James Bowen

UCC stuff

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• My Google appointment book (but it's private so there is no point in clicking this link unless you are me)

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External Interests

• Palestine
  • I was (2005-8) the national chairman of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign and was (2002-2010) coordinator of the Cork branch of the campaign.
  • The Palestine database I started in 2002, and run with others, now contains over 150,000 documents
  • See a list of some of my newspaper pieces on Palestine
• The way we live now
  • Listen to an interesting interview about a book called The Culture of the New Capitalism, based on a series of lectures given at Yale University by Richard Sennett. In this interview (broadcast in the Thinking Allowed strand on BBC Radio 4 on 18 January 2006), Sennett and Laurie Taylor cover a range of issues, particularly the way in which the worship of continuous change is undermining the world of work.
    While I found the discussion interesting for many reasons, I include it here because Sennett and Taylor discuss how, and why, many education policy documents are badly written. Here is an example of such stuff, originating in something called the National Framework of Qualifications and now being foisted on us when we propose new degree programmes:

    "Level 8: Innovation is a key feature of learning outcomes at this level. Learning outcomes at this level relate to being at the forefront of a field of learning in terms of knowledge and understanding. The outcomes include an awareness of the boundaries of the learning in the field and the preparation required to push back those boundaries through further learning. The outcomes relate to adaptability, flexibility, ability to cope with change and ability to exercise initiative and solve problems within their field of study. In a number of applied fields the outcomes are those linked with the independent, knowledge-based professional. In other fields the outcomes are linked with those of a generalist and would normally be appropriate to management positions."

    While I suspect that the people who write this kind of stuff are just inarticulate, Sennett suggests a darker motive. If you haven't got time to listen to the whole interview, listen to this short excerpt in which Sennett discusses British educational policy documents that exhibit some of the same stigmata as the text quoted above. Sennett says that the authors of such documents pay "no attention to the craft of communication" because "that's empowering to people in the centre".