Hitlers use of Christianity

see: God & Everything!

The Private Finance Initiative (PFI)

The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is a small but important part of the Government's strategy for delivering high quality public services.

In assessing where PFI is appropriate, the Government's approach is based on its commitment to efficiency, equity and accountability and on the Prime Minister's principles of public sector reform. PFI is only used where it can meet these requirements and deliver clear value for money without sacrificing the terms and conditions of staff.

Where these conditions are met, PFI delivers a number of important benefits. By requiring the private sector to put its own capital at risk and to deliver clear levels of service to the public over the long term, PFI helps to deliver high quality public services and ensure that public assets are delivered on time and to budget. - hm-treasury.gov.uk

Do You Want Ketchup With Your Degree, Or Can You Beat McEducation?

Alex Heiphetz, Ph.D., President, AHG, Inc.

A short editorial published by Education Today in early October of 2002 started a debate that is not settled to this time. Moreover, in many regards it becomes sharper as distance learning evolves. The argument is between two principally different approaches to learning. On one side are advocates of developing standardized courses that can be delivered easily and cheaply by any educator, in any environment, to any student body. In other words, these are advocates of commoditization of education. They are opposed by proponents of education that is highly specific to both educator's background and students' needs. This education can promptly incorporate and respond to newest scientific achievements and challenges. Sir John Daniel, at the time UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education and the author of the editorial, was the first to coherently articulate the former position that can be reduced to the following ideas:

* Commoditization is a key process for bringing prosperity to ordinary people Commoditization of learning material [is] a way to bring education to all.

* Secret [to success] is to offer a limited range of dishes as commodities that have the same look, taste and quality everywhere.

* Commoditizing education need not mean commercializing education. The educational community should adopt the model of the open source software movement. We can imagine a future in which teachers and institutions make their courseware and learning materials freely available on the web. Anyone else can translate and adapt them for local use provided they make their new version freely available too.

* When products become commodities there is fierce price competition between manufacturers and profit margins are squeezed. Producers hate this and industries often have to restructure, but consumers benefit greatly.

Concisely written in a lively language with comparisons drawn between McDonald's restaurants and educational institutions, this article apparently touched a raw nerve of educational community around the world. Many of the educators criticized Sir John Daniel for "consumeristic" approach to education, where process of learning does not differ from the process of purchasing food. This approach is characterized by very narrow vision of the educational process that sees learning in the first place as the consequence of the provision of data and materials. (See, for example, response by Jan Visser, President, Learning Development Institute, and Member of the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction -- http://www.learndev.org/dl/SenseNonsenseMcDo.pdf). Others criticized implicit one-size-fits-all approach; "the assumption that there are people who can think and people who can, at most, apply or adapt what "thinkers" come up with". (See an excellent compilation at http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/mceducationforall.htm).

Interestingly (but not surprisingly), all the protestations did not do much good. Established institutions expand their distance learning programs with only intermittent success. Commoditization remains one of the main concerns among educators as a number of newcomers to the educational field offering any and all degrees unbelievably fast, conspicuously easy and really cheap grows year over year. And Sir John Daniel continues his labors as a President and CEO of the Commonwealth of Learning - a Canada-based "intergovernmental organisation that was created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning and distance education knowledge, resources and technologies" (see http://www.col.org/jdaniel.htm).

The question, therefore, arises - is McEducation really the only alternative? Perhaps, in terms of the restaurant analogy, there is a place and opportunity for both McDonald's of education, and other eating places, with better, more specialized cuisine. Cheap, fast, bland education might indeed be a solution when that is what you need, or, at least, what you are ready to accept. Specialized, advanced knowledge education cannot be duplicated easily, if at all. It requires educators to be professionals in two fields simultaneously: their academic field and education, and be active in current research. These are the characteristics of educational institutions that sometimes "lost in translation". Cutting edge knowledge can manifest itself only if instructor uses his or her personal research and experience. This is something not available in a generic textbook and video.

