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.
Yeah, sounds like the playschool I went to when I was about three. I bawled and bawled my eyes out in frustration, my Mum found me a place at a nursery school instead, which was a 15min bus away instead of the previous 5min walk. The majority of my memories of there are of sitting quietly in the book corner by the fishtank devouring (visually) books.
Oh, and watching through the window in fascination a dump truck in the site next door that steered BY ITS BACK WHEELS!
I have fond memories of the kindergarten I attended in the 1950s. Mrs Knox loved the Empire and told us that it was a honour to serve the “fuzzy-wuzzies”….You don’t get ladies like her anymore.
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”?
Thanks for the image, Bob.
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.
Play wasn’t learning when I was at school. Learning was learning.
Learned to tie a tie aged 5, went to school, got screamed at by insane menopausal women who hate children. Times tables learned by rote. Reading learned by phonics.
By the age of 11, nearly all of us except the div kids who later died of drugs overdoses in their 20’s knew how to write and do maths to a higher standard than the average graduate in 2025.
I know this because I read their AI generated job application gibberish. We also had a lot more technical knowledge about computers because we all had ZX Spectrums and C64s. But today’s graduates who grew up with all this technology have no understanding or curiosity about how magic fondleslab works.
Fuck me, people are stupid now, but their stupidity frightens me less than their lack of stick-to-it. They give up so easily it’s unreal. I can’t even shout at people and call them twats anymore because young people – including the males – will cry actual tears like a woman. We, the older ones, were verbally abused from a young age so it’s nothing to us. Most of my interactions with Zoomer colleagues are about trying to give them some confidence and hopefully find their balls so they can make money. They ask the dumbest fucking questions though:
“Can I fail to hit my target and still be successful in sales?”
Mfw
I don’t think they’re stupid so much as ignorant. If their parents don’t read or talk to them, they’ve got no role models.
Steve – that last paragraph is so true. I get young people in the office who say ‘my goal is to get into Sales’ – my first question is ‘sell anyone anything lately?’ And the answer, 95% of the time is either ‘No’ or some rambling bullshit. It’s a sad fact that the education system has been so debased by issuance of excess top grades that genuine quality can’t be discerned by qualifications.
I remember sitting at a desk when I was five years old, I don’t recall it ever being a problem. That would be 1963 though when teacher was allowed to whack your bum.
I was told I spent the day under a desk, first day at school when I was 5. Terrified of all the small noisy people. I’d never seen children before.
I did come from a very strange family
It isn’t a first school memory but you’ve certainly provoked a strong memory from when I was about 6. I was bored stupid after finishing a load of maths in a book (multiplication IIRC) waiting for everyone else to finish and the teacher to mark their work.
To relieve the boredom I turned over the page and saw some question with a – sign and a dot above and below. Not recognising it, it was to be the next thing we learned, I turned them in to a plus signs and completed all the questions. When the teacher saw what I’d done I got a slap on the back of a bare leg for my pains.
The school I attended from 6 to thirteen had an intelligent teacher in charge of the 6-year-olds: for arithmetic we got practice using cards with lots of sums on BUT they were progressive and each pupil moved onto a more difficult batch after he/she finished the batch he/she was doing so we were not held back to the speed of the slowest. [The table (we moved onto individual desks when we were seven but grouping round tables was thought to encourage team spirit in 5- and 6-year-olds) I was on felt superior because we got through more cards than any other table (and I got credit from the rest of the table)].