My Spanish sister recalls with nostalgia the summers of our childhood: gently warm but not scorchingly hot, long dry days when you could play out (yes, we used to do that and didn’t need out activities coordinated by parents) and, of course, it didn’t rain. She exaggerates somewhat but I too remember the days when we spread a blanket on the grass and played or read or coloured picture books. Yesterday was rather like one of those days, warm enough to sit out in the garden, without fear of sunstroke. I don’t think the grass was dry enough to spread a blanket on however.
The long evenings at this time of year are good. It’s possible to go for an evening stroll - weather permitting - and last night it was not quite dark on the horizon at 11.00 at night. Somehow you feel you have more daytime, which I suppose you do. Now for the downside: it’s already June 15th and in just over a week it will be midsummer, the summer solstice and all that sort of thing! We know what happens after that!
Time marches on. Somebody commented that it doesn’t even stop for Mr Trump, who has just hit 80 years old. And politician/writer/etc Roy Hattersley has died at the age of 93, a very respectable age!. Politician Gordon Brown said of him: “History itself will remember Roy as a committed social democrat and egalitarian who grew up during the post-war Labour governments and always sought to ensure Labour was the party of all working people.” I wonder how many of the current gang will have that sort of thing said about them.
Meanwhile our current PM is trying to put the social media genie back in the bottle, planning to ban social media to under sixteens by spring next yeat:
‘We took powers, earlier this year to make sure we could move at speed.
I was very conscious that with the Online Safety Act it took the last government eight years from sort of identifying the beginnings of the problem to actually passing legislation, and [I] was determined that will not happen in this case.
He says legislation already passed gives ministers the powers to act using secondary legislation.
He says:
We hope to pass regulation before Christmas, and therefore to bring the ban into force in the early part of next year, probably about springtime, so we can move a real pace here.”
We’ll see how that works out.
And there are labour MPs pushing for targets to be set for recruiting male teachers. ““There is a crisis of masculinity in this country and boys who are feeling vulnerable, not listened to and isolated are too often turning to the easy answers offered to them from the manosphere, who want to sell them on a very narrow idea of what it is to be a successful man,” he said. “Getting more male teachers and more positive role models in their lives has to be part of the solution.”
For as long as I can remember there has been difficulty recruiting men into the teaching profession, especially at primary level. Phil and I were thinking back to our own primary school experience. The vast majority of the teachers were women, quite often strong, rather fierce women. The headteachers were usually men though. I don’t know to what extent gender equality has hit primary headships’ statistics.
In my girls’ grammar school I believe the only male employee was the caretaker. When I was in sixth form we did make the revolutionary step forward of having a joint French film evening together with the boys from the boys’ grammar school - girls sitting on one side of the school hall and boys on the other, with minimal socialising! Bery correct and proper!
A male teacher was employed when my younger sister was in the sixth form. And a couple of years after I left, they organised a joint school leavers’ social for students from both grammar schools. A younger friend tried to gate-crash me into that dance but staff in attendance were having none of it!
Out in the wider world, Mr Trump says he has created peace in the Middle East but Israel still bombards Lebanon. He reminds me of a teacher declaring that he taught the class but they did not learn!
In these sometimes dismal times, here is a cartoon by Ella Baron on David Hockney. Food for reflective thought:
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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