End Of Story Research Articles

History’s Babel: Scholarship, Professionalization, and the History Enterprise in the United States, 1880-1940, by Robert B. Townsend

History's Babel: Scholarship, Professionalization, and the History Enterprise in the United States, 1880-1940, by Robert B. Townsend. Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2013. xiii, 258 pp. $30.00 US (paper). Robert Townsend tells a complex and valuable story that should interest all historians and also those general readers who have a passion for history and curiosity about how historians work. He looks at the development of the history enterprise over the first sixty years of its professionalization. For me, the book holds great meaning for his story ends in 1940, just seven years before I began to think of myself as a historian. A college sophomore that year, I had been inspired by a truly great and unusually helpful teacher in a small university in the Northwest. A professor with a PhD from a major graduate program, he taught me history over a wide range in several courses and also helped me leam how to use a library, define and explore historical topics, and write historical essays, and he prepared me for advanced study and gave me great advice on the selection of a graduate program. He did not, however, teach me how the historical profession had become what it was by the 1940s, and he left to others the task of helping me make my way in the profession as a professor and, for a time, the executive secretary of the Organization of American Historians (OAH). The author writes from a good vantage point, bases his work on a strong foundation, and presents his findings in a clearly structured essay. He is the deputy director of the American Historical Association (AHA), has worked in it for more than twenty years, has given its members quantitative analyses of issues of interest to them, and includes that approach to history in this book. Furthermore, his notes of nearly sixty pages for a text of less than 200 testify to the richness of his research, and his structure divides the story into three chronological parts, each composed of three topical chapters. The book's first part covers the years from 1880 to 1910. It begins with the efforts of a small but increasing number of historians in major universities to make history scientific. They could accomplish that, they believed, by encouraging historians to base their work on primary sources, providing education on an advanced level that emphasized the seminar and led to the PhD, and demanding that the doctoral graduates publish their dissertations. This is what this generation of historians did at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Columbia, and an expanding number of other universities, but the men did not limit their attention to academic institutions. They recognized that historians were also doing work of great value for the historical enterprise in other places: archives, historical societies, and secondary schools, so the academics reached out to these historians and drew them into the project. Furthermore, the AHA and the American Historical Review were established during this period and became important contributors. …

Ethics of Responsibility? Some Postmodern Views

Responsibility is customized in the context of a consistent ethical principles derived from the knowledge based society as a corporate social responsibility. Responsibility is not of the individual but of collective entity, being a synthesis between ethics and pragmatic-utilitarian.The responsibility of knowledge based organization-main building blocks of the knowledge society - is far from what is classically called business ethics, or rather simply reporting the moral correctness based on the construction of communication strategies for social action.Corporate social responsibility as a particular form of responsibility adapted the knowledge based society, addresses the sources of uncertainty, given the post-industrial society, seen as a risk society.The purpose of this paper is to search for possible prerequisites for building an ethics of responsibility to accommodate postmodern society.Therefore we start by questioning the specificity postmodernity, both philosophical and civilizational aspect. We will discover the great challenges that postmodernity raised, namely globalization, especially the globalization of mass communication at the end of ideologies-called big stories end Lyotard's language. We reflect on ethical meanings generated unprecedented scientific advance, which allows some thinkers to believe that postmodern society and knowledge society are part of the same contemporary cultural paradigms.

James M. Bromley Intimacy and Sexuality in the Age of ShakespeareIntimacy and Sexuality in the Age of Shakespeare. James M. Bromley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. viii+210.

<i>James M. Bromley</i> Intimacy and Sexuality in the Age of Shakespeare<i>Intimacy and Sexuality in the Age of Shakespeare</i>. James M. Bromley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. viii+210.

