Behind Enemy Lines - Book Review

I'm not sure that they make them like Sir Thomas Macpherson anymore - this is a remarkable autobiography of a truly extraordinary man.

Catapulted from a privileged upbringing in the highlands of Scotland and at Fettes into military service, the young officer spent most of the war causing trouble 'behind enemy lines'. He was captured and escaped three times, before being parachuted into France in 1944 with a small elite team charged with the task of disrupting the German withdrawal. At times his account reads like a Biggles novel: blowing up railway lines, power cables and bridges before escaping under fire on a motorbike or stolen car. But the reader needs to be reminded that this is no work of fiction, and these were not pranks - these were real operations that had a significant impact on the course of the war. The French phase of his "war" culminated in the kilted Macpherson personally taking the surrender of 23,000 SS soldiers of the Das Reich tank column. He was then transferred to northern Italy, a region which he already knew well from one of his escapes from the Germans earlier in the war, where he almost single-handedly prevented Tito's Yugoslavia annexing the whole of north-east Italy. No one could doubt that he had a "good war" - his tally of decorations speak for themselves: three Military Crosses, a Croix de Guerre, a Papal Knighthood and the honour of being a Chevalier in the Legion d'honneur.

But there is so much more to this autobiography than the reminiscences of a war hero. Sir Thomas story didn't end with the German final surrender - his fascinating life continued. A talented sportsman, he combined playing fly-half for London Scots with a top athletics career, even beating a young Roger Bannister whilst at Oxford. After graduating with a First in PPE, he went on to be tutor to the young Prince Edward (later the Duke of Kent), mixing with the royal family - he diplomatic enought to be bowled out by Prince Phillip (later the Duke of Edinburgh). Leaving royal service, he went on to qualify as a lawyer before embarking on a distinguished career in industry which saw him take seats on the Board of many of the country's top companies, culminating in him becoming President of the London, then British, and finally, European Chambers of Commerce.

Single Sex v. Co-Ed?

Berkhamsted is mentioned in a wide-ranging discussion:

Meanwhile, some schools get round the problem with policies of partial segregation.

"We operate what's called a 'diamond structure', whereby boys and girls are taught together from three to 11, then have separate lessons from 11 to 16, and come back together in the sixth form", says Mark Steed, head of Berkhamsted School, in Hertfordshire.

"So while our boys and girls get the academic advantages of single-sex education, they also get the social advantages of being in a mixed-sex environment. They're getting the best of both worlds."

'Co-ed education: A lesson in growing up together' Daily Telegraph Saturday 21/01/2010

The Beauty of the English Language

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying these verses, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamor
And enamor rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangor.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succor, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenit?

Social Media Halleluah Chorus

Another Social Networking Christmas

A Social Network Christmas

A creative contemporary take on the Christmas Story

60 Seconds - Things That Happen On Internet Every Sixty Seconds

"All change please - the Internet is coming"

Extract from the opening address at the Independent Schools Council ICT Strategy Conference 07/12/11

"At first glance we have taken a rather retro title for today's conference and I am sure that many will consider the title ironic. For all but the one or two colleagues for whom the Internet still poses more of a threat than an opportunity, there’s nothing new about the Internet. We have all enjoyed its increasing benefits over the past twenty years and it has changed how our classrooms look and feel. Digital projectors and Interactive White Boards have been ubiquitous for over a decade and the arrival of reliable classroom connectivity this has meant that teachers have been able to harness the many resources that we find on the Internet, be that seismic sites in Geography or YouTube clips of science experiments and World War footage elsewhere in the curriculum. However, if you go into most of our classrooms today, you will still find teachers at the front of the class, very much still in control, and (in most cases at least) only using the Interactive Whiteboard as an expensive mouse. Good Internet access in schools has not changed fundamentally how we have been teaching. If Teachers have long been the high priests of subject knowledge and are loathe to give it up their status.

 
The Internet may not have had a significant impact on how we teach, but I do believe that it is going to transform how pupils learn. However, in a very real sense we do need to prepare for change for, indeed, the Internet is coming! We meet today at a significant time of change for the way in which we do learning in our schools. It has only been relatively recently that two factors have come together that will change the way we do education. First, broadband Internet has gone mobile. Increasingly we can take it for granted that we can access the Internet anywhere, not just when we're plugged in, but also on the move. We are now used to being permanently connected and what's more at a relatively cheap cost - well unless you leave Data Roaming on when you go abroad - that's when it really comes home how cheap it is on a daily basis! Secondly, we now all have access to a range of web-based applications that make it possible for users around the world to collaborate on projects, without the constraints of having to run the same software package.

