A Little Rant

I know I'm getting old.  You get the tell tale signs.  You can remember the first person that did a song, you recognise pictures of people that others have never heard of and you remember your childhood as being idyllic in comparison to the lives children seem to be living these days.

Today, I played a class Greg Patillo beatboxing with his flute. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ZX5qdIEB0  I told them that there were 2 tunes; Inspector Gadget theme tune and another.  I was thinking Harold Faltermeyer Axel F but they were convinced it was Crazy Frog!!

Then, working with teenagers at orchestra they were all playing games on their smartphones in the break and when they were stuck they turned to me, "Who's that?" they asked.  "It looks like James Dean to me," I replied
They were very polite but as I walked away someone asked, "Who's James Dean?" and their friend replied, "I've no idea."

And finally, I'm home and reading newspaper articles online and wondering if Mr Gove is actually human.  This evening, several parents of children at the orchestra had a little rant about Michael Gove.  They think he's got the longer days and shorter holiday thing all wrong.  They actually like their children and want to spend time with them.  "It's not the hours you put in but what you put in your hours," one parent pointed out. They were worried that if they had to stay at school until 5.30 how would they be fit to then come out to orchestra at 6, "When will they eat?  Eating is important, you know."  

Even if enough parents jump up and down and make Gove change his mind for now I am convinced that these changes will gradually happen.  It may be a product of my advancing years but I don't remember the kind of pressure that these children face.  I'm sure I started school at 9 and finished at ten past three and had a whole hour for lunch.  There were clubs after school but fun things were also done in school time.  My son starts school at 8.30 finishes at 3.15 and has half an hour for lunch and almost anything fun he wants to do has to be at an after school club or sometimes on a Sunday.  I'm pretty sure holidays were longer and I don't think I'm looking at it in the same way as you remember the sun shining all summer long, but I used to get a bit bored in the Summer holiday and I remember counting down over 6 weeks. This year the holiday is 5 weeks and 3 days.  I don't ever remember going back to school in the new year until after the Christmas tree came down on the 6th January.  Holidays were holidays, as well.  That meant you didn't have to do anything.  We weren't given loads of homework and projects, we didn't have to go into school for extra revision study days, and we didn't get stressed about not having done eleven hundred practice papers.  A friend told me today that her daughter was getting cross about the holidays that were being booked for the Summer break.  She said that she needed to study and if she went away with mum for a fortnight and Dad for a week then she only had 17 days left to do all her work.  Am I idealising my youth or to they just have it harder than we had?

I was cross with Mr Gove for pinching Obama's speech about school holidays being a throwback to our old agricultural history.  He said, "I remember half-term in October when I was at school in Aberdeen was called the tattie holiday – the period when kids would go to the fields to pick potatoes."

I kept thinking, we still do pick our potatoes in the October half term.  We plant them at Easter, we harvest everything, freeze, bottle and give away our produce in the Summer holiday.  We dig the plot over and plant broad beans in the February half term and we weed like crazy in the May half term.  We don't need to go fruit picking to supplement our income, although I am sure some people would love the opportunity to earn a bit extra.    I don't expect Mr Gove was one of the children picking potatoes, I doubt his parents needed the money.  His school holidays were probably as carefree as mine were.  As a child, my summer holidays were spent at the park, helping Alex, the boatman on Lake Meadows lake, cycling to talk to the tramp under the railway bridge at Ingatestone and roaming through farmer's fields, climbing haystacks and making dens.

And while I'm getting cross about Mr Gove I also need to point out that he makes me smile.  I have never seen a man who is such a gift to the picture editor.