A flower in time: a fairy story for Africa

A flower in time: a fairy story



He had never travelled so far. One night’s journey took him further than his imagination ever stretched. Took him beyond the familiar into the unknown. Even the stars were different, even the sky seemed a different colour. Blue and black and white, filtered through an atmosphere of such immense dense feeling that he felt able to take it piece by piece and leave it shaking at his feet. He needed a guide to how this new world worked, what it meant, what it could be. He found one.

Africa saw him as different but taught him what he needed to know to survive in a world stripped of personal experience. She showed him ways to be and ways to do. She guided him through labyrinths of misconception and histories of misunderstandings. He helped her see that not all men were quite the same. Not all wanted to take. He showed her how by giving he fulfilled both their destinies. Sharing problems brought them closer and brought them joy.

Africa was not just the story of the township children or the poolside gins and braais. It was the smiles of the educator with the laptop for the first time, the cocktail party where the white principal met his black counterpart from across the fence. He learnt to love the people and the peoples, the land; the landed and the landless.

Yet she could never quite believe that he would stay to see the whole world. She saw him learn to love the country he found himself in. She knew he loved being there and learning all about the place she called a home. But she was frightened that he would not follow all the careful routes she laid out cautiously for him. He wanted to take the road she indicated but could not burn the bridges behind while she put a shocking match to the ones ahead.

She set him a task that he needed to fulfil to convince her that this land she loved he would truly, actually and sincerely call his own. Before she would commit herself to him and always be his guide he must learn and love and lose himself in the world that surrounded him. He must bring her a gift. Not his love, not his care, not his attention, not his faithfulness, not his passion, not his time. All of these he had brought, had shown and laid on the altar he had made at her feet.

She asked him to bring the country’s fabled flower to her. This would be the gift that proved it all. His faith in her and her spirit. It bloomed just once a year and showed all the blacks and blues of the wide-open skies that crowned the spaces of this world. No spirit had seen this flower for centuries but it figured in the fevered imagination of all that world’s delirious souls. At first he argued and protested. He did not want to leave, he did not want to run from where his heart felt safe to search for something he did not yet believe in. But he knew she needed him to prove he believed in everything she said and did. He would search for this as a proof of all he had come to believe.

She bid him farewell. She did not believe he would ever be able to find the flower. She did not believe he had gone to come back. She whispered merely that he had gone.

He was gone for what seemed eternity and never said where he had been, where he had gone, what he had done. He allowed her only to know that he had gone further than he had ever travelled before in that country that he wanted to call his own. He had no history of time to set all this in. Or when he might return. He knew he had just one task. Time was irrelevant. He talked to the growers, the makers and the dreamers across the nation. Where would he find this flower? What should he look for? Which landscape would bring him closer to the gift he had to find? The last gardener he met was himself a legend. Known, respected and loved. He took him to a small garden, tended with love and protected only by the beauty of its plants. The last gardener told him that although he had never found the mythical flower this was where it would grow if it was intended to be found. The searcher wanted guarantees but knew they would never find them or him.

The gardener told him that often what you grew turned out to be what you had wanted all along. A being had to wait and see what simply appeared. The ancestors would bring the dream to him when the ancestors thought it was right.

He returned to the spirit of his dreams with the gift she wished him to bring. The plant had no flower, no colour, it was simply the seed. She could not see if it was blue or black or white. She could not see the flower it might become. She had to trust him. She had to believe that what he offered might blossom and grow into the fabled flower of love. The season now was wrong but time would see it flower.

It would take a year before they could see if the gift he brought was the gift that she had once demanded. But she was hopeful that by then she wouldn’t care.

The Coalition : the new Marx Brothers?

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.
Before I speak, I have something important to say.
If you've heard this story before, don't stop me, because I'd like to hear it again.
Groucho Marx

If only there was a real satire programme left on TV. That twerp Hislop is just a bitter and twisted posh twit. I can never forgive him for the constant rudeness and insults to Gordon Brown that went far beyond humour. And Bremner seems to be laying low. Can't he do a Gove impression?

