Following a week of criticism, a Scottish MP has called for Sir Fred Goodwin, former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, to be stripped of his knighthood.
The last paragraph of a BBC News article reads:
Sir Fred was given his knighthood for services to banking in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in June 2004.
What would you do?
So often as I do come across stories of note on the BBC website – such as this one: The Beauty of Maths – it is not often that these stories strike a chord particularly.
But this one does. It highlights the problem of a lack of teachers of Mathematics in secondary schools, and how such a negative view of Mathematics by adults and children alike are damaging the chances of finding raw mathematical talent.
I had once been drawn to teaching, and particularly of Mathematics at secondary school. However, there is little that draws me there now. All those things that attracted me to the profession are the same ones that make me feel that teaching Mathematics privately is a more attractive option. It is of little wonder that the turnover of teachers in the field is so frequent, when quite frankly the prospect of teaching is financially uncompetitive and offers far more in terms of drawbacks than perks.
Why did these chickens cross the road?
Alistair Devine, the nude photographer of his own project Stripped Naked, is using his chosen medium and taboo subject matter to highlight the sectarian differences between Glasgow Celtic and Glasgow Rangers football clubs. In an article on BBC News, is asking for hundreds of willing volunteers to pose naked to show Celtic and Rangers fans meeting in harmony. So if you’re eighteen or over, like football, and don’t mind getting your bits out, this could be the thing for you!
But you won’t find me there!
If we were looking for a prophet of our times, we really need not look any further than David Cameron. I had underestimated his delightful pearls of wisdom, but if you think about what he says for long enough, perhaps they will start to make sense eventually.
Taken from the BBC News website, David Cameron prophesies that keeping struggling pupils back a year will create a magical revolution in schools.
In the original article in the Sunday Telegraph by Patrick Hennessy, David Cameron talks about making weaker pupils attend summer schools at the end of Year 6 – the final year of primary school – to improve before secondary school. Furthermore, a pupil would retake the final year if their achievements do not meet government targets – I would assume. Hennessy writes:
[The proposal's] most eye-catching initiative is a call for the worst performers at the end of year six – the final year at primary school, when children reach the age of 11 – to catch up either by attending summer schools or in some cases resitting the entire year. This would lead to children of much more widely differing ages becoming classmates than is usual in the present system, which is strictly delineated by age.
If I may be so bold so as to suggest that mixing class ages in this manner is deluded, then I should remind David Cameron of a few things. Firstly, an underachieving child faces trauma enough, without being threatened of the possibility of having to face another year of school. Secondly, dragging a child down a year is not going to improve that child’s confidence – anything but. Even if the child is not embarrassed by being brought back a year, there is a transparent possibility that he or she will have constant reminders. Thirdly, both Cameron and Hennessy may well have forgotten about forming and forging social groups, and losing the security of your social circles will probably hinder a child’s development anyway.
But I could be wrong. Prophet Cameron might have forseen a successful blue future… But I reckon if that happens and your child hates school now, I’d consider a personal tutor.
As a child from a so-called "broken family", I would have been expected to have been an unruly and rebellious child. Perhaps what stopped me was my conscience.
And then you get reports like this article from the BBC, revealing that three thousand crimes were committed by those under ten years of age. Because they are under ten, they are not accountable and will not face criminal charges.
Later in that article, there is a debate over whether the age for which children can be criminally responsible should be changed. On the one hand, Lawrence Lee – one of the defendant lawyers in the James Bulger case – believes it wouldn’t be a good idea, but also says:
… if you go along to any estate and see the age of kids marauding around like a pack of wolves, you’d see that reducing the age of criminal responsibility to eight or nine would be vital.
On the other hand, Bob Reitemeier of the Children’s Society would like the age to rise to 14, citing the age for which a child can have sex and vote as support to his argument.
The flaw is that most children learn, as part of their early development, about consequences to their actions. They are supposed to have developed a conscience, and failing that they should have learned to realise that wrong-doing will be followed by a harsh sanction. That is what stops myself – and most people – from stealing their daily loaf.
I feel that all children – no matter what age they are – should be punished if they knowingly do wrong. I fail to see what harm there is in the police taking a child to the police station. I also fail to see how a nine year old is not criminally responsible for vandalism, theft and wounding, when obviously I would be.
Half the problem is that kids know they can get away with it.
I don’t like to get too political, unless either I feel strongly about something, or something is so ridiculous it is worth mentioning. This is one such occasion.
