I recently had to complete an equality, diversity and safeguarding e-learning course. It’s the way of things. My client has ties with FE colleges and the skills academy is also putting pressure on, so we can expect more of this stuff.
A number of things cross my mind here. Firstly, it’s unnecessary. Treating people with basic respect and ensuring that they meet the standard irrespective of who they are, where they come from or how much melanin they have in their skin is just simple common sense and basic humanity. As for safeguarding, I’m not with any candidates long enough to detect signs of abuse, so it’s all a bit irrelevant anyway. I’m not a social worker, have no desire to be one and an e-learning module won’t equip me with the skills to become one – de facto or not.
On the subject of e-learning, if I may pause here for a moment – this is the latest bandwagon everyone seems to be jumping on – Network Rail being a prime offender. Okay, computers can be useful learning tools and I encourage candidates to think about how they might be used to enhance what they do. I’ve used mine to increase my learning, but I’ve simply used it as a research tool, following where I will, looking up and cross-referencing as I see fit. What I detest are these patronising little modules that are supposed to engage me. They don’t. The assumption seems to be that this is the way forward and everyone uses computers these days. Er, no, they don’t. Some – rather a lot, actually – find this a difficult way to learn and prefer face-to-face training. For me, having to sit through a module of stuff that is a combination of simple common sense I can work out for myself and lefty propaganda just pisses me off. And they’ve got cute. You can’t just skip to the exam and whiz though that.
So, the Diversity thing – the usual stuff. However, it belied the thinking behind it all. One of the modules was about prejudice. We are presented with a selection of faces and told that one of them is an international criminal. But which one? Well, thinks I, the middle-aged white bloke, obviously. Obviously, because if I choose one of the brown faces, I am prejudiced. So I clicked on the Hispanic bloke to see. Yup, I’m prejudiced, because the criminal was the middle-aged white bloke. Quelle surprise…
And, on the subject of middle-aged white blokes… When all this stuff kicked off – when the skills academy took over the management of track safety training, my client at the time was pondering the requirement to monitor candidates’ ethnicity, gender and so on. To which I said that the outcome would be that the vast majority of the candidates would be middle-aged white blokes, because that is the primary demographic on the railway – certainly on track. They want to change this apparently. So, one wonders, what will they do? Drag black lesbians off the street and force them to sit a track safety course?
Besides, if you fully embrace diversity, this must include middle-aged white blokes, yes? Not that I have any immediate plans to embrace any middle-aged white blokes, you understand.
What about old white blokes?
I’m here for you whenever you’re ready.
How the fuck can anybody be certain who is the criminal or not on a diverse selection of unlabelled people photos? Even if I recognised a face on one of the photos I still wouldn’t be certain (he or she in the photo might be a lookalike coincidence).
If I was taking that test, I would write in block capitals on the question space: NONE OF THEM ARE CRIMINALS, and not tick any of the photos.
The program doesn’t work like that. There is nowhere to write anything. You choose a picture and click”next” or you don’t move on.
Silly me, I forgot it was an e-learning online test you were doing. In that case, if the software program needed my false submit before continuing, I would click on the window delete refusing to complete the test. Then later tell my dumb teacher trainers why.
If I want to keep my client, which I do, I play along and simply complete the test and forget about it.
As you say:’Treat people with respect and courtesy, regardless’. Although I would add the caveat:’Unless they behave otherwise’. No point in being nice to unpleasant twats. And if you have to attend class to ‘learn’ this, then frankly, there is no hope for you as a human being.
Quite. That’s why I treat Rickie with open contempt. Behaviour begats behaviour.
I attended an E & D course led by two women. Towards the end they mentioned that they also did a module on ‘assertiveness’ for women.
I asked why men couldn’t attend. One of the leaders tried to shut me up but the other one gave me a hearing.
My point was that from a woman’s perspective all the bosses were men but from a non-boss man’s view they were all bastards, i.e. 90% of men were in exactly the same position as 99.9% of all women so it was just as valid to help the non-boss men as the women. If more bosses were non-bastard men maybe the women would have more chance too?
Of course it might be that to be an effective boss one needs to be a bastard, but that is another argument!
On the subject of computer-based training some can be very frustrating. Surely the whole point of ‘Windows’ based programs is that one can mouse-over the menus to find what you want, rather than having to remember the command or keystrokes? Yet if you don’t go ‘File, Save’, say, without hesitation that’s a fail.
You don’t. I managed it and it worked perfectly well. So much so,that HR started asking what was going on.
I’m inclined to agree.
My point is that if there were more male managers that were prepared to work with female mangers then there might be more female managers. In other words the feminist prejudice that females are held back by ‘all’ men is wrong, most men are being held back too because essentially like recruits like.
As to the bastard bit: The one-time CEO of our organisation was upset that a staff survey had reported high levels of bullying. This was something that MUST stop. A director was charged with finding out where this bullying was coming from and to eradicate it. A somewhat sheepish director found himself delivering his report to the board and having to name the worst offender – the CEO!
Well it sounds like you learned about prejudice alright!
Did they actually give any rationale as to why the white middle aged man was so obvously the international criminal (i.e why the black wasn’t some african despot, the hispanic some Columbian drug lord etc).
Interested as when I’ve done this sort of cack previously (for H&S, things like that) there is usually the half hour or so of going through the “learning material” and then doing the multiple choice questions.
Just wondering how blatant the “four legs good, two legs bad” message actually was.
No. It was that the white bloke was a convicted fraudster. The question merely asked which of the people pictured was an international criminal. What it was attempting to demonstrate is that we make judgements based upon underlying prejudices and would choose accordingly. This tells us more about the people compiling the course than it does about those taking it. I do not look at someone with a brown face and think “criminal”. I correctly assumed that they would have selected a white person as this would underpin the point they were making – that white people are prejudiced against brown ones. Some are. Some brown people are prejudiced against white people. Welcome to the real world.
“What I detest are these patronising little modules that are supposed to engage me. They don’t. The assumption seems to be that this is the way forward and everyone uses computers these days. Er, no, they don’t. Some – rather a lot, actually – find this a difficult way to learn and prefer face-to-face training.”
Hence why e-learning works best as part of a blended learning approach. NOT as a substitute for all other types.
Precisely. You might want to give Network Rail that memo 😉
I retired from office life just as this sort of rubbish was becoming popular. Aren’t I lucky.
The real cause of the problem is not the idiots that dream this sort of thing up, but the idiots that think that we should take any notice of it.
Which goes back to what I said originally – I treat people as I find them. My candidates are expected to achieve the standard, so all get an equal chance. That’s all that is needed.
“I treat people as I find them”
I remember remarking when the race relations act came out “Why bother, you can’t legislate for civilised behaviour”. Naive as I was I forgot that here was a new trough to be nosed.