Tell me this isn't a coincidence

First, there's this:

A chief examiner at one of Britain’s biggest exam boards was recorded boasting about the lack of substance in the company’s tests – and their disbelief that it has been cleared by the official regulator.
Steph Warren, in charge of Edexcel GCSE Geography, said that teachers should pick her company’s exam because “you don’t have to teach a lot”.

And then there's this:

Now I do realise that these are from different countries but the UK and US have quite a lot in common, including the modern sleb culture and persistent worries about dumbing down of edumacation - 'dumbing down' is an American phrase, after all. If you want a more UK-centric example of sleb-fascination as an alternative to news you don't have to look far. Looking at The Daily Mail's site now their sidebar consists of the following (and I really don't blame if you don't read every line of this):

• Something about Sinead O'Connor getting married again
• A story about the average weight of British women
• Something about Anna Nicole-Smith, who is apparently still dead
• Something about Angelina Jolie
• Something about Jennifer Lopez
• Something about X-Factor judges who are apparently called Gary, Kelly and Tulisa (who, who, who and who gives a fuck?)
• Something about someone called Selena Gomez and Justin fucking Bieber
• A story about a single father raising twins
• Something by Jan Moir about someone called Caroline Flack
• Something about someone called Kimberley Walsh
• Something about someone called Irina Shayk
• Something about Charlize Theron's clothes
• Something about someone called Chelsee Healey
• Something about someone called Kate Upton
• Something about Prince William's wife's clothes
• Something about Declan Donnelly's car
• Something about Katie Price
• Something about someone called Lea Michele
• Something about someone called Kris Jenner being upset about something Daniel Craig said
• Something about someone called Alicia Douvall
• Something about something called a Kardashian (who are apparently not Star Trek aliens but real people... for a given value of real)
• Something about someone called Amanda Seyfried
• Something by Jizz Loans
• Something about someone called Harry Judd
• Something about Paris Hilton
• Something about Beyoncé whatsername
• Something about Twiggy
• Something about Salma Hayek's tits
• Something else about that Caroline Flack person again, but not by Jan Moir
• Something about a coat owned by Emma Watson, Natalie Portman and someone called Kristen Stewart
• Something about someone called Anna Massey in something about a loony in Broadmoor
• Something about someone called Amy Childs
• Something about Ray Winstone being in something
• Something about David Jason being in something
• Something else about Angelina Jolie
• Something about someone called Jacqui Ainsley
• Something about Louise Redknapp's shampoo
• Something about Sacha Baron Cohen
• Something about someone called Kara Tointon
• Something about Venus Williams
• Something about someone called Kelly Rowland and someone called Amelia
• Something about something called JWoww (who seems to be a person but sounds like a cleaning product)
• Something about someone called Jennifer Hudson
• Something about someone called Kitty Brucknell
• Something about a transexual trying to turn him/herself into Barbie (just more plastic, I assume)
• Something about someone called Jennifer Garner
• Something about one of Michael Jackon's kids being in a film or something
• Something about someone called Christine Bleakley
• Something about that Grilled Bear bloke meeting Mrs Queen
• Something about someone called Andrew Garfield
• Something about someone called Pat Sharp and her daughter, and someone called Mark Wright
• Something about Andie MacDowell's daughter
• Something about someone called Rachel Crow
• Something about another one of the Kardashians
• Something about someone called Kris Humphries
• Something about someone called Dianna Agron and someone called Sebastian Stan (almost current affairs in that he sounds like he might be a country)
• Something about Shakira
• Something about someone called Coco Rocha
• Something about Jessica Alba's sprog meeting Santa
• Something that might be about sexual abuse in Mormon communities, but might be more about some Mormon piano group
• Something about someone who's someone's widow being angry with Alec Baldwin for whatever he did on that plane
• Something about Michael Jackson's doctor getting a prison visit
• Something about that Katherine Heigl who used to be in Grey's Annoying Me
• Something about that Tiff Needell who used to be in the old Top Gear
• Something about someone called Toni Collette
• Something about Kirstie Alley's current size
• Something about Demi Moore's daughter's arse
• Something about something called Chord Overstreet (who seems to be a person but sounds like gameplay from Guitar Hero) and someone called Emma Roberts
• Something about someone called Demi Lovato (who seems to be a person but sounds like musical notation)
• Something about someone called Jennifer Hudson
• Something about that Amy Childs again
• Something about someone called Selma Blair
• Something about Jessica Alba
• Something about Lady Gaga
• Something about Gwyneth Paltrow
• Something about Cheryl Cole
• Something about Christina Ricci
• Something else about Katie bloody Price
• Something about handbags
• Something about shops
• Something about shopping
• Something about Tom Cruise
• Something else about this Demi Lovato
• Something else about this Emma Roberts person having a tattoo like the one in that book about the girl with a tattoo
• Something about bridesmaids wearing tuxedos
• Something else about Tom Cruise
• Something about someone called Kendra Wilkison
• Something about someone called Kevin Federline
• A story about a fake doctor doing bad cosmetic surgery in the US
• Something about new Top Shop branches coming to your local high street, providing you live in Australia
• Something about someone called Abigail Breslin
• Something about someone called Danny O'Donaghue and Tom Jones
• Something about Jersey Shore
• Something about Brad Pitt's hair
• Something about someone called Ali Larter's son
• Something about cocaine and Charlie Sheen and someone called Brooke Mueller
• A story about how Christmas drives everyone fucking nuts
• Something about that horsey woman from Sex and the City
• Something else about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
• Something about a body scanner, but at clothes shops to help you buy stuff rather than airports to help delay you while you're treated as a suspected terrorist
• Something about some people called Arg, Mark and Dougie
• Something about Lindsay Lohan
• Something about Nigella Lawson
• Something else about Emma Watson, but apparently not her coat this time
• Something about someone called Adele
• Something about money and divorces
• Something that might be about sexual abuse in Mormon communities, but might be more about some Mormon piano group, and appears to be exactly the same something as the something about sexual abuse/Mormon pianists from earlier
• Something about someone called Jeff Probst and someone called Lisa Ann Russell
• Something about someone called Patrica Klanic whose husband is a soccer player and has been accused of rape
• Something about Blur
• Something else about Andie MacDowell
• Something about Cameron Diaz
• Something about David Cameron's hair (for fuck's fucking sake I'm fucking losing the fucking will to fucking live here)
• Yet another fucking thing about this Caroline Flack and someone called harry Styles
• Something about Prince Harry and his brother's wife's sister, except not really because they're only lookalikes (that's it - when I'm finished with this I'm going to book a holiday where I'm legally allowed to shoot things)
• Something about Katy Perry
• Something about that woman who looked all upset when Jeremy Clarkson said he wanted to shoot strikers and how she used to have a damp spot for Jason Donovan
• Something about a model who's going bald
• Jesus H. Christ in a fucking mothership, something else about Tom fucking Cruise
• Something else about a Kardashian, possibly one of the ones from earlier but I'm so far past fucking caring at this point I just asked Mrs Exile to hold a mirror up under my nose
• Something about Prince Charles not understanding Peter Kay's jokes or something
• Something about Madonna likeing Prince William's wife's clothes
• Something about someone called Gamu
• Something about someone called Zac Effron kissing Michelle Pfeiffer
• Something about Dawn French's clothes