Akedah, the Holocaust, and the Limits of the Law in Roth's "Eli, the Fanatic"

In her article "Akedah, the Holocaust, and the Limits of the Law in Roth's 'Eli, the Fanatic'" Aimee L. Pozorski argues that Philip Roth's 1957 short story dramatizes the tension between the law on the one hand and the philosophy of ethics, on the other hand with the story's protagonist ultimately choosing ethics as evidenced by his identification with a displaced Hasidic Jew near the story's end. In reading the story through the inter-textual references to the Genesis story of the Akedah, Pozorski discusses the limits of the law in the face of vulnerable children and within the context of the history of the Holocaust.

Ghazal: Tangle

Ghazal:Tangle Shadab Zeest Hashmi (bio) Lorelei’s mythic hair, her combing song, caused sailors to find their fate in a tangleTo make a woman, you must first wring her neck, said Picasso. Line, bait, tangle Woman, sacrificed, is eaten whole by love gods, household gods, land and sea godsBerenice, Ptolemy’s bride, lopped o√ her braid for a god, to save her mate in a tangle The story ends worse for most but Berenice’s sacrificial locks, prized, became starsin an iridescent cluster. On a clear night you might see that love agitate the tangle Strange, the flame in Rabia Basri’s metaphor became Napoleon’s bomb in CairoThis Sufi’s Heaven burned when the library burned; metaphor in a state of tangle You pour a cup of chai, Zeest, then another and another to thaw a frozen loveThat summer garden was a figment. Its floral pendants: dead weight in a tangle [End Page 23] Shadab Zeest Hashmi Shadab Zeest Hashmi’s Baker of Tarifa, a book based on the history of interfaith tolerance in Al Andalus (Muslim Spain), won the 2011 San Diego Book Award for poetry. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times, translated into Spanish and Urdu, and have appeared in Poetry International, Nimrod, The Cortland Review, RHINO, and elsewhere. She represents Pakistan on UniVerse: A United Nations of Poetry and has taught in the mfa program at San Diego State University as a writer-in-residence. She is a guest columnist for 3 Quarks Daily. Kohl and Chalk is her new book of poems. Copyright © 2014 University of Nebraska Press

Spazio psichico e organizzazione sociale in Neuromancer (1984) di William Gibson

Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson is a central text in the cyberpunk genre. This article analyzes how, in this book, computing is a metaphor used to represent some characteristics of the psyche and also a social organization not subject to review by a single person. Memory is individual, embodied, and changes continuously. Its transposition in external media has the price of a symbolic death for the subject. At the same time the impersonality of the social machines becomes the object of a psychological projection by the individual, and takes on anthropomorphic forms. The “Matrix” is the space of “virtual” relationships (in the sense of computing). Through simulative processes that take place in real time, it’s possible to make an illusory fusion of the subject with the social body which I, however, linked to a repression of the deeper drives, affective and individual experience. The story ends when the protagonist becomes able to distinguish between external reality and psychic life.

Analyzing Storytelling In TESOL Interview Research

Autobiographic research interviews have become an accepted and valued method of qualitative inquiry in TESOL and applied linguistics more broadly. In recent discussions surrounding the epistemological treatment of autobiographic stories, TESOL researchers have increasingly called for more attention to the ways in which stories are embedded in interaction and thus are bound up with the social contexts of their production. This paper advances these efforts by demonstrating an empirically grounded approach to storytelling as interaction. Drawing on the research tradition on storytelling in conversation analysis, the article offers a sample analysis of a story produced in an L2 English interview with an adult immigrant in the United States. By engaging sequential conversation analysis, membership categorization analysis, and occasioned semantics, it examines the interactional practices through which the storyteller and story recipient launch, produce, and end the telling of a story that furthers the purpose of the autobiographic interview. By following closely the participants' coordinated actions as they unfold in time, we trace how the parties accomplish the storytelling as an intelligible and meaningful activity through sequence organization and turn design. We conclude with recommendations for extending storytelling research in TESOL to meet the evolving needs and interests of the field.

The inverted phantom giant.

