A few things of interest from the past week:
Gill expertly covered the recently published NICE guidelines for healthcare practitioners on when to suspect child maltreatment. Opinion on this document is varied, but from where I'm sitting, any such detailed and prescriptive "guidance" continues to erode professional skill, judgement and responsibility. It is symptomatic of a government that is determined to achieve top-down equality without recognising the existence of true diversity (of ability, aptitude and preference for example) - in NuLabour's brave new world everyone will be equally able to identify abused children, become lawyers, or issue fixed penalty notices to the general public, provided they have been issued with the "guidelines". Next we'll be seeing bouncers taking on the role of police officers. Oh, hang on...
In a similar vein, Dizzy pulls Ed Balls' latest lunatic initiative to pieces, rightly pointing out that he is the murderer of personal responsiblity. I couldn't agree more - but let's just sit back and watch him alienate parents of home educated children, parents of school educated children, teachers, directors of children's services and anyone who submits an FOI request and is denied information on the flimsiest and most suspect of excuses.
Sunnydaytodaymama brought to my attention this unpleasant move, funded by the DCSF, which will see young people in Portsmouth stopped by police on the streets and taken away to face a panel of "experts" including health workers and social services staff, who will question them about their welfare. Are we all awake and hearing the warning bells yet?
One sensible way of encouraging children and young people to be safer online - hint, it involves censorware, but not the in the way that Badman and Balls would like to see it used.
Blogdial flagged up the great Ivan Illich on abolishing schooling. Well worth a read, especially for those libertarians who inexplicably revert to an über-conservative mindset when it comes to how they believe education "should" be. Hello?!
Via Twitter, @Brownthorn shared this interesting document, The Nationalisation of Childhood.
Debs reminded me of physics lessons at my old school, in particular the hour and forty minutes in which I was made to stand on a science bench in front of the class for drawing a flower on my homework diary. Gosh.
Danae writes about what it means to really listen, something that our government talks of, but rarely acts upon.
Blogdial just kept the good stuff coming - here, here and here.
The problem of the unnecessarily early introduction of tiny children to schools in this country has finally been solved... By the National Day Nurseries Association. Can you guess what their proposal is? More info here.
And Seth wrote about the likely impact of ill-considered business writing, and linked to this site, the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks, which gave me a much-need giggle.
I've missed a whole bunch of stuff out I am sure, but things have been all over the place here. No sign of the flu, thank goodness, but no sign of the baby either...
(Please let me know if any links are broke, as I've not checked them).
