Stick to what you know

Leader's debate, education.
phonic reading? old style stupid...ITA...have to re-learn all over again..unless very bright.
Above are notes I made after watching one of the "leader's debates" before our General Election in May.

I've waited until after the election to air this one.
The winning party seemed to think there would be more literate people if the "phonic style" of reading was returned to. They clearly were unsure what exactly they were talking about.
Children currently learn to read using phonics in the first instance, I know this to be a fact as I have trained as a primary school teacher and also in a scheme that also uses phonics.
I presumed, especially due to the age of the people putting this forward they might have meant ITA, where the words are all written exactly as they are pronounced, this is NOT phonics.
The reason that method was tried in the early 1960s was for just that reason, the "powers that be" thought it would make learning to read and write easier. It did, but what they overlooked was that after learning the ITA method, pupils then had to go on to learn the conventional method. Not everyone found this easy, in fact it has been shown to be one of the reasons there was almost a whole generation who had problems with reading and writing. ITA encourages poor spelling, and when faced with a book written correctly, or any other printed matter, the less intelligent people found great difficulty reading and writing.
Literacy is a subject to the forefront of many educational debates, and sometimes people who know little or nothing about the nuts and bolts of actually teaching people to read and write, debate the subject. [Stick to what you know in a debate, don't be drawn onto a subject you are unsure of.]
If you want proof of this....Take a pencil in your "opposite hand", i.e if right-handed, your left, and vice versa. Then get someone to dictate at a fairly slow speed something they wish you to write. Unless you are lucky enough to be truly ambidextrous, it will look something like a reception age child produces. I know this is true, as during my teacher training, the lecturer had the whole group do this, and out of 40 of us, not one produced anything legible.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against helping people become literate, at whatever age. But some of the old methods were rejected for very good reasons, and as a pointer, the less time they were used, shows how poor they were at gaining satisfactory results.
For an article about ITA, click here.
I know the debate will carry on, but more specialised help with children learning to read would help the matter. I qualified in a scheme called the Better Reading Programme", and found that it gained satisfactory results, but when all is said and done, the educators can only do their best, and if this is not supported outside of school hours, progress will never be as speedy as some might wish it was.

Politics?

I hope over the next couple of weeks it becomes apparent who is standing against our current MP.
I have looked up her record, and she is an effective MP, who has local matters in mind as much as national ones.
To date I have only seen local posters asking people to vote for her, I don't think for one minute she is standing unopposed.
Time will tell.
One thing does bother me though, do you vote for the candidate who you know has the locality close to their heart, even if they are from a party you do not align yourself with, or vote for the person who belongs to the party whose policies you identify with most?

Expenses "scandal"

Here in the UK we are due a Euro MP election, and local council election, and if truth be told, we are about due a general election as well. After all, Gordon Brown was picked to succeed Tony Blair, there was no election, not even amongst the member of the labour party, as is usual when a leader steps down, but usually when a leader steps down they are in opposition, not in power.
A general election has to my knowledge been called at as short a time as 3 years, usually four, the maximum time between elections is meant to be five years I believe, and our current government is getting very close to the 5 year mark I believe. Ok, the usual trick is call an election when you know your party is strong, but if you wait too long, you don't have that luxury, perhaps the time spans should be set? I know this would be an unpopular move, but other countries do it.

Anyway, back to the title! The headline news here for the last few days has been the MP expenses. They are having to declare all the expenses they have claimed, these are then being scrutinised and if the expense is deemed unnecessary, or exorbitant they are being taken to task about it. For example for the last few days in the news there have been reports of MP for X having claimed £XYZ as expenses, one of the cheapest items claimed was £2.50 for a 4 finger KitKat from a hotel minibar! Excuse me, but the wages these people are on, surely they can buy their own snacks. Anyway, David Cameron, the leader of the opposition has told his members that undue expenses WILL NOT be tolerated. Following on from this there has been a mad scramble to pay back wrongly claimed expenses, from MPs of ALL parties, one MP continuing to claim against his second home....after the mortgage was paid off!
Now what I am going to say now might sound controversial...BUT......in any other walk of life, claiming payment for something that you shouldn't surely constitutes the breaking of a law. After all, if the MPs were claiming for these things, wrongly, and working for a run of the mill company, they would be charged with fraud. And if there is a general election, these people should not be seeking election, as they have proved that they can't be trusted.

I know this post is controversial, but....it is headline news here at the moment.