Primary education

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

In this country, this refers to the education of children up to the age of 11. I have said elsewhere that I believe this to be the fundamental core stage in any child’s education. If you cannot captivate them then with the joy of learning, I suspect you never will. It is also the time when you take them from their homes and show them that there is a bigger world out there and they are going to be a part of it.

I remember my primary days well for I can still picture the buildings, the classrooms and some of the teachers. However, when it comes to learning, the picture is far from complete.

Class sizes were typically 50 or so.

Sure we learned to read, to write and to do arithmetic, the old Victorian 3 ‘R’s’, essentials for survival in adult life. And we had to do this well, write neatly and get the spelling right. None of this simple decimal stuff either. You try dividing £14. 2s. 8d by 7 and you will know what I mean.

Much of the rest I am hazy on apart from Miss Tilson’s geography. She never taught us formal geography. She just told us stories with pictures and maps about the great explorers of this world and we had to write it up afterwards so by that means it was embedded.

She was grey haired even then but no matter. Her tales were the stuff of dreams. And that is why I shall follow Marco Polo on the Silk Road in the autumn of 2009. It is why I went to Africa (Livingstone, Stanley & Speke), to Antarctica (Scott & Shackleton) and maybe one day, I shall follow Orellana up the Orinoco.

History? Can’t remember much of what we were taught but it certainly wasn’t about remembering dates. I think it was mostly about Egyptians, Greeks and Romans plus the Battle of Hastings. What I do remember well is that we looked at the history of Tamworth - Ethelflaeda, daughter of Alfred the Great, Athelstan, her nephew, first king of the English, Offa, king of Mercia whose capital was Tamworth and Robert de Marmion , one of the guys in the Norman invasion and subsequently, King's Champion.

No foreign languages and no formal science to speak of although we did put tadpoles in jars and watch them turn into frogs.

Music? Well it was mostly singing and listening. Cannot recall anyone learning to play an instrument but then none of us could afford one.

Art? All the usual crap with paint and paper.

School plays. Oh we had a lot of these, large and small. My claim to fame was that I played Oliver in a Christmas play called ‘Oliver Twist asks for more.’

Games? Think this is PE nowadays. Usual stuff but I was never interested. They never even tried to teach me to swim which is a pity.

Homework? None but we were encouraged to go to the Town Library and look things up which we did. And, of course, when you are in the Library, you explore other things and that is where I started to read proper fiction.

Exams? Well they were simple in structure but they did ask you questions that you had to think about. None of that multiple choice then.

School trips? Can only recall two. One to Bourton on the Water and the other to Wall (aka Letocetum) a Roman site on the line of the Watling Street.

No computers and no internet, not that I am decrying either. Wish I’d had them. But we started with slates and graduated to exercise books.

I suppose that when you look at the above list and judge it by today’s standards, you’d say it was pretty poor. But then you must consider the outcomes as they say in modern education parlance.

Quite a lot of us moved on from our primary to a small single stream grammar school with a class size of 28. And there we dominated the class each and every year and most of us went to university. And this was against kids drawn from schools all over town.

Lost touch now but reflect:

I ended up running 4 businesses on 4 continents
Andrew became a professor of nuclear physics
Michael built his own pharmacy business
Alan is Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland

So there you have it. Little market town of 12,500, Victorian/Edwardian buildings (although the 10- 11 yo class was in a hut), relatively poor, no prescribed curriculum that I could divine, no H & S regulations and no SATS.

But plainly my two schools gave us something that lived with us forever.

Phoning Cefn Onn

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Cefn Onn is a small primary school in the north of Cardiff of which I am a governor. It is set in a poor housing state but it is great for all the staff are doing their best to give these kids the best. It is a bright school and it seems happy.

Ring them at lunchtime when the staff are serving lunch and then you will experience something truly magical. A little voice answers saying something like, 'Hello, this is Cefn Onn Primary School, how may I help you?.' First time I ever got this, I said, 'My name is xyz and I'd like to speak to Mr. abc. Who are you?' She said, ' I cannot tell you my name but I can pass on a message.' And so she did.

Great isn't it but sad also? Love the idea of the kids being given the responsibility of handling lunchtime calls. But it is so sad that nowadays we have to protect our kids with anonymity.

A good quote

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

Found this just the other day. It would seem to contain more common sense than has been exhibited by Socialism and Communism in over a century.

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

Many have attributed this to Abraham Lincoln but when you read it you can see that that is too early. Best guess is Rev. William J. H. Boetcker abt 1916

Researching the bloody obvious

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

The banking system may be broke, you can’t get a mortgage for love nor money, soldiers are being killed all the while in Afghanistan but one sector of human activity is alive and thriving – researching the bloody obvious.

In the past week, we have had an outfit calling itself Passenger Focus saying that British Rail fares are by far the highest in Western Europe. We are not talking about some piddling 10% here, they say our average rail fares are around 50% higher than on the Continent of Europe. Long distance, fully flexible, pay on the day, fares were 87% higher than the next highest country, Germany. And what is more, our fares for this are 3.5 times higher than the cheapest country, Holland.