David Cameron hasn’t had a good week. When he isn’t making an arse out of himself, someone else seems to be doing it for him. After all the media’s guffaws at the gaffes over the Conservative’s hospital "report", with apologies given then retracted, Cameron goes and says this:
Common sense suggests that with young people you need to hit them where it hurts: in their lifestyle and their aspirations.
If someone claims that common sense suggests that punishing youths faced with no future is to make sure they have absolutely no hope, I would suggest that this person has no common sense.
This quote is from a story on the BBC News website, where Cameron suggests that young offenders should be immediately barred from driving. This seems a little backward from the Tories: promoting civil liberties with one hand and taking them away with the other.
The real problem the Tories face when tackling social disorder is that they have absolutely no clue. A lot of what they "know" about social imbalances and antisocial behaviour is what is found in newspapers. It is akin to me commenting about the state of Iraq: I have no clue because I have never been there. But for Cameron to come up with hair-brain schemes to combat these problems, which really aren’t any better than trying to hug all the hoodies, is akin to me saying that we should solve all the problems in Iraq by banning all bombs.
Today is the 15th birthday of the “World Wide Web”. (It is also the birthday of the as yet unnamed niece of Shell – congratulations!) I noticed an article on the BBC News website, where a handful of panellists gave their opinions on the bad things of the Internet as it is today.
My concerns are that of personal freedom. On the one hand, while we have the freedom to write more or less anything we want, our friends in China are not, unless they access this site in an ‘underhand’ way. Just the same, if we were to write something on our sites that could libellous – or worse – if we can be identified, then we could find ourselves in deep trouble.
On the other hand, extremists use the Internet to promote their material across the world without trace or threat of action. It would be hypocritical of me to say these sites should be shut down – that would inhibiting free speech. But it worries me that such sites exist.
I suppose I am just left-wing at heart. It would be nice if everything could be resolved. Including the Internet.
It has been a peculiar day – not least because of the freak events of Chester-le-Street, County Durham. Around thirty people were swept up inside an inflatable structure and were hauled across a park with as many as five hundred onlookers. Two died, and thirteen are seriously injured:
The sculpture – called Dreamspace – is thought to have drifted for up to 40m before catching on a CCTV camera post and coming down near a children’s playground. The sculpture, created by artist Maurice Agis, has appeared at venues around the world and has recently featured on the Derren Brown television show.
Source: BBC NewsI was all but 100 yards away at my aunty and uncle’s house. We saw the helicopters going by. We had gone passed the installation on the way there – no sign of what was to come. On the way back, we saw the deflated item quite far from where it had been initially. Shocking.
After that tragic news, perhaps something a little different. As I type my wrist is strapped in bandages. To clarify, this is my left wrist, and I am extremely right-handed. So it isn’t too much of a hindrance. But it bloody hurts. Having said that it feels a bit better now.
As I half-mentioned, I went to see my aunty, uncle and cousins today. They seem to be fine, which is good. They are going on holiday soon to the Isle Of White. Lucky them! And it seems Nicola might be joining the Army. Interesting.
I have just read in the BBC News that the government wants a register of the top 5% pupils in schools who are considered to be gifted and talented. This is so that schools identify their most able students and provide more personalised and focussed programmes for them, and give them more to do outside of school.
This will prove controversial, especially as talent and gift are difficult to measure, particularly in developing pupils, who may wander in and out of that magic 5% as they progress through their school careers.
When I was school, which was a grammar school, those that were talented were singled out. In Year 11, about 30 out of the pool of 120 in the year were selected and put into one class. For that year, that was as good as it got. I don’t feel that we were pushed or encouraged any more: rather more we were encouraged to feel a little more big-headed and a cut above.
About five of us were also carted out to visit Cambridge University in Year 9 or so… the effect was that we were taken out of school for a day, and we indulged in the feat that we had achieved in that we were considered, at that early stage, material for Cambridge. I remember that at the time I thought it would be a doddle to get there.
In Years 12 and 13, about six or seven of us were invited to “E.
A.
T.
C.” – or Exceptionally Able and Talented Children. This was a lesson taken in our own time to discuss our A Level subjects to a depth not expected at A Level. In practice, this was just an exercise in talking in front of a small number of people about a topic that was loosely based on our subjects and tied more with our interests. I feel that it might have been useful had I applied for Oxbridge. But seeing as I didn’t – and that I didn’t attend a single interview to get to university – it didn’t seem like a huge help.
So what good will singling out these children do? They will be expected to attend summer classes and do extra work. Not sure I would have appreciated it… Having said, I think I would have achieved much more if I felt was being monitored more closely.BBC News – What constitutes a gifted pupil?
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