Tag Archives: education

And suddenly . . .

Sheep, as far as the eye can see . . .

. . . it’s three days since I posted.

It just seemed to happen. It’s not that I’m short of things to talk about, just the opposite in fact, but I just have trouble sorting my thoughts out. At the back of my mind there is the thought that I could be blogging thousands of words a day instead of the (intermittent) 250 I set as my target.

One of the things I have been thinking about is the many opportunities to work for no reward. I was browsing a website where a writer, who already seems to have a well-paid job was offering their literary services and directing people to the recommendations of various bodies about fair pay for artists. This person was active in education, which I always find ironic.

Lambs, everybody loves lambs.

When we used to host students on the farm we were paid, grudgingly, £5 per student. It couldn’t be more than that, we were told, because the students couldn’t afford it – the college wasn’t even paying. For that they had at least twelve hours of input from us, plus insurance, hot drinks, materials and access to animals, and paid us £50. The college, meanwhile, was spending millions on new buildings.

They wrote to us at the time offering their expertise on a consultancy basis. It was £75 per person per hour.

I demonstrate the secret of my success in Egg and Spoon racing

Words definitely do not fail me at this point, but I won’t use the ones that I have in mind. I wanted to reply that if they wanted to carry on using our facilities they would have to pay two staff for six hours each – a total of £900 compared to the £50 they were actually paying.

I was not allowed to send that reply.

They also sent us a Modern Slavery Declaration to sign, as we were one of their “suppliers”. So we didn’t just get paid a pittance, we were expected to fill out paperwork to justify ourselves. Ironic again, you may think, that they were so concerned about modern slavery whilst sitting in an office wearing clothes produced by child labour and intent on obtaining our services for next to nothing.

Their staff didn’t even come prepared. We had to provide lunch for one of them, who assumed their would be shops in the village, and on another occasion one reached over my shoulder as I was working at my desk and took one of my pens.

So much to say, so little time . . .

Cute kid or spawn of the devil?

A Tour of my Head

Just after I’ve been stuck for a subject, several come along in one go. There is actually a logical explanation of why this happens with buses, but I’m not sure it applies to thoughts.

For today, I thought I’d give you an idea of how my mind works. It came to me as I was putting on a blue and yellow check shirt. Subtlety and fashion are not really thing.

Blue and yellow is a favourite colour combination, and was even before the Ukrainian national colours became prominent. I used it as a colour scheme when I made an Airfix model of a Fokker Triplane. The colour scheme they recommended ws the all red colour of Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron. Frieda von Richthofen, a distant relative of Manfred was married to D H Lawrence. I had, at this point, a thought that I should read some more of Lawrence’s books, but I have read several (though not Lady Chatterley’s Lover) and the thought withered before becoming strong. My reading of The Canterbury Tales has ground to a halt as a lot of the tales seem to be much the same. It is, to be frank, a test of endurance rather than a literary delight. I wrote a poem about Lawrence once. I think I already posted it. I will look. I found it.

Lawrence and Albert Ball both went to Nottingham High School – Lawrence with a County Council scholarship. Albert Ball was killed flying in 1917, supposedly shot down by another von Richthofen, though this was later disproved.

Farmer Ted – one of our teaching assistants on the farm

The Finns have abolished private education, such as Nottingham High School. There is an argument for that, as the theory is that all educational standards will rise. There is an argument against it, as some people see it a dumbing down an entire nation. However, I don’t see that happening as the people who send their kids to the High School still pay for private tutors on top of that, and will continue to do so. The thing that worries me from the above article is that the British system has, for years, been moving towards the American system described in the article. What do you think?

Then, as I reached the ground floor I had a brief thought of Snoopy and his struggles with the Red Baron before going to see Julia in the kitchen.

My next thought was “Breakfast!” and my original train of thought ended abruptly. My thoughts ae like that, wide ranging and random, and easily diverted by thoughts of food.

However, despite the transfer of my energy from thought to eating, I now have a list of things to write about later in the day, and as a result of looking for references for links I have many other ideas for further projects. Thoughts are like that, once you start them they just keep going.

