Noboby leave the room, everyone listen to me, we had ten tampons at half past two, and now there's only three...

Prepare yourself for a new generation of perverts, drug abusers, teenage pregnancy, STD carriers and nymphomaniacs. Slightly hyperbolic I know but desperate measures calls for desperate rhetoric. What am I on about? I'm on about the government's ingenious idea of planning to make sex education compulsory in primary schools.

Yesterday's Guardian article quoted a spokesperson for Life Education: 'If we want to make a real and lasting difference to teenage drug and alcohol misuse, we must reach them early - at primary school'. Evidently the government has not had time to review the adverse effects of sex education in secondary schools. Minette Marrin in a recent Times online article points out:

[...] sex education has been an utter failure. The increase in sex education here in recent years has coincided with an explosion of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease (STD) far worse than anywhere else in Europe. Since the government’s teenage pregnancy strategy was introduced in 1999, the number of girls having abortions has soared. You might well be tempted to argue that sex education causes sexual delinquency.

It begs the question then that faced with such startling statistics why the government want to make sex education compulsory amongst children who still believe in mythical figures like the tooth fairy and Santa Clause.


My generation will be familiar with the science modules on human biology and how babies are made. I remember boys throwing about tampons and menstrual pads - shouting 'Here have a pillow' and sniggering. I'm not saying primary school kids will do this but something similar and more childish. Hitting each other with pads and using tampons as weapons - the latest James Bond gadget, may just be the norm. At the end of the school day teachers won't be asking where have all the scissors gone - but - nobody leave the room, everyone listen to me, we had ten tampons at half past two, and now there's only three. And so the search will begin. One tampon may be amongst the crayons, pretending to be a white crayon; remains may be found of one in the pet cage - what the hamster couldn't swallow and one in the teachers' tea - for scientific purpose of course, to see how much it can absorb.


Concern has been expressed by the sane about sexualising children by teaching them sex education but how do you desexualise sex? Perhaps we will be rigorously scientific and use scientific terms. A child who struggles with remembering and spelling difficult words is expected to take on board terms like vagina, placenta, fallopian tube, uterus, scrotum, prostate gland - need I go on? Maybe to help them learn we can have song-like-poems, like in Matilda - you know - Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs F F I, Mrs C, Mrs U, Mrs L, T Y - spells difficulty. Mr T, Mr E, Mr S T, Mr I, Mr C, Mr L, Mr Eugh - spells trouble.


I'm over reacting as usual. We're going to teach them BASIC sex education. What is 'basic' sex education? Where do we draw the line? You don't think curiosity will get the better of them? That you can tell a ten year old that a sperm penetrates an egg in the ampulla of the fallopian tube and he or she will simply note it down and that would be all? That's 'basic'. What about all the follow up questions? Teaching little kids is difficult enough without having to teach them about sex.


The problem with a 'basic' and scientific description of sex and how babies are made is that it is bereft of all human emotion. Isn't that the very problem we are trying to overcome? That sex isn't treated as a wonderful way to express human emotion but a competition, a league table of how many you've scored.

And no one is thinking about the teachers! What about the teachers? Teaching a classroom of ten year olds the basics of sex could have a detrimental effect on their sex life! Little money, no peace, and now no sex. There goes a generation of potential teachers. Think of the hot flushes in the classroom. The staff room gossip - 'My year 4s asked me to demonstrate penetration'. And I guarantee you one cheeky ten year old will ask 'Sir, do you have sex? How often?'

Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm not modern enough, maybe I'm too old-fashioned, maybe I need to get with the times, maybe I'm prude or worse yet naive. But every fiber of my being and the little logic I possess vehemently and passionately tells me that teaching sex education at primary schools is wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong morally, wrong ethically, wrong politically. Period. Oh and good luck explaining that to a ten year old boy!

Willaim Hazlitt - the first modern man?

Below is a Sunday Times Review by John Carey on Duncan Wu's 'vigorous' biography of William Hazlitt- a biography of doubtful veracity it seems. The article doesn't really review the book but offers interesting details about the life of Hazlitt, a great over view for those, like myself, who know very little about - perhaps - the severest critic of the Romantic period.