In his famous children’s book, “Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver”, Michael Ende describes a curious character: A phantom giant. Clothed in rags and with a long beard, the phantom giant appears enormous from far away, but shrinks to normal size as one gets closer. Most people avoid the poor creature, but the ones that dare approach it encounter a gentle, lonely being called Mr. Tur Tur. Chemical ecology is just the opposite of Mr. Tur Tur: A phantom dwarf. Or, in other words, an inverted phantom giant. From a distance, chemical ecology appears like a slightly odd, marginal section of biology and chemistry. But, as the interested scholar approaches, it starts growing and very quickly reaches gigantic dimensions, because all life is explained by chemistry, and all biological chemistry is guided by ecological principles. Herein lies the difficulty with chemical ecology: As it is not perceived well by biologists and chemists, few approach it to understand its significance, and the ones that do find themselves in front of a giant that defies their attempts to define and contain it. This is where the Journal of Chemical Ecology comes in: It invites us to take a closer look at an underestimated discipline and supports us to explore it and deal with its multidimensionality through the promotion of knowledge and methods. These services are unique and make the journal stand out of the crowd of scientific journals. Writing children’s books has become difficult in the era of information technology. And, so has the job of the Journal of Chemical Ecology. Young scientists gather information through accessible, dynamic websites and social platforms. They want articles that are available through a single mouse click, anywhere, anytime. They prefer advanced interactive hypertext protocols over clumsy pdf files. They care about transparency, non-profit and open access just as much as about traditional journal properties. In my view, reaching “the kids” is the major challenge of the Journal over the next years. Promoting an inverted phantom giant in the 21st century requires a combination of high-quality information and boosted visibility. In Michael Ende’s book, Jim and Luke follow exactly this strategy with Mr. Tur Tur: They become friends and offer him a job as a living lighthouse to protect their small island. They combine a quality relationship with high visibility, et voila, the story ends well! I am looking forward to seeing if the Journal of Chemical Ecology will follow a similar path to reach the next generation of biologists and chemists. If yes, there is a good chance that in 40 years from now, somebody will write a laudation and refer to another famous book by Michael Ende: “The Neverending Story”.

End of journey, end of story? A longitudinal study of involuntary work transitions among laid-off workers

The purpose of this study is to increase knowledge regarding involuntary work transitions among laid-off workers. It is part of an ongoing cooperation with two outplacement agencies enrolling white-collar workers. The particular arrangements, which are based on collective agreements, include relatively generous support, both economically and regarding the educational and counselling arrangements offered. A narrative research approach is used and the analysis is based on interviews with 15 people, conducted on two occasions with about a year in between. Conceptualizing the transition as a biographical learning process, the findings point out a great variety within and between cases. While the basic distinction is drawn between people who have changed their status and those who have not, a number of rhetorical varieties are identified, pointing to different modes of biographical learning. The originality of the paper lies in its narrative approach and the particular conceptual framework showing that biographical learning is a vital part of enforced work transitions.

Tremors

This collection of short stories and novel excerpts is the first of its kind to appearin English. Its twenty-seven stories are intended for the general publicinterested in exploring new horizons in fiction, although the fact that the bookis published by a university press might limit public access.Tremors is a collection of fiction revolving around the ideas of migration,exile, hybrid identities, and coming to terms with these. The book is dividedinto three sections, each of which, according to the editors, revolves around acentral theme. The stories in the first section, “American Homeland,” involvefictional accounts of the challenges of “immigration and assimilation in theUnited States” (p. xii). This, in fact, is not always the case. In Dena Afrasiabi’s“String,” for example, the female narrator, Forugh, is at home in the UnitedStates, for the only challenges facing her are the memory of her dead motherand the shadow of her sorrow-stricken Iranian father lurking in the background.Similarly, in Salar Abdoh’s “Fixer Karim,” it is the immigrant HeavyK who continues to ease past assimilation barriers in the United States, to theastonishment of the well-established Iranian-American narrator, so much sothat the story ends with Heavy K appearing as the lead singer in a countryband. In a number of stories, (e.g., Taha Ebrahimi’s “Family Trouble” or J.Kevin Shushtari’s “The Sweet Dry Fruit of the Lotus Tree”), in fact, the narrator’sfamily is well established and feels at home, sometimes with an Americanparent, until ghosts or guests from Iran upset the peace.The second section, “Iran, Land of Resilience,” has been so named becausethe setting of these stories is Iran, although not all of them entertainsuch a view about the land. One example is the excerpt from Zohreh Ghahremani’sSky of Red Poppies, in which the dark days of oppression under the ...

