We were working together on the Mega Maths book that I bought her a few months ago. We’re about a third of the way through it, and it’s still harping on about numbers 1-5, which she’s pretty confident with. It’s not without value - some practice in writing the numbers is useful, even if the constant counting of objects and identifying of written numbers is a bit tedious. Anyway, she did about twenty pages before she got fed up (when I looked, that’s about as much as we managed last time - she seems to have a natural cut off), and then she started being silly - circling the wrong answer, or circling all the answers, or trying to make a pattern with the circles that bore no relation to the answer, etc, etc, and making herself giggle in the process.

I started to tell her off for being silly, then I stopped. What is the point of the book? Is it to give her as much practice as she needs to get a competant understanding of numbers, how to recognise them and how to use them? Or is it to have a neat work-book full of ticks, the prove how clever she is? The fact is, we’re seeking education - understanding and knowledge - here, not neat rows of ticks for the sake of it. I’m not dealing with 29 other children, and the book isn’t my sole record of what she understands. I know she understands, because she understands it well enough to replace the real answer with one we both know is silly. What’s more, it’s her workbook, and I need to let go of the desire for her to keep it to my standards.

It was a bit of a revelation to me. The point is the understanding, not the paper record of the understanding.

And then, of course, I considered what would happen if she took that approach in school - she’d get into trouble for a start, for not doing it properly or neatly, as if there is some innate value in the work ethic of doing things neatly and properly. She might even be held back, on the misapprehension that she didn’t understand the work, because she’d given wrong answers. Which would mean she was given more work that wasn’t at her level of understanding, and she’d get more bored. A vicious cycle.

Without going in the specific things i disagree with in the report, I can say the following things have come to light over the last week or so.

For an official review, its very personal full of I believes and I thinks - now I suppose reading this blog you may say ‘you can’t talk’ and you would be right, except I’m not claiming to be authoritative and I haven’t been asked to review anything for government departments - If i did I would be submitting something with a bit of academic rigour, the Badman report contains quite a few claims but has no references to back them up.

Some of the unsubstanciated claims are really scary - “Home Educated children are twice a likely to be on social services registers for being at risk of abuse” - no evidence and others have taken the evidence from local authorites compiled it and found this to be untrue.

The Report miss represents the people he consulted, there is a place in the report where the response from the education division church of England selectively quotes there response and misrepresents there views quite significantly.

there are loads of other things which to be honest which I’ve written and then deleted because I am trying not to turn this into a big long rant. let’s just say It’s a shockingly poor report which would get thrown back at an undergraduate if they handed it in as work.

I’m not going to go in to specifics (yet) other people can do that way better than me.

I’ve been putting off blogging, because I wanted to say something thorough, all-encompassing and irrefutable about this travesty of a report, but all I’ve managed to do is write nothing, and get stress-induced heart-burn from reading it. So, expect the rant. Expect the in-depth analysis of what it actually says, and what’s wrong with it. All that is still to come. For now, accept that I am furiously angry, and that over my cold, dead body are local authority officials going to take my children off by themselves into a room, to be grilled about Mummy and Daddy, without any evidence at all that they are being abused. I will move to Scotland before that happens.

why ?

because you type in life expectancy for me at 33 and it gives you are rather precise 78.43 years.

then you type in your birthday + 78.43 years and you get

10:48.00 pm, Saturday, October 24th 2054 - which means I’ll miss Match of the Day

a page i might not bookmark because it also has a countdown timer on it

Take, for example, politicians. Now, the meeja seem to be working terribly hard, just now, to try and work me into a Fevered Frenzy of Fury over MP’s expenses/allowances. I’d like to care, I really would, but a couple of things block the path of my caring: firstly, I object to witch-hunts. Given the billions and trillions of pounds we’ve sunk into the financial services industry in recent times, getting all churlish about £300 for some tasteless (admittedly) mock-Tudor beams on John Prescott’s eaves seems to me to be finding a softer target, and taking all your frustrations out on it. I thought Hazel Blears looked extremely stressed when the press were chasing her down a suburban Salford street last week, demanding she explain herself. Frankly, who wouldn’t? The MPs of this land are not perfect, but I am a realistic person, and unlike the press, it seems, I wasn’t expecting them to be so.

Secondly, I don’t particularly think it’s their fault. They were, by and large, acting within the rules as they understood them, as the bureaucrats who explained the rules to them in the first place understood them, and as all of their colleagues and peers (in the non-nobility sense) were acting on them. If we, the British Public, have lately decided that we don’t like the rules, that we for some reason object to the size of television a particular Member might have chosen to claim for, then quit whining about it, people. This a democracy. Change the rules. Do not, not, NOT target high-profile individuals for scapegoating, as if it’s their fault. It’s not.

