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Quick Hitts

Entry 295, on 2006-03-07 at 21:02:12 (Rating 2, Comments)

Most people think my political leaning is fairly well left. I think I'm totally central, of course, and that everyone else has moved right. I guess its all relative to where you are compared with the majority. Most of the western world seems to have moved right in the last 20 years leaving us true centrists looking like we are the extreme left!

It generally really bugs me listening to people from the political right. They tend to make statements which might be held to be true by many, but aren't always supported by real evidence. They tend to have one simple solution to every problem. No doubt the extreme left do the same sorts of things. As I said, I'm a centrist, and I believe in moderation and common sense in everything!

The reason I mention this is that I have recently been listening to a podcast called "Quick Hitts". The person who does this podcast has some fairly standard right-wing political beliefs, for example: pay for teachers should be based on performance. Generally this sort of thing would annoy me, but these podcasts are produced with real humour and I actually enjoy hearing his opinions, even though most of them differ significantly from mine.

You might be thinking at the moment "what's wrong with performance pay for teachers?". Surely only a real "lefty" would disagree with that! Maybe not. On the surface it seems reasonable. Shouldn't everyone be paid more if they perform their job better? But there are problems. How do we measure performance? Who decides what it is? How do we compare performance with different ability kids, for example?

We could pay teachers who get the best pass rates in their class more. But should we expect the same rates in maths and art? What about the top and bottom ability classes? And how much paper work and bureaucracy would be involved with this measuring process? Its not as simple as it seems, is it?

In my experience, the teachers who can use the system the best are the ones who get the most promotions and status. The teachers who are too busy actually teaching to do lots of paper work and politically correct extras don't get noticed so much, but they are the ones who are doing the real job.

The Quick Hitts podcast didn't examine this side of the issue, but it did present the other side thoroughly. Unfortunately it was fairly standard right-wing rhetoric and didn't really bring anything new to the debate. But I will continue listening because there's often a lot of good sense there too.

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