Millicent's Productive Manor

People get very angry when they receive a letter from their child's school with a spelling or grammatical error on it. I can see why. I like to read things that are well written and properly proof read too and for some reason it seems so much worse when it comes from the establishment responsible for educating our children. One such correspondence hit the national press recently which contained 14 errors.

These sort of errors are becoming more common on letters sent home from my son's school and I lay the responsibility solely at the feet of Michael Gove. Now, you may be thinking that I'm being overly harsh but when schools are stressed to the point of breaking and teachers are forced to think of their pupils as data rather than real people with parents who actually have time to read books (with good spelling and grammar) then something has to go and that something is probably going to be checking a dictionary or taking time to thoroughly proof read a letter before it's signed. I try not to adopt the angry, "these people teach my children," approach and instead see the humour in the mistake.

Yesterday, I received a letter about my son that said, "Please encourage Millicent to use this time in a productive manor." Although I am quite a cruel parent I can assure you I didn't name him Millicent but I did start worrying that maybe it was his staff room nickname until I checked Facebook and discovered that everyone had received the same letter mentioning poor Millicent. You can see how this happened; the teacher put in a fake name and expected the office staff to change it for everyone to make the letters look personal.(We're not fooled though). The other error is probably a bit more serious and points to a teacher who either can't spell or has bad handwriting. It could be a typo and autocorrect error and as I really like the teacher who signed the letter I'm going to hope for that and spend my time imagining what this Productive Manor that Millicent should spend time in might be like.

I imagine a grand country house in the middle of nowhere, without internet access or TV. The internal walls are lined with thousands of books on every subject a GCSE student (or anyone else) could wish to read about. There is a piano for bashing, which relieves tension and allows both sides of the brain to work together but this piano always plays beautifully and never causes frustration.  The weather is always perfect; warm but not too hot; blue skies but no glaring sun; light rain at night with no oppressive clouds. There are bedrooms with beds that you fall into and sleep the most perfect sleep and there is an unlimited supply of paper pencils and pens by the bed for early morning thoughts. There is an unlimited supply of beautiful stationary all around the house but all of the same type, so that no time is wasted trying to pick the most interesting pad to write on. There is a swimming pool and a woodland walking area for mind breaks which are scheduled for every couple of hours and the swimming pool has magical qualities so that when you get in (fully clothed) you  are instantly in your bathers and when you get out you are fully dry and dressed and ready to work again without wasting any time on. Good nutritious food would appear whenever you needed it along with enough water to keep you properly hydrated. The plates would disappear and be washed up and put away without you even having to think about it. To do lists and timetables that you approve of would appear for you so that your brain is never cluttered by the decisions of what needs to be done. The other people in the manor only appear when you are taking a break or need some help and make absolutely no demands on your time.

Now all I need to do is find Millicent and ask her if I can come too.