Britain gets it badly wrong; and the kids think maybe I learned to read from a witch or a shamanIt was the week the 14-year-olds chose their GCSEs, and therefore a big growth-mindset week for me, one in which I was happy to discover a whole new vista of my own ignorance and wrong-headedness. Goodbye, then, all those things I used to know. Cool people don’t do history any more, it’s just out-of-date politics. But don’t be fooled, they don’t do politics either, that isn’t a thing. Now they do geography. You’ll notice not that much has changed; we had to choose between history and geography in 1989, round about the year GCSEs were invented. Nor have the contours of the Earth, or mysterious centrality of the oxbow lake, changed all that much. Sometimes when I attempt to share my experience, I see a trace of something like a tactfully masked surprise pass over their faces. God knows, I don’t want to interrogate, so I’m guessing here: but I think they’re surprised that school existed when I was a kid. I think they think I learned to read from maybe a local witch or shaman and then moved directly from there to whatever it is I do.The week digested: the Home Office is not where the heart is. Continue reading…
Britain gets it badly wrong; and the kids think maybe I learned to read from a witch or a shaman
It was the week the 14-year-olds chose their GCSEs, and therefore a big growth-mindset week for me, one in which I was happy to discover a whole new vista of my own ignorance and wrong-headedness. Goodbye, then, all those things I used to know. Cool people don’t do history any more, it’s just out-of-date politics. But don’t be fooled, they don’t do politics either, that isn’t a thing. Now they do geography. You’ll notice not that much has changed; we had to choose between history and geography in 1989, round about the year GCSEs were invented. Nor have the contours of the Earth, or mysterious centrality of the oxbow lake, changed all that much. Sometimes when I attempt to share my experience, I see a trace of something like a tactfully masked surprise pass over their faces. God knows, I don’t want to interrogate, so I’m guessing here: but I think they’re surprised that school existed when I was a kid. I think they think I learned to read from maybe a local witch or shaman and then moved directly from there to whatever it is I do.
The week digested: the Home Office is not where the heart is.