For those that skipped much of that list it's 125 articles, 95% of which involve slebs, and close to 0% of which involve actual news. Okay, sure, they do put a lot of shite in the sidebar and more newsy news in the main bit, but even there Sinead O'Connor puts in an appearance along with one or two things about house prices (wouldn't be the Mail without them, would it?) while the story about exams being made easier appears nearly halfway down the home page.

Coincidence? I find that hard to believe. Whether it's just an effect of successive governments prioritising the appearance of educational success over actually educating or whether it's a deliberate attempt to create Orwell's proles, the undereducated 85% who were conditioned to have little or no interest in the world but were easy to manipulate. As always I tend to go with Hanlon's Razor and assume stupidity and cupidity over conspiracies, but sometimes I do wonder.

Greengrocer's in the public s'ector s'trike

H/T Nanny Know's Be'st

Permitted discrimination

We all know that we're not allowed to discriminate against almost anyone these days, even though discrimination is, when you get right down to it, someone just making a choice. It might well be a choice that I think makes them an arsehole but the point is that it's their choice. Still, when it comes to people who might look different, have different body parts in their underpants, worship a different sky-being or even worship the same one in a different way, it's a choice you're expected not to make anymore.

No, not even if they are ginger.

Not a bitch, okay?

However, the operative word in that opening sentence up there is 'almost' because the other thing we all know is that discriminating against the English is just fucking fine by everybody.* And so I see that Scotland have discriminated - in the sense of a choice and in the spirit of take and take - to take the fifteen hundred quid a head extra they get under the Barnett Formula and at the same time charge English students the thick end of ten grand to go to a Scottish uni.