But Gove is crying out to be properly satirised. He is almost his own caricature. His plans for the new curriculum, while saying he intends to Free up teachers through the Free schools, are beyond belief. I was teaching PSE in an inner London comp when Thatcher's government was trying to make "promoting homosexuality" a crime, I just wanted one of them to come to one of my lessons. I only had to mention gay rights in the classroom to provoke the choral response from the boys of "Sir's a poofter". The idea that teachers were promoting homosexuality was ludicrous and born out of the Tory government's complete disclocation from real life.

Gove's plans for poetry seem to be based on his interests and rarefied school experience. Teaching Dryden to 13 years olds? Teaching any poetry is hard enough but stuff with no relevance to a teenager is a recipe for anarchy.

Then there is little Michael's offer to open up unused (and presumably unwanted) DFE offices for new "Free" schools. An old water cooler and dusty desks is not the sort of resource many teachers will see as ideal. What about play areas, sports facilities. dining halls, assembly areas?

And as for Osborne..... a man who has lived on a £4m Trust fund telling real people that their prospects, benefits and aspirations are going to be cut.

Osborne and Gove are the brothers we expected from the Tory club but Clegg and Cable? Didn't we expect a bit more?

OK, we have the evidence that Clegg lied before the election video http://tinyurl.com/y6ld7fg but did they think before they betrayed their party and joined hands with this upper class bunch of clowns?

Groucho said he didn't want to belong to any club that would have him as a member. There's something there for the LibDems to consider. My message to Clegg and Cable is also from the wise words of Groucho...
Next time I see you, remind me not to talk to you.

A Coalition of Clowns - Big Top Big Society

The BIG TOP - Big Society


Dave decides to rewrite history, Nick can't answer questions until he has asked himself the question first and Osbornegump? Well he just smirks.

A coalition of clowns?

And then there is Michael Gove.
in blazer.
with adviser
and demonstrating his plans for the state education sector .

Clowns have those big feet and Gove has certainly been stomping all over the educational community in the last few weeks.

Talking to Headteachers in the last few months, it is clear there is no great enthusiasm for the new Academies. They want new buildings, more money and greater control of their school's curriculum. Gove has disappointed many with the BSF fiasco and when you get down to the detail you discover that even with new academy governance, new money won't be flooding in. In the meantime, all the expertise, local knowledge and local history built up in the Local Authority teams will be lost.

Once you destroy such a team, it is next to impossible to get it together again. Corporate history and the basics of getting things done for the benefit of the local community will disappear with the LA staff forced to hawk their services elsewhere.

In the Academies Bill debate yesterday, Glenda Jackson made an impassioned appeal for schools as part of their communities. The education world Gove is creating, is a return to the competition, to the lack of local collaboration that initiatives such as trust schools started to create.

Clowns are supposed to make you laugh. But an awful lot of people are terrified of clowns.(Coulrophobia)

I am terrified of what this lot of clowns will do. Big Society? Big Top.

#Osbornegump - a millionaire among us

Judging from Twitter, I am not alone in feeling a sense of nausea whenever George Osborne or Michael Gove smile. There is something so sickeningly slimey and crappily confident in the policies they are imposing upon us.

I went to Wikipedia George to learn more about Gideon. Some key details that explain how this man is where he is today.

Osborne is part of the old Anglo-Irish aristocracy, known in Ireland as the Ascendancy. He is the heir to the Osborne baronetcy
Originally named Gideon, he changed his name to George when he was 13. In an interview in July 2005, Osborne said: "It was my small act of rebellion."
Attended Magdalen College at the University of Oxford, where he received a 2:1 in Modern History.
He has an estimated personal fortune of around £4 million, as the beneficiary of a trust fund

So the man who is now in charge of our economic destiny has never had any formal education in economics and never done any work connected to it.
In fact the only connection is that he is a VERY rich man!

So there he sits in a cabinet along with 20 other millionaires and dispenses wisdom. He decides the fate of millions of ordinary people from the comfort zone of his own millions.

So, I started thinking. Who does he remind me of? Nonsense statements wrapped up in sentimental platitudes about the "good old days" ? A hazy view of history?

F O R R E S T G U M P ! #osborne gump

So forgive the following slight alterations to some Gump quotations.

