sheldrake wrote: ↑Mon Jan 06, 2020 7:43 am
Little waster wrote: ↑Mon Jan 06, 2020 12:37 am
sheldrake wrote: ↑Sun Jan 05, 2020 11:19 pm
The tories won a majority in 2015 after 5 years of coalition and 4 years of Gove in charge of education.
Serious question, do you genuinely believe that in any way represents an individual parents informed consent over specific educational interventions?
No, I think it represents a generalised approval for the previous 5 years of Tory govt.
I know that's what you think but the numbers come nowhere near supporting your hunch.
I shouldn't even need to spell this out but the Conservatives won a plurality not a majority in 2015 (just like Labour in 97 and the "winning" party in almost every other UK GE in 2 centuries) and all even that indicates is a general support for the whole Tory policy offering rather than any explicit, specific support for any one policy or even policy area. The 2015 manifesto itself massively played down their own educational track record.
Drilling into the numbers puts specific voter approval for Tory educational policies down at 23%, meaning psephologically people were as often voting for the Tories
DESPITE their educational policies as because. 77% disapproval is an overwhelming disapproval not "general approval" in anyone's book, the echo-chamber dweller is obvious here.
Returning to the OP. There is a certain irony that Cummings has put a call out for a ragtag bag of maverick physicist misfits to come to the rescue and shake up a complacent civil service with their sciencey superpowers, blue-sky thinking their out-of-the box-theories regarding Big Data analysis, blockchain and popular beat combos, to identify the black swans and shift the public policy paradigm and push the envelope on the solution phase space right at the bleeding edge of the risk/opportunity interface*.
Except of course one of the likeliest bits of paradigm-busting thinking they are liable to come up with is "
Why don't we use the scientific method to trial new public policies in pilot studies to see if they actually work, and to iron-out unforeseen implementation issues, before we roll them out at great expense and disruption nationwide" an idea he has already categorically rejected on they basis they might give him answers he doesn't want.
For all his lip-service about the scientific method, Cummings has repeatedly indicated he doesn't believe it should apply to him and his gut instinct because ... well he can quote Sun Tzu, can't he.
*... and we have a call at the back for a full house on the management consultant b.llsh.t bingo. That's a full house, we'll have a check-through to see if they've won the set of steak knives.
This place is not a place of honor, no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here, nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.
This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.