You remember Friday afternoons when you were a child, the elation of knowing that the next day was SATURDAY the absolute BEST day! 3 O’Clock came and you would literally leap home from school (in the days when you were allowed to leave school before midnight), run in to Mum, (in the days when you were allowed to have a Mum who could stay at home and look after you), get a snack and dump the schoolbags, then run straight out into the street to play, play, play (in the days when you were allowed to play out). Remember that fantastic feeling that you would not have to think about going to school untill at least Sunday night when last minute homework was completed and you finally gave up kidding yourself it was still the weekend.
How could you forget being a child, when these little pleasures of life were the stuff of great happiness. The smell of toast, Mummy, the thought of holidays, Daddy laughing, SATURDAY!
Well a stupid little body of faceless bores has just announced that they want to BAN poor kids from having Saturday altogether. CentreForum, which is described as being a “Liberal think tank” ( the jury is out on whether Liberals can actually think, or feel or do anything human) has come up with the idea that basically because some schools are so bloody awfull that none of the children who go there actually get an education the best thing to do would be to send the children into these schools more often!
The Daily Telegraph (17th July) reported that “poor kids” would be forced to go into school on a Saturday and even during the holidays (click here). Of course it will only be poor kids who are affected by this, poor kids who are already suffering due to inadequate schooling are to be singled out as idiots and deprived of what may be the only thing left in todays society for children to enjoy. Because the state fails to provide proper schooling for poor children, (this is the state which insists on sticking its nose into everything and believing it can do it best) the answer is to punish those children by making then go to school on a Saturday.
But here’s the bit that will really take you to the fair, the schools where the children are being failed will get paid more money for being useless! Under the “think tank” scheme the “educators” of the poor children will get monetory hand outs to keep the silly rascals who can’t read and write locked up for another day. But wait, it gets better, this money is to be enough to have schools literally fighting to get poor kids enrolled. This is supposed to solve the problem? A load of rubbish schools scrapping over a handout?
NO, NO, NO! Resist! Surely people cannot be so brain dead that they would let this happen? If the state fails the schools and the schools fail the child then it is the State and the School that should be punished, not the child. The whole thing is upside down. Consider, a child should have Saturdays free to roam and play, to be children, in order for Saturdays to be free the child should have a good education during the week so he truly enjoys his Saturday and is a well rounded person, because he should have a good education there should be good schools for him to attend, because there should be good schools for him to attend our society should ensure that good schools and teachers are in place for him. He is the centre, if the other things fail him then they should go.
Do not crush that little poor child, with his cheeky Saturday face and his bruised kneecaps. Do not crush his simple pleasures at beeing free on a Saturday to be a boy. No, the whole state should stop and reconsider, parliament should put all things on hold, the media should be in UPROAR untill that child is guaranteed the freedom to be a boy on a Saturday.
Crush the dammed “think tank”, crush CentreForum, crush the schools, crush the state but do not crush the child. Do not take his Saturday away, this child, who might not read and write because he has never been taught to. His life will surely be a hard one today. His adulthood marred by the disadvantage of his youth, but now he is oblivious to this hardness, do not force his head down yet and break him. Leave this child alone to his blyth indifference, as short a time as that may be.
There’s a beautifull poem by Whittier written in 1855 when boys were still allowed, it starts ” Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! With thy turned-up pantaloons, And thy merry whistled tunes….” Its a far cry from todays beleaguered children but it still rings true, we still see them, now and then, in glimpses, those “barefoot boys”, resilient and bold, but still just children. Do not punish them because they are poor, rather love them more because of it.
(aknowladgements to Chesterton)
Dear St Joan Of Arc Pray For Us.
This is the last portrait of the Madonna and Child acomplished by Bellini. This subject was his particular favourite as can be seen in the tenderness apparent from the painting.
1 response so far ↓
Jan Baker // December 11, 2008 at 4:25 pm |
Oh it is so true! And so unnecessary! The problem is that educators have abandoned standards and thus, no matter how many hours the children spend at school, they learn nothing. Like the ‘news,’ where reporters go about asking ordinary people without any evidence or inside information to opine about the stock market, the guilt of this or that politician, and a whole host of questions that require data to answer, as if all opinions are equal, teachers follow the same procedures in the classroom. Then students, faced with the inevitable tests of real knowledge, whether paper and pencil or simply performing real work after graduation, cannot pass them.
I have retired from teaching, but by accident I learned about the standards-based method of instruction, and became my district’s ‘wonder teacher.’ It simply involved using a model of recognized excellence, like, say, taking an essay of G.K.’s, and helping kids to break it down, identify those elements that made it good. How does the first paragraph start? What does that third sentence do? How many errors are there (none!)? How many interesting words? What is the shape of the sentences, all the same or do they vary? And how do they vary? And so forth. We would make a list of the characteristics, and then write to imitate them. I scored the work according to the model, but on a sliding scale of course. Everybody knew what they had to do to get an A, and why their own attempt still might earn only a C. My kids ‘essay test scores went so high the authorities came to investigate, and stayed to praise. And yet they did not promote the same method among my peers–because they would not recognize any standards of excellence! As liberals, they could not! They continued to act as if all work by all kids was ‘equal’ and could not understand why the kids couldn’t pass the state tests. And we too began after-school-school, and before-school-school, and Saturday school, and they would have been open on Sunday but they finally ran out of money. This was in Pittsburgh, USA.