Learn in Schools?? Or are they convenient places to park children while we make money, gossip, quarrel, go shopping... Because I figure children will not learn the valuable things they need to learn by a 'social distancing' school environment. They'll learn no more than my granddaughter does by 'isolating' herself in her room with mobile phone, laptop, make-up stuff. mirror... And Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
Children need to learn to negotiate their social environment, chatter, play, love, hug, shout, ask questions, make friends, quarrel, make up... Even criticise, question... Every day, when my granddaughter proceeds to schools, her skirt just that half centimetre shorter than it should be, I don't say to her, 'Focus. Learn a lot.' Instead I say, 'Be happy, be kind.' And when she comes back in the evening with an avalanche of news, 'He said, she said, and she is like...' , I merely ask, 'And what did you do for someone else today? She disdains to answer me; old people are so strange.
And do these silly suits in office really believe children will be irreparably damaged by not going to school for a month, a half-year? My children, two boys and a girl were born in many countries, in some where schools started at eight years and boasted no reception classes. They are not exceptionally able or disciplined. And I certainly was not a demanding parent. Indeed I was not even around a great deal of the time, as I was teaching 'other people's children' in strange and distant places. My sons and daughter among themselves garnered four Masters degrees and a Ph.D, while somewhere along the way, I managed to do evening classes and an M A in Education. In spite of all that EDUCATION, we are extremely flawed individuals.
Children have to be in places that other children gather and school is one of many places this can happen. We have to make that possible soon, but not while the two-metre rule applies.
I know of at least two families who taught their children at home, and the children did as well or as badly in their GCSEs as anyone else. {Another blog some time on the monstrous imposition on parents and children called exams. What a way to calibrate a child as a functioning individual!)
And, I hate to say this: so many teachers are damaged and weary by their every-day; I was one of them for many years. We have no lien on knowledge of any kind, let alone child-rearing wisdom. There are some great individuals among teachers and children benefit hugely from their humanity, but they are very few. Most are like me -- chasing the material for the next lesson, catching up on marking homework from weeks ago, marking essays without consistency or objectivity...
And now I will probably have a deluge of complaints from good teachers (whatever they are), so I shall go into hiding. SELF ISOLATION??
Children need to learn to negotiate their social environment, chatter, play, love, hug, shout, ask questions, make friends, quarrel, make up... Even criticise, question... Every day, when my granddaughter proceeds to schools, her skirt just that half centimetre shorter than it should be, I don't say to her, 'Focus. Learn a lot.' Instead I say, 'Be happy, be kind.' And when she comes back in the evening with an avalanche of news, 'He said, she said, and she is like...' , I merely ask, 'And what did you do for someone else today? She disdains to answer me; old people are so strange.
And do these silly suits in office really believe children will be irreparably damaged by not going to school for a month, a half-year? My children, two boys and a girl were born in many countries, in some where schools started at eight years and boasted no reception classes. They are not exceptionally able or disciplined. And I certainly was not a demanding parent. Indeed I was not even around a great deal of the time, as I was teaching 'other people's children' in strange and distant places. My sons and daughter among themselves garnered four Masters degrees and a Ph.D, while somewhere along the way, I managed to do evening classes and an M A in Education. In spite of all that EDUCATION, we are extremely flawed individuals.
Children have to be in places that other children gather and school is one of many places this can happen. We have to make that possible soon, but not while the two-metre rule applies.
I know of at least two families who taught their children at home, and the children did as well or as badly in their GCSEs as anyone else. {Another blog some time on the monstrous imposition on parents and children called exams. What a way to calibrate a child as a functioning individual!)
And, I hate to say this: so many teachers are damaged and weary by their every-day; I was one of them for many years. We have no lien on knowledge of any kind, let alone child-rearing wisdom. There are some great individuals among teachers and children benefit hugely from their humanity, but they are very few. Most are like me -- chasing the material for the next lesson, catching up on marking homework from weeks ago, marking essays without consistency or objectivity...
And now I will probably have a deluge of complaints from good teachers (whatever they are), so I shall go into hiding. SELF ISOLATION??
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