It can be found here:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article4954754.ece

William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man by Duncan Wu

The Sunday Times review by John Carey

William Hazlitt's collected writings fill 22 volumes. He was a literary critic, an art critic, a theatre critic, a philosopher and a polemicist, and his works The Plain Speaker (a collection of essays) and The Spirit of the Age (a survey of the writers of the Romantic period, most of them known to him personally) used to be revered as classics. Nowadays he is scarcely known, and Duncan Wu's vigorous biography, the fruit of 10 years' labour in the archives, is an attempt to put that right. The Hazlitt he brings to light, however, is unlikely to win a place in his readers' affections. He was a tormented, bitter man, who excelled at resentment.

His father, an Irish dissenting minister of heretical views, had taught him to hate all institutions, whether of church or state, and since human society is based on institutions this was an important first step towards his son's unhappiness. Born in 1778, young Hazlitt greeted the French revolution with frenzied enthusiasm. He idolised Napoleon, and was filled with hope that the victorious French would put an end to Britain and its constitution, an event that, Wu tells us, both Hazlitt and his father had long wished for.

The defeat of his hero at Waterloo was a devastating blow. He did not wash or shave for weeks and got drunk every night. As a teenager he had much admired Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, and sought their friendship, joyful that they shared his revolutionary ardour. However, the reign of terror, followed by the imminent threat of a French invasion, drastically modified the three poets' political views. They supported the British government's repressive measures against suspected revolutionaries, and Wordsworth even enlisted in the Grasmere volunteers, a unit that was fortunately not cast in a combat role.

Hazlitt never forgave them. He denounced them as turncoats and pursued them with derision and vituperation. Reviewing Coleridge's poems in 1816 he dismissed Kubla Khan as “nonsense verses” and Christabel as “utterly destitute of value”. Wu says that he knew perfectly well they were works of genius, but lied about them to get his own back on Coleridge - behaviour that Wu is inclined to condone. It seems questionable, though, whether changing one's political allegiance is necessarily as heinous as Wu seems to feel. In the last resort, the poets' sin was merely that they were less keen to see the end of Britain and its constitution than Hazlitt was.

However, Hazlitt's rancour was implacable, and its source was not only political. In 1803 a strange episode took place that permanently poisoned relations between him and his former friends. He was staying in Coleridge's house at Keswick, and went out one evening to the local tavern, where a girl he tried to chat up made an impudent remark. His response was, Wu says, “characteristic”: “He threw her over his knee, lifted her petticoats, and spanked her on the bottom.” He then fled to Coleridge's house, where news arrived that a gang of locals was on its way to wreak vengeance. Coleridge and Southey rapidly smuggled him out of Keswick to Dove Cottage, where Wordsworth took him in, supplying him next morning with money and clothes so that he could get away.

Since the three poets quite possibly saved his life, it might be expected that he would repay them with thanks. On the contrary, he began to feel that he had been unnecessarily humiliated, and came to see himself as the victim, and his rescuers as malicious persecutors. As usual, Wu takes his side. “Hazlitt was not an embittered or grudgeful man,” he maintains, “but the treatment he suffered at the hands of Wordsworth and Coleridge was to rankle for the rest of his life.” Hazlitt's extraordinary capacity for feeling hard done-by was also apparent in the matter of his first marriage. His wife was the sister of a successful barrister, John Stoddart, and since Hazlitt was a penniless journalist, and often in debt, Stoddart generously set up a trust to make the newlyweds an annual allowance. Far from being grateful, Hazlitt saw this as a “mammoth humiliation”. It “filled him with disgust for years to come”, Wu testifies, and was one of the “corrosive forces” that destroyed the marriage. Hazlitt repaid his benefactor by describing him, in a newspaper article, as a “stupid, senseless, vulgar person”, and likened The Times, of which Stoddart was editor, to a “water closet”.

