David Newnham fears for the future of a red-haired boy called Terry
He’s distracting me, that kid with the carrot-red hair. His name is Terry, and he should be at school. Everyone knows that. Go on, Terry. Try making it round the corner without destroying my neighbour’s fence, or scratching my car, or bending the No Waiting sign. Then I can get back to my computer.
Ah yes. The Government’s Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning. So many mediating factors and over-arching themes to digest. It’s a worthy website, if a little wordy. They are formulating evaluation frameworks and picking up on selected methodological issues, investigating models and identifying research themes when my attention flits back to the window.
There’s no mistaking Terry. (He’s stopped at the corner. What’s he up to?) It’s not just the hair - it’s the whole boy. He’s the size of an eight-year-old, but with the face and gait of an old man. I guess he’s about 12. I also guess he’s halfway through his life.
I first noticed him one afternoon as he set fire to a litter bin outside my house. It was a joyless act - more a job of work than a game. His shaven head gave him an angry look, and I said to myself then that he’d never make 30.
But I must get on. There’s a one-day workshop highlighting tensions between validity, precision and relevance, and raising issues around temporality and causality. Any room for Terry in your longitudinal datasets? He won’t detain you long, I fear.
I heard two girls chatting to a policeman in the town. “It was Terry who put a brick through the window in the takeaway,” they told him. If only I could sit him at my computer and show him the broader picture before it’s too late.
“Explanations that focus on individuals,” it says here, “are situated somewhere on a continuum between emphasising stability and emphasising dynamism in individuals’ propensities for crime.” See here, Terry, I’d tell him. It’s you they’re talking about. But he’s moved on, round the corner and out of sight for now.
And back on my screen I note that another seminar is being mooted, although those who construct theories of social cohesion haven’t yet fixed the title.
Don’t they know that time is running out for Terry?
