An Obituary printed in the London Times – Interesting and sadly very true.
"Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.
He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:
– Knowing when to come in out of the rain;– Why the early bird gets the worm;– Life isn’t always fair;– and maybe it was my fault.
Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).
His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.
Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.
Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.
Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.
Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason.
He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame, and I’m A Victim.
Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.
From http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100015877/the-most-widespread-child-abuse-in-britain-is-perpetrated-by-the-government/"
I had saved the above because, mostly, I believe it. Of course I don't believe in the sentence 'Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children'. It's a loaded sentence: a sentence loaded against parents and for teachers. It assumes a lot. And you know what 'assume' does - it makes an ass out of u and me.
Unruly. What does unruly mean? I mean what? Does unruly simply mean that the teacher cannot control a child? Is it good for a teacher to control a child? And is a child who is controlled by a teacher not open to the blandishments of a paedophile? In other words, that is a child who is in danger. After all, school spends a good deal of its time making its users conform and yet warns children against conforming to certain adults' desires. Can young people discern the Janus-faced quality inherent in these teachings? Won't they be mightily confused? Conform and risk attracting abuse. Or don't conform and risk disapproval and ostracism. It takes a brave child to stand up against the pressures of peers and superiors (adults who have control over the child). And that child often gets exiled from the place of pressure.
Do parents attack teachers? Well, the media says they do. Personally I haven't known many parents who attack teachers about anything. They might disagree with teachers, but they don't attack them. You're going to say that my experience isn't too extensive and just because I haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't occur. You'd be right.
Can you really discipline an 'unruly' child? I mean can you punish a child? Does punishment work? Will the child merely turn into a conformist or a silent rebel when punished for some transgression as defined by the institution? Won't a silent rebel eventually outwardly reveal his or her inner rebellion? Doesn't anger at injustice flame in the depths of every rebel?
So. Unless you strictly define the terms, you cannot just lob the bombs implied in that sentence, can you? Or you can, but it's not fair. It's not fair to parents, teachers or children.
The piece about Common Sense is good though. And seemed to be relevant when the Labour government was attempting to convert all of us into pathetic cotton wool people. Let's hope those days are over altogether.
Or are all governments still pulling the cotton wool over our eyes?
Sunday, 18 September 2011
Friday, 2 September 2011
Summer wind-down
Wow. What a weird summer.
More like a summer and an autumn mushed together. Have you seen those trees laden with bright berries? Isn't that a sign of a really hard winter?
In one or two ways, it's been a hard summer.
It's been hot and sweaty and red-faced, and that's just the dog.
Has education lounged about, taking a break then?
Not here. We've been Chinese fluting as usual. Practicing piano. Grafting away on those websites and moderating as a new activity. Drawing and painting. Communicating with friends. We've been entering writing competitions while not believing that we can win but doing it anyway. We've been off to the Lakes visiting Kendal and Keswick on a coach tour where two young people pressed camera buttons a lot. We've planned to conquer the world on various games and not necessarily this world. We've coped with my mother breaking her femur and ending up in hospital. We have cared for her house and her cat. We've thought about health a lot and what it means to us.
In other words, we've been living and learning.
Doing what comes naturally. What we all do all the time.
Time constraints are largely irrelevant because people who are interested in what they are doing keep doing what they are doing.
Summer.
Summer is winding down. But we aren't buying uniforms and we aren't buying into the idea that they are necessary.
Sorry that it's been so long since I set cursor to blog, but it's been a strange summer.
Nice to be back though.
More like a summer and an autumn mushed together. Have you seen those trees laden with bright berries? Isn't that a sign of a really hard winter?
In one or two ways, it's been a hard summer.
It's been hot and sweaty and red-faced, and that's just the dog.
Has education lounged about, taking a break then?
Not here. We've been Chinese fluting as usual. Practicing piano. Grafting away on those websites and moderating as a new activity. Drawing and painting. Communicating with friends. We've been entering writing competitions while not believing that we can win but doing it anyway. We've been off to the Lakes visiting Kendal and Keswick on a coach tour where two young people pressed camera buttons a lot. We've planned to conquer the world on various games and not necessarily this world. We've coped with my mother breaking her femur and ending up in hospital. We have cared for her house and her cat. We've thought about health a lot and what it means to us.
In other words, we've been living and learning.
Doing what comes naturally. What we all do all the time.
Time constraints are largely irrelevant because people who are interested in what they are doing keep doing what they are doing.