Another corrosive force that destabilised the marriage was Hazlitt's fondness for the company of prostitutes. He gave them free run of his lodgings, which inevitably fuelled scandal and also distressed his young son, who was so appalled on one occasion by the noises coming from his father's bedroom that he intervened physically. Pathologically shy and tongue-tied in company, Hazlitt seems to have found sexual satisfaction only with women he felt superior to socially. He fell madly in love with his landlady's daughter, Sarah Walker, who was, apparently, willing to engage in lengthy petting sessions, but refused to have sex. He persuaded his wife to divorce him, in the hope that this would win Sarah over, but she still resisted, and he vented his thwarted lust and rage in a detailed account of the affair published in 1823 as Liber Amoris, which mingles feelings of contempt based on social class with sexual loathing and hysterical denunciation. He describes himself as “glued to a bitch, a little damned incubus”, and Sarah as “a common lodging-house drab” with “an itch for being slabbered and felt”. Wu endorses Hazlitt's judgments. Sarah was, he assures us, “exactly what he feared: a snake, a succubus”, and feminist critics show their “stupidity” by accusing Hazlitt of sexual harassment. All the same, they seem to have a point. When Sarah finally rejected him he persuaded a friend to move into the Walkers' lodging house with the express intention of seducing her. The friend reported back to Hazlitt, who noted his accomplice's progress in a diary. He appeared naked before Sarah, and kissed her on several occasions, but apparently got no further.

Publishing Liber Amoris was an act of self-destruction. The Tory press seized on it with delight, execrating its author as a libertine and whoremaster, and Hazlitt's reputation was in ruins. He died in poverty. Wu's biography is, like its subject, passionately partisan, and throws objectivity to the winds. He gleefully applauds Hazlitt's “rabble-rousing” tirades, and lambasts his enemies as blackguards and liars. At times he verges on fiction by inventing conversations that he feels must have taken place, but which do not occur in the historical record. This may attract scholarly frowns, but it undoubtedly livens up his writing.

For all that, the claims he makes are wildly extravagant. The reader blinks to learn that Hazlitt possessed “laser-like intelligence” and “an almost godlike perspective”. Such estimates cut no ice unless backed by the kind of analysis that Tom Paulin attempted in The Day-Star of Liberty, and Wu never gets near that critical terrain. The samples of Hazlitt's essays, art criticism and lectures that he offers seem verbose, far from incisive, and not always notable for intelligence. What sort of intelligence concludes (in Characteristics) that “Women have as little imagination as they have reason; they are pure egoists”? Nor is it clear why Wu considers Hazlitt the first modern man. All it seems to amount to is that Hazlitt was a journalist, so foreshadowed the power of the mass media. But, to qualify as modern men, competitors must have had ideas we still use in our thinking. Among Hazlitt's predecessors Montaigne, Newton and Rousseau all did that. Among his contemporaries, Wordsworth and the protosocialist Robert Owen, whom he dismissed as insignificant, did so, too. Hazlitt did not.

Next on the never-ending reading list....

(In no particular order of course)

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Experience by Martin Amis

Perfume by Patrick Suskind

Unpacking the Face

"We are such creatures of language that what we hear
takes precedence over what is supposed to be our primary
channel of communication, the visual channel"

The Naked Face, published in New Yorker, August 2002, by Malcolm Gladwell is a tantalising article on reading other people's facial expression.

Gladwell writes about Paul Ekman, a San-Francisco psychologist, who first discovered that facial 'expressions were the universal products of evolution' - not culture as it had been previously assumed.

Not only do our emotions create facial expression but what Ekman and a colleague discovered was that 'expression alone is sufficient to create marked changes in the autonomic nervous system' - so it's true what they say, smiling can make you feel better! They discovered this accidentally. Whilst trying the facial expression of anguish/distress they found that they both felt terrible. 'Emotion doesn't just go from the inside out. It goes from the outside in.'

