Badger spots

True scale of Assad’s slaughter revealed at Syrian mass grave

Listening to politicians talk about asylum seekers it sounds like their one & only purpose is to keep people out. Which of you is not too much of a coward to say: it is GOOD that people escape from danger. And it is GOOD that the UK can be a place of sanctuary, actually.

@naomicfisher I really don't understand why some people battle with your knowledge? What does it achieve... Creative and responsive adults still play. Play is being curious. It never stops hopefully. I wish our current education supported children to stay curious life long. Pods of discovery.

Whenever I write about keeping children’s curiosity alive through more choices and more play, someone says something like ‘well I’m glad my doctor learnt how to follow instructions’. Or ‘Naomi would like to see a world where people choose how to drive and don’t bother about following the Highway Code’. This is why an understanding of child development is so important in education. When adults learn a specific skill (like medicine or driving) they use mastery learning. This is the type of learning which enables us to become experts. Deliberate practice. Goal-oriented exercises which aren’t about the here and now. Intentionally practicing your French verbs so that you’ll be able to speak French when you go to France next year. It is often quite narrow in scope - learning to be a doctor won’t qualify you to work as a lawyer. It enables us to develop specialist skills. This isn’t how young children learn. Their brains are literally structured differently. They are discovery learners. This type of learning enables them to explore and find out about the world. It is wide in scope. When they learn a language, there is no deliberate practice of verbs going on. They watch, they listen, and they give it a go. To adults, it often looks frustratingly unfocused. That’s because discovery learning is about widening children’s experience of the world, not about becoming a specialist or an expert. They flit from thing to thing and lose interest fast. The results can be hard to measure. The capacity for mastery learning starts to develop as children approach adolescence. It improves gradually over time. By age 17 or 18 they are approaching learning in a very different way. This takes longer for some of them - the brain changes of adolescence continue until at least the age of 25. As adults, we tend to overvalue mastery learning and dismiss discovery learning as ‘just play’. We want to hurry children onto learning measurable knowledge and skills. We try to sit them in desks and give them worksheets to do, whilst they often fight us to be allowed to run around and pretend to be superheroes instead. Discovery learning lays the foundations for everything that is to come. It is a special and unique time of life. Following instructions and colouring in the lines can come later, but once you are grown, you can never go back and learn like a 6-year-old (or an 8 or 10-year-old) again. Humans are pure discovery learners for a short and intense period of our lives. We have our whole adult lives to specialise, but you’ll never again have quite the same drive to play. (For more about discovery learning, I recommend Professor @AlisonGopnik's book The Gardener and the Carpenter)

Vexatious complaints Over the last few weeks there have been multiple reports regarding the Mossbourne Federation schools in Hackney. Reports from teachers, from ex-pupils and from parents. All talk about an atmosphere of fear, which teachers say was created deliberately and that they were told was justified educationally. Hundreds of accounts are involved. These accounts talk about frequent use of detention and isolation, and students say that they left with mental health problems which they are still struggling with, several years later. They talk about the use of shame and public humiliation to control behaviour, and how this impacted them. One calls it a ‘toxic culture’. Both national newspapers and the BBC have talked to multiple people with similar stories. Hackney Council is taking this seriously, and has started an independently-led safeguarding investigation. The Mossbourne Federation spokesperson says that this is a ‘vexatious campaign’. Vexatious is a word which drew my attention, because I’ve seen it before. It’s been used by other schools and MATs where many parents are complaining about how their children are treated and the impact on them. Vexatious means ‘an action which is brought without sufficient grounds, purely to cause annoyance’. Mossbourne Federation are saying, nothing to see here. There’s no issue with us and our practices – but these parents are behaving badly. They’re the problem, not us. It is, in fact, an attempt to shame the parents, to make them seem like troublemakers, out to make a fuss about nothing. It’s a way to avoid listening to what they are saying. It’s a deflection. They’re pointing the finger elsewhere. This is the response which parents from other schools tell me that they get when they try to raise issues about the impact that harsh discipline polices are having on their children. They get defensiveness, and an insinuation that they and their child are in fact the problem. They get asked questions about whether they are supporting school policies at home, and their own attitude to homework. When they tried to complain to the LA they were referred to the DfE, who referred them straight back to the school. This is also the response which I get when I raise these issues on social media. I am accused of lying, of making it up to gain followers, or of trying to convince parents there is a problem where none exists. ‘Vexatious’ says, we’re not listening. We don’t believe you. You’re making it up to annoy us. And isn’t this exactly what parents are complaining about? For years, no matter what they and their children said, the answer was ‘We’re not listening, because the problem is you’.