But only English students.

Education Secretary Michael Russell this week announced that Scottish universities would be allowed to charge students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland up to £9000 (A$13,500) a year from 2012-13, after England and Wales raised their own tuition fees.
But Mr Russell reiterated his commitment to keep higher education tuition-free for Scottish students.
This means students from the other 26 European Union member nations can study for free too, because EU laws essentially preclude members from discriminating against citizens of partner nations, but leave them free to discriminate within their own country.

So there you have it. England and Scotland, not partner nations. The Act of Union is over 300 years old and the Union itself a century older, the two countries have benefitted from each other down the years, and currently one derives a not inconsiderable financial benefit - not just the Barnett Formula but the large public sector north of the border - but whatever that makes them they're certainly not partners because the EU says partner nations' governments can't screw each others' citizens. Screwing their own is okay, and of course that's a principle function of government. And therefore screwing different groups of citizens is presumably a domestic issue that the EU isn't too interested in. It's discrimination, sure, but it's officially sanctioned discrimination which means it's perfectly fine and above board.

So suck it up, fellow countrymen, and pay up without complaining. And please remember not to take it out on any gingers even if it seems like they deserve it.

No, look, it doesn't go up your nose, it's ... oh, nevermind

* Presumably not fine by English students wanting to study in Scotland, but I imagine they don't really count anyway.

Bullying victim snaps - the animated version

Yep, Casey the Chifley College bullying victim has had the Taiwanese computer animation treatment from NMA TV.



Is there nothing they can't make completely bizarre yet strangely compelling?

On a side note news.com.au are saying that western Sydney is divided over the issue.

"Good on him. I was so happy to see a bully finally getting what he deserved," one St Marys resident said.
"I don't condone violence but when kids stage an attack like that and record it to humiliate the victim it's wrong."
But another resident Jayne Saunders said: "He could have broken that little kid's neck."

An explanation might be needed for Jayne and others thinking the same way: when you continually harass and provoke and torment a placid pet to the point it goes nuts and attempts to bite someone's face off you've sown the seeds of your own misfortune. The kid who was picking on Casey - who is apparently not at all sorry for doing so - might have had his neck broken, and had that happened it would have been as a direct result of the violent incident he himself initiated. The question Jayne Saunders and co. are probably not asking themselves is what would Casey have done to Ritchard Gale if the he and the other bullies had simply left him alone. Almost certainly the answer is:

Absolutely nothing.

What did you get up to in school today, kids?

Nothing much. Oh, apart from it was our turn to look after the crocodile. That was pretty good.

THE Northern Territory News launched a snappy new promotion this weekend, giving away a crocodile to a school in its area.
...
Staff from a reptile park in the territory capital, Darwin, will set up a crocodile enclosure at the winning school and train a lucky class in how to care for their new reptilian mascot.

Well, on the one hand a school pet that's likely to live as long as and possibly even longer than any of the pupils has got to be better than upsetting all the kids when the hamsters all drop dead again. Hear that, Lydd Primary School in Kent? You thought it'd toughen the kids up and teach them a useful life lesson to have them raise a lamb that they'd eventually vote on whether send off to be turned into chops. In the Territory they'll feed lambs to their school pet and their grandchildren will decide whether to send it off to be turned into luggage.

On the other hand it's a fucking crocodile. A whole new meaning could apply to the phrase, "I'm just taking class 3E to feed the school pet."

Crocodile, for Daily Mail picture editors

And just in case David Attenborough has been in your magic fishtank and explained a bit about Australian crocodiles and you're expecting this to be a smaller and relatively safe freshwater crocodile rather than a much larger and much more dangerous two-fucking-attacks-in-2011-already saltwater crocodile, you'd be wrong. The reptile park, Crocosaurus Cove, makes a thing of having the real monsters if their website is anything to go by.

Enter the world of the awesome Northern Territory Saltwater Crocodile, with some of the largest in captivity on display. Fish for crocs, ‘Swim with the Crocs’ in the separate pool along side the croc enclosure, or enter the “Cage of Death”.

Cage of Death? If they get one of those too that'd be one school that never has any discipline problems. If I don't find out who threw that then the whole class - and I do mean the whole class - will be in the Cage of Death after school.

Sadly, if you're thinking of moving to the NT, finding out which school wins the crocodile and enrolling your own children there purely to make sure they grow up tougher than anyone you know you'll almost certainly be too late. The lucky school only gets the crocodile for just one term, and that's a pity because I liked the idea of there being a school producing year after year of school leavers conditioned to utter a single phrase whenever the subject of educational animals comes up. Altogether now:

"That's not a school pet... THIS is a school pet."