"My momma always said, "Life was like a box of chocolates.You never know
what you'll get but the rich always get the goodies."

Recruit Officer: Have you given any thought to your future, son? Osborne Gump: "Thought"?

Stupid is as stupid does. (didn't have to change this one!)

"You have to do the best with what God gave you and millionaires like us will always get the best"

Hello. My name's Osborne, Osborne Gump. You want a pay cut?

Mama always said, dying was a part of life and now I am in charge of the NHS the poor will see it quicker

The coalition's slogan, led by osbornegump, appears to "we're all in this together". Great from a cabinet of 21 millionaires. Don't expect to sit next to them on the bus, queuing with them at the A & E, waiting with them for the teacher at the parents evening or collecting the reduced job seekers allowance.

So I am now pushing for #osbornegump to be Gideon's official hashtag.

Join me? or follow me on Twitter

Let's all at least try to be heard. "If the baby does not cry or cry out it can die on your back" xhosa proverb

The Tories, and the education they think parents want

So we have seen the manifesto from the Tories.

But haven't those of us in education, heard it all before? Michael Gove still seems to think that the education he got, will solve all the problems for schools in the 21st Century.

He still talks about parents wanting children schooled in straight lines about Kings and battles. What good do dates and lists do any of us? In the last few months I have read Hilary Mantel's excellent, prize winning "Wolf Hall" and watched the Carry On Henry film with a raucous Sid James as the King and a baffling Barbara Windsor as the a substitute Anne Boleyn. Both have the same historical background.

I studied that period for my A level History course. Did it do me any good at all to make sense of the events in each story?

More important history to consider in the last few weeks of the election, would be the terrible damage done by the last conservative education ministers under Margaret Thatcher.

Remember the leaky classrooms, the demoralised teachers, the old schools with no hope of renewal?

Well Michael Gove's vision of a new education system sounds remarkably like that historical period. A return to Grammar schools, to pre-comprehensive divisions, to strange starchy curricula even at the primary stage, to school blazers, to latin etc.

So can we all be grateful for what Labour achieved an firmly reject Gove's Etonian vision?

Being a "hat" in South Africa 2010

Every step of the route to the ATM had been carefully plotted. Getting cash from a machine in a busy thoroughfare should be easy, but not always in Cape Town. Too many beggars and potential thieves, too many worries about what comes next. But the ABSA in St George’s Mall was in view of lots of street tables and bars. Should be safe, should be easy.

So, the language had been selected, the transaction, complete and all that was left was for the paper rands to emerge from their safe little hole. A few flashing lights and it was all done, card in breast pocket, cash following, then an urgent voice over the shoulder.

“Hey Man, you haven’t signed out”. I turned to see who was being so helpful. Well dressed young man, suit and open necked shirt. Clean, tidy and non- aggressive.

“I don’t need to do any of that, I got my card back and the right amount of cash”.

He smiled, friendly but supercilious.

“You’re not a local are you? If you don’t check out, sign out, the next person can insert a card and read your stuff.”

The liberal white man in me checked out my reactions. This was a well mannered (well meaning?) black man, on a busy street with lots of people around. He stepped back, he didn’t crowd me, he had offered me advice. I took it, even though I knew he was wrong. I didn’t want to show him a lack of respect.

I put my card back in the slot, I did the business and made sure I checked out carefully. I turned, said thanks to him and he took my place at the ATM. I moved on. I patted my breast, felt the reassuring edge of my credit card, the warmth of the small wad of notes and headed on my way to a bar, to a drink and some more talk. The sun was warm, not hot. I passed a few “hats”, English or German, who were looking over the South African tourist goodies on a stall, all of which had been imported from Nigeria or DRC. I felt that little edge of knowing, I was almost a native. I knew my way round these streets. Knew the best place for a good coffee, knew which eating houses slapped on the rand for the visitor and thought I knew what to be frightened of on the streets in the bright afternoon light.

Six weeks later, I opened up the envelope with the bill from MasterCard and saw somewhere on the streets of the Mother City, someone had been free and easy with the card I still had close to my heart. Free with buying petrol, easy in Pricerite, free and easy as they bought some fancy threads in Woolworths. My doubtful moment when I thought I could not show any distrust when the nice young Xhosa man offered advice had cost me ten thousand quid and a whole lot more. Bhuti!