Ring Flower

Are there still openings in the ceaseless recycling of sensational news stories through which we can bear witness to the unmarked tragedies rupturing countless lives all around us? What role can the media play to address the unacknowledged grieving of our age? In his characteristically poetic style, Ge Fei deftly exposes an answer so disquieting it will echo long after the story ends.

Competitiveness Issues in Kazakhstan

This is a brief analysis of the competitiveness issues of Kazakhstan. Policymakers and leadership of many emerging and transitional countries understand the importance of competitiveness. However, the story ends there and countries implement partial reforms and urgently for the immediate visible results, creating a periodic mismatch in expectations. In this brief paper the author elaborates about the great amount of work that competitiveness requires and explains for the need of holistic approach in this endeavor. This analysis could be useful for policymakers from the former soviet republics, since there are many commonalities in competitiveness issues in the region.

Rotator Cuff Vortex

top photo : dan zelazo author photo : james rudy 40 worldliteraturetoday.org for Tim Kelly When the TV played above the bar, I faked my interest in the game – it was the bodies I wanted to tell the stories. Like the story Tim told of Darryl Stingley: there was a photo of him playing in his obituary, leaping for the football in a perfect arabesque (this before the hit that cut his spinal cord). On Friday nights, Tim and his friends throw The Vortex Ball in the bookstore parking lot, although Tim threw his shoulder out, and now the game is on hold until the surgeon finds the time to cut Tim’s rotator cuff and reattach the fittings. The body tells a story mostly about loss (all, in Stingley’s case). And still the ball exerts a pull: the men strain toward it when the TV’s playing, transfixing the dog as well, who goes crazy playing fetch, and will retrieve as long as anyone can be coerced to throw, a drive inbred and neural, although the ball is, in the dog’s case, a stand-in for some specimen of game – by what gene does the compulsion travel? In the epic story of the Mayans, the heroes get their necks cut by the wings of bats down in the underworld, so that their cut heads can bounce off the hips of the death-lords playing a game simply called “the ball game” – naturally, the story ends with the heroes resurrected, then thrown into the sky to become the moon and sun. Scholars call the game a way of ritualizing war, blood not entirely averted by the ball since the losers were beheaded, skulls racked like bowling balls in the upperworld arena. I have seen depictions of this cut into the stones of Chichén Itzá, where you can hear the game still roaring from the dusty court, although the playing died five hundred years ago. Also carved there is the throne, or chac-mool, and the king lounging on it, though this story is debated: could be any doofus spectating. And what’s the story behind his enthrallment with the ball – do all round things have gravity, no matter if they’re thrown by men or spin of their own accord in space, orbs cut from bigger orbs in a motion picture that’s been playing ever since The Bang? And we take our miniscule positions in the game. Forever after, Stingley sat in the throne of his chair, uncomplaining, probably dumbstruck: when your old life cuts out and a story takes over that’s all a game played by the ball on your neck. Lucia Perillo’s sixth book of poems, On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths (2012), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her previous book, Inseminating the Elephant, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress. In 2012 she also published a book of short stories, Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain, shortlisted for the 2013 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. Rotator Cuff Vortex Lucia Perillo special section ...

