Education Wins Again

Some interesting research into what effect marriage has on peoples feelings of happiness has just appeared. Apparently married men are much happier than single men, not exactly a shock I guess, as are married women, though not by the same amount. The discrepancy seems to have something to do with women being happier in general.

Possibly the most interesting finding however is that men with more highly educated wives are happier:

A married man's chances of achieving a high level of happiness - above a score of seven - are improved by 8 per cent for every extra year of education his wife has. But married women's happiness level is unaffected by their husband's years of schooling.

Women do not care how dumb their husbands are - but they feel happier if the men are smarter than they are, the study shows.

So the 8 years of University I have is not doing anything. Dammit. I wonder if the place of education, or the type of study of their spouse has any effect on mens feelings?

Possibly The Saddest Thing I've Ever Seen

A truly horrifying video. A tip of the hat to Ben Goldacre's Bad Science.



What's so scary is that most of those kids really never had a chance, they will never be able to think for themselves, from age 0 they have been reduced to living automatons. If it is this easy to indoctrinate people to believe stuff that is clearly nonsense, just how difficult must it be to have them believe anything? This is why a rational outlook on the world is so important, it really is one very small jump from believing this kind of anti-factual rubbish to justifying absolutely any of the worst things humans are capable of because some old book tells you its ok.

Just look at some of the bullshit they are being taught, dinosaurs and men living together, the world is 6000 years old (so God has just set it up exactly so it looks older?), the good old lie that evolution says people are decended from monkeys, I don't know about you but the guy giving the talk looks a bit ape-like to me, so maybe there is something in that one.

Education, Edukation, Edjuckation

Hi All, its been a long time since I lasted posted, this has mostly been due me being away for Christmas, working on Phase IIs for the telescope time I got (this is where we set up the way we want our observations to be taken), writing a paper, and trying to help my girlfriend through the awful confusion that is teacher training.

Anyway now I'm back and want to jump right into something I noticed while at home. In a town near my home called Blyth there are plans to set up a new Academy, nothing too special there except that this Academy is going to be partly funded by the Christian Fundamentalist "Philanthropist" Peter Vardy. For those of you who don't know who he is, he is a man who made his fortune selling cars, now he spends his time and money trying to brainwash children to try to buy back his soul. His Emmanuel Schools Foundation currently runs 3 schools, with plans for 4 more (apparently 7 is an auspicious number in the Bible).

The schools are built and run under one of the governments worst thought out Private Finance Initiatives, for the investment of £2million (or about 9%) of the cost of building one of these schools, Peter Vardy gets total control of the school, he chooses the Headteacher all but 2 of the board of governors. This despite the schools running costs being entirely met by standard funding from the Education authorities. Does this seem like a terrible deal to anyone else? It gets worse when after 25 years the land the school is built on also becomes legally theirs! Land that was probably owned by the council and worth considerably more than £2 million, it seems Mr Vardy has gone from dodgy cars to dodgy real estate deals now.

The schools have courted a great deal of controversy through their teachings, which have occasionally seemed to contradict the guidelines of the DFES, as well as their hiring practices. I personally know of one teacher at one of the academy's that was told they would not be hired if they "lived in sin", remember their wages are being paid for by you and me (well not me, yet), yet one man who will actually make a huge amount of money out of the deal gets to decide who is suitable to teach our children. I could go on for hours listing all the things that are wrong with these schools, from the fact that they teach creationism, to the fact that they are inherently homophobic intolerant places, but other people have done it better so here are some links.

This one is particularly good.
Wiki as always has the goods.

I sincerely hope Blyth manages to keep these wing nuts away from their schools, and shame on the government for blackmailing them so that the only way they can get the new schools Blyth so obviously needs is by selling their children's minds.

For a final thought, what a crazy world we live in when a left wing government gives control of education to a bunch or right wing zealots.