You cannot beat McDonald's at its game, but is it your game? Your students will much rather appreciate unique specialized knowledge you can share with them. This is your institution's trademark strength. Translate this traditional strength into the language and tools of distance learning. Our experience working with educational institutions and corporate training departments alike shows maximum enrollment, highest retention rate and highest student satisfaction in courses that use courseware prepared by educators based on their own research and experience.

This courseware might include printed materials, audio on CDs, as well as video presentations on DVDs. Two latter formats (audio and video) can be also accessed as streaming audio and video served by a web server. These materials obviously must reflect the current state of science. Textbooks student purchase in a book store reflect data and methodology that are at least two -- three years old, in most cases more than that. Generally available educational video is often ten or more years old. Today it is unacceptable. Current technology does not require you to produce courseware by thousands copies and use it over the period of several years with few, if any changes. Both printed materials, and audio / video can and should be updated by educators to each course and produced on-demand. They will provide students today's data and methodology at an angle that is specific to your course and student body.

Technology allows you to take competition out of realm of commoditization ("who can provide me with the cheapest degree") into the realm of value ("what education is most valuable for me"). Experience shows that this is not the field where McEducators want to compete. articlealley

The globalisation of Education = Worldwide Corporate Media Conditioning

Issues

In academia, discussion of globalisation mainly focuses on identifying and implementing strategies for recruiting international students, on internationalizing the curriculum, on the acquisition of language skills in one or even two non-native languages, on promoting academic mobility for both students and professors, or on encouraging networking between researchers and research subjects. While not belittling the need to discuss such strategies, this conference would like to shift the debate further upstream. To be more specific, we wish to see participants debate analyses of issues raised by globalisation.

Firstly, an issue of epistemology:

With the exploding growth of knowledge and the attendant dispersal of places producing this knowledge, we are faced with the question: How much of it is relevant in this age of globalisation?

An issue of democracy:

Might not globalisation hinder access to higher education by widening even further the gap between the countries of the North and the emerging countries?

An issue of space:

if a nation's territory no longer encompasses the entire life of its society, what about the university campus? Clearly, it no longer encompasses academic life in its entirety. What is the space and place of university life? Will academia become divorced from its campus territory?

An issue of society:

Will globalisation produce new social distinctions between those who have access to knowledge and everyone else? In the academic community, will it introduce distinctions among students and professors with international backgrounds and those without?

Finally, an issue of politics, which has two overlapping components:

on the one hand, the place of private sponsorship and, hence, the question of university funding; on the other, the role of the nation state. Being universal by nature, knowledge is primarily international. Yet university systems are still organized nationally. By developing ever more tightly knit international networks, will not globalisation lead to a relaxation of the ties between the university and the nation state? - bi.ulaval.ca

- Sir John Daniels - Questions and Answers PDF

Open universities -

Jane Figgis: Now let's look at the planet's ten mega universities. Sir John Daniel is the Vice-Chancellor of one of them, the Open University in the U.K.

Sir John Daniel: The two biggest are the Chinese Television University system which has over half a million students, and there's a university in Turkey, surprisingly, Anatolia University, which has over 500,000 students. So these places are on three continents, there are three in Europe, one in Africa - the University of South Africa - and then the rest are in Asia.

Jane Figgis: Well we've got two near neighbours don't we, in Indonesia.

Sir John Daniel: Yes, that's another of the very big ones - Universitas Terbuka in Indonesia. You've got, probably for my money, of the really big ones, the most effective and well functioning is the Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University in Thailand which I think has been brilliantly led and developed.

And for me of course, the importance of these institutions is that people don't realise how the growth in world population is going to require us to expand university education, even to retain the present participation rate, which goodness knows is very small in some developing countries. I was reading recently that one would need to open one medium sized university every week just to stand still. Well that's clearly impossible, so I believe that these mega universities have a very important role in increasing access. And what they've also done, as I discovered when I studied them, is to very substantially decrease the costs of university education.

Jane Figgis: But these mega universities are not just for developing countries, as Sir John's own Open University attests.

Sir John Daniels: Harold Wilson, the politician who had the idea, really had two goals: the first was to expand access because Britain had had a very elite system of higher education up until that point. But very much in his mind was a second goal which was to use the mass media for educational purposes. Television was just developing - we're talking early 60s when he started talking about this - and he believed that television in particular was much too important a medium to be left purely to entertainment. So that was part of his vision. It's interesting that when he first made a speech announcing this concept in '63, there were fewer people in all U.K. universities combined than there are this year in the open university.

