I can’t help feeling that this could be the most insane thing I read about all year.
Of course schools need playgrounds, schools should not be a form of imprisonment - it’s bad enough that most office workers don’t get enough exercise, without getting children into bad habits that early. It seems like a form of child abuse, not to mention a recipe for disaster.
According to the BBC:
Sir Ian Blair said: “While the response of the Metropolitan police and other forces will be extremely robust around youth violence when it is committed, we should also be thinking about how to stop children drifting into these gangs.
“One of the ideas I have asked to be explored is that where an older sibling is clearly involved in gang activity, the right way forward is that there should be a child protection approach for any younger sibling who is clearly at risk of moving into a lifestyle which is extremely dangerous to that child.”
which has become a Have Your Say item:
Should children in gangs be protected?
Britain’s most senior policeman has said children lured into gangs should be treated like victims of abuse. Do you agree?
Notice the subtle change? Suddenly he wants to protect the guilty rather than (as he stated) protect the innocent. And of course most of the posters instead of doing some checking and realising the basis for the discussion is nonsense start blaming the “liberals” - I’ve yet to meet one of these liberals who prefers criminals to their victims, but there must be a lot of them because they always get the blame along with their PC compatriates on Have Your Say. Doesn’t anyone read anymore?
I was browsing the government petitions and came across the following two mutually exclusive petitions
Faith schools remove the rights of children to choose their own religious, philosophical and ethical beliefs. They also sanction ethnic segregation and create tension and divisiveness within society. Schools should be places where children are given a free education, not centres for indoctrination. Creationism and other religious myths should not be taught as fact regardless of the funding status of a school. Abolishing faith schools will provide children with more freedom of choice and help to promote a fully multi-cultural, peaceful society.
Faith schools help to ensure that children develop mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually and morally. As such faith schools ensure children are well placed to choose their own religious, philosophical and ethical beliefs. Schools should be places where children are given a full education, not centres where the spiritual and moral is excluded. Evolution and other scientific theories should not be taught as fact but instead along side other ‘faith’ views of origins. Supporting faith schools will provide children with a fuller education, parents with the choice of such for their children and help to promote a fully multi-cultural and peaceful society.
I find it amusing that the “for” is quite clearly based on the “against”, but really both petitions annoy me since they both seem to assume that faith schools and creationism go hand in hand. I believe that faith schools are a good thing, but I also accept evolution as a fact and Genesis as parable.
I’ve just tried to use the “Choose and Book” on NHS Healthspace to arrange my appointment with ENT and the stupid thing doesn’t support Firefox - great -1 for good design practice there. To make matters worse it is the most unhelpful site I have seen in ages - verdict abysmal.
There is now an online edition of the Domesday book, but it suffers a similar problem to the 1901 census you have to pay to look at it. Quite frankly it sucks, presumably the digitisation has been paid for out of the public purse and the public should have free access to what is a valuable educational resource. I see the 900th anniversary version is free.
I’ve just seen a post on lifehacker about how to quickly convert from the 24 hour clock to a 12 hour clock which basically boils down to how to subtract 12, take away the 10 first and then take away the 2 and the snobbish comments following the post have to be seen to be believed.
A year or so back Ruth did a course on teaching basic skills and as a result of her doing that course I hope that I have changed my attitude to people’s core skills. Folks, there are a lot (and I mean a huge number) who find even basic arithmetic hard and anyone who chooses to laugh at them in public really should remember the motto “if you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all.”.
Back page of this months PC Pro has Jon Honeyball complaining about the stuff people put in blogs and I can’t help feeling he is missing the point. I have three blogs and none of them have him as an audience, the target audience is me (the one who will exist in two weeks time and not remember today) and my family, if anyone else finds anything useful so be it. Yes, I know I am posting in the open but so what? When I have a conversation on the bus other people can choose to listen, but I don’t worry about that.
Two weeks ago we bought our youngest his first pair of shoes, today we are buying his second since at some point while traipsing round Walsall in the torrential rain one of them has gone missing. First person to design shoes that toddlers can’t pull off gets my custom.