Unsociable

You know, I sometimes have a little laugh about socialisation.

I mean I'm probably the most unsocial person I know.

I don't like parties. Can't hear what people are saying. Don't drink. And, if I like the people, I've probably told them all the news and heard all theirs before the party gets going.

I can take or leave people. Some people. Some people can take or leave me. I have high standards for friendship and most folks - I'm afraid - don't qualify.

I like my own company. Or the company of a good book. Or the radio. Or the t.v. Or my dog who is a good friend.

And my family, but not all the time. And it wouldn't be good for them if I were hanging around their necks all the time either.

I can be sociable sometimes, if I want. I can laugh and dance and sing and make merry and tell stories that people giggle at or marvel at or whatever.

But, deep down, I'm happy being on my own. I don't need a lot of social stuff to keep me topped up with sunshine.

The LAs wouldn't like me if I were in their schools. They'd think I was odd, weird, a bit off, er, unsocial. But my view is that this is me. Take me or leave me. It's up to you if you wish to be my friend. If you don't, well, I possibly won't miss you.

There are people I miss. People I have cherished that I haven't seen for many years. Some of them I'm back in touch with and, hopefully, we'll bridge the years and be friends again.

Or not.

Either way, I am what I am.

Unsocial.

You have to let me be the way I am. I cannot bend myself or break faith with my personality. You can't turn me into a character from Friends because I'm not that kind of social animal.

I'm just unsocial I guess.

Just...me.

Thoughts on a good education

The Labour government DCSF used to say: "All children and young people are entitled to a good education. This doesn't necessarily mean children have to go to school: many parents choose to educate their child at home'.

I have to take issue with the first part of this. According to Protocol 1 Article 2 of the ECHR 'No person shall be denied an education'. OK, a person should not be denied an education and nothing is mentioned about a good education. The state provides an education but scarcely anyone agrees what a good education is and many voices will howl me down when I say the state provides a good education, including my own. How do we actually know what a good education is? Other than some helpful judges with an almost impossible task, no one can define what a good education actually consists of. If I were like my father, I would say everyone should have an education in the classics and in Maths, and maybe have a run around a football field once a week for a bit of a diversion. If I were a P.E. teacher I would probably say that English is a natural thing for English people, and we should be doing more push-ups, football, rounders, cricket, cross country running, ski=ing...

I would hate both definitions of a good education because I am not good at Mathematics - oh, I can get along and I can excel myself if pushed, but I'm not a cleaving-to-numbers-natural mathematician. As to P.E., I was one of those children who dreaded the lesson, unless it involved dancing, and hated the idea of being at the mercy of several bullies who knew how to take advantage of the opportunities advanced by the myriad wonders of Physical Education, indoors or out.

So, for me, unless you're a budding Steve Cram or you loaf about doing Calculus in your fun time, don't ask me to vote for at least two members of the National Curriculum.

The convent school I attended had Sewing classes (don't laugh, it did). Oh, the humiliation. The pricked fingers. The continuing and absolute hatred I had for my kit, my uselessness and the horror of having to 'make a dress' for the 'fashion parade' at the end of term. It was a term already contaminated by the terror induced by the prospect of having to emigrate to unknown Canada at the end of it. I laboured: I did labour on that darned dress. I learned to detest the material I'd bought - the cheery bright yellow mocked me, the patterned yellow leaves and flowers irritated me. I heaved at the thought of more endless, boring tacking. In the final countdown, my dear aunt who was a dab hand with a needle took pity on me and finished the garment. I wore it on the catwalk. Everyone was underwhelmed. I was embarrassed. I was sick at heart, but relieved to get the ordeal over and relieved that I wouldn't be 'tested' on something so foreign to my nature again.

So what makes a good education? I think it comes from inside yourself. I think it's your motivation. I think it is what interests you, and what interested me was reading, reading, reading, other people, history, French, reading and writing, more reading and, gradually, even more writing. In my adult life, people now pay me for my writing. Putting pen or word processor to work was an 'out of school' habit. I didn't write at school. I did the minimum amount of writing I could do at school because my writing, my real writing (my love) was private. It did not belong to the school, it belonged to me. I didn't want my adoration of the written word to die prematurely because I was forced to write.

So it was a secret. All those years ago it wasn't ready to flower and grow and be stomped upon by the foot of criticism it would probably have received in school. You get very little encouragement in school, I found. It was all 'Well, you should have/could have done it this way...'

Or even, once, after one of my short stories was marked, I was asked, "Did you copy? Is this your own work?"

Mrs. English Teacher, no, as I told you at the time I didn't copy. I read everything like a pig enjoys truffles and I got good because I did what I enjoyed doing and enjoyed getting good at, and your severe, distrustful look and your swingeing insult could have blighted the little plant behind the bushel but, thank the universe, it didn't.

It was mine and you didn't put your big feet all over it while it was growing - my talent was buried under a bushel until it was ripe and until I felt confident enough to let it try itself in the full glare of light.

Then it flourished. As all true real passions have the ability to flourish when they aren't trampled all over by strangers with gigantic damaging assessing criticising plates of meat.

I gave myself the best education I could give myself. I gave me the education I would've wished the schools I attended had given. I did what I was good at and I wasn't put off what I loved until what I loved became what I was good at.