Most of the mental health industry is concerned with palliating the stressful effects of an unequal society. Interesting piece from an Italian group on how this could be different journals.francoangeli.it/index.php/rpco…

It’s our FREE book launch for the Teenagers Guide to Burnout tomorrow lunchtime! Come and hear Missing The Mark and I talking with Dr Olivia Kessel of SEND Parenting about it. eventbrite.co.uk/e/108695126348…

@SarahsGarden12 Love them all!

I tend to be where the sky is blue these days but wanted to share -The neighbouring village has #Christmas Lights designed by pupils in their Primary School. They were paid for by the community group. Nothing you can show me will be as wholesome and full of true Christmas Joy 🥰

@TheVikingDane Ha ha this!

Anyone???? 😂😂😂 Please help us out.

@TheVikingDane Oh no my favourite is O come all ye faithful. Because me and Mama sang it so badly and not in any key around the local lights turning on that we laughed that much that we couldn't breathe. I kept saying Mum don't get distracted by that tuneful singer next to you! A beauty memory.

Christmas Hymn Poll! I cannot be the only Viking who loves the traditional Christmas hymns. They are all just wonderful but which is the best? The winner goes through to the next round, and selection is random etc.

With consternation and complications, as an undutiful and questioning subject of your realm. Bloody well get on with some systemic changes. I believe you are capable of this. Would you like my help? First step understand your privilege...

but it would be interesting if you didn't keep regurgitating the same old shit. Why are you papering over the cracks and not entering into much needed ethical conversations with people who Iive your political knee jerk reactions every fucking day of their lives?

Hi Labour government please understand you are responsible for people's lives. Their living and dying well enough. The fact you are carrying on the rhetoric of shirkers and workers is beyond my remit to vote for you anymore. I won't turn into a Tory ever. Politics is what it is

@BBCNewsnight @Docstockk In times past I was an advocate of assisted dying. I am deeply unsure of it now. Without the infrastructure of joined up care and the lack of acknowledgement of how that impacts people with complex health problems, whether it is terminal or not. It feels frighteningly simplistic.

“I’m shocked a Labour government would do this…and make this one of the first things they do.” “Do you blame the Prime Minister for that?” “Of course…” Christian Fraser speaks to actor and campaigner Liz Carr in the moments after MPs backed proposals to legalise assisted dying.
#Newsnight

@michaelpforan As an older woman who does understand the complexities of being in the world as a born female or male. I appreciate your knowledge about the nuances and realities of the laws around that.

Shes not interested. She spends an inordinate amount of time talking about me and publicly insulting me. People don’t need to get caught up in this psychodrama but if you’re genuinely interested in where we disagree on the law, I’ve written what I hope is a fair minded response.

I didn’t block Alessandra because she disagreed with me. I blocked her because she can’t disagree with someone without insulting them. It’s tedious. She hurls insults at people and thinks everyone is stealing her ideas. We’re simultaneously wrong AND stealing her ideas.

@PTMFramework @dropthedisorder I believe dumping the BPD diagnosis would be beneficial for all of us traumatised girls and women. It really has no purpose other than denying traumatic experiences. Like in the old days of women being called hysterical. I don't have any diagnosis because I have avoided them.

Time to dump the ‘dustbin diagnosis’ of ‘BPD’? Article in Therapy Today quoting Jo Watson @dropthedisorder Dr Lucy Johnstone and the #PTMFramework among other sources. bacp.co.uk/bacp-journals/…