What did you learn in school today, hon?

Unusually for me I can't make my mind up about this one.

[Smithereens,] a book of gruesome short stories, which includes a task asking students to write two suicide notes, is being taught to 13-year-olds at some schools, prompting adolescent health experts to warn it could encourage vulnerable teens to self harm.
...
Australian Childhood Foundation chief executive Joe Tucci said schools should not be asking students to rehearse potentially harmful behaviour. ''When you encourage adolescents to undertake activities that blur the line between fantasy and reality … it might tip them into undertaking that activity,'' he said.
Childhood pyschologist Michael Carr-Gregg said Smithereens should be immediately removed from schools.
''It could give them ideas about self harm and potentially lead them to believe the world is a bleaker, darker, more miserable place than it actually is,'' Dr Carr-Gregg said.

Well, actually I'm settled on one or two things, chief of which is this paranoia that children and adolescents are so fucking fragile these days that almost anything is seen as liable to tip them over the edge in some way, is probably a bit over the top. Newsflash: at school we did Lord of the Flies without becoming savages (well, more savage than teenagers are naturally), To Kill A Mockingbird without instantly becoming racists, lawyers or Gregory Peck, and a couple of Shakespeare romance comedies without anyone expressing a desire get into any item of female attire except in the sense that teenage boys normally want to. My teenage years are not so far behind me that I don't recall them quite well, and I can say without any hesitation that we were able to tell the bloody difference between the written word and the real world. Teenagers don't shatter when they read something depressing. No, probably not even the emos.

On the other hand it does seem like the kind of book I'd have hated to get in English class. Lord of the Flies was depressing and bored my arse off so thoroughly that I used to fall over sitting down. Part of its educational effect on me was that I didn't learn what a good book it is until school was a few years behind me, but at the time I had to read it I did not actually read it at all. I read just enough of it to get the homework done without too many really crap marks, and not a single sentence more. What I'd like to have read would have been some Tom Clancy or something. Or perhaps Alastair MacClean or Ian Fleming if it had to be something a bit older.* Something with some bloody excitement in, for Christ's sake. So if at the start of a new term the English teacher had plopped a copy of Smithereens on my desk it might have induced feelings of suicide, though not for the reasons that have been suggested, but they would quickly have given way to narcolepsy and catatonia.** And that's it.

Maybe it's different if you're a parent. Maybe I'd also send my offspring off each day with a little part of my mind gibbering and fretting about their safety and their wellbeing until I saw them again each evening. Actually I'm sure I would, but I hope I'd also recognise that they're likely to be little different from the rest of us at the same age. So despite the headline that made me think it'd be more of this or this the thing I'm really unsure about is just the appeal to kids of that age and wether it can tear them away from fluffy and non-violent things like World of Modern Zombie Warfare Combatcraft 2. And Facebook.

So why the hell are they actually bothering? Ah, silly me, the answer has been staring me in the face all the time. Looks like they're afraid of someone suing for compo.

If a student harmed themselves after reading it, the school could be in breach of its duty of care.

And they're worried about the stuff in the book making people depressed? What the fuck do they think their reaction to it is doing?

* Just about everyone read Lord of the Rings themselves. Boys' school. I imagine it's normal.
** The thought of Cerys Matthews might have woken everyone up again. Boys' school. Probably normal as well.

Strange sort of maths lesson.

I have no idea what sort of questions will be asked in lessons as a result of this.

Children are to be taught about homosexuality in maths, geography and science lessons as part of a Government-backed drive to "celebrate the gay community".
...
Lesson plans have been drawn up for pupils as young as four, in a scheme funded with a £35,000 grant from an education quango, the Training and Development Agency for Schools.
...
Among the suggestions are:
Maths – teaching statistics through census findings about the number of homosexuals in the population, and using gay characters in scenarios for maths problems;

"If Alan is being spit roasted by Brian and Charlie but all three change places every time and go at it twice a day how long will it take for them to get through a 12 pack of condoms? There is certainly no need to show how you arrived at your answer."

This is for kids as young as four, yes? An age at which homo-, hetero-, bi- or anything-sexual is meaningless. Oh, sure, kids that young might use gay epithets but without any real understanding of what it is they're saying. At that age just fucking tell them how to add up and subtract for Christ's fucking sake. You can leave it 'til they hit puberty to tell them not to beat each other up because someone thinks someone else is gay.