When it comes to commuting, that is journeys of 25 miles or less, we happen to be 88% more expensive than the next country, France. On top of all this, some Government minister, Lord Adonis (you wouldn’t want to bend over in front of him) says it would cost £500 million a year to bring our commuter fares in line with the Continent. £500 million? What kind of flyshit is that compared to the bank bailout?

In all this some apologist has weighed in saying that Britain has more frequent trains. So what does that mean? Are they saying that by running more frequent trains half empty is a better bet than running less frequent trains which are three quarters full? Crap, I haven't done the figures but I do know intuitively that that would not account for anything like the fare difference. Down here in Cardiff you can get a train to London every 30 minutes through most of the day. Slash that to once an hour and maybe we might see a price reduction.

None of this is any surprise to anyone who has surfed the internet checking on rail prices at home and abroad.

Next we have some woman from Princeton University ( a really nice place and my friend Lin works there) telling us that pictures of bikini clad women in the workplace can make men see them as objects or tools rather than independent people. She apparently tested the men beforehand to determine their level of ‘sexual hostility’ and guess what? The men with the higher sexual hostility rating had lower empathy. Amazing isn’t it? Who could have guessed that?

Of course, she never bothered to check that attitudes of women who have hunky males on their calendars or their screen savers. After all, that might just have revealed that women were as ‘bad’ as men when regarding the opposite sex as objects.

And finally we come to the outstanding revelation that many British retailers have failed to pass on the VAT rate cut from 17.5% to 15%. Have they been asleep since this happened, I wonder? The cut was decided on overnight and most retailers didn’t have the time to change the labels so you got your VAT cut at the check out. Not for long though.

The labels were changed and afterwards you saw just as many prices such as £xxx.99 as before. Now hang on, let’s do some basic arithmetic. If it was £299.99 before the cut, then it should be £293.60 afterwards. Did we see a mushrooming of .60 tags? Hell no. Once the dust settled, the retailers went back to charging us what they like.

All this research would be fine if it cost nothing but it does and in the end, you, me and every other taxpayer funds it.

I tell you, the day is not long off when some Ph.D tells us that after two years intensive research, he has concluded that 5 years olds are generally smaller than adults or that lettuce is often green. And of course, you can only see the sun in the daytime.

UK Government & sex education

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

Britain has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Western Europe. Hardly surprising given that every Labour Government and quite a few Tories since 1964 has encouraged fecklessness through their 'It's not your fault,' message. Margaret Thatcher was unpopular partially because she hinted that 'Maybe it is your fault.'

Well the other week, we had the news that some lad, Alfie, aged 13, (and looking about 9) had fathered a kid with a 15 year old girl. So now we are going to get a Government leaflet entitled 'Talking to your teenager about Sex and Relationships.'

Well, for a start that would not have helped young Alfie since the lad was actually 12 (which is not a teenager by my definition) when he knocked her up. Too late for the Alfies then.

(As an aside I note that the mother in all this was named as Chantelle. Says it all doesn't it? Cursed by name from birth.)

The key message coming from this Government drivel is that parents should not impart their own values on the kids but encourage them to form their own values. Sounds good doesn't it but what if the kids' own values develop a taste for rape, murder, theft, grievous bodily harm etc. ? Are we to put them right on those things or do we pat them on the head and congratulate them for evolving into independent human beings?

Talking to myself

Saturday, February 14th, 2009

I have always talked to myself, not quietly but out loud. Linda, my secretary for 11 years, never got quite used to it. She used to hear me muttering and come into the office saying something like, ‘Sorry, what did you want?’ and I’d just say, ‘Nothing, I am talking to myself.’

In later years, I used to say, ‘I love talking to myself. It all makes perfect sense and I get no backchat.’ That was just whimsy.

I don’t see anything wrong in talking to yourself and certainly it is no sign of madness or mental derangement nor even schizophrenia. It’s a way of mulling things over, vocally. So when you have an issue on which to make a decision, you have to weigh up the pros and cons. So one part of you feels one way and another feels another and for me, it helps to have a dialogue with myself.

Some days you do this in writing. You take a page of paper and draw a line down the middle with the opposing comments or questions on each side. Other days, you divide your mind into two parts and conduct the dialogue aloud. I cannot honestly say what provokes me to do one thing or the other.

I talk to inanimate objects too like the television or the computer screen. I speak aloud when I am driving too. Who cares? I don’t and I don’t think I am really mad – well maybe, just a bit.

NASA/Europa and ESA/Ganymede

Thursday, January 19th, 2009

Oh wow! NASA is now planning a flight to Europa and the European Space Agency to Ganymede, both on the same rocket. The trouble for me is that it won’t go until 2020 and then it’s a six year flight + two and half years around Jupiter before they orbit these two moons so that’s like 2029 before we get results and I’ll be 85 or dead. No matter.

Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system and even bigger than the planet Mercury. It may have sub-surface water and therefore life – so that’s exciting already.

But Europa, oh I do wish I can see this visit. We are pretty confident of an ocean below that icy crust and maybe even life. Arthur C. Clarke, that most prescient of science fiction writers, speculated on this in his 2010 Space Odyssey book, the sequel to 2001.

Let’s not hope he was completely right about this for, in the book, Europa was protected by the obelisk and when the Earthlings left Jupiter’s orbit, they received the repeated message:

All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landings there.