Rotator Cuff Vortex

top photo : dan zelazo author photo : james rudy 40 worldliteraturetoday.org for Tim Kelly When the TV played above the bar, I faked my interest in the game – it was the bodies I wanted to tell the stories. Like the story Tim told of Darryl Stingley: there was a photo of him playing in his obituary, leaping for the football in a perfect arabesque (this before the hit that cut his spinal cord). On Friday nights, Tim and his friends throw The Vortex Ball in the bookstore parking lot, although Tim threw his shoulder out, and now the game is on hold until the surgeon finds the time to cut Tim’s rotator cuff and reattach the fittings. The body tells a story mostly about loss (all, in Stingley’s case). And still the ball exerts a pull: the men strain toward it when the TV’s playing, transfixing the dog as well, who goes crazy playing fetch, and will retrieve as long as anyone can be coerced to throw, a drive inbred and neural, although the ball is, in the dog’s case, a stand-in for some specimen of game – by what gene does the compulsion travel? In the epic story of the Mayans, the heroes get their necks cut by the wings of bats down in the underworld, so that their cut heads can bounce off the hips of the death-lords playing a game simply called “the ball game” – naturally, the story ends with the heroes resurrected, then thrown into the sky to become the moon and sun. Scholars call the game a way of ritualizing war, blood not entirely averted by the ball since the losers were beheaded, skulls racked like bowling balls in the upperworld arena. I have seen depictions of this cut into the stones of Chichén Itzá, where you can hear the game still roaring from the dusty court, although the playing died five hundred years ago. Also carved there is the throne, or chac-mool, and the king lounging on it, though this story is debated: could be any doofus spectating. And what’s the story behind his enthrallment with the ball – do all round things have gravity, no matter if they’re thrown by men or spin of their own accord in space, orbs cut from bigger orbs in a motion picture that’s been playing ever since The Bang? And we take our miniscule positions in the game. Forever after, Stingley sat in the throne of his chair, uncomplaining, probably dumbstruck: when your old life cuts out and a story takes over that’s all a game played by the ball on your neck. Lucia Perillo’s sixth book of poems, On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths (2012), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her previous book, Inseminating the Elephant, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress. In 2012 she also published a book of short stories, Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain, shortlisted for the 2013 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. Rotator Cuff Vortex Lucia Perillo special section ...

SUFFERING FICTION IN

Suffering in The Unnamable implies two different, but intimately related, concepts. Firstly, Unnamable is assailed by fictions throughout his narrative. The stories Basil, and Worm are foisted upon an unwilling audience as Unnamable is bombarded supposed proofs his historical (Beckett 2010, 36). Those fictions are themselves replete suffering as characters are denuded, degraded and dismembered in what appears be a purposeless catalogue. Throughout novel, question who is responsible for these stories - whether originate in Unnamable, or whether he is merely their victim - is frequently at issue. Yet, even if Unnamable is responsible for these stories, and hence responsible for suffering contain, he is never less than a victim also, as stories rebound upon in an attempt gain his adherence and so circumscribe his existence and identity.Towards end his whirl words, Unnamable sketches out bare plot what appears be a romantic, cliched story a married couple. The man goes off war, dies, and his widow remarries. The first husband has not died in war, however, and returns only die in a train of emotion, at thought seeing her again (125). Meanwhile, second husband has hanged himself with emotion, at thought losing her, leaving widow who weeps, weeps louder, at having loved him, at having lost him (126). This melodrama has a pedagogical purpose: there's a story for you, that was me nature emotion, that's called emotion, what emotion can do, given favourable conditions, what can do, well well, so that's emotion, that's love. As Unnamable has think through certain ambiguous details in story it is designed teach me how reason and, crucially, to tempt me go, place where you can come an end.The melodrama highlights a number key aspects various fictions that Unnamable endures. For instance, its purpose is bring Unnamable into a form being through a belief in and adherence fiction as told; for fiction be accepted as fact, as it were. In order attain this end, characters within fiction are beset by all details and accoutrements a fictional world - the nature trains, and meaning your back engine, and guards, stations, platforms, wars, love (126) - and are thus made suffer. The final aspect is application reason, whereby story's loose ends and inconsistencies are thought through and brought into a coherence that further encourages Unnamable's belief.The relationship between Unnamable's belief and suffering is amply demonstrated by tale Mahood, circling his family in rotunda. The Unnamable's adhesion Mahood's story and therefore Mahood's identity - I've been he an instant (27) - is made possible by increasing suffering himself. begins tale a single leg, but, apparently at random, a further limb is lost: Mahood must have remarked that I remained sceptical, for he casually let fall that I was lacking not only a leg, but an arm also (33). By increasing suffering Mahood, which entails further dismemberment body, it is hoped that Unnamable will overcome his scepticism and accept an identification Mahood. The physical diminution is a crucial part programme bring Unnamable into being, as he himself posits: A single leg and other distinctive stigmata go it, human be sure, but not exaggeratedly, lest I take fright and refuse nibble (27). By reducing human in physical terms - or, putting it another way, making body suffer - it is hoped Unnamable will recognise himself, yet he claims that they could clap an artificial anus in hollow my hand and still I wouldn't be there, alive their life, not far short a man, just barely a man, sufficiently a man have hopes one day being one, my avatars behind me. …