'Kinell.

When did The Mash stop doing piss-takes and start doing policies?

I ask only because this makes more sense than some things that are being suggested.

As angry students demanded the right to help themselves to other people's money, MPs backed an amendment to the government's higher education funding proposals to just scrap the fucking thing.

...

Professor Henry Brubaker, director of the Institute for Studies and a long time campaigner for the abolition of universities, said: "Hospitals can train doctors, law firms can train lawyers, journalists can be trained by children and sociologists can train themselves by watching television for six hours a day.

"The vast majority of 'careers' are complete bullshit anyway. Sending people to university just means you get pointless, bullshit jobs being done by someone who has spent three years and thirty grand turning themselves into an arse."

Or increasingly someone who has spent even more time and money getting a Master's or something, because these days nearly everyone their age has a vanilla degree in something and they're starting to feel a need to separate themselves from the crowd. You know, a bit like a degree used to do.

Dumming down at The Tellygraff - UPDATED

Okay, everybody makes a typo here and there. I'm no different and now and then I do catch one while re-reading an old post I'm about to reference or quote. However, in my defence I have to point out that the entire staff here at Chez Exile consists of me, myself and I, with cups of tea, additional opinions and interesting links to engage and enrage me occasionally provided by the lovely Mrs Exile. Thorough proof reading is often a casualty if it's late or a nice weekend afternoon or if I'm rushing to get a post off before doing something else because I don't have anyone else to do it. Newspapers do, so I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about taking the piss out of them for poor English. What I am starting to feel a bit guilty about is focusing on The Grauniad and its long standing rep because these days The Telegraph seems to be worse. I screen-capped an article there the other day in which "Philippines" had been given no less than four Ps in one use (still uncorrected at time of blogging), though the correct spelling had been used in the rest of the piece, but I'm not going to put it up to giggle over because I've since seen a better one. How unfortunate for The Teletubbiegraph that the article is about education, falling standards and the plan for pupils to lose marks for using poor English in their exams.

To their credit someone at the paper seems to have spotted and corrected it before the commenters started, but the point is that The Tele do seem to be a bit slack at checking things before hitting the publish button. Not just spelling. Whoever is responsible for pictures and captions has let a few howlers slip through. Aside from several mislabeled animals and other gaffs spotted by the Ambush Predator there's this shotgun masquerading as an air rifle and more recently this "small-calibre weapon" (small compared to what? An artillery piece?). I mean, if you don't understand the terms and can't be bothered to look them up why bother with the picture at all?

And then there's the question of what on earth they're thinking when they select certain pictures for certain stories. Back in January for a warble gloaming doom story about how the decade was the hottest ever the picture caption read:

The Goddard Institute for Space Studies report found temperatures had been getting steadily warmer over the past three decades.

You might expect whoever does the pictures to have used a graph illustrating this claim - and surely there was one in the GISS report - but what they actually chose to show this worrying trend in all its apocalyptic glory was a stock agency photo of a blonde girl in a bikini posing on a beach.

What's that supposed to say about the story? We're all going to die, but some girls have got lovely tits, eh? I can't help feeling it says more about declining standards at The Tele than anything else.


UPDATE - sadbutmadlad in the comments points out that there's another mistake in The Tele's picture caption. Instead of "written English" they've put "written english". Good spot, SBML. The Telegraph slips a little further.

What are they teaching kids these days?

By the approving sounds of some lecturers, rioting, trespass and property damage. I dunno, once upon a time it was apples on the desk. In my school days it the occasional bag of sweets or, for one particular teacher, Monster Munch. Now it seems like if you want to be teacher's pet you have to smash a few windows in and drop fire extinguishers on coppers from a high roof.

The times are a-changing.

When I was a child I had more freedoms to look forward to as I grew up. Some were freedoms my parents decided I was ready for, such as crossing the road to the park on my own, riding my bike on the road, going to the local shops, sometimes with a signed note from Mum or Dad asking for a packet or two of Embassy since I was some years off 16 - I doubt many shopkeepers would do that now for fear that it was a local Trading Standards op or even that someone would simply dob them in. For others I was automatically considered ready by the state, such as buying and using my own tobacco, having sex, driving, buying alcohol* and standing for Parliament (which doesn't come with the freedom to do all the rest simultaneously although the behaviour of some MPs may suggest it comes with the misapprehension that it does). It would be a pretty depressing state of affairs if the reality was that you're born free** and then grow up looking forward to your freedom being progressively infringed and eroded, wouldn't it? Nah, surely not... that's just ol' Angry Exile's deeply ingrained cynicism, right?

