Look at me

It is a very scary possibilty that the recent display of public disorder by a very small and probably excrutiatingly polite rabble of about 20 objectors to anyone debating the possibility of considering raising the question removing the requirement for priestly celibacy in the Roman Catholic set up is the most exciting thing to happen inside or round about the Camberwell Civic Centre since ... the year I did my HSC and had to dig my blazer out and put it on to attend one last long dreary Speech Night.

I can't remember a word anyone said at us last night, but such is the impact of the poisonous environment I can still, after all these years, murder the school anthem with great gusto, lyrical accuracy and all the tunelessness one would expect of the tone-deaf.

It isn't a very exciting part of the world.

That's gratitude for you

A mother is tonight spending her first night in prison after being sent down for failing to get her adolescent daughter to attend school regularly.

The girl had offered a wide variety of typically lame and generally hackneyed excuses (of the 'dog ate my PE kit' type) but one stood out: I don't like Mondays. She didn't like Monday's and all she didn't go to school. So her mother's in jail.

Some people don't know when they're well off.

High School for Girls

We're considering our options. We now have almost exactly a year to make that crucial decision. I spent a bit of time this morning looking at the web site of one option. I wasn't overwhelmed. It looks just like a bloody comprehensive.

I'm was not inspired.

Then out of curiosity I had a look at the wikipedia entry for the same school. If the job the that's been done on it is the work of one or more members of the current or recent past student body then I rather like their spirit.

'In my day' we had fewer outlets for our creative energy. How lucky today's students are, having wikipedia entries to subvert in the manner done to this particular High School for Girls.

Bravo!

Further thoughts on my Education Ukase

The empress spoke this morning in haste and has now repented.

Having been at work and been rendered bad tempered by the experience I have returned, reviewed and suffered the following reaction:

You are a stupid cow. It is much simpler than that. Chain the little fuckers to the desk at age five on the understanding that you'll release them at the age of sixteen or when they can recite their multiplication tables 1-12 fluently, which ever comes sooner. Ok. That's the new education policy. Simple, innit?

A work in progress

Gordon Brown's made (yet another) attempt to breathe life into the Education, Education, Education rallying cry. No doubt if anything comes of this it will be over-engineered, mis-directed and hideously expensive which is a shame, really, when you think about it.

If I could have any ministerial position, and predicated on the highly unlikely assumption that the funding and authority were in place I'd take the job, I'd take on primary education.

I'd decree that

• each 'year' be broadly made up of children with a birthday between 1st of August and 31st July
  
• children enter school on September 1 of the August-July year in which they turn 6 and that they spend six (not seven) years in primary education.
  
• the children entering school for the first time in any given year shall all start school on the same day - which shall be the 1 September or the first Monday thereafter
  
• the school day should begin at 8:00 am; broadly pre-lunch hours shall be reserved for more academic work while post-lunch hours shall be generally reserved for creativity and PE
  
• the academic year shall be divided into either three or four terms and no further, ie there shall not be six terms as at present (although they are commonly known as half-terms)
  
• the stated principle objectives of primary school education shall be centred around socialisation, physical fitness, creativity and basic skills in literacy and numeracy
  
• during the first two years children shall be read to each day, and the material shall include poetry and plays as well as prose; even in their sixth year children shall be read to for not less than half an hour on one day per week - and by this time they shall be receiving an introduction to major literary works
  
• all children shall be exposed to music, and musical instruments from their first year, and acquire competence in at least one instrument (even if the much maligned recorder) during the course of the six years
  
• all children shall be exposed to foreign languages and acquire basic skills in at least one language (even if the much maligned French) during the course of the six years
  
• all children shall regularly participate in one session of organised competitive team sport per week, one session of gymnastics and other PE as time permits
  
• each school shall conduct an annual sports day (weather permitting) and there shall be losers as well as winners
  
• school dinners shall be compulsory; they shall be both nutritious and delivered in a manner designed to encourage the develop social skills in diners
  
• the academic component of the primary school curriculum shall be centred around English language and mathematics as the essential tools for further learning
  
• clear and unambiguous emphasis shall be placed on developing sound handwriting technique encompassing neatness and clarity
  
• English language skills shall be developed through a twin-pronged strategy of supporting creativity within framework of discipline and increasing precision in spelling, grammar, punctuation and syntax
  
• it shall be possible to exclude disruptive children, bullying children, threatening and violent children and to hold back those who fail by a significant margin to achieve the designated standard required to move 'up a year'
  
• parents shall be informed once per term of their child's performance or more often as required

No doubt much of this would go down badly with teachers who regard themselves as over burdened by the demands of external agencies. They probably are so I shall, in so far as it is reasonable, dispense with bureaucacy and free up teachers to teach.

The abolition of mid-term breaks will not only release that time for teaching, but also eliminate at a stroke the wholly disruptive down time immediately before and after those breaks.

And no doubt the money question, too, will rear its ugly head. More money put into education today would mean less money having to go into the currently vast social welfare and national health service expenditures in the future, so if money had to be found and taken from somewhere else (say, in what's currently being put into British soldiers fighting other people's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) then it should be looked at as an ethical investment.

Well this policy formulation work is knackering, and I recognise that my work is incomplete but I have plot to search out. This is theme though is one to which I shall return.

I Want To Cry

News yesterday, today on the front of the papers that this government, in office for over a decade has now concocted a new way of ruining people's lives: for the next seven years the children of this country are to become involved - on an entirely involuntary basis - in (yet another) educational experiment. This is Suck it and See policy making on the fly the victims of which will be children who are the age my daughter is now, which means my daughter. The escape hatch is jammed closed and the price she pays just gets higher and higher.

I have no confidence whatsoever in this administration.