The science of connection.

I began my career in 1994 as an interventional cardiologist, and I thought the world of medicine was totally mechanistic. My patient has a blocked artery; I have a stent and a statin in my toolbox; I fix the artery—end of story. There is nothing wrong with this approach in acute care. This type of medicine, the backbone of conventional medical education, can save lives. We were trained not to prevent disease but to treat acute problems. This training assumes patients are acutely ill and that the answer lies in some sort of “magic bullet.” They are not coming to us for preventive care.

In Moderation

Journalism has a vital role in fostering communities by providing a forum for public criticism and compromise. The internet has markedly changed news organizations' abilities to fulfill this role. Through two surveys—one of more than 100 online newspaper editors and one nationwide survey of more than 1000 internet users—this study extends community journalism online by examining what role, if any, journalists have in online community formation. Specifically, the study focuses on comments at the end of news stories and suggests that the more comments a newspaper receives on a daily basis negatively affects how journalists see their audiences and could discourage their participation in online community formation. On the other hand, the second study suggests that encouragement from journalists might be a key factor in whether people will comment. Whether participants noticed moderation in comments was a significant predictor in how frequently they posted. The key predictor of participation, however, was whether participants felt a virtual sense of community with the news organization. The study suggests that journalists need to be involved in online comment forums to build virtual communities and achieve the ideals of community journalism.

Juvie by Steve Watkins (review)

Reviewed by: Juvie by Steve Watkins Karen Coats Watkins, Steve. Juvie. Candlewick, 2013. 311p ISBN 978-0-7636-5509-9 $17.99 Ad Gr. 7-10 Sadie is always willing to help out her family with whatever they need. They need a lot, though—her father is a reclusive hoarder who refuses to get help, her sister, Carla, is a substance-abusing single mom, and her mother works multiple jobs to keep them in their home. When Carla wants to party one night, Sadie lies to their mother and goes with her, only to find herself busted for drug trafficking when two guys trick her sister into making a delivery to an undercover cop. Since it would be Carla’s third offense, Sadie takes the fall thinking that she won’t have to do time, but a strict judge sentences her to six months in juvenile detention. There she runs afoul of the usual thugs and crazies before she settles into a keep-your-head-down existence that enables her to survive her first three months, which is where the story ends. The book presents Sadie’s sacrifice as the noble, right thing to do, as it enables Carla to get her act together so she can be a better mom, and while Sadie has to lie consistently to keep the real story from surfacing, she maintains her wholesome good-girl personality through her ordeal. The suggestion that even a bad rap and a stint in juvie don’t have to change who you are is an interesting one, and the psychology of enabling is certainly credible. The notion that her sentence won’t damage Sadie’s chances for a future, including a college scholarship, doesn’t ring true, though, especially since she will have to maintain the lie that she was in fact guilty of selling drugs. The point that not guilty doesn’t mean innocent—she did, after all, make a series of bad decisions in going with her sister to the party—is subtly made, and readers may detect it through the overt story of Sadie as a strong and caring heroine making the best of a bad situation. [End Page 242] Copyright © 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Two Stories about Art, Education, and Beauty in Twentieth-Century South Africa