Summer.
Summer is winding down. But we aren't buying uniforms and we aren't buying into the idea that they are necessary.
Sorry that it's been so long since I set cursor to blog, but it's been a strange summer.
Nice to be back though.
Friday, 22 July 2011
Seriously uncooperative cats
You know I saw a cat being attacked once.
It was a horrible sight. A person attacked the beast and the poor animal turned, arched its small back and spat. Then it used claws to draw blood. The man wasn't pleased. He wanted to cow the creature. He wanted that creature to obey him, to do what he wanted done. That's how it should have behaved because he wanted it to behave that way.
The cat, being full of vim and vigour, retaliated in a cat-like way. With teeth and claws and scratching...
The cat did not cooperate with the man.
The cat was uncooperative.
Hostile, you might say.
People, too, can be uncooperative and hostile.
Why? Well, they might not want to do whatever it is you want them to do. They might object to being treated like naughty two year olds. They might resist doing whatever you want them to do because, after all, they are sovereign beings and they don't need telling, do they?
Do you tell your neighbour how to park his car, where to hang his laundry, which bits of trees he should pollard? No? Thought not.
Why?
You don't direct your neighbour because your neighbour is a sovereign being. He can decide many things for himself. Of course if he parks his car in such a way to block yours, then you might have a gentle word. If he sticks his laundry in front of your window when he has a perfectly good drying spot inside his property line then you would be sensible to question him a bit. And, if he lops off branches from your side of the fence, he's in for a little talking to, isn't he?
You'd think he was a tiny way along the mad boardwalk if he transgressed these norms, wouldn't you? A bit nuts. Losing it.
And so we come to Gill's blog about Lincolnshire and all the other places who think that Lincolnshire rocks. This is a link to Gill's blog. Our amazingly radiant and brilliant writing Gill who upholds the truth, the honour and the right.
http://sometimesitspeaceful.blogspot.com/
""Threatening behaviour can consist of the deliberate use of silence.""
That sentence is from this document:
http://lincolnshirescb.proceduresonline.com/chapters/g_work_uncoop_fams.html
Its title is 'Working with hostile and uncooperative families'. It reeks of maladminstration already, doesn't it? Hostility to any family just billows from its very appearance.
Why on earth you possibly should want to write such an incendiary piece of bollocks I don't know. Are you trying to be deliberately provocative, Lincolnshire, and all the other places who have similar poison flowing in their veins? Don't you like people? Do you think you are superior to people? Do you think you are the saviours of the world? Or just Lincolnshire or wherever the others come from? Who are you aiming to please here? What is your purpose for foisting on the innocent internet such venomous twaddle?
If you are trying to induce hostility in folks going about their own business in peace and harmony then you are doing sterling work, my friends. There's nothing at all like putting people's backs up in the first second of attempting to 'help and support' them, is there? Your basic pre-Psychology Psychology course would have taught you that, wouldn't it?
'Softly softly catchee monkey' quite clearly isn't a proverb you've ever been exposed to, have you, my dears?
There are other things you have quite caught on to. Thinking. Allowing. Being. Seeing the best in people. Understanding that your understanding is really limited. That you are failing in being service providers and instead are dictators. You are setting people you encounter up to fail whether or not they are guilty of doing whatever it is you are determined they must be doing.
What bothers me is how do they get away with this tosh?
Who authorises such complete idiocy? Such arrant nonsense fit only for burning.
Who spends the money to require another human being to so degrade, jeer at, throw aspersions at and justify assumptions that should never even be countenanced at all?
Oh, bloomers. We do. We spend the money. It's our money being used against us to hurt all us hostile uncooperative sovereign beings who don't need help, don't want help and won't take help. Of course help, in this case, is a pejorative term (debasing and negative). Anyone who can spew bellicose bile like that is anything but helpful. Anyone who can nod at the pages and smile is guilty of monumental hubris and incredible ignorance of the respect and decency required of a civilised man or woman towards his or her fellow human beings.
You should be ashamed of yourselves, Lincolnshire, and all you others. Hide your sorry heads in shame. Take the nasty piece of vitriol away and start Psychology classes, and don't skim-read your textbooks.
There will be an exam later, and you shall be judged.
It was a horrible sight. A person attacked the beast and the poor animal turned, arched its small back and spat. Then it used claws to draw blood. The man wasn't pleased. He wanted to cow the creature. He wanted that creature to obey him, to do what he wanted done. That's how it should have behaved because he wanted it to behave that way.
