The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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3:50pm on Tuesday, 22nd March, 2011:
Comment
There was a strike by lecturers at the University today. The unions called it because of changes to the pension scheme that make it less generous.
I'm only part-time, I'm not in a union and I don't use the university's pension scheme, so this isn't exactly relevant to me. Nevertheless, I was a little concerned that there might be picket lines 0utside the teaching centre where I was due to hold today's lecture. I therefore showed up 10 minutes early, in case I had to remonstrate with pickets.
Surprisingly, there were no pickets.
When we had strikes when I was an undergraduate, there would be lecturers forming arms-linked chains across the entrance to the lecture theatre block, chanting disparaging things about Margaret Thatcher. Nowadays, they can't even be enthused enough to stand outside the teaching block and tut-tut.
Other than the fact this strike has no relevance to me personally, the reason I would have crossed a picket line was because this was the last CE317 lecture and a very important one (it's the kind of material of which final parts of examination questions are made). I thought I owed it to my students to give it. My students, however, did not see it quite that way: only four showed up.
There was an email this morning from the Head of Department exhorting us to ask our students to fill in forms saying how great they think our teaching is. Yes...
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Copyright © 2011 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).