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The chronicles of Ruin, continued. Call me Ishmael said....intelligence is knowing what to do when you don't know what to do. Anonymous said... When I don't know what to do,I come here. 10 September 2009 22:59
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3 comments:
A subject close to my heart, Mr Ishmael. Last evening I went to the mongoose boy's school's parents' evening. Not to boast but the boy is a bright baby and will doubtless march out of there in due course with a wheelbarrow load of chits. So I am unconcerned, whisper it, with the mad grading structure. "You're at 6a, mongoose boy, and your target for the year end is 7b. So that's good." What all that crap means is completely beyond me and I care not. Choosing GCSE subjects next year - yeah, right. Yawwwwn.
What I am interested in is the development of his intellect and his attitudes. It is true that they are at their most "plastic". You can make anything you want out of a child of these years. Fortunately, we live in a safe and leafy, middle class, sciency area. We have a very much higher than average population of - err, people with superior parenting skills. The environment is conducive. Nonetheless several of the conversations confirmed to me that it is his parents who will do the bulk of the important moulding and directing. Good teachers - I liked them - but as the man said in the film, there are not enough hours in the day for those people to materially build the best possible human being they can and the system itself drives everything towards mediocrity.
We took mongoose girl junior. She plodded around after us and at any spare moment sat cross-legged on the floor and opened her big, fat book. This drew more than one uncomprehending look. One can only wonder at the narrowness of the window of opportunity that some poor kids are born to.
In many ways it is the world of broken families, and even of dual working parents, that has brought us here. There is no way in which many modern families can do what some of us had done for us all those years ago, and which we try to do for our kids. I got almost a Victorian education at primary school; my parents did the rest. Grammar School O-levels were Maths, Physics, Chemistry, History, Geography, French, Latin, English Lit and English Lang. For everyone - with maybe German instead of Latin. These are the basic foundations of skills and knowledge, to be built upon later. Now many of these foundations are "options" and these options include Media Studies and others of that ilk.
So busy are we earning our shekels to pay for our consumerist lives that we forget that it would be better to spend a day's pay talking to your children than in working to buy them a Nintendo Wii so that you never have to speak to them again.
Close to mine too Mr Mongoose. I am so glad it is all over for us, that school shit.
I watched a weeping mum leaving her weeping three year old at pre-school. She told me the child was crying out in the night "I want to go with Mummy". But because the parents had paid the fees and they want the "best" for their child they ignore the evidence of their hearts. It gave me a sleepless night.
My own girl would have caught a cab to nursery school aged two, so keen was she to get there. But by 14 the system had lost her and she has struggled to get out of bed ever since.
With all her A stars she couldn't even get a job working in a shop in the run up to Christmas in the affluent South. It's cheese packing or care work whether she gets a degree or not. No wonder she has left the country.
Not everyone fits the system, Ms Lilith. Good luck to your girl for I will encourage mine to leave the country too. We are sinking into our silver sea. Ruined and now, I think, beyond repair.
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