I grew up a bus-ride away from Eton, the ultra-posh school in Windsor – Windsor being where my primary school was. But I never wanted to go to Eton. One of the reasons for that was the Eton Wall Game. So far as I understand it, you have to shove a big ball along a big wall and past a line. Or something. It's played between two brands of Etonian called Oppidans and Collegers, whatever they are.
How come, the non-aficionado will ask, that such a slow and at times painful sport survives?
Non-aficionado. That would be me.
One answer is simply that it has done so since at least the 1760s and probably longer: the wall was built in 1717. Another is that it gives the 70 collegers, who like to think of themselves as the brains of Eton, the chance to show that they are anyone's equal at games too. The wall game is essentially a collegers' sport: even now, they have a ceremony in piam memoriam JKS – J.K. Stephen, a great colleger player (and in later years a very minor poet) of the 1870s. Collegers have more chance to play than most oppidans do, and greater skills can make up for the greater brawn available among their more numerous rivals.A third reason may seem unbelievable to those who have never played this game: it's fun. Buried in that sweating, unmoving bully are skills and achievement that few watchers – not even the boys looking down from atop the wall – will see, let alone understand. Boys like rough games. They like to have skills, even arcane ones. They like to compete, however eccentric the game. Ask the synchronised swimmers, the shot-putters, the hop-skip-and-jumpers before you rush to mock the world's dullest game.
Not all boys feel this way. Trust me. I don't mind watching rough games but I don't care to play them thank you, and I never did. I've never forgotten or forgiven being made to box, against my clearly stated will, at the age of eight. Presumably nobody is made to play this Eton game, and assuming that's so, fine, play up, play up etc.
I got to this via her and she got to it through these guys . That's the blogosphere for you. That's a game I like a lot.
I've just done a Samizdata posting linking to this, which is a story about Chinese people coming to British universities, in large numbers.
As usual, watch out for the comments. I've already learned things I didn't know.
The government is going to put a stop to bullying in schools:
The suggestions are part of an anti-bullying charter, which all schools in England will be expected to sign.
And what will happen to any schools which refuse to sign this anti-bullying charter? Will they perchance be ... bullied?
The lefty schoolchildren of Britain are playing truant to demonstrate against George W. Bush, and the government is on the case. (I wonder. Would they be so severe on demonstrations that the Prime Minister was in favour of? No need to answer that.) If that's what it takes for teenagers to grasp how silly compulsory education is, then I'm for it.
The government today launched the latest wave of anti-truancy sweeps of town centres and shopping arcades - as speculation mounted that some children will bunk off school to protest against the visit of US president George Bush.Teams of police and education welfare officers will patrol known truancy hot spots in England over the next three weeks in the fourth such nationwide operation, said young people's minister Ivan Lewis.
Figures from the last national sweep in May showed police caught 5,182 truants, 2,194 of whom were in the company of an adult.
In the previous operation last December, 7,341 children who should have been in school were stopped, 3,645 of whom were with a parent.
Mr Lewis said: "The message could not be clearer - school attendance matters. Truancy is a passport to a life blighted by wasted opportunities, unemployment and even crime.
Well if you make truancy into a crime, it isn't that surprising that it leads to … crime. But if "truancy" was legalised, it would surely do far less damage, and stop being a gateway crime to real crimes. By making truancy illegal, you put those who do it beyond the protection of the law, and thus make the process far worse.
Legalise all truancy. Not just soft truancy like taking a day off for a demo that your mother will be at as well. No, legalise the lot. I know it sounds terrible, but really, it would be better.
Get a load, as they say in the USA, of this guy, a teacher with a difference.
Fritz Kraemer, a refugee from Nazi Germany who tutored generations of America's leading generals in historical and geopolitical thinking, died in Washington on Sept. 8. He was 95.From 1951 until his retirement in 1978, he worked in the Pentagon as a senior civilian counselor to defense secretaries and top military commanders. His son, Sven, a Pentagon official, said that Mr. Kraemer's title often changed but that he occupied the same map-covered office from which he would be called on to prepare briefings, often on short notice, on such diverse subjects as political developments in Southeast Asia, economic prospects in China and French views on nuclear weapons.