And it is hardly heartening that the colossal drip Michael Gove who is (Tory) shadow spokesthingummy for Education has pooh-poohed the proposed expansion of diplomas into more academic areas of 'study' on the entirely fatuous grounds that the new diploma in academic areas would undermine traditional qualifications. Well, doh!

This is primary school playground debate on the subject of secondary education and that's hardly heartening.

What's heart breaking though is that the Tories have since this government was first elected been at the head of the annual stampede to protest the perceived corruption of the 'gold standard' A Level qualification and the general dumbing down of standards in education.

In life, in general, one can't have it 'both ways' but Michael Gove at least seems determined die a political death trying to.

A word in your ear if I may

Are you a school teacher stuck in a monstrous traffic jam on the way to the airport to catch the plane that will take you to sunnier or more interesting parts for the duration of this forthcoming 'half-term' holiday?

If so, good. And I hope your uber-expensive holiday turns out to be a miserable week from beginning to end.

May your flight be over crowded and delayed five hours at take off. May your airline send your baggage to the wrong continent and your tour operator fail to provide a courtesy coach for you at the other end of your flight. May you find yourself staying in a cockroach infested partial development on a building site within sight but not walking distance of a beach, with an algae encrusted swimming pool, surly staff who insist on talking foreign, pour drinks over you at any opportunity, spit in your food as they carry it to the table and then stand at your elbow until you tip them.

I hope your mattress is made of concrete and your walls are made of cardboard. I hope you discover that the roof leaks, during an unseasonal torrential downpour, and find rabid bats roost in your (communal) bathroom.

May you suffer influenza and dysentery then find yourself the lust object of a deranged 7ft tall transsexual nurse.

Apart from that, have a nice time.

Don't forget to write; just a few words on the back of a post card will do. I'm the woman at home teaching my child maths while you're away in some hopefully rat infested holiday spot or other. When you come back to 'work' do try to get the children back into 'school' mode and up to speed within a fortnight of school's resumption.

After all there are not that many weeks until the end of this term and the two week holiday they have over Christmas and New Year, not including the winding-down period during which they learn nausea-inducing nerve jangling ditties mistakenly referred to as Modern Christmas Carols and carry out other pointless winding down type and strictly non-educational activities.

And let us not lose sight of the fact that once they do return at the start of the New Year there will be all the post-Present receiving excitement to wean them off before you can settle them back into a receptive frame of mind; do try to accomplish that well ahead of the essential pre-half-term winding down period so that they are all in the right mood to enjoy their holiday totally and so need a good week or so to get back into stride for the second half of the term.

Are you beginning to get my point yet?

These next five terms are crucial and you're having a lousy holiday on the Costa del Rodent, or so I hope.

Love and Kisses, Hen

PS sorry to harp on about this but, would you believe it: blogger's spell checker might not recognise Sri Lanka but it has not problems with Transsexual. How frightfully er, something or other that is.

How to get laid by a good looking bloke

No that was a question not the title for an self-help guide; on the other hand a self-help guide on that subject would be useful. Any contributions? Full attribution and a cut of the royalties available.

Would it be easier if I dropped the bit about good looking? Personally I'd like to keep the 'bloke' bit - though I might become flexible on that point in the future; I've heard that happens to a significant proportion of middle aged women, but if I'm going to take on an OU course I think I'm entitled to stick with my first preference for a while longer.

moan, moan, moan ... and no sex involved

What ever else might be said about the 'new' blogger the new 'spellchecker' is undoubtedly a retrograde step. The peculiarities of the old spell checker amused. Now the (a) quirky contents and (b) lack of a facility to add new [and we're talking very basic, standard English words] content are not even mildly entertaining. In fact I find the damned thing a tedious waste of time. Anyone?

There we were

thinking that things had been bloody awful weather wise... and then autumn turned up in the early hours of this morning to set us all right on that point.

We're all going on a summer holiday

Last year the Big Swinging Dick made a mistake. Hardly news, hardly surprising.

What was odd about this was how quick he was to recognise his mistake and move to address it.

He put up a notice. Hardly news, hardly surprising. It is, after all, what he does when confronted by the need to appear managerial.

It wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if only his staff would or could read, but even the ones that can won't.

He laid down the law in no uncertain terms. Occasional staff recruited (or re-recruited) to help out over the summer, both to cover an upturn in customer numbers and also the upturn in annual leave taking by permanent staff may not take holidays. Simple.

Or it would be if the Big Swinging Dick had even the spine of the simplest vertebrate, and something like a grip on the decision making of his assistant managers. One way or another they've all managed to slope of for days off here and there, mostly on the weekend, when we're in direst need of additional staff let alone cover.

And the absinthe swigging soirees are only the worst of it, not the least interesting. Fucking students.

The benefits of a college education

Well they don't include the ability to proof read. All that tax payer subsidised education and Jack the Lad^* couldn't be depended on to spot a basic error in some text - a table with three columns showing code number, description and quantity - I'd had to type up and asked him to sing-song with me. I read, he checked. We spotted the obvious error, which was a line largely missed. He missed the fact that after that line the code numbers were out of sync with the description.

Thanks Jack.

Fortunately I spotted the problem before sending off the order. Otherwise our Christmas wine offering might not have been quite what it should have been.

By the way that does go to show that not all businesses are gearing up for Christmas before the New Year festivities are recovered from, and sorted by Easter. No we're still deciding what we might want in and asking for it.

Any way none of this really matters. Jack the Lad has a profile on FaceBook (or another of those social networking sites) so he's obviously got all the technical skills to get ahead in life. And he does so remind me of my mother's younger brother as I remember him when he was the same age. Big sigh. I know Jack that one day you'll be balding and wear polyester trousers. What a shame.

*I suppose I can track Jack's progress through life via social networking sites: he's now left us and gone to university where, no doubt, he'll do splendidly.