Students have never read good children’s books
- Many students can only recollect vaguely books read in childhood, generally such examples as Enid Blyton and “Biggles”, said Mrs Helen Murdoch, of Hamilton College of Education, at the Youth Libraries Group national weekend school in Stirling University. She tried to raise students’ awareness of children’s literature: they studied a dozen modern novels, relating to various stages of development in a child’s response to reading.
`One year absent from school’
- By 15, British children have lost on average one year’s school because of absence. The National Children’s Bureau study from birth to maturity of all children born in a single week in March, 1958, also found that 87 per cent of middle-class children were good attenders, but only 71 per cent of children of unskilled manual workers.
TUC backs `toddlers’ liberation’
- Shop stewards and union members should back teachers’ call for nursery education for all children between two and five, said Mr Norman Willis of the TGWU at the TUC annual conference in Brighton. He hoped the conference would be remembered for endorsing the “toddler liberation movement”. The cost would be pound;11m a year - the same amount spent on defence in a few days.
Manx birch under assault
- A new assault is being made on the birch, still used frequently as a judicial punishment in the Isle of Man. Campaigners are hampered by living in a small, close community, solidly behind the status quo. There was even an attempt (unsuccessful) to have veteran abolitionist Mrs Angela Kneale prosecuted for contempt of Tynwald, the Manx parliament. In the last 20 years, she says, there has been an average of 6.4 birchings a year - far higher than the British average. One child was birched for stealing strawberries.
Marking time over exam changes
- It seems almost everyone in Sweden would do away with marks in comprehensives . except the students. “No other question brings me so many abusive letters,” said Education Minister Mr Ingvar Carlsson. “The more grades we abolish, the more angry are the letters I get from young people.”
