{"id":477,"date":"2011-04-05T09:44:16","date_gmt":"2011-04-05T08:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=477"},"modified":"2011-04-05T09:44:16","modified_gmt":"2011-04-05T08:44:16","slug":"adrift-somewhere-between-delight-indifference-and-despondency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2011\/04\/05\/adrift-somewhere-between-delight-indifference-and-despondency\/","title":{"rendered":"Adrift somewhere between Delight, Indifference and Despondency"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Friday's Bagheot <\/a>Blog recalls a Punch cartoon from just before the second world war which shows a military chap sprinting from a government building to a waiting taxi and crying urgently: \"To the Royal School of Needlework \u2013 and drive like hell!\". \u00a0 Miles Kington<\/a> had this happening in the 1940s, but no matter.<\/p>\n

It got me wondering where the military type would be going today; the Higher Education Academy, perhaps. \u00a0After all, both the Royal School of Needlework<\/a>, and the Academy<\/a>, are significant social institutions about which the general public knows little (and probably cares less), and yet each in their very different ways has an effect on people's lives \u2013 if only they knew it. \u00a0As it is, a quiet and polite indifference is likely to be a popular reaction. \u00a0Some might also think that both ought to be more interested in sustainable development than they seem to be. \u00a0I am one of those.<\/p>\n

This may seem a harsh comment as far as the Academy is concerned. \u00a0After all, it has a dedicated sustainable development advisory group (I should declare here that I am a member), an ESD project, and it has now agreed that\u00a0sustainability is to be one of seven strategic themes within the its new service programme starting in 2011. \u00a0The other themes are reported to be: internationalisation, assessment and feedback, employment, reward and recognition, retention and success, and flexible learning.<\/p>\n

Some \u2013 pragmatists probably \u2013 will see this theming of sustainability as a significant indicator of a seriousness of intent: for example, it's being treated as seriously as assessment, etc. \u00a0I am not so sure and I confess that my first reaction was a despondent one: that sustainability is only<\/em> being treated as seriously as assessment, etc., when it surely needs to be elevated to a different plane entirely, where it informs the Academy and all its works, and is not just another theme alongside many others. \u00a0So, whilst I am not despondent, I am certainly not delighted either \u2026 drifting, rather, in a choppy sea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Friday's Bagheot Blog recalls a Punch cartoon from just before the second world war which shows a military chap sprinting from a government building to a waiting taxi and crying urgently: \"To the Royal School of Needlework \u2013 and...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}