[LINK] The VITTA 2006 Conference

[Karl Auer]

On Wed, 2006-09-13 at 17:31 +0000, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
> > The school my daughter goes to just released its 2005 annual report ..
> And having written ten thousand + reports, (4/year/student by 200 kids)

I'm talking about the school's annual report, not student reports. This
is a document that tries to say what the school did during the past
year.

There may be superficially good reasons for these meaningless phrases
having evolved, but the fundamental one is laziness on the part of the
education system. You have pointed out cowardice as another reason. If
the school system doesn't have the courage to tell someone honestly
about their child's abilities, or to support and defend the teacher who
says it truthfully, who will? Who can?

Jargon is OK within the system. Maybe "student outcome" is useful as
jargon, I don't know. To the rest of us, it is meaningless. "Positive
student outcome" - you can't argue with that! But the reason you can't
argue is that it means no more than "a good result", without any actual
content.

There is no excuse for not phrasing a school report clearly.

> Just don't spam them Karl. There are thousands of teachers on those lists 
> and teachers being what we are, believe me, someone will follow you up :-)

I responded to your CC list. You don't want them in the conversation,
you BCC them, or you leave them off. Still, it's nice to hear that there
*is* some backbone out there.

I bet that at your conference there will be many speakers who use this
debased and hollow language without any pressure at all, so used have
they become to its comfortable emptiness.

K.

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