Do we really expect five-year-olds to sit at desks? I want a school that understands play is learning
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
Back a number of years I made a prediction about Ms. Cosslett’s career arc. She leapt to pominence running a fiercely feminist website as I recall it. Got hired at The G. Had a babbie.
At which point we got columns on how hard it is to get a pushbuggy up and down two front steps, and what’s with small halls and all that?
Which led to my prediction. Ms. Coslett’s career was going to be milking being a Mum – in a fiercely feminist manner of course – for decades. Then there will be the columns on the unwelcome appearance of grey hair – if daring, two such dependent upon locations – and then how to be a Granny and so on. Effectively, the sort of thing the Daily Mail used to run from a female agony aunt type updated for today’s fiercely feminist woman. We will, in fact, be able to time the columns with a calendar. “What’s this with the 11 plus?” is due in 6 years, how to speak to teenagers about sex in 8 to 10 and so on.
Utterly predictable. Unless the Guardian editor works this out of course.
The long term aim being to get the gardening column in the Independent, just like Germaine Greer.
I’ll not be around to see that apotheosis but that is my prediction.
Whether or not she ever writes anything interesting is the only uncertainty left.
As I’ve pointed out before, since she seems to be reprising Biba/1968 currently, will her fashion sense progress with the aging of the sprog? 11 Plus should give us safety pin earings & vinyl & we can eventually look forward to big hair & Dynasty padded shoulders.
Germaine used to have the most godawful tedious column in the Sunday Telegraph about living in the country.
I concluded that this was the fate of any feminist writer whose looks had deserted her.
Suzanne Moore’s articles in the DT are
Iikewise deranged.
I am waiting for Camille Paglia to do a book on Airfix kits.
Odd that name came up Otto, I had never heard of Ms Paglia until this morning when I was prompted to watch a video of her from 1996 explaining how US universities had been taken over by the wokerati and the kids weren’t learning, they were being indoctrinated.
“I am waiting for Camille Paglia to do a book on Airfix kits.”
I’d read that; I hope it’ll be available on Kindle.
It’s no uncertainty- it’s a given she never will
I’m guessing the sprog will not be exposed to the joys of a multi-ethnic state school.
“But it was in 2014, with Michael Gove’s curriculum changes, that Lue-Quee noticed a profound shift towards more formal learning. She had tried hard to incorporate play in her schools. Working with a class of 30 pupils with several Send children and some with limited English, she says that play-based learning provided an environment to develop skills many of them hadn’t yet secured. “It meant no child was in a classroom where they felt lost,” she said.”
It also means that the English-speaking non-SEND kids are being educated at the same level as the rest.
“Lue-Quee had introduced a role-play area in the form of a wooden “home” corner that the children could turn into whatever their imagination desired – a kitchen, a den, a space rocket – which had a “phenomenal” impact on their language development and social skills. There was also a creative corner – a space where children could access drawing, craft and art materials to play, create and build of their own accord, aiding their motor skills and helping them learn to hold pencils and write. When the school became an academy trust, the executive headteacher told Lue-Quee that these spaces didn’t belong in a KS1 classroom, and they were removed and replaced with desks.”
That’s babysitting. If you’re going to do that, you don’t need expensive teachers with PGCEs, you need a few mums with cups of tea.
But of course, the extension of the school day is a lot about babysitting. Allowing mothers to indulge in pretending to have real jobs. Another thumb on the scale of working mothers that if you removed it and people had to pay to watch the kids, in cash, might see some mothers deciding they’ll do it instead.
Apart from the normal to bright native kids who were bored as fuck and not learning anything.
That sounds like the kindergarten my nipper went to before infant’s school.
TBF to Ms Coslett, the pattern you describe has been followed by hordes of Polly Fillas on all sides of the political spectrum across every national rag and Lord knows how many mags for years.
It must be frustrating if you are a female proper journalist and you see that so many prominent female writers are producing this sort of gash. Or perhaps you are just jealous they’ve got such an easy gig. Perhaps they all want to be Caitlin Moran or Bryony Gordon.
There’s no shortage of wimmin “artists” ploughing the same furrow. I know a couple. Their work is all palely loitering. How tough it is being a mum.
And there I was a few days ago writing about a farmer’s wife who had four kids under five, still kept all the other shit together, and found time for other stuff too.
“There’s no shortage of wimmin “artists” ploughing the same furrow. I know a couple. Their work is all palely loitering. How tough it is being a mum.”
Roughly speaking you can tell when a field (outside of care) has passed peak because you see more women and less men. The men have found something more rewarding (financially or intellectually) to do. There’s less competition for the women.
You’ll get a story like “woman becomes principal conductor of orchestra”. Yeah, because no-one much cares about going to see an orchestra perform. The money’s shit nowadays. The status isn’t even there. But there’s loads of blokes composing film scores.
Women (with a few exceptions) don’t have the same commitment as men. There’s a tiny number who can keep up with the men. Most of them are churning out mediocre work, to add to a sea of mediocre work, then the complain there’s no money. Well, why is someone going to listen to your song over the million other songs on Spotify?
At what point will she notice her pubes thinning with age? Think we’ll get a column about it?
Whoopi Cushion’s “balding pudenda”?
from which we conclude that the sprog of loose corsets is not very bright?
Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
If “How can I get a column out of this?” is forefront in the mother’s mind I’d call it child abuse.
The reason is so that they get used to sitting at desks, so they can bang out articles for The Guardian, so that Cosslett can still enjoy (liquidised) smashed avocado on toast for brekkie when she’s a dribbling idiot.
So, the lid is probably due a right old shock RSN.