Buses, you say? Well, if you insist. The theory is that if the first bus along a route is late, it has extra passengers to pick up. This means that it takes a little longer to load and the second bus loads quicker as it has fewer passengers. Same for the subsequent buses. As they progress along the route the first bus gets later and the following ones catch up. If you are waiting somewhere towards the end of the route it will seem that you waited a long time for your bus (which is late) and that several turn up at the same time (because the following ones have caught up. Not sure that is useful knowledge, but read the whole post – 600 words and very few of them useful. That is how my brain works.

Gingerbread Men

Old Age and Brainpower

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As usual, there is much to write about, and, as usual, I’ve forgotten most of it.

I know there was something interesting to tell you, and a few other things that weren’t quite so riveting. Ah well, they say the first two signs of old age are poor memory and . . .

. . . I’m sure I’ll remember the other.

Sorry, it’s an old joke, but I have nothing better to offer.

I’ve just been reading a book on how to write poetry, It should have been subtitled “Or why self-publishing is dangerous“. It enables people who have lots of confidence, a few published poems and a couple of college courses to write books about how to write mediocre poetry. I can write mediocre poetry, I was hoping to read about how to write good stuff. There are always a few pointers you can pick up from a book like this but t is irksome to pay money for mediocrity.

I also bought a book of monostich poetry. Well, you have to keep learning, don’t you. 50 poems, each of one line. It cost 49p, so it wasn’t a fortune. On the other hand, it did highlight the perils of one-line poetry. There’s a type of haiku, which is often called a monostich or a monoku. One term is imprecise and the other is probably grammatically offensive to scholars of Japanese, but it’s all we have, unless you prefer “haiku written in one line”. I thought I’d have a look at it in more detail. It’s never too late to learn something new, even if it is that one line poetry is often a let down.

I just remembered one of the things I was going to say. A quiz question last night (final round of Pointless) wanted three obscure publications of the Bronte sisters. I said Villette, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I’m always worried about Villette because I wonder if I’m confusing it with the novel by Churchill, or Disraeli. However, I was correct – Villette and Agnes Grey were both pointless answers. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is slightly better known. I did know there was another less known one but couldn’t remember it. It is Shirley.

Churchill’s novel is Savrola. Disraeli wrote Vivian Grey and Sybil – close but not quite the same.

My point? I know the names of most of the Bronte novels, but have only ever read Jane Eyre, which convinced me never to read another. I have never even picked up Churchill’s novel or any by Disraeli. This highlights the difference between knowledge (which I have) and education, which I do not. So I bought The Canterbury Tales for my Kindle. You know where you are with Chaucer, even if you don’t know all the words. I will never be as well read as Derrick Knight, but I still have time to expand my mind.

Vicissitude, Vocabulary and Victory

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Why is it that I can spell vicissitude, a word I seldom use, but I struggle with accommodation, cemetery and success? I use them all the time, so they should be second nature. They aren’t. I always have to think about them. There are others too, but I can’t call them to mind just now.

When I was 16 and coming up to a couple of years of exams (we needn’t discuss the results – the fact I ended up working on a farm rather than carving out a brilliant academic career is all you need to know) I started to read a dictionary – improving my vocabulary and my spelling. If you were to examine my vocabulary and spelling using modern forensic techniques, you would probably find that they are stronger in words beginning with A to H. There is, frankly, only so much dictionary you can read.

Similarly, at that time, I read a number of Shakespeare’s plays to increase the breadth of my knowledge. They mainly went over my head and passed into oblivion. There is only so much you can take in if you are simply reading something. I now realise that in the absence of a teacher I should have at least bought some notes to help me through the work. The only plays of Shakespeare that I know much about were the ones we studied at school and plus Henry V and Romeo and Juliet. The former is courtesy of Kenneth Branagh and the latter is from my watching of Shakespeare in Love.

When you look at my academic career from this point of view it’s hardly surprising that I ended up failing to shine.

However, now I mention academics, I am reminded that I was going to write a post on politicians and skit notes. I will start that in a minute so I don’t forget.

It’s nearly the 11th November, so the header picture is the 2021 Jersey “Masterpiece Poppy” coin 5 ounces of silver and a poppy made using metal from a Spitfire that flew operational sweeps over the Normandy beaches, army mess tins dated 1945 and a Landing Craft that actually landed tanks on D-Day.

