Curious buit rarely useful advice

Ian Pindar, ed.  How to Cook A Hippopotamus (Folio Society, 2006) A collection of advice and instruction, ranging from how to cure a cold to how to practice ventriloquism. As for cooked hippo, you boil the chunk you want to eat, then “souse it in vinegar, with chopped onions and cayenne pepper.” In short, as with any wild meat, overwhelm its flavour with strong spices.
     Advice books are older than the Bible (which is a compilation and redaction of many earlier works). Following Gutenberg’s (re-)discovery of printing with movable type, one of the earliest international best-sellers was Castiglione’s The Courtier (1508-1529, yes, it took 20 years to write), which was translated into all the principal European languages, and influenced a slew of successors. That is, imitators shamelessly stole from it. That’s been the method of composing advice books ever since, and next to cookbooks, they form the most reliably profitable product of the great publishing houses of the Galaxy.

    This compilation will save the reader the tedium of searching for useful tidbits, and for that reason alone is worth seeking out. I received it as a gift, and have consulted it several times. I have, however, followed none of its advice. ***

Innumeracy rampant: Suppose average class size were 25

Innumeracy 2: If average class size were 25 students

Let’s suppose the Ontario Secondary Teachers took the Ford government at its word, and negotiated an average class size of 25 students. (1)

Given a high school of 1120 students (the number I used in Innumeracy 1).
Number of classes would be 1120/25, or 44.8, or 45 in round numbers. So we would need 45 teachers for those classes.

But in any one period, 1 in 5 teachers has a prep period (also used for “standby”, or emergency supervision). So we would need 45 x 1.25 = 56.25 teachers to cover a full timetable. We would also need a principal, a vice-principal, and three guidance counsellors. (2)

That comes to a total of 61.25 teaching staff. (The 0.25 teacher would be one hired to teach one class.)

That results in a student-teacher ratio of 1120/61.25, or 18.3:1. That’s well below the 22.5:1 that the Ford government decided to raise to 28:1. (3)

Footnotes

(1) In the past, school boards have resisted average class size numbers. They did the arithmetic, and understood what it actually meant.

(2) Some school boards would add a half-time vice-principal, which would bring the staffing total to 61.75, and a student teacher ratio of 18.2.

(3) Because some classes will be capped around 22 to 24 because of safety or limited facilities, the larger classes would be over 30.

Innumeracy rampant: Student-teacher ratio and average class size

Innumeracy 1: Why the Student-Teacher ratio is not the Average Class Size.

The Toronto Star and the CBC constantly use “average class size” when reporting education news. For example, the Toronto Star recently reported that the Ontario Minister of Education was offering to reduce the average class size from 28 to 25. He did no such thing. He offered to reduce the student-teacher ratio, which is something quite different.

Here’s an example showing the difference, using the 28:1 ratio that the Ford government initially mandated.

Given: A high school of 1120 students.

At 28:1, this school will be assigned 1120/28, or 40 teachers.

Of these 40 teachers, one is a principal, one is a vice-principal, three are guidance counsellors (1).

Thus there are 35 teachers available for classroom teaching. A teacher is assigned 4 teaching periods in a 5-period day. Therefore at any given time, 28 teachers are in class, and 7 have a preparation period (2). This means that the average class size is 1120/28, which is 40 students per class, not 28. (3) (4).

The 22.5:1 ratio that existed prior or the Ford government’s changes came about because of attempts to keep average class sizes below 30. Even so, class sizes above 30 were common.

Footnotes:

(1) The Provincial average is 396 students per guidance counsellor. In larger schools, there will be two vice-principals.

(2) If an emergency absence occurs, a teacher may have to do a “standby” during a prep period.

(3) Special education classes are capped at 20 students. Safety regulations limit lab and shop classes, generally around 24. Some other classes (music, arts) are limited by the available space and supplies, generally also around 24. Thus, the remaining classes will be well above 40 students per class.

(4) Senior students may qualify for “spares”, but these days most opt for taking additional courses instead, so as to be better perpared for university or college.