Wrong, because thanks to a revoltingly authoritarian head teacher there's one neighbourhood here where kids can look forward to losing the freedom of association when they start primary school.

Students at [Osbourne Primary School in Mount Martha] on the Mornington Peninsula have been banned from congregating in groups of more than three in a bid to stop gangs of children teasing and upsetting their classmates.

...

In the latest edition of the school's newsletter, principal Liz Klein wrote that the rule was introduced to stop "gangs of students wandering around the schoolyard teasing and upsetting others for their entertainment".

The newsletter states that students are not permitted to walk around the school in groups larger than three.

What a stroke of fucking genius! Why bother teaching children right from wrong? Why go to the trouble of actually dealing with teasing and bullying as it happens? No, far easier just to ban groups larger than an arbitrarily chosen number in the knowledge belief hope that the problem will just magically go away. Oh, for fuck's sake, where do I begin with this kind of utter fucktardary?

Well, for starters there's the point that some of the parents have made:

The controversial rule ... has been criticised by some parents for punishing the whole school rather than just those students doing the wrong thing.

Quite, and doing so is not simply unjust but fucking lazy, which would be the second point. I can't imagine how the principal can even begin to justify it unless she was to suggest that it's a valuable lesson about what to expect when they're older since governments at every level will take the same lazy route of punishing largely innocent groups of people, and incidentally taking a huge, diarrheic shit all over their liberties - which is the third point - in order to get at a small number of trouble makers. Could this be the idea?

Yeah, I doubt it too. So what does the principal - and am I just being a pedantic pom approaching middle aged fartihood or does anyone else prefer 'head teacher'? - have to say for herself?

Ms Klein told 3AW today that certain students had made a habit of walking around the school in a pack aggravating others.

Certain students, yet Liz's response is a measure targeting all students.

Despite being spoken to by teachers, the students had persisted with their behaviour.

Well stack me, who'd have fucking seen that coming? And now those self same little shits can congratulate themselves for continuing to make their fellow pupils' lives at school just that little bit more miserable than they need be, all thanks to Liz Klein and her policy of don't-know-what-to-do-now-so-punishment-for-all. Fucking hell, Liz, whose side are you actually on here? The poor bloody kids who were on the receiving end are now being bullied by you and the fucking school instead of, or more likely as well as, the original bullies.

Because that's the fourth and final problem, Liz. As well as being lazy, unjust, and authoritarian your policy is going to fail as soon as the bullies work out that they only need to split into pairs and target lone kids, which I suspect they might be able to do faster than you did. You're assuming that in a group of three bullying can no longer take place, and simple mathematics - do you teach that at Osbourne? - should be enough to work out that in such a group two children can still gang up on the third. Fucking hell, woman, that's more or less how democracies function. Another lesson, perhaps?

Yeah, right.


* Yes, I realise this means that they are not really freedoms as such, but I'm in a bit of a rush and a discussion on freedoms, liberties and negative and positive rights wasn't the point of this post.
** If you have now got Matt Munro singing in your heads, I have an idea how old you are.*** And if you think beauty surrounds you as well then I also have an idea that you may be on drugs. Or just bloody lucky.
*** If you also have a cat it knows. Trust me, it just does. And its contempt for you has just doubled.

Heretic!

I wish I could say this was a surprise but I'd be lying if I did. Professional apostasy in the British educational establishment seems nigh on unforgivable, particularly if you compound the sin by exposing what's wrong to the outside world. Hopefully Katharine Birbalsingh will find a job at a school which doesn't need to fear her for this, if there are any like that left in Britain.

Inevitability redux.

Back in March I quoted a bit of The Daily Mash's spoof article on traumatising lessons inspired by the real life staged shooting 'role-play' lesson at a school in Evesham, Worcestershire. At the time I said that Cracked.com probably had already pencilled it in for a place in Seven Terrifying Lessons Your Child May Be Taught In A British School, and then promptly forgot all about it. In my inbox today was an email from a rellie back in the UK who, knowing I have a chuckle about this sort of thing, sent me this link to a Cracked article titled, '8 Real Grade Schools That Went Completely Insane'. From #7 on their list:

Sometime around March this year, children ages 10 to 13 at the Blackminster Middle School in Evesham were rushed into the playground for what they assumed was a fire drill, when a masked gunman appeared out of nowhere and "shot dead" a popular science teacher.