Jersey 2020 Poppy Masterpiece Coin

This is the 2020 version – the poppy medallion is made from metal left after Spitfire PM631 had a major restoration. It was one of the last Spitfires in service (until 1957 with the Meteorological Flight) and one of the first planes in the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. The penny gives an idea of scale. It seems to be quite fashionable, and lucrative, to make souvenirs from bits of wartime scrap.

Apologies for the title, I was stretching a bit to obtain alliteration.

Friday Part 2

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The day moves on. A man rings with four George IV pennies. That’s better than the usual junk people ring us with. He reigned 1820-1830 and there are only three dates. The 1827 is quite desirable. (That’s dealer talk for expensive).

He rather spoils the effect when he adds.

“They’re all dated 1919.”

Yes, I have yet another typical example of the British education system on the phone.

“That’s George V,” I say. “They are quite common. If they are in the normal condition they turn up in, it wouldn’t be worth your while bringing them down.

“No,” he says, “1919 is rare, I’ve seen them on the internet.”

“What does it say on the internet?” I ask, though I can guess.

“They’re worth between £60 and £900…” I know what’s coming next, “because they have mint marks on them.”

He’s right, they do. In 1918 and 1919 we needed extra minting capacity for pennies so the Heaton Mint and the King’s Norton Metal Company were given a contract to mint over 5,000,000 pennies. The Royal Mint did over 110,000,000 that year, so the pennies with the H and KN mintmarks are quite scarce, but not exactly rare. As a boy, in the days before decimalisation, I used to look for H and KN pennies in my change, and always managed to find a few before a new craze took over.

The truth is that if they are in good condition, and I mean the condition referred to as VF (Very Fine) or better, they are worth £30 fo the H and £90 for the KN.

The definition of VF, despite some of the coins you see claimed as VF is “A coin where all the fine detail is present, but not the ‘minute’ detail and signs of wear and tear to its higher points make it obvious that it has been in circulation but only minimally.”

That’s the point – wear from minimal circulation. Most of the pennies we see were taken out of change and kept in 1971 when we went decimal. They had been circulating for over 50 years. They are almost flat but people say they are in good condition because “you can read all the lettering”. Well, if you mistake Georgius IV for Georgius V, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the lettering is not all it could be. As you descend from VF you come to Fine, then to Very Good (which is dealer-speak for awful). And then you come to the area which most pre-decimal copper falls into – in the trade it’s called “clear date” which means, as you might guess, that you can read the date and mostly everything else is well worn.

He wouldn’t listen, so I passed him over to The Owner. He’s allowed to be rude to customers. He told the bloke that he shouldn’t believe everything he sees on the internet and that we can supply him with mint marked 1918 and 1919 pennies for 25 pence each if he orders them by the hundred.

I don’t blame the man with the pennies, I blame the internet. There is a lot of misinformation out there. And I blame the education system which is afraid to teach people how to thinkl.

Eventually, the day draws to a close and I queue in traffic to get home. Lockdown really has finished and the nation is back at work.

1921 Pennies Look how worn they are – these are a selected lot in about Fine condition. THey are good enough as an example but a collector would prefer something a bit better.

A Lost Day

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I seem to have lost a day. I’m not quite sure how I managed it, because I’m convinced I wrote something, but there’s nothing there. I’ll just have to put it down to having a senior moment. I’d feel better about it, to be honest, if it were associated more with drinking than old age. Poets drink – Larkin and Thomas were famous for bending an elbow. That’s Dylan Thomas. I’m not sure if Edward Thomas drank. Probably not. There’s something a lot more appealing about being a hellraiser than there is about being a respectable old man. If there was only me to think about I’d much rather go out with a bottle in my hand than a rug tucked neatly round my knees.

Unfortunately, drunks don’t make particularly good husbands, and I imagine the kids would hate it if they had to come and bail me out after a night of revelry, so it looks like respectability will be my fate. I wonder how many men out there, like me, still think fondly of their drinking days when they were much funnier and had more fun. Well, we thought we were much funnier, Once I actually gave up drinking I realised that this wasn’t actually the case.

