April
I’ve always loved April, the month that for me means spring, puts a spring in my step and a song in my heart. It’s the time when gardening in earnest can really begin and, here, when locally grown asparagus and strawberries abound in the shops and markets. Cantaloupe melons are appearing in the shops too, from Spain at the moment but locally grown ones will appear within a couple of weeks also. It’s the start of a local fruit bonanza that will last into September. And I’m a fruit-aholic.
I’ve not yet done any planting of summer flowers in front of my house but the allotment has kept me quite busy. White onions, lettuces, potatoes and radishes are all in and sprouting as well as the sunflowers with which I want to completely surround my plot. The rest will be planted in the next couple of weeks. As no one has claimed the fence bordering one side of the plot I’ve planted eight forsythia cuttings and three honeysuckle cuttings alongside it. I’ll take more cuttings in the next few weeks which hopefully can be planted in the autumn. It’s go, go, go.
Education
So what do you think education is about, what is part of it, what negates it? I think that tick boxes, as part of any evaluation negates it. Think about that. Tick boxes are antithetical to education and yet they are widely used to evaluate it. How can that be?
Just consider this. How many times have you seen the virtue of thinking “outside the box” as having produced a new insight, a breakthrough on a problem, an advance in knowledge? I think it has has happened quite frequently. Just as one instance, Einstein’s theory of relativity couldn’t have happened without it. Einstein couldn’t have had that insight without thinking outside the box. But, educated today, Einstein wouldn’t have been allowed that insight, he would have been marked down, as less intelligent, because of it.
So why are tick boxes used to evaluate education? It seems fairly obvious to me that it is because they make education (and teachers) esay to evaluate, which happens to be very important to politicians, particularly useful in fooling the public into believing that education levels are maintained or increased while budgets are cut.
Of Mice And Men
My French friends are puzzled about the English; they think we have changed in personality. The French have for long regarded the English as “bagareurs”, always ready for an argument, a, fight, stubborn, perfidious. Isn’t that what saved Britain in WW2?S o they look at what has been happening in England and scratch their heads and think “Why isn’t London burning? We know the English can be taciturn but have they all become mice?”. If the same had been happening in France the guillotines would already have been dusted off and wagon loads of MPs would be on their way to meet their maker. The price of electricity is soaring in England; here the price rise is capped at 15%, raised from 4%. Inflation of food prices isreported as 17% in Britain, here it is just above the general inflation level of 5.7%. And the French are up in arms about the price rises. A proposal to raise the retirement age to 3 years lower than the British retirement age has already seen Paris burning in parts. Why isn’t this happening in London?
So
the French ask:what has happened to the English?Mice or men? Was Macron right when he called Brexit the vassalisation of the English?