Well, I wasn't far off. Incidentally, British schools are also at numbers 4, 3 and 1 on the list, meaning that they outnumbered the combined efforts of the USA and Australia's sole entry (#5 - locking up the special needs kids in a pen) by two to one.

Kind of makes you proud, doesn't it?

Inevitability redux.

Back in March I quoted a bit of The Daily Mash's spoof article on traumatising lessons inspired by the real life staged shooting 'role-play' lesson at a school in Evesham, Worcestershire. At the time I said that Cracked.com probably had already pencilled it in for a place in Seven Terrifying Lessons Your Child May Be Taught In A British School, and then promptly forgot all about it. In my inbox today was an email from a rellie back in the UK who, knowing I have a chuckle about this sort of thing, sent me this link to a Cracked article titled, '8 Real Grade Schools That Went Completely Insane'. From #7 on their list:

Sometime around March this year, children ages 10 to 13 at the Blackminster Middle School in Evesham were rushed into the playground for what they assumed was a fire drill, when a masked gunman appeared out of nowhere and "shot dead" a popular science teacher.

Well, I wasn't far off. Incidentally, British schools are also at numbers 4, 3 and 1 on the list, meaning that they outnumbered the combined efforts of the USA and Australia's sole entry (#5 - locking up the special needs kids in a pen) by two to one.

Kind of makes you proud, doesn't it?

Bonfire of the calamities #1

Oh noes, cries The Indy, who will monitor the curriculum now?

The war on quangos has already claimed three education bodies – with the prospect of a fourth in the near future.

Although few tears have been shed for the demise of Becta, a body which advised schools on new technology, plans to scrap the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE), the profession's regulatory body, and the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Authority, which monitors the national curriculum, have provoked more controversy.

Presupposing there is a need for a National Curriculum, because if there isn't why would you need a body top monitor it? Even that assumes that teachers, department heads and head teachers can't do that in their own schools at least as effectively.

As for the GTCE, if teachers want it there's nothing to stop them setting it up, running it and, most importantly, funding it themselves. As with all quangos the ones that have value will be able to sell their services to the relevant sector, and if they can't then clearly they weren't offering any value in the fist place and should never have been funded by anyone, much less the taxpayer. Again, the GTCE's regulatory functions should be put in other hands, either head teachers or the Department for Education.

But it gets even better. See why The Indy think it should be kept.

The loss of the GCTE [sic] leaves teaching without a body to hold disciplinary hearings that can lead to the striking-off of incompetent teachers. Earlier this month, it was criticised in a BBC Panorama programme for holding too few disciplinary hearings, rather than too many.

Er... you don't think that maybe the fact that it almost never performed this function might perhaps be part of the reason for getting rid of it? You don't think that maybe it would be simpler and more efficient to have this function performed elsewhere?

...the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, has yet to announce how essential work done by these bodies should be handled.

Ooooooh, Sir, I know, Sir... Sir... Sir... it's head teachers again, isn't it, Sir?

Christ, it's not fucking rocket science. Just tell the heads they can actually run their schools again now, and more than that, make it clear that they're expected to.

Vote Abbott for Labour Leader.

I've mentioned before that I don't have a lot of time for The Tele's Simon Heffer. I do tend to agree with what he says a fair bit of the time, but since he also strikes me as the kind of person who'd happily see someone flogged for having once been in the room where someone else smoked a small spliff agreeing with the guy usually makes me feel like I need a wash afterwards. So in a few minutes I'm off for a shower, because he's at it again.

The Labour leadership battle went through its obligatory disgusting phase this week ... and we have moved on to the amusing phase, with Diane Abbott as a candidate.
I don’t want another Labour government (though I fear I may be disappointed), so I want her to win. At the very least, I want her to do well enough so that whoever wins feels obliged to offer her a place in the shadow cabinet. And because of her principled and laudable act of sending her child to a private school, that can only be as education spokesman.

Oh, yes. Please make her Labour leader, but if not then Ed Balls as leader and Abbott as shadow education minister. It won't, as Heffer hopes, destroy the Labour party when there are millions of non-thinking tribalists programmed to vote for it because their dad did, or their mate at work does, or because Man-fucking-U play in red as well, but it will be funny as fuck.

Been to the Ambush Predator's cave... UPDATED

... and this has left me speechless with rage.

Remember the story of Marcus the sheep and the parents determined to prevent his slaughter bcause their little darlings had their pwecious feewings hurt over the cuddly 'pet'?