Since then of course, there's been a massive expansion in the other universities which I have to say does not appear to have impacted on demand for us, which continues at record levels, and indeed at a time when the demand for full time higher education in Britain seems to be just sort of bottoming out or even declining, as I was reading this morning, it is in Australia too, our demand - because of course we're addressing ourselves primarily to working adults - seems to be buoyant.

Jane Figgis: And that group doesn't get used up?

Sir John Daniel: Well no, it seems not. And that's interesting, because certainly in the early days, a lot of people said this will be a pool draining operation, and all these people who didn't go to university when they were young, when you've got through them, the system will take over. And it doesn't seem to be true, and I guess the reason it isn't true is that the more education there is in society, the more people want. And we bang on about life long learning, but I think there's evidence this is actually happening. I keep meeting people for instance who say, 'When I retire, I'm going to do an open university degree.' And they obviously follow up on this, because we now have 6,000 students over 60 and 800 over 80. I mean these are seriously dedicated people.

Jane Figgis: And just as Harold Wilson thought television might make an educational difference, John Daniel has started to invest big in CD-ROMs and the Internet and computer technologies generally. The down payment this year was 10-million pounds.

Jane Figgis: With the vast scale of your university, going into this new world of technologies, is it possible for you to get it wrong enough that you actually screw up the business?

Sir John Daniel: Oh absolutely, yes. That's why it's a high stakes game. But I suppose if we believe, as I think I do, that the present wave of technologies do have the potential to fundamentally and helpfully change the relationship between people and knowledge and indeed people and people, then it is worth helping them become attuned to that. But there's lots of ifs and hypotheses in there, and the first thing I'd like to know is, is it actually true that what we are calling the knowledge media do change in a radical and helpful way, the relationship between people and knowledge.

So yes, we can stumble very definitely. And that's why I'm getting more and more obsessed with costs, and one of the interesting things about the mega universities is the dramatic differences - and we're not actually the only English language mega university - there's one in India, there's one in South Africa - and if I try and roughly back-of-the-envelope calculate the difference in costs, the per student cost at the Indira Ghandi National open university in India is about one-fiftieth of the cost at the U.K.O.U. Now imagine if Indira Ghandi gets on to the Internet, develops a good world wide web teaching method and all the rest of it, it would make sense for people in England and people in Australia, to pick that up at one-fiftieth of the cost of what I'm offering. So I believe that education may well become an international commodity business where it doesn't any longer respect the national boundaries we've become so used to.

Jane Figgis: Sir John Daniel, from the U.K.'s open university. - abc.net

excerpt from a speech by Sir John Daniel

Education: A public - Private Partnership - CASE European Schools Development Conference, Keble College, Oxford, 22 March 2004

For developing countries there is a clear trade off. If they make primary education free, resources do not usually permit them to make education free at other levels. As countries start to expand their secondary and university systems, creating a mixed economy at these levels becomes a live issue.

It is particularly live because some countries have a tradition of free higher education. Historically it was only offered to a tiny elite but now the systems are expanding and the students, not surprisingly, think it should continue to be free.

My view is that governments will have to face down these protests because it simply does not make sense, as is the case in at least one West African country, for the state to spend one hundred times as much on each university student as on each primary pupil.

So how do we finance educational institutions if the state cannot pick up the whole bill? Let me comment on the alternatives.

First, students can pay fees that cover all the costs of running the school or college. This usually means quite high fees. The school or college can be organised in two ways. It can be a non-profit foundation, where all surpluses are re-invested in the institution. Or it can be run for profit, so that shareholders benefit from the success of the institution.

In recent years there has been a steady increase in the number of for-profit institutions at the university level, notably in the USA, and they make some people nervous. My own observation of the for-profit institutions that I know indicates that they are doing a good job, producing satisfied graduates and happy employers.