Unfortunately, most of what school gave me was heartache. Years of time wasting. Hours of droning boredom.

My life gave me my education. How do you deliver an education? You are fooling yourself. You cannot deliver an education. You can help someone through their thoughts and emotions and finding out information, but never ever stomp on their little talents.

Those little talents might, one day, save the world.

Good, good, good, good quotations

'We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.'

Winston Churchill.

I was pottering around looking at information about the Women's Land Army in World War I and II (for an article I'm writing), and I found the above quotation from Winston Churchill. I know that Mr. Churchill is reviled in some quarters but I've always had a sneaking admiration for him. He failed miserably at school; his father didn't know what to do with him, in fact. I think that often happens with incipient genius.

Those superbly-charged brains sometimes do not fit in.

"Young Winston attended Harrow School, on the outskirts of London, where he was schooled in the classics. He hated most of his school time at Harrow and had little interest in learning Latin, Greek or mathematics. But he did love poetry, history and writing English essays."

"Winston was short in stature and very headstrong and stubborn. During his early school years, Churchill didn't get along well with other students. He recalled how he had to hide behind a tree when some other boys threw cricket balls at him."

http://www.school-for-champions.com/biographies/churchill.htm

Yet he learned English. Kept in a class for three times as long as anyone else, Churchill parsed sentences and stared at the blackboard for many hours. He owed a debt to Mr. Somervell who was charged with teaching the least likely boys the English language. The ones who were deemed stupid stayed with Mr. Somervell, and the others who were bright went on to tackle Latin and Greek.

"President John F. Kennedy summarized Winston S. Churchill's rhetorical grandeur with the statement that "In the dark days and darker nights when England stood alone--and most men save Englishmen despaired of England's life--he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle."

http://workinghumor.com/quotes/winston_churchill.shtml#

Well done Mr. Somervell. Your work will never be forgotten.

The enlightened principle

"Not even the apparently enlightened principle of the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ can excuse indifference to individual suffering. There is no test for progress other than its impact on the individual. " Aneurin Bevan, In Place of Fear (William Heinemann Ltd, London, 1952), p. 167-8.

Gotta love it

Do you love the internet? I do. Isn't it - regardless of a bunch of rubbish on some websites - the most amazing educator? It's made my little life a lot easier. Where once I said "Well, we should go to the library and look that up." Now it's "Let's go on google (or one of the other search engines) to see what we can find." What an amazing force for good. I salute the internet. Thank you to all you lovely and varied people who contributed to its development. And here is the equally adorable Wiki entry all about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet The internet: you couldn't make it up really.

What do we measure?

"The gross national Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our door and the jails for the people who break them (...) It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl (...) Yet the GNP does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials (...) It measures everything, in short, except that which makes worthwhile." Those wise words came from Robert Kennedy and were quoted in Doing the right thing: Measuring wellbeing for public policy. Bobby Kennedy is speaking about the ridiculous measure of economic growth to determine the health of a country. Taken from http://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/ Found by H, researcher extraordinare. Thanks once again, H.

'Free schools'

Yes, they should. Free schools I mean.

A lovely person from Home Education Business Forums has brought this to our attention:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/mar/21/free-schools-creationism-department-education

"Government spokesman says the education secretary is 'crystal clear' that teaching creationism is at odds with scientific fact" it burbles.

Hmmm. And I thought you could rely on the writing on the package. Free schools? Ha! Nothing free about being told you can't teach creationism, is there?

And it's an oddity that scientific fact is a) not always fact and b) is often widely and vehemently opposed to the current mode of thinking in science.

Professor Brian Cox may whittle on about black holes but even he has to admit that, once we get inside one, the black hole is merely a big cavity of mysterious happenings. Let's face it, creationism may be entirely appropriate inside your friendly neighbourhood black hole.

What is it behind all this then?

It's the struggle again with what you personally believe and what the state thinks is right and wishes you would believe. It's the space between your ears that's up for grabs. Believe that science is fact and you're approved of. Believe that a supreme being decanted us into life and you're not.

And, once again, the human being - that bright source of restless curiosity - is relegated to a plaything in the clash between the world views of other people. Because no human child is clever enough to sort his or her way through the various theories and come out with some sort of conclusions that satisfy him or her.

"The BCSE, which describes itself as the leading anti-creationist organisation in Europe, wrote to Gove to express its "extreme concern" at applications from groups such as the Everyday Champions Church and the Christian Schools Trust to run free schools."

Why does the BCSE (whosoever they are) wish to express 'extreme concern' at other people learning whatever they choose? Why must we all believe in science the way most folks conceive it to be? What's in it for the BCSE? Why are they so bothered what children learn about the universe?

I believe in a certain type of loo roll (toilet paper) but I would defend to the very verge of death your particular right to like another type of bog wiper.

I suppose that makes me open-minded.

And if the government tells us we should prefer one loo roll over another?

Is that the government's job?

What are they so afraid of? Is it that science, when analysed by those eager young bright minds (or any minds at any stage and any age), will appear to be fairy stories told by those with reasons to tell them?

I'm not against science. I've sat in a fair amount of classes learning all types of the stuff and had many hours of pondering over the beauty of a lot of it. I say let the creationists rock on with their creationism, and the scientists point out the loveliness of science. Teach both and let the brilliant brains that sit and listen work it all out.

"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact." ~Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 1883