What do these disparate topics have in common? Read on!
I recently got into (another) spat on LinkedIn about whether Latin should be a compulsory subject in state schools. Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for Education, has just introduced such a policy, which drew howls of derision from the usual suspects: “Irrelevant.” “Useless” (the subject and Williamson). “Teach climate change instead.” “Teach values and ambitions.” Eh, what?
Had another letter published in the Bucks Herald this week:
Want to feed children? Local is the best way
I support our local MPs, Greg Smith and Rob Butler, for voting against the proposed food vouchers during the school holidays.
Earlier this year, provision of such vouchers was far from universally
successful, being slow to deliver, expensive to administer, and target
recipients were missed more often than an English soccer penalty. As a more
viable alternative, in many communities local foodbanks instantaneously
materialised, and established foodbanks stepped up a notch. The result was that
more kids were fed more quickly locally than nationally.
Translation: Happy days are here again!
My German classes have re-started, albeit by Zoom and not in a sparse church room in Linslade. Nevertheless I’m celebrating, because my OCD-inclined brain did miss its weekly workout during lockdown and the summer hols.
Strictly speaking the blog title should be Die glücklichen Tage sind zurück, literally “The happy days are returned”, and that’s why I love German (as opposed to Germans, Germany or anything EU-related, being born near Workington and educated around Wakefield; EU-rebellion is in my genes).
About ten years ago, I was discussing with my Dad his time as Chief Education Officer at a top security prison. He had taken up the post just before the Open University was formed (late 1960s), their degree courses in prisons were introduced, and Dad was delighted to be an explorer in this uncharted territory.
He explained that the prison teaching staff were “… working without precedents. It was one great big experiment. The Home Office was quite generous with supplies such as books and civilian support staff. Somehow rooms were found. The tutors worked with a combination of instinct and experience. There was no link between the various prisons, so there was no uniformity. Many tutors came down from the local further education college and became involved with a far higher level of education than their day jobs; so when it came to their future career considerations, they had an advantage.”
“I remember our first degree-success,” he continued. He [the offender] was summoned to attend the daily get-together of the Governor and senior civilian and officer representatives. They sat on one side of the table and our new graduate sat solo on the other side, so spic-and-span that it hurt, speaking only when spoken to, accepting the various congratulations quietly with a poker face. He was quite successful in giving the opinion that he was far better than anyone else there.”
According to the National Literacy Trust, 16.4% of adults in England, that’s over seven million people, have very poor literacy skills. And another study in 2010 concluded that English-speaking children may take twice as long to learn to read and write as speakers of more ‘regular’ languages, because English spellings are so variable. One such variability, cited in a BBC-online article, is "through" and "trough", written similarly but consonants and vowels pronounced differently.
This has prompted something called the English Spelling Society to join forces with the ominous-sounding American Literacy Council to shortlist six alternative spelling systems. They are now asking people to vote for their favourite, which will be promoted as an alternative to traditional English spelling. The objective is to “help people to master English spelling more quickly and without the teacher's red pen".
Wen ay red abowt this projekt, may furst thort woz that kids hoo lurnt tu reed and rayt this new sistum wud strugel to riid enithing ritten tradishunali.
No, I’m not talking about the generation that came of age during the Great War; or the young lives that ended prematurely during either of the two World Wars; or the Yazidi girls abused so heinously by ISIS; or the Bosniak massacred by the Bosnian Serb Army; or the generations suffering ongoing inhumanity in any number of troubled nations, Yemen, Syria, Sudan, to name just three; or the A-level students whose 'lives have been ruined' by a flawed algorithm.
(With a little help from my friends)
1. Move to a farming area then complain about the farms (The number one Why Would You for all of us)
2. Dress provocatively then complain when you provoke
3. Marry into the Royal Family then complain when they ask you to behave like a Royal
4. Keep a pet tarantula
Every now and again, I toddle on down the lane with a long-handled grabber in one hand and a bin liner in the other, collecting the detritus that others have either dropped while out walking, thrown out of their cars while driving, or that has been dropped elsewhere and blown in the wind – Sorry, Bob Dylan, but that is definitely NOT the answer.
People who litter are themselves detritus. Trash. Rubbish. Garbage. Ugly. If you litter, do not pass Go; do not collect £200; go straight to jail and rot.
No need for a clever headline to attract attention for this
post, methinks.
Unless you’ve been hibernating on Venus, you’ll have heard that Dr David Starkey CBE, Cambridge historian, writer and media presenter, said some apparently racist things and was promptly ostracised from society.
I have two questions:
When I was eight years old or thereabouts (so long ago I can’t remember exactly) I attended the local junior school in the heart of a West-Riding-of-Yorkshire mining-cum-farming village. The community was homogenously white, so when we were introduced to a new trainee teacher, who was Asian, our jaws dropped (that, I do remember). Up until then my sister and I had been the exotic ones, having moved from Cumberland, but this teacher was something else.
Whether he was Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or what mattered not to us. All we cared was that he was more heavily tanned than anyone we knew, spoke with a funny accent (funnier than West Cumbrian, according to my best friend), smelled funny (it must have been garlic) but dressed 'normally'.