The name on the card no longer belonged to me.

Communicate with an even better "Talking Tutor"

EMAS UK is a UK based company that wants to be able to support teachers to teach and children to learn, whatever their home language happens to be. It was created because teachers and local authority advisors asked them to help with resources for non English speaking children that were arriving in their schools. The approach needed to be simple and logical, have a large number of resources, be in as many languages as possible and be able to be accessed in seconds. They created the Digital Resource Library. The Digital resources base has around 200 languages of resources, some filled with more than others, a simple to use web site log in that downloads PDF resources in seconds and is constantly growing. This gives the school 12 months unlimited access for a whole primary school access and the cost is £195.

EMAS UK wanted to be able to support teachers and pupils even further and so they created Talking Tutor. Talking Tutor was developed because teachers asked if there was some tech solution to allow them to speak to the newly arrived non English speaking pupil in their own language. EMAS has created an educational tutor that speaks in 14 languages. This has proved successful for communication with both parents and pupils. It means that a new arrivals parents could be asked direct questions such as age, address etc. It also means that the teacher can talk directly to a new pupil in their home language. This could be a revolution in welcoming new children into the classroom. But the team at EMAS UK has done more. Teachers and school staff wanted more languages so more have been developed giving 24 languages in total.

Schools also wanted to be able to communicate properly with parents and pupils, holding two way conversations, and they wanted the ability for parents and pupils to be able to talk back. This was the start of Two Can Talk, a two way communication system that speaks in any of the two chosen languages, allowing communication to be developed into relationship building and being able to offer real help to some of the most vulnerable members of our society.

EMAS UK has launched the first talking communicator that works between languages. No software to load, no network issues, instant availability any time anywhere there is Internet connectivity, simply access the website and start using the communication tools. It is important that schools are aware it is not a translation tool but a communication aid, some words and sentences do not translate exactly, but it works at sentence level and contextual level to give the most appropriate sentence in the language of the user.

Talking Tutors’ Two Can Talk is as simple as typing, simply type in the text you want to say, choose a language to communicate in and press the say it button. The avatar then speaks the sentence in the chosen language, there’s also written text alongside. This supports learning by encouraging the link between written language and pronunciation. It is an ideal way to improve language skills by using the computer to model vocabulary by practising saying what is on screen. Two Can Talk can be used to speak between any of the 24 languages; the input language can be changed to allow language use between other language speakers. This helps develop the personalised learning agenda and helps the school to promote inclusive teaching regardless of language.

Using Two Can Talk is as simple as using Instant Messenger but with the confidence of having a language specialist at your side. Schools are reporting that they are using Talking Tutor to communicate with parents on the telephone, and by letter, as well as in person. One school in Wales recently reported that they had a pupil with health problems and they needed the parents to collect the child quickly. They typed the text into Talking Tutor, held the phone to the speaker and pressed the ‘Say It’ button. The result was that although they didn’t understand the parent’s response, they did arrive within minutes and took the child to hospital. Previously they would have had to find a person, usually a translator that could speak the language, wait for them to arrive and then start the process. Talking Tutor made communication simple, effective and instantly accessible whilst saving the school money.

Talking Tutor and Two Can Talk is currently being used by schools in Thailand and Sweden with other countries such as Norway and Poland negotiating to use the online tools in their schools. In Europe there is a global migrant population in excess of 41.9 million people, whilst the UK has an estimated 6 million limited English speakers with over 30 million foreign nationals visiting the UK on an annual basis.

EMAS UK has priced Talking Tutor and Two Can Talk to make it affordable to all schools, costing £395. When you think a translator may cost a minimum of £20 an hour, plus expenses and travel time, this once a year payment seems to be excellent value. Helping every child to communicate is important. Every child should have the opportunity to achieve their own personal potential. This impressive piece of online software certainly goes a long way in the right direction. And I have to say its potential is quite staggering.

It’s also tremendous fun and has lots of possibilities that schools will love to explore


http://www.emasuk.com/