Carols for this #Christmas Eve...Mr Magoo's & a #college version

...with thanks to +George Station for the seasonally appropriate and timely reminder about Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol. You'll be back to regular schedules all too soon. I cannot say the same for myself despite (or due to) Janus posts due on multiple blogs. Until then, I and my sundry personae will be out and about on social media and re-blogging elsewhere. The college version Carol from the archives, covers routine topical posting and is as timely now as it was in 2012. If you need more post-season caroling about the state of education, check out Ken Previti's 2014 Christmas Carol post on Reclaim Education, another Education Blogger Network blog. [Ed note: opening paragraph edited/updated 1/2/2015]

...from the archives, Saturday, December 29, 2012: A College Christmas Carol

The University of Alabama has a choice to make

…a message from our caroling friends @usuas…'tis the season…

Right now our USAS group is caroling outside of our President's office in hopes of catching her attention with our rendition of "Jingle Bell Rock."

A College Christmas Carol

…at Remaking the University, Chris Newfield compares "A Christmas Carol" to current stories of struggling, indebted students. 

Elsewhere, Stephen Downes comments on the NYT article that Newfield references below, "T[he students] need a broader array of social supports, and most of all, a society determined to help them out of poverty, rather than blame them for being in it. But I see no sign higher education as a sector has any real interest in that."  

Here Newfield calls for that to change and tasks senior college officials with working to restore the bankruptcy option...lest Marley's fate await them... 

As Scrooge leaves his counting-house on Christmas Eve, he encounters his cheerful nephew, who tells his Uncle Scrooge that Christmas is one of those "many things from which I might have derived good, [but] by which I have not profited, I dare say."   The good, the nephew continues, is to have the one moment in the year in which "men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

Scrooge dismisses this feeling and, with a final dig at his long-suffering clerk, leaves his office, only to be confronted by two amiable gentlemen who are soliciting "some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time."

Scrooge asks them, "are there no prisons?" 

'Twas the Week before Christmas

Twas the week before Christmas, and schools through the land

Were relieved that the end of term was at hand.

Teachers used whiteboards to screen seasonal flicks

While heads CRB-checked all passing St Nicks.

Headteachers were furious they soon would be getting

A "disproportionate" system for barring and vetting.

To their wondering ears, someone heeded their calls:

A u-turn, of sorts, was announced by Ed Balls.

Checks on once-a-month visitors will now be retracted. Balls claimed it was schools that had "overreacted".

So how many parents will face vetting vexations?

Up to nine million, from the Mail's calculations.

The academies' scores were dismissed as big fables For they used BTECs and DiDAs to climb the league tables.

The think-tank that found this stressed they weren't snobs,

But didn't think the courses would help kids get jobs.

An MPs' committee backed the home educators (Which may stop their moans that "Everyone hates us").

Their numbers are "growing" - but can that be true?

As they refuse to be registered we haven't a clue.

New nativity plays made traditionalists weep, As Jesus "has been replaced by an angel or sheep".

So said a vicar from Cheltenham, who seemed not to know

That, in The Grumpy Sheep, Jesus still stars in the show.

A Coventry primary showed even more mettle Producing a hooliganised version of Hansel and Gretel.

A yobbish Gretel tells Hansel, in a scene of great tension:

"I'll break your neck if you tell her that I pinched her pension".

The play's bleak humour helped it do plenty of business,

But one parent moaned that it "killed the spirit of Christmas".

"Which spirit was that?" tired teachers might think.

Merry Christmas to all - you may need a stiff drink.

By Michael Shaw. Published in TES, Cymru edition18 December, 2009