School tests create surge in new medical conditions

In recent weeks teachers have noticed a number of new illnesses among their students. Little is known about many of these diseases, but there is a strong suspicion they are linked to government testing. Here is the latest list of new disorders:

Adverbal diarrhoea

Burst apostrophe

Checking pox - spontanous outburst of pimples occurring when a student notices with 1 minute to go that they've misread the question

Compound fracture - inability to hold 2 parts of a word together. Most common in teenagers.

Conjunctiontivitis

Consonantipation - usually due to a blockage in the vowels

Tense future - usually afflicts children the week before SATS tests

Homophonia - fear of words which sound the same. There is a related strain occurring in foreign languages, which is an irrational fear of two nouns of the same gender occurring too close to each other in a sentence.

Severe inflection: this could take the form of Phonemonia, or Pluralisy, which usually affects several parts of the body at once

Passive tense - the student is so stressed they are unable to get out of bed

Past tense - Ofsted was last week

Possessive Compulsive Disorder - someone who finds it difficult to share a pencil during an exam.

Prolapsed pronoun

Punctuated ulcer - in extreme cases, the patient ends up in a comma.

Many of these seem to be mutations of previously harmless bits of grammar. Kept in isolation, or small groups, grammar is benign, but large swarms of grammatical terms seem to exhibit different behaviour, and have a toxic effect on those using them. The misplaced apostrophe has always been capable, on it's own, of exciting high levels of stress and rage, but this is the first time we have seen such dramatic effects in other sections of the English language.

Lecture Church, Seminar Church, Tutorial Church

Just finished reading George Lings latest 'Encounters on the Edge' about Crossnet in Bristol. These are always worth reading, and there was one section which particularly leapt out at me. Here's an abridged version of what Lings says:

One source of education is the lecture, a presentation made by an expert in their field, disclosing prior learning...it assumes that giving information, but a motivated and able teacher, leads to positive change in students. There are obvious links to the sermon and the role of preaching. The results, in both contexts, seem to me to be extraordinarily variable. A few are deeply inspired and changed, some love the system while others merely endure it, and some even skip it. However in the church there is litle structured equivalent to the required reading that supports the lecture method, much less producing an essay demonstrating learning and engagement with the topic.

I am then not suprised that lecture church may breed preachers, but it is long doubted that by itself if produces disciples

In recent years, this has been supplemented by seminar church. At worst these are simply groups of passive participants who hear more lectures, perhaps further enlivened with visuals or story. At best this includes dialogue, group work, Q&A with the seminar leader etc. Alpha and many other process evangelism courses are positive examples of this.

Once again, weaknesses can include almost total lack of prior preparation by the 'students'. Information can trump transformation.

The pattern in Crossnet is most akin to tutorial church. In Oxbridge this system requires prior engagement by the student, followed by presentation of that learning. which is then dissected and evaluated by the tutor on a 1 to 1 basis. There is nowhere to hide. It is the most labour intensive and searching of the threee methods and (deemed to) produce higher quality results. It is not possible to do that with very large numbers. Itis a trajectory of high investment in the small because of its power to transform and to send out.

Thought: how many of us 'preachers' would like to get away from 'lecture church' models, but believe that either our congregations, our inherited practices, or our diaries won't let us?