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Jolly Green Giant
Joined: 01 Aug 2006
Posts: 22
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 Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 6:23 pm Post subject: |
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Rennenkampf How do you GUARANTEE not getting fired in an indiscriminate attack on the staff? Can you you GUARANTEE that you will still have a job at the JIC next year?
Jolly Green Giant Seems he�s sank his teeth deep into this one and is refusing to let go. I repeat, that there is no answer and no telling what can happen. But it is a well-known fact that lightening rarely, if ever, strikes twice in the same place. So you, my friend, may never enjoy a repeat of your long awaited JIC epic.
Today, the staff and management alike are leaps and bounds ahead of the predicament in which you still appear to be wallowing. Why don't you try to straighten your ways? Welcome yesterday�s man, to a new tomorrow. |
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Rennenkampf
Joined: 23 Sep 2006
Posts: 91
Location: Hail
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| Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2006 2:01 pm Post subject: |
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Today, the staff and management alike are leaps and bounds ahead of the predicament in which you still appear to be wallowing. Why don't you try to straighten your ways? Welcome yesterday�s man, to a new tomorrow.
1.Why can't you answer the simple question as to why the Managing Director who started the last purge won't start another one?
2.''Today the staff and management alike are leaps and bounds ahead of the predicament''
Can you you provide an example of this advance by ''leaps and bounds''?
3.Do you get paid to write this drivel?
WE WILL PIERCE THE BLADDEROF LIES BY THE POIGNARD OF TRUTH |
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Jolly Green Giant
Joined: 01 Aug 2006
Posts: 22
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| Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2006 6:05 pm Post subject: |
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Jolly Green Giant Do you want it rubber-stamped and signed off by the Director of the RC himself? There are no more plans for another purge. It seems the previous one had done the trick very well indeed. No more heads will roll in the same way as before not now or in any time in the near future. Those days are over.
I understand it is hard for you to accept. And, I know you need bundles of reassurances. Lord only knows why. But the efforts of the new ELC management and the continuing overhaul of all operational systems at the JIC are making a profound difference. Life and work here is so much better in every way conceivable.
Why is that so hard to believe? |
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Stephen Jones
Joined: 21 Feb 2003
Posts: 4124
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| Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 5:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Why is that so hard to believe? |
Possibly because everybody else we talk to tells us things are more or less the same as before.
I have declined to comment on JIC for some months, but JGG's unctuous ignorance shouldn't be left unanswered.
Firstly, his original posting has no merit; let's go through it.
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| Firstly and most practically, in 2005 the ELC Unit moved and was rehoused in a huge, brand new structure with cool, spacious classrooms and computer equipped faculty offices. |
ELC moved in January 2005; the problems, entirely unrelated to the building, escalated after that time. The building was considered worse than the old one by those who had worked in both, half the classrooms are cool (in fact they're freezing) and the other half are often boiling because they didn't succeed in getting the balance of the AC right. Many of the classrooms are spacious, but there are many that are half-size yet still have to fit in forty plus students. The building had still not been transferred to the Royal Commission from the contractors because of arguments over completion of contract, which only affects you when you want a lock changed for example and find that maintenance won't look at it because it's not their job. All offices had computers in 2004. The offices in the new building suffer from severe overcrowding because the building was designed for half the faculty it has now. It was suggested some of the smaller classrooms be turned into offices but nothing came of it.
Now, the building problems are not uncommon in Saudi or anywhere in the world. I would not have mentioned them were it not for the fact that JGG is attempting to tout them as the bees knees and the next best thing to the Dakota building.
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| Then, last year a new in-house language curriculum was also introduced. It has proven tremendously successful. |
The curriculum is not in-house. It has been lifted lock, stock and barrel from Aramco and is around twenty years old, although there have been cosmetic revisions. As well as doing the Aramco materials for four hours a day students also spend two hours a day working through two volumes of Betty Azar's grammar exercises. Although this system is better than the old KFUPM monstrosity, it can hardly be described as wildly successful, merely tolerable.
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| Also, new CALL labs and Language Labs form part of the new curriculum. |
The CALL labs were set up in 2003. The order had to be made in two days to spend surplus budget money, and ordering missed out on the detail that the number of 45 computers per lab was for labs half as big again as those in place. As a result of the overcrowding, and the use of the labs for listening as well as CALL, CALL was widely unpopular, and when the move to the new bulding came, the CALL labs first stayed empty and then unused (60 of the computers were issued to new staff for the offices bringing the number of lab computers down to 120). I know of no software written specifically for the Aramco course, and the only additional software purchased in the last three years has been a test generating software nobody (including the vendors) was sure how it would work in practice, and for which no software had been written in June 2006.
An order has been placed for data projectors and a computer console in every classroom (I know this because one morning in December 2005 I was asked to give a provisional procurement form for up to a million riyals before lunchtime as there was another budget surplus). To the best of my knowledge these have not been delivered, and their setting up, and tweaking and the writing of software for them will probalby take until September 2007.
The truth is that the only technological advance in the college has been the purchase of the Automatic Mindless Cliche Generating Software (TM) of which JGG makes such fulsome use.
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| There are no more plans for another purge. |
In May and June 2006 staff were assured their contracts would be renewed, they were given return plane tickets, and in many cases told they could or should move out of college accommadation and take a housing allowance, as a result of which some bought a complete household of new furniture only to find out soon after that they would have to sell all, pronto. One member of staff was told he was fired as he was leaving to cook for the housewarming party he had invited ELC colleagues to.