Error corrected 20191102

Anonymous. The First Country Life Picture Book of Britain (Revised third Edition 1953) Ninety superbly printed photographs, illustrating mostly towns, villages, and landscapes. Large format, technically excellent and well composed photos, which don’t pretend to do anything other than show you their subjects. First published in 1937, and by that date already more of a nostalgic record of the Britain that was. About ten years earlier, Roye England had arrived in England from Australia, and was horrified that the English didn’t value their rural heritage. His nostalgia for an England he never knew resulted in Pendon, one of the best public model railways anywhere.
     The magazine Country Life celebrated the upper middle and upper class county. Up to half of its pages were given over to real estate adverts, many half page, also superbly printed, which extolled the properties as ancient infrastructure ideal for supporting the country gentleman’s lifestyle. My grandparents “took it”, as they said, in large part I think because Grandpa was a realtor and needed to know the market.
     I thoroughly enjoyed this book. About half a dozen of the photos showed places or buildings that I visited when my Uncle took us on extended Sunday drives in search of surviving royal arms in Midlands country churches. ***

Post 2019 election comment

The election confirmed regional divisions. Alberta especially feels aggrieved that the rest of Canada doesn't want to bail them out. Yet Alberta is still better off than the rest of Canada, despite its oil-patch downturn. It also has a far more diversified economy than the oil-funded spin doctors will ever admit. It has reliable wind power, the knowledge base for a thriving high-tech economy,  and oil capital sloshing around looking in the wrong places for investment. Its agriculture thrives. In other words, Alberta is well-placed to lead Canada in the conversion from oil to renewables. It should begin to do so.

Quebec's Bloc will push Quebec interests and priorities. Quebec like Ontario, has a nearly green electric grid. both export much of their electricity, and could export more. Both  have a sound manufacturing and service economy. Both have the knowledge base, and Ontario the resources,  for a high tech sector that could compete internationally. IOW, these Provinces could co-operate wth Alberta in rebuilding Canada's economy. They should begin to do so.

Is the above image of a rosy future justified? Objectively considered, yes. However, regional grievances could, I fear, prevent the inter-Provincial co-operation that would heal those grievances. I hope  that co-operation and healing will happen. All it takes a few people to start talking to each other instead of past each other

 William Cole, ed. The Punch Line (1968) A collection Punch cartoons from the 1960s. Funny, wry, satirical, humorous, allusive, straightforward, in short whatever your desire in a cartoon, you’ll find some here. The book shows off twenty-five Punch regulars, many of whom also drew for The New Yorker. Cartoons are and odd kind of art: they rely on cultural knowledge, sometimes esoteric. Much of their meaning is contained in the bits and bobs included in the drawing, and even in the shapes of the lines used to mark the expression on a face or the attitude of a body. Words point the point of the drawing, but often aren’t needed. Stereotypes abound: gardeners wear shabby pants well past their best before dates. Racy women have almond eyes and lush lips. Snooty people look down their noses. Husbands often cringe. And so on. In fact, cartoons remind us that stereotypes are used to signal status, character, personality, life-style, and so on. They often don’t work as intended, or even do harm, because they simplify, and because they change more slowly than the culture that made appropriate sense of them in the past.    
     In their use of cultural signals cartoons resemble Medieval and Renaissance pictures, which were made for people who could read the symbols included in the image. How much contemporary cultural knowledge do we need to understand the art of our own time? I’d say, a lot. We don’t realise how much until we see the art of a generation or two past. Art marks generational change as much as fashion does, but fashion lags, and usually has to catch up to art. I liked all the cartoons in this book, but some more than others. Here’s one of my favourites. The caption reads "Come back - I haven't finished with you yet! "

The hidden expense of private sector bueaucrats

Hershel Hardin. The New Bureaucracy (1991) A thorough account of the state of bureaucracy in the private sector, where its malign and expensive effects are well hidden. The private sector strenuously denies the existence of its bureaucracy, successfully diverting attention and anger to government, which actually costs us a lot less. Chapter 1 reviews the escalation of CEO and other senior management pay. Nowadays, almost 30 years later, Hardin’s figures would water eyes even more. The rest of the book surveys the structure and operation of the bureaucracy piece by piece. By turns amusing and appalling.
     I encountered the private bureaucracy in one of my first summer jobs, but I didn’t realise it at the time. I worked for Linde Gases, then a subsidiary of Union Carbide (which was done in by the release of poisonous gases from its plant in Bhopal, India). I discovered that each invoice or “gas shipping order” cost the company about $8 from placing an order for a new batch until its eventual destruction. Every day, I wrote up several of these GSOs for customers buying about $6 worth of oxygen and acetylene. I suppose the company thought that the information was worth $2. I began to wonder about the cost of moving information within a corporation, and concluded that beyond a rather small size, an organisation spent more of its resources moving information than providing goods and services for its customers.
     A worthwhile book. Read it. ***