[LINK] The VITTA 2006 Conference

[Karl Auer]

On Thu, 2006-08-24 at 14:27 +0000, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
> Do you have a suggestion for something you'd like to see at this year's 
> conference?

Why yes I do!

A session on how and why NOT to write anticommunicative GARBAGE when you
are supposed to be informing and inspiring students, parents and the
community.

The school my daughter goes to just released its 2005 annual report. It
is horrible. The whole thing is riddled with imprecise expression and
wonky thinking. Targets that aren't targets. Metrics that aren't
metrics. Achievements that aren't achievements, like "continuing to
support" something.

The report is filled just brim-full of terms like "significant", "in
terms of", "quality teaching", "innovation", "enrichment" and "outcome".
In four or five paragraphs comparing the school to State averages they
used seven (yes, I counted them) different ways of saying "about the
same".

Any attempt to analyse what has actually been said sort of slides into
the swamp. That's doubly sad since one of the school's targets for the
year is to improve communication. They didn't mention with whom, which
will make "meeting" that "target" very easy.

The crowning glory? It had to be "signed off on" (that's another ghastly
invention of the times) by a specialist in the education department! No
mere crud this, no! It's officially sanctioned crud.

Reports like these are wasted effort if people can't get from them a
clear idea of where they went wrong, what they did well, where they are
now and where to go next. Making such a report clear, concise and
accurate makes the effort of writing it an investment instead of just a
ticked-off item on a to-do list.

*Someone* needs to tell these people that they should be leading by
example and writing clear, clean English.

The best investment the Australian education industry could make would
be to issue every single teacher with a copy of "Death Sentence" by Don
Watson, and make continued employment contingent upon them never, EVER
using the phrase "improved student outcomes".

Regards, K.

PS: And YOU, Stephen, could start by promising never to say "key
highlight" again :-)

PPS: The CC list looked interesting, so I kept it. Heh heh :-)

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)