R.F.J. Seddon’s Log

The Least of Our Worries

2012-05-25T15:34:52+01:00

Robert’s recent concerns about exam questions:
- Whether a question about ‘how Western Humanist thought has been used to either legitimise or challenge racism and colonialism’ would be read as inclusively or exclusively disjunctive.
- When a candidate thought a question on ‘the sustainability or otherwise of the claim to human exceptionalism’ was asking about environmental sustainability. (The results hung together better than one might expect.)
- What the people were thinking who answered a question about pre-Seventeenth Century philosophy by writing about Descartes.
The Education Secretary’s recent concerns about exam questions:
- That ‘explain’ might somehow, possibly, conceivably be read as a synonym for ‘justify’.Although I will grant that the question sounds more obviously like one of psychology or sociology than of religious studies.

Disagreeable

2012-04-19T17:18:47+01:00

A referendum on whether to elect members of the House of Lords would be unnecessary and expensive, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has said... “Unlike the referendum last year, [it] is the subject of complete consensus between the parties; we all had manifesto commitments to deliver House of Lords reform.”
B.B.C. News

Which, one might think, implies the opposite conclusion: that since it was impossible for anyone voting for one of the major parties to vote against an elected Upper House, public judgment on the matter was underdetermined by the election. Which is not to say that a referendum is desirable, merely that a cluster of manifestos resembling a Greek chorus is no strong argument against it.

London Weighting?

2012-04-18T23:41:14+01:00

Where do I get news about the plight of postgrad. philosophy teaching assistants at Birkbeck? Private Eye, naturally...

Even though the pay has been lowered a few quid since last year, one hour’s teaching per week at £27.82 per hour... doesn’t sound bad. But when seminar preparation, essay marking, replying to e-mails, grading the students and writing each of them a personalised report are taken into account, the teaching assistants find themselves working about five hours for every one hour they are paid for.

I wonder whether this revelation has anything to do with a recent request from the British Postgraduate Philosophy Association for survey responses about teaching conditions in the nation’s departments. (For the record, Durham’s terms aren’t directly comparable to Birkbeck’s; pay for marking is set by the departments separately from centralised teaching pay, and the Philosophy Dept. pays on a per-script basis, although less generously than the Dept. itself would have liked.)

“If I fail to report, 008 replaces me.”

2012-04-12T15:02:04+01:00

The surge of pseudo-sequels to the writings of deceased authors has reached the point at which a multi-paragraph summary of one literary franchise alone now seems required:

[William Boyd] is the third author in recent years to be invited by the Ian Fleming estate to write an official Bond novel.

Before him came American thriller writer Jeffery Deaver, who penned Carte Blanche in 2011; and Sebastian Faulks, whose Devil May Care was published to mark Ian Fleming's centenary in 2008.

[...]

Other writers to take on Fleming's hero include John Gardner and Charlie Higson, author of the Young Bond books.

My general view of authorised continuations is that their status is a side-effect of the law of copyright; except perhaps in rare and special cases, they are aesthetically of no inherently different status from any other fanfiction. Yet I’ve suspected for a while that the existence of a single successor figure, blessed by a late author’s estate, may have a certain appeal to readers left wanting more: that it plays on romantic notions of a Chosen One, an authentic heir, which are notions of exactly the kind which might play on the sympathies of... the kind of people who like to read novels. I wonder how long that effect can last in the face of such an obvious franchising operation.

‘Staff’ When It Suits

2012-03-23T14:22:46+00:00

Surprise mass e-mails from the Vice Chancellor seldom augur well...

I have been required to sign a Data Protection Undertaking issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office following an accidental information security breach at the University last summer. As part of this undertaking I have committed to ensuring that all staff are made aware of the University’s Data Protection Policy and receive training as a matter of absolute priority... The [online] training module should take a maximum of half an hour to complete...

I have asked and had it confirmed that yes, the University expects part-time tutors to do this training, despite the fact that we are not employees but unsalaried workers on contracts for services, and there is nothing resembling this new imposition included in our contracts. Presumably it falls under the same line of thought as the unremunerated training which new tutors are expected to undergo before being granted contracts in the first place; but those of us already under contract this year are basically being ordered to do extra work for free.

Fortunately, by the time the deadline rolls around the teaching year will have ended and our yearly teaching contracts with it, thus saving me the bother of dealing with this.

Academonic

2012-03-23T02:35:18+00:00

No results found for demyship:(Demyship)

Did you mean Demonship?

Spanish Research Practices?

2012-02-28T15:52:36+00:00

Are pre-doctoral research posts normal in Spanish academia?

The successful candidate will be expected to enroll in the Master Program in Analytic Philosophy and to eventually apply for entry into one of the associated PhD programs, to elaborate a PhD dissertation contributing to some of the work-packages into which the project [sc. or ‘research and training network’] is divided. The candidate will be... employed by the University of Barcelona under one-year contract in the first place. The contract can be renewed for a second year, if the candidate is accepted into one of the associated PhD programs and upon satisfactory performance. The candidate will then have the support of the program to get one of the PhD grants offered by different public Spanish institutions, which typically provide 4 years of funding.

Hooking them in early, I suppose: recruiting a postgrad. researcher for their project fresh from the B.A. and paying a salary for only two years, just long enough to get the researcher embedded into their Ph.D. programme. Perhaps this is all completely conventional and above board, and recruiting a researcher for a specific project area without fully funding the post from the project budget is routine practice.