What schools need

The Daily Telegraph has asked how we can reduce bullying and peer pressure in schools today. Here's the mail I sent them at "Have Your Say":

Yes - school should be every bit as much about learning for life as learning Pythagorous' Theory and who won the Wars of the Roses.

In my schooldays (1970/80s) it was still sadly more about the latter. I also suffered terrible bullying. I loved learning but I hated going to school. I always knew I wanted to become a teacher. Yet few of my own teachers saw it in their job description to help us manage our teenage emotions. We were left to fight it out ourselves. And that was at an all-white, very middle-class private school in one of the loveliest cities in Britain!

No, we need neither experts nor pyschologists, nor meddlingy nanny-state study groups, commissioned to work out what’s ”wrong” with today's youth, who suffer, I believe, more from peer pressure than public-school-style bullying. We just need a bit more commonsense. From everyone.

Happy St George's Day - let the youngsters speak!

Happy St George's Day. The DT marks the occassion with all the predictability of a wet Bank Holiday: Asking Vox Populi how to celebrate the occassion. But read on please....

We're told today three times more people celebrate Guy Fawkes than St George. How nice then to read this comment under "Have your Say":

"We should get all the English people together and have a march. Don't even ask for permission. It's OUR country. Come on English people don't do it for the sake of it. Do it for the generation behind us who'd always have celebrated their National Day.

It's signed "13-year old boy who loves his country".

Now don't you wish there were more British teenagers around like that?

On the day a third of UK schools are hit teacher strike action, certain newspapers observe ever rising peer pressure and bullying, asking readers how to "rescue childhood."
I agree that academic study is not the be-and-end all of schooling. It's more about learning how to get on with other people. And if people are different, then graciously accepting them for what they are. Get it right at school and chances are you'll keep getting it right as an adult too.

I suffered terrible bullying at school. I loved learning (English, foreign languages and history were my sanctuary) and always knew I wanted to become a teacher but I HATED being in school. I received little support or sympathy from teachers. Their job description was just to teach, of course. As pupils we were left to fight it out ourselves. And that was at a middle-class, fee-paying school in one of the most desirable cities in Britain!
So I think I can understand some of the problems of youngsters today. Mounting peer pressure is not going to be solved by tax-payer-funded commissions and psychoanalysts. Let's just learn to accept - and appreciate - individual differences, whether it's speaking differently or wearing "unfashionable" clothing . Then schooldays really could be the happiest days in life.

Raw weather or just a raw deal?

Mark Twain said it was always best to read the weather forecast before praying for "good" weather.

I wonder though what he'd have made of BBC radio newsreaders telling us today to expect "raw" weather.

No wonder Aled Jones did a double take: "Raw??!?".

Consult your dictionaries, please, Aled and everybody. It means inclement, or just plain bloody awful.

Office (non-) workers

So we're told today that the average office worker puts in only 4 hours a day. The other 4 go on surfing, private emails, unnecessary phone calls and idle gossip.

I can believe all that. The translation department where I worked in-house was a hotbed for much more time-wasting besides.

Best were the 2 colleagues next door, who'd lock themselves in at midday and ask to be left undisturbed for an hour. 40 winks it was, apparently. They were probably lucky to clock up even 3 hours of service a day.

After 5 years I quit in disgust. I'm just glad I'm not paying anyone to work for me in my office.

Learning from The Apprentice

Watching The Apprentice last night I learnt 4 useful things:

There’d be only half as much congestion in London if the beeb stopped ferrying its dozen apprentices around town in twice as many limos.

Sell a punter a picture of them with a Beckham lookalike for 16 quid and you can sell ‘em anything.

David Beckham’s lookalike is in fact Beckham himself posing as his lookalike. Didn’t fool us last night though, Becks!

There is indeed a hell on earth. It’s called Saturday Afternoon at Bluewater Shopping Centre.

Lonely planet armchair travellers

Thomas Kohnstamm isn't the only travel writer to never visit countries they write on.

I once went to an interview with a travel book publishing co. in Munich. When asked about the travel expense budget they looked at me aghast. "Travel?! Our authors don't travel! They get everything they need off the Internet!"

Slightly bemused, I googled some of LP's less well-known guides on inviting places like Afghanistan and Myanmar . Quite obviously these guides were written with the sole purpose of putting readers off going there so they couldn't check out the authenticity anyway.

LP on Myanmar - "Big ethical decision - should you go there?"

LP on Afghanistan "Warning - dangerous landmines" (when was a landmine not dangerous?)

and, best of all, on Chechnya: "Travel warning - dangerous territory!".

That's it. All my LPs are going in the bin.

So it's official - "Not tonight, dear" is uttered these days more by men than women.

What always amuses me about these "Surveys" is not the results but who they interview. I won't go into the finer points of the Sex Drive study, but if you little further into "Men's sex-drive - there goes his" in today's DT and you discover the only people they quizzed on the issue were couples in therapy! So of course they got the skewed result they wanted!

Send someone out on the streets to quiz Joe Public and you'll get totally different results.

People with a clipboard stopping you on the street or phoning you at home with "just a few quick questions" are a pain even at the best of times. But this is one is so typical of how unreliable "surveys" are anyway. The more "private" the question, the less likely you'll get an honest response. Particularly if you're interviewing some stressed dad minding a rabble of kids out on the pavement whilst missus is inside Tescos buying groceries. If you were that chap quizzed by some stranger about your sex drive would you seriously give an honest answer or lie through your teeth?

Awful Americanisms

Just spent a lovely week in the Austrian Alps!

In our group were 2 lads from Scotland. I couldn't help notice every mealtime how they requested their food: "I'll get a schnitzel, I'll get a pancake..."and so on.

So how about this: "I'll get mad if I hear any more of that!"

What happened to the "old-fashioned" polite requests "I'd like.......(please)" or "I'll have.......".?

I'm not against Americanisms per se, and I can even tolerate their ghastly use of "guy" for women too. But this "I'll get" business is just downright impolite and smacks of indfference!