Rather a lot of things were cancelled yesterday. Football matches were postponed. Football associations have said this was a wrong decision. Watching football bonds people in times of joy and sorrow apparently, and they felt that an opportunity has been missed for fans to express their respect and grief. Okay! I suppose so. But some people who had bought train tickets to go to away matches might feel a little out of pocket. Cricket, however, continued as usual.
But there was no Match of the Day for Phil to watch at the end of the evening. A Saturday ritual disrupted!
A march in favour of rejoining the EU was cancelled but hundreds (official numbers - no doubt unofficial numbers differ) of people marched through London to protest about the shooting by police of an unarmed black man, Chris Kaba. A reporter for Sky news mistakenly reported the marching crowd for people on their way to lay flowers for the queen and had to apologise later for her mistake. Quite why mourning royalists would carry Black Lives Matter banners is a different matter altogether but, to misquote Paul Simon, I suppose even Sky reporters see what they want to see and disregard the rest.
Phil found something this morning that said that the editor of the Sun newspaper had said he was surprised by the death of the queen as he expected her to live for decades more. Really? We might have expected her to reach 100, but 110 or 120? No!
We have been largely avoiding television news, and quite lot of news online for that matter, as there is a lot of repetitive stuff for royalists, speculating on how members of the royal family are coping, and whether sorrow is reuniting Princes William and Harry.
I did find an article by Torsten Bell about education, initially about the influence of women teachers on girls’ education.
“New research into rural schooling in 1930s and 1940s America makes the case for teachers as role models as well as educators. At a time when girls saw few women in professional roles, it found that those with disproportionately female teachers at primary school achieved better educational outcomes. Maybe that’s not surprising, but the researchers went on to show that the impact continued long after they had left the classroom. Women who had more female teachers earned more, and even lived longer, than those without.”
Much is discussed nowadays about the need for male teachers, especially in primary schools, as role models for boys as is the question of which gender achieves better in school at different stages. Maybe the whole business needs a radical rethinking. Personally I had only one male teacher throughout all my schooldays. I was taught by a lot of strong determined women. Certainly at the secondary stage the headmistress of my girls’ grammar school was determined that we, “her girls”, should go on and do great things.
Another aspect of education commented on by Torsten Bell is the matter of missed education, such as the much discussed matter of how the closing of schools during the pandemic has affected children and young people. Apparently in 1960s Germany there was a change in the school calendar which reduced the length of the school year by a third over a period of two years. I have tried in vain to find more information about this.
“Students had less classroom instruction, but with increased homework to make up for it.
While previous studies of the immediate impact on educational outcomes didn’t find much, this tracked those affected throughout their entire working lives, to show real effects on both employment rates and earnings (a year of lost teaching reduces lifetime earnings by 3%). This isn’t just about cash; even five decades afterwards, these students were more likely to be introverted and neurotic.
It turns out school – or the absence of it – really does stay with us for life.”
Interesting stuff!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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