They say that they can compete successfully because most not-for-profit universities, whether private foundations or in the public sector, are badly managed. Presumably the question of development, in the CASE sense, does not arise in a for-profit institution because why would I pay to put up a university building, even if it has my name on it in lights, if all I am doing is to put more money in the shareholders' pockets by sparing them an expense.

The second alternative is that benefactors pay for much of the cost of the education carried out in the institution because they believe that education is important. Before states began to get seriously involved in providing education in Europe in the 19th century, the churches were major benefactors, as witness the college that we are in and most others across this city of Oxford. In reality, of course, most institutions, like the ones you represent, are mixed economies: you receive fees from pupils or their families; you have endowment money; and you may get a contribution from the state, at least in taxes remitted.

In the last few minutes, let me concentrate, as you mostly do, on benefactors. Why do people give money to educational institutions? Again, reasons are more often mixed than uni-dimensional, but let me suggest four.

First, there is the monumental function of educational institutions. It is striking how university campuses in America play the same role as medieval cathedrals in Europe, of giving the wealthy the chance to leave something permanent as a memorial to themselves or their beliefs.

Second, benefactors may want to promote a particular topic or an activity in which they believe passionately - new fives courts or a library of books on Islam, for example.

Third, they may simply wish to help succeeding generations of young people. My own school, Christ's Hospital, was founded because Henry VIII destroyed much of England's social support system by suppressing the monasteries. When his son Edward VI came to the throne his advisors urged him to rebuild this support by creating foundations for the sick, the mentally ill and the orphans of the City of London.

That is how Christ's Hospital came to be founded, in 1553, to take care of and educate the orphans of London.

The fourth motive of benefactors, which is a variant of this one, is that many simply believe that education is about the best general investment they can make in the future. This is entirely consistent with the role of education in development that I mentioned earlier.

One can never know where the paths that one did not take in life would have led, but I am convinced that Christ's Hospital was the making of me. I was orphaned at age six and the boarding environment and quality of the school gave me a superb start in life and was a huge relief to my mother.

When she died I used some of the money in her will to become a benefactor to Christ's Hospital myself, as a Donation Governor, and I am proud to contribute in this way to giving someone else the advantage that I had. As you probably know, Christ's Hospital is the inverse of most private schools. You can't attend Christ's Hospital if your family earns more than a modest amount, whereas most private schools are the other way round.

It is not realistic, of course, to expect that all schools can aspire to have the level of benefactions of a Christ's Hospital and be able to offer most of their pupils an education without fees. However, the work that you are all doing to increase the level of gifts and endowments to your institutions is a wonderful thing. - portal.unesco.org

Sir John Daniel, [...] reflects on the history of UNESCO-CEPES, with which he has had a long involvement, and of its role in promoting co-operation in higher education in Eastern and Central Europe. He also dwells on the work of UNESCO, in general, in the domain of higher education in the immediate future. The organization, he writes, will pursue its efforts to promote twinning and networking through the UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs Programme that has just celebrated its tenth anniversary. Other major efforts will be made to broaden access to higher education worldwide, to further strengthen quality assurance measures, to diversify the sources of funding for higher education, to strengthen the synergy between teaching and research, to continue efforts underway to strengthen academic freedom, and to pursue the reform of management and governance structures in higher education. This way, higher education can be further developed, and more can be expected of its contribution to other levels of education.

[snip]

As universities evolve in order to better serve the globalized knowledge societies in which they are situated, becoming increasingly marketized and directed towards practical entrepreneurial objectives, do they not run the risk of losing sight of their traditions, particularly that of the pursuit of truth for its own sake?

Mgr. Guy-Real Thivierge, the Secretary-General of the International Federation of Catholic Universities (FIUC), who is aware of this risk, stresses the role of Catholic universities in participating in globalization and in the market while striving to humanize both according to Christian principles of justice. One role of Catholic university education is to serve "as the voice of those who have no voice".

For Professor Hans van Ginkel, the Rector of the United Nations University, who is also the President of the International Association of Universities (IAU), as well as being a member of the International Follow-Up Committee of the World Conference on Higher Education, higher education nowadays is called upon to perform a much wider variety of tasks than could have been easily predicted in the 1990s at a number of conferences having as their themes a variant of "The University of the Future" (or of the Twenty-First Century).

