Category: News

Someone’s out of touch

Photograph of a conker in it's shell, partiall...
I may disappoint you

I just read a story on the BBC News where the Chairman of the Independent Schools Association warns that children are living in a virtual prison, not being prepared enough for adult life. He cites many things – and I’ll actually agree with him, up to a point.

He points out that kids aren’t getting out enough. They’re not enjoying the traditional games and experiences that people my age an upwards did. These include, mending bike tyres (actually, I’ve never done this – eek), playing conkers and so forth. They’re not experiencing such things as disappointment when they lose at things.

Hmm.

I seem to recall that conkers has been banned in some schools on Health and Safety grounds. As have many other games (Rik will tell you of his experiences on this blog post). As for disappointment, don’t forget that newspapers around the country have in the past been ordered not to publish the results of children’s football matches if the scores are too “embarassing”.

Yes, the guy’s right – children are failing to experience a lot of things. But isn’t it our fault that this is so? Society as a whole? We’re protecting them far too much, from things that they shouldn’t be protected from.

However, I’d not blame schools. They’re covering their own arses due to ridiculous Health and Safety legislation and idiot parents who want to wrap their children in soft bubbles and release them into the real world when they’re eighteen.

Along with coating them in disinfectant every time they sneeze and dressing them in nothing but hypoallergenic crap, we’re destroying their immune systems, their emotional development and – courtesy of the ridiculous syllabuses – their intellectual skills.

No, I’m not a parent. But I have enough friends who are and enough cousins and the like of school age to know that these complaints are widespread.

Can’t we just let kids be kids?

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Ban everything!

Many used or smashed paintballs on the floor.
Danger - may cause you to go postal

And I thought we were the only over-reactionary country in Europe. After a horrific school shooting in March, the German government has announce it’s going to make it more difficult to obtain a gun. It’s also toying with making home gun safes mandatorily biometric – so you have to open them with your thumbprint and not a key.

OK, I can go with that. If weapons are harder to get hold of through legal means or through theft then nutjobs will find it more difficult to go on a rampage.

However, they’re also planning to ban all laser tag and paintball across the country as well. The ****? That’s about as mad as, say, banning all depictions of swastikas in a vain hope that everyone will forget about Hitler. Oh, wait – they did that as well.

Coming up next, if nobody stops them I’m sure, will be a complete ban on violent computer games. And films. Every re-released DVD in Germany which features a handgun will have digital jiggery-pokery performed on them to change the firearms into radios or something. Mr Spielberg will be minted from the royalties from that idea.

Seriously, it was an awful thing to happen to any community. But does anyone really think that banning paintball will have any effect at all?

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Teacher knows best?

A teacher writing on a blackboard.
The next SoS for Education?

Maybe I’m thinking outside of the box here, but surely the people who know education best are those entrenched in it? The front line. The actual teachers and head teachers.

Instead, policy is set by the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, formerly one half of the Secretary of State for Education. This position is currently held by one Edward Balls, who’s an economist. Not a teacher. He never has been – as far as I can discover – involved in the teaching profession other than by being a student.

So, given the decline in educational standards that’s pervaded our system for the last dozen-or-so years, what on earth makes him think he’s right in what he does and that teachers shouldn’t be listened to when they’re discussing their own profession? I’m not saying teachers aren’t as good, or as dedicated. I’m saying the infrastructure they’re forced to work within is screwed and makes their jobs far harder than they should be.

The current news story is one of the two main teaching unions deciding to boycott SATs exams for 11 year-olds next year. From their professional point of view, the exams are a waste of time and serve only to feed league tables – something our current government loves and has adopted for many of the public services.

Thing is, I agree with them. Exams are fine in certain circumstances but when trying to prove the worth of a school they’re utterly pointless. It’s easy to train someone monkey-fashion to pass exams, especially 11 year-old children. Instead of being taught about a subject, teachers are forced to teach them how to pass a certain set of exams. This narrows the educational spectrum massively and serves no purpose for the children whatsoever.

All you have to do is look back to the 60s when we had an educational system to be proud of. Exams were hard. I defy anyone to compare a 1965 O-level in maths and the 2009 GCSE equivalent and tell me that they’ve not become easier. Leaving aside the Imperial system used back then (I admit that would make things more difficult in itself) but the breadth and depth of the subject matter is far greater in the older papers than the current ones.

In a bid to make our schools seem better, we’re making things easier for children. Seriously, what is the point in ensuring that 30% pass with A-grades (or whatever the figure is) if we’re managing that by lowering the standards? Part of the reason we have to lower the standards is that teachers currently have to waste so much time coaching children through exams every other year.

