My CRC students have to write 150-250 words describing themselves and this blog project.
I'll do the same.
I started my professional career in 1971 as a history teacher in Leicester, England. I then lectured in Education for a year in Worcester, before becoming Head of History at a large school in Wolverhampton. My last full-time job in England was as Head of Faculty/Head of Year at a school in Rochdale.
We (my wife, Mary, our elder daughter, Kate, and I) then decided to work abroad. We arrived in Brunei on New Year's Day 1980. I taught History & English there for nearly 10 years, at the Puusat Tingkaten Enam ( 6th Form Centre). My wife worked at Brunei International School, where Kate and her sister Emma, born in 1981, were pupils. In 1982 Kate left Brunei for boarding school in England.
When we left Brunei, I worked for 2 years in Hong Kong, accompanied by my family, followed by a year, single-status, in KSA & 2 years here in Abu Dhabi. In 1994, while woring at a summer school at Etob College, I was asked to go for 11 weeks to Qatar and ended up staying there for 9 years. I returned to Al Ain in March 2003 to work at the Air College for 6 months, before transferring to ADMC in October of the same year. At the same time my wife returned to Al Rabeeh School, where she had worked 1993-4, as a kindergarten teacher.
Our elder daughter currently lives here in Abu Dhabi with her American husband Adam and two children, Louisa & William. Younger daughter Emma is a nurse in England, where she lives with her husband Andy and young son Harry; they have visited us several times here in Abu Dhabi.
The aim of this blog is to examine the concepts of global warming and climate change, to try to understand what they mean and to do so in a critical, sceptical & analytical fashion. I have already posted re. the importance of critical thinking and will do so again as one of our later tasks. For the moment, suffice it to say that I feel there is a tendency nowadays to blame everything, from tsunamis to food shortages, on global warming. This is nonsense, because tsunamis are natural phenomena, with natural causes, while food shortages, as in Zimbabwe, are due almost always to political mis-management.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Critical Thinking
Extracts from an article by Lisa Hilton in The Spectator, 04.02.09
Is it not irresponsible to deny children the capacity to assess information for bias, distortion and inaccuracy in a world of unsupervised, unfiltered internet access? Good history teaching provides a confident perspective from which to dismiss, as much as absorb, the massive amounts of information with which children will be daily bombarded on the web. Huxley’s Bernard Marx claims that 62,400 repetitions equal one truth; not an implausible figure in the age of Google... In denying children the thrill of our own epic historical narrative we also deny them the option to compare, to judge, above all to refuse. Surely the point of all humanities teaching is not the regurgitation of whichever facts the government deems appropriate, but the ability, quite simply, to think? Orthodoxy is the absence of thought.
Is it not irresponsible to deny children the capacity to assess information for bias, distortion and inaccuracy in a world of unsupervised, unfiltered internet access? Good history teaching provides a confident perspective from which to dismiss, as much as absorb, the massive amounts of information with which children will be daily bombarded on the web. Huxley’s Bernard Marx claims that 62,400 repetitions equal one truth; not an implausible figure in the age of Google... In denying children the thrill of our own epic historical narrative we also deny them the option to compare, to judge, above all to refuse. Surely the point of all humanities teaching is not the regurgitation of whichever facts the government deems appropriate, but the ability, quite simply, to think? Orthodoxy is the absence of thought.
An Inconvenient Truth
Global warming
My CRC students are creating blogs containing not only their own personal details but also their views on climate change and global warming. The starting point is Al Gore's movie, 'An Inconvenient Truth'. The main thesis presented, it must be admitted very impressively, at the outset of the film is that climate change and global warming are inextricably linked to human activity. Gore presents a mass of statistical evidence, backed by impressive graphic displays and photographic evidence, to back up his argument. The film footage is colourful, dramatic and well-matched to Gore's commentary. The movie is well directed and very thought-provoking, whether or not one accepts all of Gore's arguments.Over the coming weeks the students will post blog entries on their views of the movie, definitions of global warming, its causes and possible solutions.
My CRC students are creating blogs containing not only their own personal details but also their views on climate change and global warming. The starting point is Al Gore's movie, 'An Inconvenient Truth'. The main thesis presented, it must be admitted very impressively, at the outset of the film is that climate change and global warming are inextricably linked to human activity. Gore presents a mass of statistical evidence, backed by impressive graphic displays and photographic evidence, to back up his argument. The film footage is colourful, dramatic and well-matched to Gore's commentary. The movie is well directed and very thought-provoking, whether or not one accepts all of Gore's arguments.Over the coming weeks the students will post blog entries on their views of the movie, definitions of global warming, its causes and possible solutions.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Global Warming Project
We are now about to start our blog project, which is about climate change & global warming.
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