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Faith schools and Indoctrination

Professor Michael Hand, Philosopher of Education from the University of Birmingham came to visit us. After introducing himself and explaining what his job entails, he asked us whether we thought faith schools should be abolished. Towards the end, he asked us "Do you think faith state schools should be abolished on the grounds that they indoctrinate pupils?"

Though I had though he wouldn't be biased and would give us a balanced argument, I soon came to find out that the perspective he was advocating was that faith schools should be abolished on such grounds. I didn't get the wrong end of the stick, I clearly haven't.

Shaken martini not stirred, why?

For many of you who are out of the Education system, many schools, sxith forms and colleges have began to use the term "home learning" rather than "homework" in an attempt to help students understand that additional work which is set is not for the teacher (which homework might suggest) but rather for the student's developement (as home learning is supposed to suggest).

Last Chemistry lesson, I was set a very bizarre peice of home learning. I was given a question; "Why does James Bond prefer his martini to be shaken, not stirred?" We are currently studying an enormous chapter about compounds containing the carbonyl group and have just completed a section on reactions with aldehydes and ketones. This information may be somewhat relevant to the answer.

*Disturbing* Harassment and interrogation at Ben Gurion airport

I wasn't sure whether I should make this into a blog or a forum post, mainly because I haven't differentiated between the two entirely but also because blogs seem a little bit more personal. I use them for things that affect me or have affected me in some way or another and I use forums for news related items. 

Before you proceed if you are a little child, then perhaps you shouldn't read this. Come back here when you grow up and mature a little and understand that the most cruelest of things do happen. They are real. They're usually unheard of until someone brave speaks up and speaks of their stories.

Mobile web updates

A couple of months after replacing my PC, I have got around to making a few more updates to the site - I had quite a bit left to do after the changes to the layout etc that ended in Ramadan, but I never got around to them.

Right now, I have added preliminary support for a couple more sizes - screens that were 320px wide (eg iphone and smaller android phones) were already supported, but there was much wasted space on slightly larger devices - those that had a default device width of 340 or 360 pixels were less well supported creating wasted space.

That should now be fixed. I am aware that on some pages the page is being "stretched", making the view zoomed out and less easy to read. That might be figured out.

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