The Ant and Modern work culture

THE ANT

Every day, a small ant arrives at work very early and starts work immediately.

She produces a lot and she was happy.

The Chief, a lion, was surprised to see that the ant was working without supervision.

He thought if the ant can produce so much without supervision, wouldn’t she produce even more if she had a supervisor, So he recruited a cockroach

who had extensive experience as supervisor and who was famous for writing excellent reports.

The cockroach’s first decision was to set up a clocking in attendance system.

He also needed a secretary to help him write and type his reports and …

... he recruited a spider, who managed the archives and monitored all phone calls.

The lion was delighted with the cockroach's reports and asked him to produce graphs to describe production rates and to analyze trends, so that he could use them for presentations at Board‘s meetings.

So the cockroach had to buy a new computer and a laser printer and

... recruited a fly to manage the IT department.

The ant, who had once been so productive and relaxed, hated this new plethora of paperwork and meetings which used up most of her time…!

The lion came to the conclusion that it was high time to nominate a person in charge of the department where the ant worked.

The position was given to the cicada, whose first decision was to buy a carpet and an ergonomic chair for his office.

The new person in charge, the cicada, also needed a computer and a personal assistant, who he brought from his previous department, to help him prepare a Work and Budget Control Strategic Optimization Plan…

The Department where the ant works is now a sad place, where nobody laughs anymore and everybody has become upset...

It was at that time that the cicada convinced the boss, he lion, of the absolute necessity to start a climatic study of the environment .

Having reviewed the charges for running the ant’s department , the lion found out that the production was much less than before.

So he recruited the owl, a prestigious and renowned consultant to carry out an audit and suggest solutions.

The owl spent three months in the department and came up with an enormous report , in several volumes,

that concluded :

“The department is overstaffed ...”

Guess who the lion fires first?

The ant , of course, because she

“showed lack of motivation and had a negative attitude".

NB: The characters in this fable are fictitious; any resemblance to real people or facts within the Corporation is pure coincidence…

Having a bad teacher in first year can harm kids' entire academic life

London, April 26 (ANI): Having a bad teacher in the reception year can harm a child's entire education, according to a new study.
Researchers at Durham University found that the effect of having an exceptionally poor - or an unusually good - teacher in the first year at primary school was still detectable six years later.
The findings suggest that many pupils are being betrayed by schools that, in an effort to rise up national league tables, concentrate their best teachers on pupils about to take their Sats tests at the age of 11.
"More effort needs to be spent on the most valuable years which are the earliest years," Times Online quoted study's lead author Peter Tymms, professor of education at Durham University, as saying.
For the study, the researchers analysed the progress in learning vocabulary, reading and mathematics of more than 73,000 primary school pupils who were tested at the beginning of their schooling in 1999 and then annually until 2005.
Kids who were in classes in the bottom 16 percent of progress in the reception year performed, on average, around a fifth of a level worse in their Sats test than those whose class progress was average.
On the other hand, those whose classes progressed most in reception year performed about a fifth of a level better.
According to researchers, the effect of good and bad teaching is cumulative, so if a child is unlucky enough to have a poor teacher every year of their primary school career, this would make a difference of an entire level in their test performance.
"The residual effect lasts as long as we can measure it," said Tymms.
The study is published in the journal Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability. (ANI)