Wonderfully written and dealing with interesting concepts, this article is well worth the long read. It can be found here along with other Malcolm Bradwell articles: http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_08_05_a_face.htm

Here is a taster from the beginning of section 2:

'All of us, a thousand times a day, read faces. When someone says "I love you," we look into that person's eyes to judge his or her sincerity. When we meet someone new, we often pick up on subtle signals, so that, even though he or she may have talked in a normal and friendly manner, afterward we say, "I don't think he liked me," or "I don't think she's very happy." We easily parse complex distinctions in facial expression. If you saw me grinning, for example, with my eyes twinkling, you'd say I was amused. But that's not the only way we interpret a smile. If you saw me nod and smile exaggeratedly, with the corners of my lips tightened, you would take it that I had been teased and was responding sarcastically. If I made eye contact with someone, gave a small smile and then looked down and averted my gaze, you would think I was flirting. If I followed a remark with an abrupt smile and then nodded, or tilted my head sideways, you might conclude that I had just said something a little harsh, and wanted to take the edge off it. You wouldn't need to hear anything I was saying in order to reach these conclusions. The face is such an extraordinarily efficient instrument of communication that there must be rules that govern the way we interpret facial expressions. But what are those rules? And are they the same for everyone?'

Perhaps what interests me so much in this article is that I've always thought I was really observant and a very good people/face reader. Wish I could take the test Ekman devised!

The dreaded apostrophe 2 - an example of apostrophe abuse

What is up with this sign??!

If you've read the post below (part one of the dreaded apostrophe) you should spot the mistake easily!

The dreaded apostrophe ( ' ) (one eyed alien)

The apostrophe is the most misused punctuation in the English Language. Trust me. You see people putting it anywhere and everywhere without thinking about it, even adding it to pronouns – ‘Hi’s’ – no, that doesn’t say ‘hi’ with apostrophe ‘s’, it is meant to be ‘he is’. See what I mean? There is a blog dedicated to apostrophe abuse in public signs and institutions. It is worth checking out if only for a little laugh.

The apostrophe has two uses:

1. To show the omission of letters (the apostrophe of elision)
2. To form the possessive of nouns.

The omission of letters

When words are contracted (shortened) apostrophe is used to indicate the omission of a letter. Contractions are common in informal speaking and writing. However, with formal writing you should avoid contractions. Don’t be lazy! Do not be lazy.

For example

Who’s - Who is

Shouldn’t – Should not

Didn’t – Did not


It can also be used in numbers – for example ’08 = 2008


Forming possessive of nouns

You can’t form possessive of verbs. So if the word is a verb , a ‘doing’ word don’t even think about adding an apostrophe.

Rule of thumb – to check if you need an apostrophe to make it a possessive noun – try to put the phrase ‘of the’ in the sentence. For example

the man’s car = the car of the man = you need an apostrophe.

So you’ve decided you do need an apostrophe. Follow the simple rules below and you won’t go wrong.

Add ’s to the singular (just one) form of the word
For example the man’s bike.

Add ’s to the plural (more than one) forms that do not end in ‘s’
For example the children’s biscuits.

If the plural form does end in ‘s’ then just add the apostrophe (') without the ‘s’
For example: the five friends’ house.

Apostrophe is never used to denote plurals (more than one). So in the above example it is ‘friends’ (more than one friend) rather than ‘friend’s’. Because we are trying to show possession of the house by these friends we add an apostrophe after the ‘s’, like we would if we said ‘the man’s bike’. But why not apostrophe ‘s’ (’s) - because there is already a letter ‘s’ in the word ‘friends’ so an apostrophe ‘s’ just wouldn’t look or sound nice – try saying ‘friends’s house’. :-)

If there is joint possession and nouns are used then add the ’s at th end of the second/last noun. For example, Jane and Daniel’s dogs. Not Jane’s and Daniel’s dogs. Not Jane’s and Daniel dogs.
Why is there no ’s in dogs? Because we never use ’s to imply more than one. Dog – singular, one. Dogs – plural, more than one and therefore no ’s is used because apostrophe is not used to denote plural form.

If I discover more rules to help I will update this post so keep checking.

Remember, don’t use the apostrophe with pronouns.

Don’t use the apostrophe to denote plurals – for example ‘Apple’s on offer’ is wrong wrong wrong. You mean apple plural therefore it would be ‘Apples on offer’

Best way to avoid apostrophe error is to proofread your work.