A chap on Radio 4, last week, pointed out that the fairly generous allowances system was introduced for MPs in the seventies. At that point, for the first time in history, there were a large number of MPs in the Commons who weren’t from privileged backgrounds. They weren’t able to subsidise the honour of serving in Parliament through private incomes and they didn’t automatically, as a matter of course, have a pad in London where they could stay during the week. If there was a litter bin outside an MP’s Westminster office, you didn’t go in - it meant he was asleep in there.

Democracy is too important to be treated with the level of disdain that it gets in this country. The basic salary of a member of the UK Parliament is £64,766, compared with £113,599 for a US Congressman ($174,000). It’s nearly double. Gordon Brown gets £187,600, give or take, compared with Barack Obama’s £261,147 ($400,000). But if ever there is talk of a pay increase in the Commons, you can bet your bottom dollar that Joe Public will rant and rave (and be given radio and TV air time on which to do it) about how unfair it is, because he doesn’t earn that much. Well, no. You don’t. But frankly, I want the six hundred or so people who actually run the country, the ones who are in charge of everything, to be of the highest possible calibre. I want no-one to be excluded from pursuing such a career on the basis of its cost, and I more or less believe that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. On that basis, maybe we should double their pay, and see if it improves things.

So no. I don’t mind if an MP charged me for his flat in London. I don’t even mind if he spent the best part of a grand on a telly to put in it. I would never spend that much on a telly, but that’s about my priorities. If the big, expensive telly is what makes the flat in London feel like home, then knock yourself out, as far as I’m concerned. As long as you turn up, vote for compassion, vote against insanity, and occasionally stand up for your constituents, I really don’t care. It’s a tiny price to pay.

Did you know KITT was convertible?!

Kevin just read this article to me (almost word for word, since he was enjoying it so much), and I have one thing to say to Charlie Brooker - frankly, I’d have said it on the website, if they’d put comments on the article, but they didn’t, so I’m doing the second-best thing. I’m commenting on a little-known blog in a hidden corner of the internet where Mr Brooker will never venture.

The thing is, Charlie - may I call you Charlie? I read your column in the Grauniad, and I even watch your BBC4 TV show, when I remember - the thing is, that Michael Knight, a lone crusader in the dangerous world of a man who does not exist, he was my first love. I accept that David Hasselhoff has turned out, over the years, to be a bit of a nutter, but the fact remains that that Knight Rider stole my heart when I was seven, and there is nothing on this earth that you can do or say to change that.

This year, in a reflection of the current economic climate, we are going for a much more produce-based garden. We’ve bought a strawberry plant, three tomato plants, some carrots (baby, to grow in a window box), and a blueberry bush. It’s not a big yard, so we’re not going to get a bumper harvest, but it’s a start, and we’re seeking the smug feeling of growing stuff, more than the actual food.

I have a bit of a master plan to use guttering to make more space - but I don’t think I’m going to make it this year. For now we just have the three window boxes and the raised bed I made (that is still standing!).

Daisy loves worms - and snails, as well as putting here hands in the dirt. Not sure she gets the growing bit yet.

Ruth (after slight pause to remember what clothes she got out for Daisy): They’re called leggings, darling. They’re a sort of trouser.

Kevin (another pause): Oh. OK, then.

It’s not easy, being a dad.

Anyway, the thought of that made me sad, so I’m making a concerted effort to write things, and thereby convince him that it’s a good thing.

In recent times, we have been on holiday to the Isle of Wight (yes, it’s true, we always go on holiday to the Isle of Wight), with my mother and my aunty, and got very lightly sunburnt in the process - which isn’t bad, in April.

HiddenHenry is occasionally astonishing, particularly with reference to his understanding of shape and form. I forgot to blog, a while ago, about his two-years-early drawing of circles, and about a month ago, he distinctly drew a circle, with three small circles inside it, before pointing to the bottom one and saying “mouth”. At 20 months. Frankly, that takes me beyond Proud Mother Boasting of His Advanced Development, into That’s Just Scary. Similarly, while we were away, we went into the gift shop at the Ventnor Botanic Gardens, part of the decor of which included a trellis-type design, which made green diamond shapes against a panel. It sounds odd, but it looked fine. Anyway, H pointed at the diamonds, and started singing Twinkle Twinkle. I remember being astonished at Daisy’s recognition of a triangle at a fairly early stage (in the face of her dogged refusal to get colours at all), but not this early. 21 months?! He scares me…