Well, they won. They hounded a brilliant teacher out of her job.

A headteacher who outraged parents and traumatised children after allowing a lamb that had been hand-reared by pupils to be slaughtered has been 'bullied' from her job.

Yep, I remember alright. And following the links JuliaM provided to the new article I read this:

Andrea Charman has resigned after telling friends she has been 'bullied and victimised' ever since.
Mrs Charman even received threats of violence after the decision for six-month-old Marcus to be butchered and his meat sold in a raffle.
Many parents at Lydd Primary School in Kent yesterday admitted Mrs Charman had generally been a good headmistress.
But they insisted her position had become untenable over her handling of Marcus's fate.

/facepalm

Why, when she had generally been a good headmistress, was her position untenable? Because despite this being the decision of the schoolchildren, your poor fragile offspring that you are protecting and shielding from the evils of the world by demonstrating such hatred toward their teacher (yeah, good parenting that, you fuckheads), you made Andrea Charman's life a fucking misery. That's why it was untenable. Your fault!

Worse still...

Adele Grant, 41, said her ten-year-old daughter Liberty had been left 'psychologically traumatised' and needed counselling after the death.
Of Mrs Charman's departure, she added: 'My daughter's pleased. In fact, she's absolutely ecstatic, although some of the pupils are upset because they liked her.
'My argument was never with her as a headteacher. It was the way she handled things. What happened was disgusting and barbaric and unfair to the children.'

No it fucking wasn't. Taking them in order, your disgust is as subjective as if I aired the opinion that you're an evil, chthonic spawn of the darkness in human form - completely irrelevant. Next, was it really barbaric? Did Andrea Charman have it ritually killed or sacrificed during a Black Mass? There are no reports to suggest that anything like that happened, and with regulations governing animals destined for meat being what they are I doubt it was anything worse than the slaughter of any other food animal. As for being unfair to the children, have you forgotten that it was the children themselves who decided Marcus's fate. I think what you mean is 'fuck the rest of the kids, it was unfair to my daughter because she disagreed'. Can we just go back to last September for a mo?

'Children from Year 2 and above were given the opportunity to choose what happened to the lamb. It was made clear that it could be kept as a pet, or sold to go for meat to raise money for the school farm to buy more animals.
'The following week the children voted by an overwhelming majority for the lamb to be sold for meat.'

In addition Andrea Charman claimed that the kids were always told that 'lambs were meat', something you and your fellow campaigners perhaps should have spent a little more time discussing with your fragile offspring. Yes, Adele, that's right. It's not gone unnoticed that you were one of the handful of parents who opposed the not-decision not-made by Andrea Charman when she allowed the children to vote on whether Marcus became a school pet or was sold for meat to raise money to buy the school more animals.

The fight to save Marcus was co-ordinated by three mothers, Adele Grant, 40, Tina Goodyear, 49 and Jo Davis, 33...

Kiddies being kiddies saw that 1 lamb = money > 1 lamb and sent him off for an exciting new career in catering, but that offended your sensibilities, didn't it? Too chicken (sorry) to deal with the realities and help your children do the same it was easier for you to go off on one and start a Facebook group* instead. Whether you meant it to get out of hand and reach death threat territory or not I don't know and don't care. What I do know and care about is that your actions are those of someone who supports minority rule over a majority decision, and that's got no fucking place in a free society.

You know what I really find ironic, Adele? You named your daughter Liberty.


* UPDATE - There are some fucking gems on there.

I used to go to school with bullies. I have as much contempt for them now as I did then!

Ironic coming from someone who has more recently expressed apparent delight that the teacher had been hounded from her job, and is a fan of well known non-bullies such as PETA and the ALF. Best of all is one from Adele herself, the woman who named her daughter for something she seems to have little time for:

I'm sick to death of people keep saying that it was "only the minority" that had a problem with the slaughter program, regardless of whether it was the minority or even one child, the law states "EVERY CHILD MATTERS"

Every child matters apart from the ones who voted that Marcus got turned into a lamb rogan. But there you have it - the will of a majority takes second place to that of just one child. Er, Adele, I don't think that's quite what the law says.


UPDATE 2 - More from Facefuck via commenter Woman On A Raft at JuliaM's:

What happened here is one of the worst examples of psychological cruelty I have ever come accross. She went ahead despite the pleas of children, parents members of the public and even celebrities such as Paul O'Grady.

So if Brangelina had wrote in saying 'waste the sheep' that'd make it okay? Or what?