put my card through the machine to let the know I was paid up. Then through the self-opening door, past the kiosk picked up a kickboard for later then over to the pool.

    There was my shock for the day. Instead of the 50m pool I was used to seeing, it was only 25m. (They have a 'boom' which they can move to the end of the pool to make it 50m, or to the middle of the pool to make two 25m lengths. It is supposed to be 50m in the mornings.)

    A couple of years ago when I moved to this pool, it took me quite a while to swimming 50m lengths. Now the idea of turning every 25m just throws out my rythm completely. I just didn't want to have to change my routine this morning. But there was no choice. Either swim 25m lengths or don't swim at all.

    Now people who know me well know that I can sulk when my routine is thrown out and I sulked this morning. I got in and swam my kilometre but I refused to enjoy it. They could make me swim but they couldn't make me like it. I was going to make them pay. I was going to be miserable all day and somehow they would know it and they would be miserable as well.

    I employed a similar sort of logic when I was a student at school. If I had a teacher I din't like, I would deliberately fail the subject. It was my way of getting back at the teacher. Makes perfect sense to me.

    Anyway, that wasn't all tha happened at the pool this morning. Making the pool shorter means that the people swimming in the lane cross paths more often. I take great pride in the fact that I have reduced my 600m time from 14:30 to 12:40 over the last couple off months but I still swim in the slow lane. Another 20 seconds off the time and I reckon I'm qualified for the medium lane.

    Regardless of what I think is 'slow' and 'medium' there are considerably faster swimmers who either think 55s for 50m is slow or are annoyed that us slow swimmers get a lane to ourselves. So there is one swimmer in this category who gets into the slow lane every morning. Don't know why. He just does and he usually passes me a couple of times over my 600m. I have my little protest and don't wait for him to pass at the end unless he is right on my tail but otherwise it doesn't really bother me.

    Not everyone is as sanguine about it however.

    This morning another frequent fellow swimmer jumped in to our (slow) lane around 6:30 (this is all am remember) about 15 minutes after I started. We had a brief chat as we often do before he went to set off. This is when the first signs of trouble became apparent. Mr 55s was coming up for a turn just as Mr 6:30 was about to set off. Now etiquette would have it that you don't start off just as someone is turning. Mr 6:30 either hasn't read the unwritten etiquette book or came along this morning prepared to protest at Mr 55s swimming in the slow lane so he went to take off just as '55' was turning. There was a brief glare between them and this time '55' won out. '6:30' waited.

    Oh well, an incident averted I thought - although '6:30' uttered a few choice words before he started his swim.

    Not so the next time the two swimmers where in the same relative positions. This time '6:30' judged his take off to be about one second before '55' completed his turn so they were both swimming in parallel. '55' wasn't happy about it and stood up and walked past '6:30' looking down at him but apparently not able to make eye contact.

    The situation was repeated at the far end a few laps later and this time '55' had had enough. He stood up and bumped '6:30'. The two men then both stood up and started pushing each other. I don't think any punches were thrown but it was an ugly scene. They had it out and each swam for a few more laps and then got out. I didn't see either of them after that.

    I was left wondering what it is about society today that leads to events like this? What is this underlying rage that comes out on the road, in the supermarket and now, in the pool? What is it that we are really angry at? As a civilisation, we in the West have never had it so good yet it seems we have never been less satisfied with our lot. We are safer than any generation before us but we spend more time in fear for our safety than ever before. We complain about rising crime rates even though long term crime rates are falling. It is thought we believe that as ordinary people should be able to live our lives without any fear for our property, our personal safety or illness. And if any of these things comes under threat then it must be someone's fault.

    We go to the swimming pool to keep healthy but then push our blood pressure up by venting our anger.

    So just to lighten everything up a little here's a nice piece from the Honolulu Advertiser (via Kottke)

    Posted by chriscurnow at 5:51 PM | Comments (0)

    Security breached

    Apologies to anyone who read and was offended by a comment that someone left at chriscurnow.com today.

    I just logged on to check the site statistics and found a couple of new comments had been posted. Now I know there are lots of you out there who look at chriscurnow.com, but we don't get many comments (HINT! HINT!). So I went to check the comments and found one of them was just a list of URLs to sites offering to enlarge bits of me that I have no interest in enlarging. (Well I didn't actually check the sites to see what they were offering but from the urls I guessed what the content would be.)

    It was bad enough that the comment had been left and it has now been deleted. What concerned me was that the whole entry body had been replaced with similar URLs. I don't know how someone could do this. I thought I had taken all the recommended security precautions when I installed Moveable Type but still someone snuck through.

    This has concerned me since I set up this site. I am now advertising my address and obviously makes it a target for hackers. Needless to say I will be discussing this with my hosting service and see what else I can do.

    In the meantime, I'll just keep chekcing and try to remove stuff like this as soon as possible after it is posted.

    Posted by chriscurnow at 4:31 PM | Comments (2)

    July 1, 2004

    Women writers

    Emerging women writers

    Posted by chriscurnow at 9:02 PM | Comments (0)