Almost from its beginnings in 1968 Flintshire Bird Club has had a "ratings scheme" for its members. All members do a yearly exam, and they are awarded different coloured badges according to their results. In the early years, the questions were very searching .... not just a picture of a Gannet which you had to put a name to, not just a picture of a Pratincole's wing that had to be labelled with the feather tracts ... oh no. They would ask questions about the mathematics involved in bird surveys, about plant succession and its impact on conservation, about niche separation, predator-prey interaction ... there would be graphs to interpret,feeding strategies, speciation, nomenclature, cumulative frequency curves to plot and interpret, standard deviations to be calculated, population data to be interpreted, capture-recapture results to assess and the like. You were expected to know about insects, mammals, spiders, flowering plants and their place in food webs etc. You couldn't just learn a lot of bird's names and trot them out. You needed to do something with the knowledge and experience you had. The rot set in when they started charging a fee for the various sorts of badges. The "Expert" badge, a fine red one, would cost £50 The " Very Reliable" badge, a lovely deep blue one, £40. The "Reliable" badge in emerald green was £30. The " Fairly Useless" badge , a nice shiny brown, was £10 The " Useless" badge, a sort of sludgy brown, was just £2. They didn't pull their punches in those days. Ever since then, the prices have steadily risen, and, oddly, the success rate has shot up ! Crumbs ! Almost all of our members have got top or nearly top grades. And strangely, the nature of the questions has changed too. They're all much simpler now, usually some pictures of garden birds, some pictures of different sorts of nut feeders, a few multiple-choice questions where the wrong answers were very very very obviously very wrong, some colouring-in, and a few birding celebrities to identify. No writing of actual sentences is needed. This has all been done in the name of "accessibility" .. and quite right too. And it's win-win all round ! Our members are all brilliant ! And Flintshire Bird Club rakes in about £7000 a year ! If your local club hasn't latched on to this money-grabbing and mendacious swindle, sorry, excellent morale-building enterprise, perhaps you should tell them all about it. .All along the ancient wastes the thin reflections spin That gather all the times and tides at once we love within That build the edges round the shrouds that cloud the setting sun And carry us to other days and other days to one And full the single stillness of the mirror that is made By each and every one of all the colours in a shade Inside each eye is sitting like the sword inside the blade And longs for once upon a chance to open love's cascade For here we stand - hand to hand Fighting for the Promised Land And you try to tell me with consternation That you have found me a brand new lock Then you try to warn me that there's only one combination One new sling - the same old rock There is a famous straggler stood on the edge of time Who held the staff but did not feel the pain He multiplied the mystery with utterance sublime And crossed his heart for those who died insane His friend a restless mouthpiece 7000 years of age Trends to flash a face to shape his ways Everlasting light is burning bright inside his cage He's only got to breathe to fan the blaze Such a groove to have him here on-board Her Ladyship The man who makes his living out of bed Such a gas to see him flying through his ceaseless lip One day, someday soon, he'll lose his head And withering in the galleries with eyes fixed on the door Are who and you and me and thanks a lot And those who see but cannot stand to walk on any floor For fear that good is something bad is not But loud and clear is the call In black and white across your wall Damn it all, man, can't you see And you try to tell me with consternation That you have found me a brand new lock Then you try to warn me that there's only one combination One new sling - the same old rock By the way ... I hope nobody thinks this is in any way a criticism of all those young people who seem to have miraculously become vastly cleverer over the last 20 years despite expecting to combine A Levels with a full, drug-fuelled and social-media-obsessed social life and rampant self-harming and depression, or indeed the exam boards and schools who have steadily colluded with the complete and obvious farce that it the current grading system. No.
I'm glad we've sorted that out.
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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