The future has arrived. The processes that have shaped universities, in only a small number of years, have transcended any blueprints that might have been crafted for them in these conferences. The complex processes of the knowledge-based economy, globalization, the use of information technologies, and the subtleties of the debate on public versus private responsibility for higher education call for increased university autonomy, the use of buffer organizations and boards of trustees between governments and higher education institutions, more entrepreneurial funding and behaviour on the part of university administrators, financial autonomy, and more sophisticated university management all-around.

- Higher Education in Europe

Australia, Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, USA

In the Vatican: Alpha speaker Nicky Gumbel is presented to the Pope, who has called for a 'new evangelisation', at the end of a General Audience in the Papal Audience Chamber in February

Papal audience as cardinals speak out

March 2004

Mr Gumbel - along with his wife Pippa and son Jonny - were presented to the Pope by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, Preacher to the Papal Household, at the end of a General Audience in the Paul VI Audience Hall in the Vatican.

Father Raniero has been a friend since the two men met at a conference in Frankfurt in 1999.

Also introduced was Kitty Arbuthnott, head of Alpha for Catholics, who presented the Pope with a painting of the Prodigal Son by Christian artist Charlie Mackesy, whose drawings illustrate the Alpha manuals.

It was part of a five-day visit to Rome during which they met representatives of the Congregation on the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the Sant'Egidio Community, the Focolare Movement and the Rome School of Evangelisation run by the Emmanuel Community. They also met Cardinal Stafford, who was until recently President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, and the Rev'd Nicholas Hudson, Rector of the Venerable English College.

An increasing number of cardinals and senior Catholic clergy are encouraging the course's growth as they seek to fulfil the Pope's call for a 'new evangelisation'.

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyon, France, has taken a close interest in the growth of Alpha in the country. Speaking on the new Alpha introductory video, he said, 'For the French church, Alpha is a great opportunity for our time. It is a wonderful gift that we have received from England.'

In January, around 600 Catholic lay leaders and priests attended an Alpha conference in Paris, where a fifth of all Catholic churches now run the Alpha course. The conference was run by the French Alpha office.

The Catholic church in Scotland is being encouraged to use Alpha by Cardinal Keith O'Brien, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh.

Writing in the brochure for the forthcoming Glasgow Alpha conference, he said, 'A priority for me on my appointment as Cardinal was the 're- Christianisation of Scotland'. 'I see the Alpha course as an initial and very important tool for this programme - bringing together those who are seeking the way ahead through the following of the Christian faith.'

In America, the course is having an impact on hundreds of Catholic parishes - and it is spreading fast. In April 1999, more than 500 Catholic clergy and lay leaders attended a conference in Baltimore introduced on video by Cardinal William H. Keeler, Archbishop of Baltimore. Catholic parishes using Alpha all over the world are experiencing a new dynamism and sense of mission in their local congregations. One Catholic lay leader, Mrs Mary Hagar, of Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, runs Alpha in two parishes near her home. She said, 'I have been doing evangelisation programmes in the Catholic church for 30 years.We have been trying to evangelise people with minimal to poor to dismal success. 'I went to an Alpha training programme on the east coast and I came out saying, 'This is what I've looked for my whole life. This is the programme that is going to change lives.' 'The first course far exceeded our expectations in numbers of people signing up and after the Holy Spirit weekend, the testimonies verbally and in writing were astounding. 'For those of us who are Catholic, Alpha is the tool that is bringing into reality in our lifetime the church we have always dreamed of.'

After returning from Rome, Nicky Gumbel said: ' It was a great honour to be presented to Pope John Paul II, who has done so much to promote evangelisation around the world. We have been enormously enriched by our interaction with Catholics in many countries. It is a great privilege to meet inspiring leaders from different parts of the church - Catholic, Baptist, Salvation Army, Pentecostal, Lutheran, Methodist, and so many more - and discover that what unites us is infinitely greater than what divides us. As Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa has pointed out, the battle today is similar to that of the first century. The battle is around the King: Is Jesus a Universal Saviour, or just one among many? Thus, on the crucial issue of our day, we can be united and proclaim this Jesus to a desperately needy world.' - alphacourse.org

Church war on gays

By Cristina Odone

AT THE gathering of the primates of the Anglican Communion, all eyes are trained on the conservative African bishops. With a little help from their evangelical American brethren, their implacable opposition to gay priests has caused so much of the Church's recent troubles. But the renewed impetus for a war on gays within the Church of England comes from a homegrown movement - Alpha. Here, at the very heart of the Mother Church, thrives an influential group that has made homophobia respectable.