The cat, being full of vim and vigour, retaliated in a cat-like way. With teeth and claws and scratching...
The cat did not cooperate with the man.
The cat was uncooperative.
Hostile, you might say.
People, too, can be uncooperative and hostile.
Why? Well, they might not want to do whatever it is you want them to do. They might object to being treated like naughty two year olds. They might resist doing whatever you want them to do because, after all, they are sovereign beings and they don't need telling, do they?
Do you tell your neighbour how to park his car, where to hang his laundry, which bits of trees he should pollard? No? Thought not.
Why?
You don't direct your neighbour because your neighbour is a sovereign being. He can decide many things for himself. Of course if he parks his car in such a way to block yours, then you might have a gentle word. If he sticks his laundry in front of your window when he has a perfectly good drying spot inside his property line then you would be sensible to question him a bit. And, if he lops off branches from your side of the fence, he's in for a little talking to, isn't he?
You'd think he was a tiny way along the mad boardwalk if he transgressed these norms, wouldn't you? A bit nuts. Losing it.
And so we come to Gill's blog about Lincolnshire and all the other places who think that Lincolnshire rocks. This is a link to Gill's blog. Our amazingly radiant and brilliant writing Gill who upholds the truth, the honour and the right.
http://sometimesitspeaceful.blogspot.com/
""Threatening behaviour can consist of the deliberate use of silence.""
That sentence is from this document:
http://lincolnshirescb.proceduresonline.com/chapters/g_work_uncoop_fams.html
Its title is 'Working with hostile and uncooperative families'. It reeks of maladminstration already, doesn't it? Hostility to any family just billows from its very appearance.
Why on earth you possibly should want to write such an incendiary piece of bollocks I don't know. Are you trying to be deliberately provocative, Lincolnshire, and all the other places who have similar poison flowing in their veins? Don't you like people? Do you think you are superior to people? Do you think you are the saviours of the world? Or just Lincolnshire or wherever the others come from? Who are you aiming to please here? What is your purpose for foisting on the innocent internet such venomous twaddle?
If you are trying to induce hostility in folks going about their own business in peace and harmony then you are doing sterling work, my friends. There's nothing at all like putting people's backs up in the first second of attempting to 'help and support' them, is there? Your basic pre-Psychology Psychology course would have taught you that, wouldn't it?
'Softly softly catchee monkey' quite clearly isn't a proverb you've ever been exposed to, have you, my dears?
There are other things you have quite caught on to. Thinking. Allowing. Being. Seeing the best in people. Understanding that your understanding is really limited. That you are failing in being service providers and instead are dictators. You are setting people you encounter up to fail whether or not they are guilty of doing whatever it is you are determined they must be doing.
What bothers me is how do they get away with this tosh?
Who authorises such complete idiocy? Such arrant nonsense fit only for burning.
Who spends the money to require another human being to so degrade, jeer at, throw aspersions at and justify assumptions that should never even be countenanced at all?
Oh, bloomers. We do. We spend the money. It's our money being used against us to hurt all us hostile uncooperative sovereign beings who don't need help, don't want help and won't take help. Of course help, in this case, is a pejorative term (debasing and negative). Anyone who can spew bellicose bile like that is anything but helpful. Anyone who can nod at the pages and smile is guilty of monumental hubris and incredible ignorance of the respect and decency required of a civilised man or woman towards his or her fellow human beings.
You should be ashamed of yourselves, Lincolnshire, and all you others. Hide your sorry heads in shame. Take the nasty piece of vitriol away and start Psychology classes, and don't skim-read your textbooks.
There will be an exam later, and you shall be judged.
Saturday, 9 July 2011
Research, music, pride and fun
Yesterday I reaffirmed what I've thought for a long time.
We like to home educate because it's - well - just plain good fun.
E was speaking to one of her friends about World War II. The friend mentioned what her grandparents did during the war which led E to come along to ask me what my parents did. Some of what they did she already knows and I've even written my mother's story which was published in Ancestors magazine, and there's a side panel about my mother's time in the Women's Timber Corps in my 'Toiling on the Soil' article mainly about the Women's Land Army in Family History Monthly, July 2011.
E was interested in her dad's father's experiences so we started to dig, with our limited knowledge, and found some very interesting things. An afternoon went by. Our knowledge has increased and been enhanced. We know more about my girls' grandfather (sadly not with us now) than we did.