Reliable access to broadband Internet on mobile devices combined with the rise of high quality easily accessible, web-based collaborative tools has the potential to transform learning. These two factors are empowering pupils, allowing them to have a greater say and take greater control over how they learn. Young people are beginning to study differently and we are beginning to see a shift that is taking control away from teachers and giving it to the pupils.

Several years ago I was privileged to hear Dylan Wiliam address the HMC Conference on Teaching and Learning. The essence of his argument was that pupils learn more from each other than from the teacher. What he said struck a chord with me. I was teaching classroom ICT at the time [teaching the ECDL to Year 9] and could see this dynamic in action. Two or three pupils in the class got what I said, and I could literally see this knowledge spread around the classroom virally as pupils taught each other how to navigate the inner workings of the MS Office suite. Indeed, when I look back on my time at school, it was my friend with whom I caught the train to and from school who taught me Maths; and I taught him R.S. As far as we were allowed, we asked others in the class to explain the things that we didn’t get first time. I didn’t realize it then, but fundamentally we were teaching each other.


We now have web-based tools in place that allow pupils to share ideas and to collaborate on projects. Google Docs and a whole range of web-based freeware enable pupils to comment on each other's work, to pool their collective knowledge and understanding. Pupils are able to share their expertise with other pupils, they are able to refine their ideas and to bring on the weaker students.

Collaborative working is one of the most important skills that this generation of pupils is going to need in life - it is already the norm in work place. It is perhaps a digital immigrant’ s perspective to even ask the question, but this way of working raises a whole range of issues about what constitutes cheating. Collaboration is the norm and it certainly is the future.

The whole Wikipedia project is based on the premise of the "Wisdom of the Crowd", i.e. that there are sufficient experts and enthusiasts 'out there' who collectively know more any individual and who will correct, update and amend articles. Using collaborative tools allows teachers to harness the "Wisdom of the Class" - allowing pupils to share ideas and to support each other.

I am a great believer that classrooms should be "places of learning" rather than "places of teaching". Schooling is not about well-crafted lessons, but about whether or not pupils actually learn. Such an approach demands that the role of teachers will change. Yes, there will be a key role for teachers in the new order, but it will be different to their traditional role. Teachers will need to be facilitators, setting up the structures for the collaboration to take place. They will need to set the assignments and they will need to monitor that the discussions are on track, but a light touch approach is what will be required. Pupils operate best when they see this as "their" space. Teachers are able to follow the discussions and even to join in the discussions when necessary.

So I do believe that we, once again, we find that ICT is the engine of educational revolution. New technologies will mean that schools will begin to operate differently. So, in a very real sense, once again we must say, "All change please - the Internet is coming".

Miss Representation: how the Media presents women

The following film was recommended by an American delegate at the GSA Conference. It is a thought-provoking and powerful presentation that challenges the way in which the media present women. It is sure to provoke discussion in the home and schools alike.

http://missrepresentation.org

Body Image - it's all about perception

Young people have always been concerned about their appearance, but this generation is under greater pressure to look good than ever before. On average British children are spending between six and eight hours a day looking at screens, during much of which they are being bombarded with images of the "beautiful". Men's and women's magazines present distorted images of human perfection. At present the average model weighs 23% less than the average British woman, so it is no surprise that at any one time 1 in 4 women in this country are dieting and that the UK has the highest rate of cosmetic surgery in Europe.

Poor body image is not just an issue for adults. It is now an acute problem, not only for teenagers, but also for children. Age 9 to 10 is a crucial time for developing poor body image. By age of 10, 1 in 3 British girls say they want to be thinner: by 13 half have a dissatisfaction in body image. And it is not just an issue for girls, boys are increasingly feeling pressure to look good. A recent survey found that 22% of boys are concerned about their body image. 

So how are parents and schools to respond to this challenge? Parents and schools need to equip young people to develop a strong sense of self-esteem and self-worth that enables them to resist the social and media pressures that they face.

Reflections based in a presentation by Nicky Hutchinson and Chris Calland, authors of Body Image and the Primary School, at the GSA Annual Conference. www.notjustbehaviour.co.uk