If people couldn't believe what they heard from the horse's mouth in June, why should they believe what they hear from the donkey's 'arse now?
JIC was not a disaster before, and is not the Elysian fields now. Now that the good doctor has been transferred from the corridors of power to the lumber rooms of obscurity, there may be less of the random unpleasantness and schizophrenic management style that characterized the last few months of his reign, but the only real change has been the promotion of the ex-deputy for Academic Affairs to the position of Managing Director.
And as he was the one nominally responsible for the RC deciding that a week's notice is quite all right to dismiss staff, even though they have to committ themselves three or four months beforehand with no guarantee of renewal, or that two year contracts can be torn up at will as happened in one case, this does not bode well for future job security.
It is a fact that byzantine hiring procedures and other difficulties would limit the number of staff likely to be purged, and the MD is unlikely to have the fast one pulled on him that happened last year, but the fact remains that JIC staff are subject to bureacratic hurdles and limitations whilst the RC has decided it is no longer burdened by the same.
On the other hand it does pay well, students are generally pleasant unless pushed, or on occasion woken up, and the sheer size of the department means you are likely to keep out of harm's way.
And don't worry too much about being shaken up by the new world order. When management talks about looking to the future it means 'bukra inshallah'. |
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Rennenkampf
Joined: 23 Sep 2006
Posts: 91
Location: Hail
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| Posted: Fri Nov 24, 2006 12:48 pm Post subject: |
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Jolly Green Giant wrote:
There are no more plans for another purge.
If you are only a teacher how can you reveal the plans of the senior Saudi JIC management with such certainty?
Jolly Green Giant wrote:
No more heads will roll in the same way as before not now or in any time in the near future. Those days are over.
If you are only a teacher why are you so well informed about the JIC
management's manpower planning?
Jolly Green Giant wrote:
Why is that so hard to believe?
Because last November teachers were promised their contracts would be renewed if they wished to stay.
WE WILL PIERCE THIS BLADDER OF LIES WITH THE POIGNARD OF TRUTH |
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Rennenkampf
Joined: 23 Sep 2006
Posts: 91
Location: Hail
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| Posted: Fri Nov 24, 2006 5:23 pm Post subject: |
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[ There are no more plans for another purge. It seems the previous one
had done the trick very well indeed.]
This is what the Jolly Green person tells us.
Could you explain how the first purge has ''done the trick very well indeed''?
What particular 'trick 'is achieved by knifing 40 people in an orgy of personal spite? |
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J Alfred Prufrock
Joined: 18 Nov 2006
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Sat Nov 25, 2006 4:59 am Post subject: |
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Rennenkampf wrote:
What particular 'trick 'is achieved by knifing 40 people in an orgy of personal spite?
Why is there this strong assumption that the dismissals were all out of spite? Why are these teachers treated like matyrs? The truth is they were kept in their positions by a management that was too weak to act in the beiginning. Out of desperation for native English speakers, the old management kept these teachers. Ther truth is that their personal lives started affecting their relationship with students and staff. The truth is that some of them could hardly speak in clear English. The truth is that one of them disrobed or stripped in class to make a misguided point. The truth is that some of them were bad teachers. Yes, they should have been dismissed in a more professional manner, but they had to go. (In fairness, my judgement is based on those teachers who were part of ELC) |
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Rennenkampf
Joined: 23 Sep 2006
Posts: 91
Location: Hail
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| Posted: Sun Nov 26, 2006 1:10 pm Post subject: |
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Prufrock:Why is there this strong assumption that the dismissals were all out of spite?
Because your allegations below are based on malice not fact.
Prufrock:Why are these teachers treated like matyrs?
The correct spelling is martyrs.
Prufrock:The truth is they were kept in their positions by a management that was too weak to act in the beiginning. Out of desperation for native English speakers, the old management kept these teachers.
The correct spelling is beginning.
The 'old management'is now in charge of the University College-are you accusing them of incompetence?
Prufrock:''...out of desperation for native English speakers...''
anti Western prejudice again
Prufrock: The truth is that their personal lives started affecting their relationship with students and staff. The truth is that some of them could hardly speak in clear English.
These accusations are meaningless.
Do you have any evidence for this slander?
Prufrock:The truth is that one of them disrobed or stripped in class to make a misguided point.
The person accused of this left 6 months before the pogrom of teachers.
Prufrock:The truth is that some of them were bad teachers.
Where is your evidence?You never observed them or spoke to their students.
Prufrock:Yes, they should have been dismissed in a more professional manner, but they had to go. (In fairness, my judgement is based on those teachers who were part of ELC)[/quote]
Where is the evidence for your 'judgement'?
Mr Prufrock/Jolly Green Giant's descent to vulgar abuse,misrepresentation
and vicious innuendo instead of reasoned argument only serves to prove the weakness of his case,degrading the JIC and the many loyal and conscientious Saudi employees in the Royal Commission.
The crude insinuation about ''their personal lives'' epitomises the anti Western anti teacher culture which has polluted the English Language
Centre for too long.
As Mr Prufrock presumably has recruitment responsibilities at the English
Language Centre in the JIC he should write in a more professional and less venomous style. |
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