Alpha is a "back to basics" course in Christianity. Its teachings about homosexuality are clear: gays are not only sinners, they are also sick. The Rev Nicky Gumbel, Alpha's leading light, is on record calling for their healing, and for gays to lead a life of abstinence. Enrol in the Alpha course, and you will take part in fifteen sessions over ten weeks that drag you into a world full of no-nos: no sex before marriage, no feminism, no abortion and no gay sex.

During the arm-waving services, PowerPoint presentations, weekly suppers and the weekend away that constitute your Alpha immersion, you will receive endless confirmation that the prejudices you have learnt are just. You are no bigot, you are brimming with the Holy Spirit; you are no homophobe, you are virtuous follower of Holy Writ. It is a Calvinist view that delights in the metaphorical stoning of the wicked, while overlooking the compassionate Christ of the Gospels.

Armed with this self-righteousness, Alpha graduates in Britain (1.6 million have attended the course, though the figure includes repeat customers) feel compelled to spread their beliefs within a Church that they are taught to regard as decaying if not downright decadent. And other Anglicans, from the woman in the pew to the bishop in his seat, listen.

For one thing, the tremendous success of the Alpha course commands respect. The rest of the Anglican Church presides over a steady decline of communicants and vocations, but Alpha can point to astonishing growth, accompanied by impressive affluence. Those who swell the Alpha movement are not trailer-trash simpletons but accountants, stockbrokers, lawyers - the eminently respectable professionals who were once the backbone of the established Church.

The Alpha course has clout. A shame it uses it to hound rather than heal, and to exclude rather than embrace. - timesonline.co.uk

PM unveils plans for self-governing schools

Polly Curtis, education correspondent Monday October 24, 2005

Key points of education white paper

Polly Curtis, education correspondent - Tuesday October 25, 2005

All schools will be encouraged to become "trust schools" with greater independence and freedoms to run their own affairs

Trust schools will be backed by businesses, charities, faith groups, universities and parent and community groups. As in the case of academies, trusts will be able to appoint the majority of the governing body, control their assets, become their own admissions authority (within the national code of practice and with no return to selection by ability) and potentially vary the national curriculum. A trust can run more than one school.

A new "schools commissioner" will be created to get trusts up and running

The commissioner will identify backers and match them to schools and support parents in setting up new schools. The commissioner can also advise the education secretary on the exercise of her powers.

Trust schools will set their own admissions

This will be within the national code of practice, but the government today expressed a preference for banding, to ensure pupils of all abilities are taken into a school.

The role of local authorities will change

Local education authorities will change from being a direct provider of services to a more strategic commissioning role. They will be less involved in the day-to-day running of individual schools and more in "driving up standards", the Department for Education and Skills says. - education.guardian

Top 50 independent schools found guilty of price-fixing to push up fees

Matthew Taylor, Rob Evans and Rebecca Smithers - Thursday November 10, 2005

Fifty of the country's leading private schools were found guilty yesterday of running an illegal price-fixing cartel which investigators said had allowed them to drive up fees for thousands of parents.

Following one of the biggest inquiries in its history, the Office of Fair Trading published provisional findings showing the schools, which include Eton and Harrow, had exchanged detailed financial information in a regular report known as the Sevenoaks survey.

"This ... systematic exchange of confidential information as to intended fee increases was anti-competitive and resulted in parents being charged higher fees than would otherwise be the case," the OFT stated.

The inquiry has focused fresh attention on the benefits private schools derive from their charitable status - a controversial tax exemption that critics say effectively amounts to a government subsidy - in return for questionable wider "public benefit".

- guardian