Now I'm listening to music from Lord of the Rings as played by E. So haunting and beautiful. It's a piece I just thought I'd always hear on CD. But now my daughter can play it on her piano. Wonderful.
How talented they are, my once little girls. How much my heart thuds with pride these days. How I have to hide it with a brisk 'That was lovely, dear.' How I love my beautiful young people.
How pleased I am that we home educate, and they have the freedom to be themselves in this world of encouraged conformity.
We like to home educate because it's - well - just plain good fun.
E was speaking to one of her friends about World War II. The friend mentioned what her grandparents did during the war which led E to come along to ask me what my parents did. Some of what they did she already knows and I've even written my mother's story which was published in Ancestors magazine, and there's a side panel about my mother's time in the Women's Timber Corps in my 'Toiling on the Soil' article mainly about the Women's Land Army in Family History Monthly, July 2011.
E was interested in her dad's father's experiences so we started to dig, with our limited knowledge, and found some very interesting things. An afternoon went by. Our knowledge has increased and been enhanced. We know more about my girls' grandfather (sadly not with us now) than we did.
Now I'm listening to music from Lord of the Rings as played by E. So haunting and beautiful. It's a piece I just thought I'd always hear on CD. But now my daughter can play it on her piano. Wonderful.
How talented they are, my once little girls. How much my heart thuds with pride these days. How I have to hide it with a brisk 'That was lovely, dear.' How I love my beautiful young people.
How pleased I am that we home educate, and they have the freedom to be themselves in this world of encouraged conformity.
Saturday, 25 June 2011
Cats and kittens
When a cat wants to eat her kittens she calls them mice.
Old Bulgarian proverb
Or when a government wants to take over your home educated children it calls you, the parent, a child abuser.
A government wants to rule the citizens of its country. How much more comfortable it is for governments to ensure that citizens have no ability to reason, to ask questions, to rock the stability of the boat that does nothing for most of them but everything for some of them, to reassess and retread, to promote change...
When a cat wants to eat her kittens she calls them mice.
Great proverb.
Old Bulgarian proverb
Or when a government wants to take over your home educated children it calls you, the parent, a child abuser.
A government wants to rule the citizens of its country. How much more comfortable it is for governments to ensure that citizens have no ability to reason, to ask questions, to rock the stability of the boat that does nothing for most of them but everything for some of them, to reassess and retread, to promote change...
When a cat wants to eat her kittens she calls them mice.
Great proverb.
Saturday, 18 June 2011
Draughty guidelines
I wasn't going to post about them.
Was I?
Well, if I wasn't I've changed my mind.
On the whole, I'm one of these people who ignores instructions. It's from years of following instructions to find that a) I'm more confused if I follow them and end up somewhere miles from where I want to be or b) I don't have a clue what they are saying and therefore I get more frustrated and upset carefully having tried to follow their careful beckonings. It's just... because the world doesn't come with instructions. There aren't certainties, and attempting to cover ALL the potholes we can break our legs in doesn't just work.
There's always another one to trip us up.
So someone (or more than one someone) who is still nameless to me has laboured long and hard to bring forth guidelines ostensibly for local authorities to get to grips with the incredibly mysterious matters belonging to home education.
These guidelines cover a lot of pages. Here at http://www.box.net/shared/6lk1826muy
But we have guidelines. We already have guidelines. And we have dedicated and sensible home educators telling local authorities how to do it. How to treat home educators. How home educators should be treated and how the law should treat home educators.
In my view it's like this. I live near the sea. Two minutes away. There's a pedestrian path along the side of some grass-covered dunes right beside the mighty ocean. This path is for people to walk on. The path is to keep people out of the way of cars that zoom up and down near them.
The path is shared by many, many cyclists whose cycle path ends just north of where people walk. So the cyclists see the pedestrian pathway as a continuation of their cycle-way, and the people on two feet see the concrete walk-way as their pathway.
The law favours the two-feet: the argument is won by two wheels because soft bodies are a lot more able to be damaged in a row with two wheels.
For me, it's an analogy. Home educators are the two feet. Local authorities peddle themselves along mowing down (or nearly mowing down) home educators who are going about their business legally educating their children. But in a radge between those with wheels and those with bodies but no wheels, the wheels are the winners. And the legal upholders (law/police/the state) of the right of way (home education) do not enforce the right of way.
Either the law upholders don't think that the soft bodies are worth worrying about or they like the wheeled ones better. Or both.
Or neither.
