The Guardian's Rafael Behr offers a bitingly sharp analysis of the Green Party's drift into Corbynite antisemitism, and on Zack Polanski's failure to act as a leader.

Behr's right. Every word.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/oct/07/zack-polanski-leadership-zionism-green-party

#GreenParty #ZackPolanski #antisemitism #UKpol

One of my courses this year is new to me, I am taking over from excellent colleagues who worked hard to make the course effective, but students universally hated it, and most did very poorly in the assessments.

I am not sure why and how that happened. My colleagues really tried hard to get it right. They were committed and conscientious.

One unfinished thought:

Students were worried about the exam and asked for guidance, practice questions, extra revision material, recordings. All exam-related.

My colleagues caved in and offered all those things.

That sucked the life out of the learning process. Everything became exam prep, and even the best students no longer heard the subject matter speak to them.

Good teaching teaches the subject first, and then helps students to show they learning in the assessment. The minute you teach _for_ the assessment, the student's mind becomes closed to the living voice of the subject.

#teaching

First lecture in a course that I have taken over and teach for the first time. A very large class, second-year students who are eager to learn and who are also anxious, as the course was taught very rigidly before.

I have discarded slides altogether and develop the material on the whiteboard, as I used to do. So liberating. 10-20 minutes for setting the scene, then I give them a mini case to work through with their neighbours. The students are wonderful. The room buzzes in eager discussions between them; they compare notes, check each others calculations, argue earnestly with each other. Live discovery of fundamental truths, in a shared space. The subject is alive and speaks to us. After the session I release my notes, which put all the micro insights together.

Real teaching, I and Thou, is possible. I am lucky to be a teacher and to have these students. Life is good.

#teaching #lectures #HigherEducation #IAndThou #AcademicChatter #StopTheAICorruption

The cheque's in the post, he wrote to the landlord, whilst filling in the forms for another loan.

#vss #debt #CostOfLivingCrisis

A heartfelt "no to genAI" from a teaching and education perspective. By Katherine Rundell. l 100% agree.

《 genAI risks becoming an iron curtain that comes down between a young person and their potential for thinking, for experiment and conquering frustration, for stamina and for invention – and thereby, between the young people and their freedom. It risks halting learning before it can take flight. 》

《 It was always very possible to write an essay about Paradise Lost without having read Paradise Lost. This is the first time it is possible to create an essay about Paradise Lost without having read the essay you just “wrote”. This is the first time in history that sentences do not need to have humans behind them. 》

《 The young mind is a spectacular thing. To waste its beauty and strength would be a dereliction of the trust the young are asked to put in the old. 》

https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/aug/08/i-hate-what-ai-is-doing-to-the-minds-and-happiness-of-the-young-katherine-rundell-on-the-view-from-the-classroom

#education #learning #noAI #noLLM #KatherineRundell #StopTheAICorruption

BREAKING: Scientists at Angelus Silesius University have discovered that under certain conditions, humans are capable of writing and thinking unaided, without the help of standard prompt-driven AI software bots.

"It sounds counterintuitive, but it almost looks as if our subjects wanted to do these things on their own", texts Professor Melanchton, the project lead. "We don't fully understand the mechanisms yet, but our study suggests that humans may have some sort of in-built agentic capabilities."

#StopTheAICorruption
#LiveThePromptfreeLife

Higher Education's march toward our eventual genAI suicide continues.

N is an enthusiastic young colleague who's been promoting genAI all along. This week he shares a new paper he's written. In it we find a lengthy list of the dangers of genAI and why we shouldn't be using it. Wait, what? Is this the same guy?

Let's read on. What is N's solution to the recognised genAI failure? "Agentic AI." Ah, that's where we're heading!

A long list of agentic AI's presumed powers follows, along with presumed supporting pedagogical theory. No reference to actual practice: like Sam Altman we trade on future promises.

The soulless, person-less future we are promised, without any hint of irony: "AI as a collaborative partner"; "from AI as a servant to AI as a learning companion".

Heaven help us.

#StopTheAICorruption #HigherEducationChatter

Holmes did not appreciate being interrupted, but having watched him writing and deleting draft toot after draft toot for several hours, I could not hold back any longer. Forgive me, Holmes, tell me, do you save your unsent toots for later editing?

Holmes put aside his ancient Blackberry. Oh, my dear Watson, that you should even ask! Of course not. Lestrade no doubt saves his draft toots on his iPhone, the good man. But then he also scribbles every obvious fact into his little detective's notebook, does he not. Good for him, I say. No, Watson, I don't save deleted drafts. I have a brain.

I write because I wish to write. If I want to share what I wrote, we post it. If not, I delete it. If any part of it persists, it does so without record. Now, let me get back to my phone.

He did not mind my scribbling down his words in my notebook as he spoke.

#SherlockHolmes #DoctorWatson #Lestrade #drafts #MastodonCulture

I had never seen Holmes cry before. He sat in his chair, his face in his hands, It's broken, he stammered. It's broken.

I saw the pipe on the table, fractured. It's a delicate material, meerschaum, I had told Holmes many times that briar is so much more practical. But Holmes said he loved the coolness of the smoke from his Calabash.

There was movement in the chair. Moriarty gave it to me, Holmes sobbed. It was a token of his affection. The last thing he left me.

I began to realise the enormity of what I had just learnt. It felt a little awkward, too. I rang the bell to call Mrs Hudson and ask her to bring the tea.

#SherlockHolmes #DoctorWatson #Moriarty MresHudson #pipes #meerschaum #vss