Today is the first day of meteorological winter, and almost the end of lockdown. cases of Covid are going down, so it seems to work. I’d like to book another month of lockdown for next April, when the weather is likely to be better. I’m getting quite used to the time off.

According to government figures only about 54% of people intend getting vaccinated, and when you show them various bits of misinformation, easily found on the internet these days, this goes down to 48%. All that work so that 52% of the population can decide not to bother.

It calls the whole nature of education into question. Why bother studying for years to become a doctor when you could know more than a doctor by pressing a few buttons and reading something off the internet?

The Insomniac Diaries

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The clocks went back at the weekend, I’ve been getting more sleep and at 5am this morning the inevitable happened – my sleep levels overflowed and found I didn’t need any more.

Nature abhors a vacuum, as Aristotle said, and the space once filled with sleep was soon filled with worries. (I always thought that quote came from someone like Pope until I looked it up just now, strange how ideas develop over a lifetime and then turn out to be wrong.

He did, however, give us a little learning is a dangerous thing, which would tend to suggest that this blog could be fatal in the wrong hands, as Wikipedia and my education are both examples of ” little learning”. You need to study something like Classics at Oxford to be fully educated. Then you can become Prime Minister, like Boris Johnson.

I’m off to work now, but will leave you with that thought.

More Serious Stuff – Deep Thought, Castration and the Importance of Parents

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I started doing more thinking after writing yesterday’s post. There was a lot to think about, mostly about murdered teenagers. After bringing two kids up in a city that had a poor reputation at one time, you can get quite thoughtful.

Interestingly, the writers blame the Labour government for the various problems, where most of the people these days blame the Conservatives. That is probably a sign that we should leave politics out of the discussion.

Youth clubs, youth sports and such things are, at best, distractions rather than a cure. If you are keeping kids off the street they can’t get into trouble. When looking at funding possibilities I’ve often seen the terms “distraction” or “displacement activity”.

We had quite a few difficult kids at the various rugby clubs we attended. Some were the typical sort of inner city kid you’d expect to be in trouble (who we used to work with in Rugby League) and others, in Rugby Union, were much more affluent and better educated.

One of the things I noticed was that you could put a lot of effort in and make no discernible difference. I also noticed that if the parents weren’t engaged nothing seemed to work. That held good for all the kids – parents who were at work all the time were just as bad as parents who deserted their family.

So my solution to the problem is to put the family back at the centre of things. I’d also be prepared to think about castrating absent fathers who didn’t live up to their responsibilities, though it’s likely that this would be a last resort.

It’s about the basics – decent places to live, education, jobs, reducing teenage pregnancies…

I’m starting to sound like a beauty queen here, but I’ll stop short of advocating world peace and an end to famine. It is, however, a matter of some regret that I didn’t start thinking forty years ago – it might actually have made a difference at that point.

Does anyone have any good ideas?

Loose Ends and New Beginnings

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I’m tying up a few loose ends today – you may have noticed a new, more accurate, subtitle (“Life after the Care Farm”) and I’ve added the latest news to the About Us page.

I’ve also added an update to the Ecocentre page.

They aren’t worth reading (being dry and, possibly, a little bitter) but if I add links it supposedly makes the blog more visible on the internet. It’s what they call Search Engine Optimisation. Like much of modern life I find it easy to ignore, but occasionally I like to give it a try.

It’s funny how the internet, whilst being ephemeral in nature, also preserves things.

Julia is taking the group from Mencap to see the Flintham Show. We’re just hoping the weather improves. It has generally been a good day out and the group is looking forward to it. At least some good has come from our time at the farm.

They are advertising an education tent at the show – we have been replaced so easily. What hasn’t been replaced is the write-up that Julia prepared for the education tent several years ago. That is still up on the site, and is promising a number of things they won’t be able to deliver, including Connie the Cow, who is now living at a local school.

Ploughing at Flintham Show (2016)

Julia has just joined the Women’s Farm and Garden Association. It seems quite a go-ahead group of people, despite being formed in 1899, though the marketing could do with some work: we didn’t even know it existed until I saw one of its badges for sale on ebay.

Perhaps ebay is a force for good after all.