May the 4th be with you

Today was pet day at Meg's shiny new school. A culmination of a week's preparation. They've fashioned pet homes out of shoe boxes and made collages of petshop animals. Each animal's name scrawled in lanky script under it. They've told animal stories and been on bear hunts.

This morning, each child brought in a pet for the rest of the class to meet. There were cats, Guinea pigs, fish, woodlouse, worms, a pony and numerous dogs. Mcleod was amongst them.

I'd arranged for a late start at work, so could spend much of the morning with the kids. They had a wail of a time.

Miche was there too, as she volunteers as a classroom support on Fridays. She knows the teachers quite well and was chatting to one of them whilst watching the kids enjoy themselves.

"Now, this is what it's about Miche, not those damned targets, key achievements and benchmarks. This is what we should be doing all the time." She said to Miche.

Miche was delighted to hear it. You see, we both feel that our young children are monitored, measured and evaluated far too much in our education systems. I imagine that there is a template child somewhere, like a cardboard cutout, that our government compares all other children to. God forbid we create a child too bad or too good. Too different, even.

Coincidentally, I came across this TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson on my lunch break today. He summed up my thoughts on the matter brilliantly. I urge you to watch it. Now, it's twenty minutes long, but this man is a wonderful speaker, and bloody hilarious too. I guarantee you will enjoy it.



Apologies for the title. It had to be done.