But his influence on national policy was felt most visibly, perhaps, in a friendship he struck in 1944 when he was a private at a Louisiana Army camp during World War II. There, he met Henry A. Kissinger, also a private and another refugee from Germany, whom he helped guide toward a career that reached the highest echelons of government.
In cold-war years, long before Mr. Kissinger moved from Harvard to the office of secretary of state, Mr. Kraemer pursued his antitotalitarian views, participating in formal and informal seminars at staff colleges and within the Pentagon, where Donald H. Rumsfeld referred to him as "a true keeper of the flame."
He also developed close and mentoring relationships with many officers who either occupied or would rise to powerful positions, among them, Gen. Creighton Abrams; Gen. Alexander M. Haig Jr.; Gen. Vernon A. Walters, who later served as ambassador to the United Nations; and Maj. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, the theoretician of counterinsurgency.
If you want to read all of it, hurry, because this is the New York Times, and that has a habit of disappearing behind all the usual barriers that all we bloggers hate.
Oh goodee, David Miliband has had another idea about how to harass teachers and complicate everyone's lives:
Every child could be offered a place at US-style summer camps, it emerged today.Ministers believe the move could fire enthusiasm for school and build youngsters confidence.
Three pilot projects which ran this summer were deemed successes, the Department for Education and Skills said.
Now Schools minister David Miliband is poised to launch the scheme nationwide following further analysis next month.
Natalie Solent is not impressed:
… A pilot scheme was successful and so they are all convinced that a burst of wholesome exercise and outdoor living will send the young lads and lasses home flushed and happy for some reason other than the usual Ecstasy tablet / successful shoplifting expedition / fornication.So we're back to ten mile runs and outdoor living, eh? What's the betting that next year's miracle cure is the long-neglected educational virtue of cold showers.
These poor deluded innocents never seem to figure out that experimental pilot schemes frequently succeed because they are pilot schemes; i.e. new and not offered to everybody. Remember Home-School Contracts? When some head teacher first thought up that wheeze it probably did work well. Gosh, thought the kids and the parents, a contract, we better take this seriously. But once every child in the country gets one in his school bag at the end of the first day back it becomes just another bit of paper to sign.
Wise words. Some good may come of this idea. More harm. Huge expense. Oh, and crooks organising camps that turn out not to be, while the kids stay at home and the parents get their cut of the swag. Just you wait. If I am wrong, I like to think I'll have the decency to link back to this and admit it. If I'm right, you can count on me linking back.
The sad thing is that instead of spending his life making the lives of headmasters hell, David Miliband might have made quite a good headmaster himself.
Proof that education can be a dangerous thing:
A textbook on Islam that preaches the value of "holy war" and "martyrdom" for all Muslims is being reprinted by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority for use in schools in the occupied West Bank.Entitled Islamic Culture, it was originally published in 1994, but has been reproduced this year, despite undertakings from Palestinian leaders – following international pressure – that new books would be introduced.
The book, intended for 17-year-olds, explains: "Jihad is an Islamic term that equates to the term war in other nations. The difference is that jihad has noble goals and lofty aims, and is carried out only for the sake of Allah and for His glory." It also refers to shahada, or martyrdom. A suicide bomber sent to kill civilians in Israel is celebrated as a shaheed in the Israeli-occupied territories.
One passage in the book states that if a Muslim is "blessed with shahada and honour, his soul returns to its Creator to live a different life, content with the rewards and honour bestowed upon it, a life of grace thanks to Allah."
The general assumption at this blog is that education prepares you for life, and I join in as many arguments as I can find about how best you contrive that. This, on the other hand, is preparation for death. At best, for life after death. And not just your own death.
Meanwhile, the Merde in France (NOT The Dissident Frogman as originally stated, see comments) reports that in Gagny, in France, a Jewish school has been burned down.
Nothing substantial here today, I'm afraid. But I have just posted a rather long piece for Ubersportingpundit about the preparations made by the England rugby team for their attempt to win the Rugby World Cup. They have reached the final of this tournament, and there's a decent chance they'll win it.
In this piece I concentrate on the matter of how you prepare people for extreme high pressure situations. This has also, I assert, been what the England coach, Clive Woodward, has also been concentrating on.
The central claim I make is: that you can perfect anything you can practise. Discuss. Here or there, I guess.