We already live in a society where children (and adults) are handed things on a platter. By making schooling easier, we’re ensuring the production of generations which feel they don’t have to work that hard – if at all – to achieve what they want. Generations that’ll settle for what they can get with minimum effort.

No wonder the country’s in a complete mess. If something’s worth having, you have to work for it.

Now, I just want to make it clear that my criticism here is not levelled at teaching staff or the pupils themselves. It’s at the system, and at the government(s) that have created this system. As with much of our social infrastructure, the whole thing needs torn down and redesigned. Remember that old “back to basics” promise we were given? Why can’t we have that?

And isn’t one of the most basic things taking a person from within an organisation and promoting them to the top – simply as they have a lifetime of experience from which to draw? So how’s about making an ex-head teacher the next Secretary for Education?

Or is that too much like common sense?

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Support the Gurkhas

LONDON, ENGLAND - APRIL 24: Actress Joanna Lu...
Nice lady - nicer man

There is an online petition which can be “signed” in support of the Gurkhas, and specifically in protest at the ridiculously insulting decision made by the government recently as regards their rights to enter the UK. I know it’ll make **** all difference – when was the last time our government actually gave the slightest toss about public opinion? – but at least it makes you feel good to vent off with other people.

It just disgusts me that our government seems to be happy to wait hand and foot on filth like the chavs, but treats genuine war heroes with disdain. Please, sign it. Unless you’re a chav. In which case I understand that you probably can’t even spell your own name, likely change address every time you trash the house I’m paying for out of my taxes and wouldn’t know a Gurkha if he came up behind you and slit your throat.

Hell, if one did that he could have my room.

And, no. I didn’t sign it just because Joanna Lumley looked hot in various frocks in The New Avengers all those years ago. And Sapphire and Steel. I really should dig out some copies of those.

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Seriously, what is this country coming to?

The flag of the United Kingdom (3:5 Army version).

Or, perhaps, what has it already gone to? I’ve only been back her a week or so and I’m sick of the place already. Don’t get me wrong, life up in Perth with the folks is laid back and relaxed. But there are things which just don’t feel right and news stories that are driving me nuts.

A daft one to start with. All of the bins along the main road into Perth have been removed. If there’s somewhere you expect to see a bin, it’s by a bus stop. They’ve all gone. So rather than pay someone to empty them, someone’s decided that they’ll just take them away. Maybe they’ll be replaced, but I doubt that very much. I might look into this and see if the council have an answer.

[Update: the bins are back – new ones. So only bad planning, not a removal of a public service]

Then there’s a budget and the general economic mess. Gordon Brown refusing to apologise and people making more fuss over some potential letters to “smear” some other sleazeballs. As if we don’t have enough problems without parlimentarians calling each other names. Pathetic. I wouldn’t trust these overgrown schoolchildren to cook their own dinner, let alone run a country.

The decision to only allow about 100 Gurkhas to apply for residence is a complete disgrace as well. We hand out millions each year to lazy, good-for-nothing, workshy filth who can’t even be bothered to look for a job… and turn our backs on people who fought for our country every bit as bravely as any British soldier. Disgusting. I don’t think there are words strong enough for me to describe how repugnant we must seem to push them away as we are.

If we’re bothered about “thousands” of people trying to move here then the solution is simple. Check their military record and if they were a Gurkha, let them in. And stop giving money to the chavs who just spend it all on drugs, booze, fags, crappy gold jewellery and Sky TV. Let those ******** starve until they find a job. That’s not what these brave men fought for, nor my grandad, nor anyone else.

And a final one. Just one incident, but similar things have happened before, and recently. A young girl, 11 years old, shot while queuing for an ice cream on Merseyside. The shooter described as being about 16 or 17 years old. Shot her then cycled away.

What. The. ****.

I am so thankful she seems to be OK as far as shooting victims go, but it just staggers me that something like that can happen in this country. An isolated incident, a one-off by a loony.. OK. But this kid was part of a gang, and it’s happened in the past. How can this keep happening?

In a week that’s seen St George‘s go by with barely a blip outside of some mentions on Twitter and the like, I should have been proud – for a day – to be English. Instead, I’m ashamed. Not to be English as such. But of the state my country has fallen into.

Yes, I know England‘s just one part of Britain but I see myself as both English (born) and British (bred). They are, to a large extent, one and the same to me. And I’m saddened at the state I find both of them in now.

Is it too late to dig ourselves out of this hole? I genuinely think it is, short of some kind of major upheaval in the social and political systems of this country. We need someone in charge who’s not afraid to strip away the last 40 years and get back to some serious basics. Strip people of a lot of their “rights” (criminals, chavs, filth who run our streets, politicians…) and make people realise that they can’t get away with this any more.

Because right now they can. And will. And do.

And that’s just not good enough for my country.

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