THIS IS A STORY WITHIN A STORY, and the first story ends like this: On Monday, September 15, 1980, Silverman Jara was stoned to death. Jara was a school principal in apartheid South Africa’s Ciskei Bantustan; he was killed by his own students, apparently as he attempted to prevent them from destroying their school.1 His was the fourth death resulting from the riots that had been roiling the region for fourteen days. The Ciskei’s top official, Chief Minister Lennox Sebe, flew in by helicopter, and noted that such a thing had never happened before. “People must realize that we are no longer contending here with students but with terrorists who have no consideration for human life,” he insisted. “I am convinced these children will kill their own parents.” Thus did Sebe enlist Jara’s death in the ongoing struggle for control over South African education under apartheid, a struggle that both activists and the government understood to be only a proxy for the real struggle between the state, its functionaries, and the masses of black South Africa. Jara was a principal, a teacher, and a casualty of war; he was a man who died in a moment of spectacular violence that much extant scholarship on twentieth-century South Africa makes legible and almost normal. Politicized (or in South African parlance, conscientized) students fought against the state and its functionaries throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These functionaries were most often the police or the military, but occasionally the struggle claimed teachers and administrators as casualties as well.2 This was Silverman Jara’s world.

Rhetoric over reason will not fool sector

The lasT few weeks have seen the good and the bad of the early years. The good has come in the form of the speedily arranged and highly organized #BigOfstedConversation events that were held around the country. so many people and organizations, who gave up their time to coordinate, host and attend these thoughtful and engaging think tanks, need to be congratulated. This is the sector mobilizing to address an issue head-on in a concerted and united way. There seems to be growing mistrust toward the ‘independent’ inspectorate. There are many frustrations on behalf of the sector that need to be addressed, many mysteries obscured by official fog, and the coherent messages and questions coming out of the Conversations will allow the inspectorate’s hierarchy to understand that its goals and methods might need to be, how shall we say, better communicated. Where once settings had both Ofsted and their local authority help monitor and shape provision, now there is only Ofsted. But why should we settle for this? Perhaps, with the local authority role diminishing, it is time for a new kind of monitoring and support system? Is it time to offer parents, and each other, a more suitable inspection regime, carried out by experts, with children’s interests and developmental needs as the number one priority, rather than political agendas? Now for the bad and my, how bad. You will have read liz Truss’ response to the open letter from the save Childhood Movement – if you have not, you should, you really should. Ms Truss has been quiet of late, even less engaging with the sector. since More Affordable Childcare and the fall-out over the calculations from the department that showed that affordable it certainly was not, we have not really heard much. But no longer. In response to the open letter, rather than address the sector, we were served with an astonishing article [available at www.telegraph.co.uk] that missed most of the points, insulted the knowledge and experience of almost everyone in the sector, and ended with a paragraph so truly, well, memorable, that it needs to be read to be believed. It would be easy to write an essay on that paragraph alone, littered as it is with: ‘What sort of arrogance allows them to appoint themselves custodians of childhood, we can only wonder... this group’s misguided, regressive, inaccurate, superstitious and dangerous idea... crush their future.’ [Daily Telegraph, september 13, 2013] Is this ‘on message’ in the coalition’s eyes? as the education secretary has shown, if hundreds of people (mostly those who know what they are talking about) disagree with you, they must be wrong, or lefties, or superstitious... end of story. But read the letter and you will see that its signatories are none of these things. They are childcare experts, but for some reason Ms Truss overlooks such expertise. Ms Truss has talked about raising the status of the workforce through new qualifications, perhaps it would help if these future childcarers had some hope that their knowledge might help shape childcare policy? Or that they might be offered reasoned debate from their minister. That would be something, would it not? Editor Neil Henty MSc eye@markallengroup.com