It's just an analogy. One I enjoy.
Hey, phew! watch out for the bikes now!
Was I?
Well, if I wasn't I've changed my mind.
On the whole, I'm one of these people who ignores instructions. It's from years of following instructions to find that a) I'm more confused if I follow them and end up somewhere miles from where I want to be or b) I don't have a clue what they are saying and therefore I get more frustrated and upset carefully having tried to follow their careful beckonings. It's just... because the world doesn't come with instructions. There aren't certainties, and attempting to cover ALL the potholes we can break our legs in doesn't just work.
There's always another one to trip us up.
So someone (or more than one someone) who is still nameless to me has laboured long and hard to bring forth guidelines ostensibly for local authorities to get to grips with the incredibly mysterious matters belonging to home education.
These guidelines cover a lot of pages. Here at http://www.box.net/shared/6lk1826muy
But we have guidelines. We already have guidelines. And we have dedicated and sensible home educators telling local authorities how to do it. How to treat home educators. How home educators should be treated and how the law should treat home educators.
In my view it's like this. I live near the sea. Two minutes away. There's a pedestrian path along the side of some grass-covered dunes right beside the mighty ocean. This path is for people to walk on. The path is to keep people out of the way of cars that zoom up and down near them.
The path is shared by many, many cyclists whose cycle path ends just north of where people walk. So the cyclists see the pedestrian pathway as a continuation of their cycle-way, and the people on two feet see the concrete walk-way as their pathway.
The law favours the two-feet: the argument is won by two wheels because soft bodies are a lot more able to be damaged in a row with two wheels.
For me, it's an analogy. Home educators are the two feet. Local authorities peddle themselves along mowing down (or nearly mowing down) home educators who are going about their business legally educating their children. But in a radge between those with wheels and those with bodies but no wheels, the wheels are the winners. And the legal upholders (law/police/the state) of the right of way (home education) do not enforce the right of way.
Either the law upholders don't think that the soft bodies are worth worrying about or they like the wheeled ones better. Or both.
Or neither.
It's just an analogy. One I enjoy.
Hey, phew! watch out for the bikes now!
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Inveterate detectors of lies
Children are inveterate nosers-out of the double-dealing and lies of adults.
Don't you think?
When Y was somewhat younger she came in after school full of something that made her big eyes bigger. They were made bigger by her passionate iteration of 'What matters'. By that she meant the stuff that adults think is important and even vital is not. For example, the head teacher of her school considered that straightening the lines the children formed after their break at lunchtime to be really important. Catching and stopping bullies was ignored.
The head teacher also insisted that rules - the great God Rules - should be slavishly and mindlessly worshipped. Y's rules were different. She knew that small children SHOULD NOT BE BULLIED, and did something about it when they were. She chased the bullies who, having the habit of hanging around in crowds like flies around a corpse, then flew away before her determined onslaught. She was tall and imposing, and she ran at them to STOP the tormenting of little things in the playground.
"But why didn't you tell a dinner nanny?" I asked innocently.
"But Mum," she spluttered, filled with indignation. "They just say you shouldn't tell stories, and tell you that you're lying!"
My indignant crusader. All of seven years old.
Young people are more adept at finding the truth in every situation and, sometimes, acting on their impulses of mercy to help other people.
Do you think that is why we remove our children's wisdom from society by boxing them up in schools?
Don't you think?
When Y was somewhat younger she came in after school full of something that made her big eyes bigger. They were made bigger by her passionate iteration of 'What matters'. By that she meant the stuff that adults think is important and even vital is not. For example, the head teacher of her school considered that straightening the lines the children formed after their break at lunchtime to be really important. Catching and stopping bullies was ignored.
The head teacher also insisted that rules - the great God Rules - should be slavishly and mindlessly worshipped. Y's rules were different. She knew that small children SHOULD NOT BE BULLIED, and did something about it when they were. She chased the bullies who, having the habit of hanging around in crowds like flies around a corpse, then flew away before her determined onslaught. She was tall and imposing, and she ran at them to STOP the tormenting of little things in the playground.
"But why didn't you tell a dinner nanny?" I asked innocently.
"But Mum," she spluttered, filled with indignation. "They just say you shouldn't tell stories, and tell you that you're lying!"
My indignant crusader. All of seven years old.
Young people are more adept at finding the truth in every situation and, sometimes, acting on their impulses of mercy to help other people.
Do you think that is why we remove our children's wisdom from society by boxing them up in schools?
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