You can practice what you’ve learnt here- even if you’re (contraction) an expert you’ll be surprised. http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/skills/grammar/grammar_tutorial/page_52.htm

And here : http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/interact/g_apostEX1.html

Guardian Article: The art of avoiding plagiarism

The art of avoiding plagiarism: how to be a student

'The best way to avoid plagiarism is to avoid reading anything
written by somebody else. Unfortunately, this is not really what
higher education is supposed to be about.'

The above article which offers tips on how plagiarism can be found here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/oct/07/students.highereducation

Very handy if you're a student. If not ....well, still useful.

Remember, imitation is suicide.

Emerson?

The Links Section

I've just spent a great deal of time adding blogs and websites worth checking out if you're like me and interested in language and grammar. BUT I bet if you went through each my posts you'd find countless mistakes. I'm not dumb. I'm lazy. Really lazy. The lady doth protest too much? Maybe. I think I will focus on a bit of grammar and language in my next few posts. I need to improve a lot if I'm going to be a secondary school English teacher in two years (apostrophe?) time. The sad thing is I get a buzz out of grammar and language. But only if it is done right.

In case you're wondering, the links section is on right hand side of the screen, at the bottom. Happy browsing!

These are hard times for romance - so lose yourself in 'Lost in Austen'

These are hard times for romance

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=E5Q-FcWhEEE

Amanda Price with a copy of Pride and Prejudice in her hand
(image from fanpop)

Contrary to that truth which is universally acknowledged – Elizabeth Bennet does not end up with Fitzwilliam Darcy in this modern time traveling version of Pride and Prejudice. I’m sorry – I couldn’t resist beginning with those words! For those of you who have stumbled upon this article looking to buy Impulse body sprays I must disappoint you – you won’t find any here.

ITV’s mini-series, four parts in total, is about modern girl Amanda Price who escapes the mundaness of everyday life each night by losing herself in the world of Pride and Prejudice. By a sheer stroke of luck (and coincidence of course) she finds Elizabeth Bennet in her bathroom. A secret locked door in the bathroom is a portal to another world – and what do you know, it is the world of Pride and Prejudice. Amanda becomes trapped on the other side of the door – in the world of Elizabeth Bennet, whilst Elizabeth is in modern day England. The mini series follows Amanda Price and how her presence affects the well-known plot of Pride and Prejudice.

My rather simplified version of the plot does no justice to the series. It does not mention, for example, that Jane Bennet in a desperate attempt to save her family financially marries Mr Collins, that Caroline Bingley is actually …well, how to put this delicately – Miss Bingley prefers the company of woman, nor does it mention Lydia’s elopement with Mr Bingley.

The most obvious and striking deviation from the novel in this mini-series would have to be in the character of Wickham. I hope you’re sitting down because in Lost in Austen Wickham, the very man who attempted to seduce Darcy’s sister – is a ‘goody’, an honourable man. And not only that, dare I say it, I’ve grown quite fond of him!

However, much remains the same. The writers have wisely preserved the original character of Mrs Bennet. She is as wifty as ever and I spent a great deal of time wondering how the Bennet sisters’ repressed their matricidal urges. Pride and Prejudice meets Psycho would perhaps be a hit one day.

Darcy is as ‘insufferable’ as he is in the book and Amanda responds to him much in the same way Elizabeth does in the novel. Amanda is determined to keep the central plot of Pride and Prejudice intact – the story of Darcy and Elizabeth. However, being a hapless frustrated romantic in our modern world (these are hard times for romance) she quickly falls in love with the honourable gentleman Mr Darcy. The absence of Elizabeth means Darcy soon reciprocates Amanda’s feelings.

I loved the character of Mr Bennet played fantastically by Hugh Bonneville and I was pleased to see that he was portrayed to be as silly as Mrs Bennet, an impression I’ve always had from reading the novel.

Of course we must mention the cultural clash. For example, at Bingley’s ball Amanda drinks too much, pops outside for a fag (you breathe fire?) and ‘necks’ Mr Bingley. Oh the shame. At one point she asks for something to brush her teeth with and is provided by what looks like twigs from my local park! Perhaps the most amusing cultural clash depicted in this mini-series is when Darcy retracts his proposal to Amanda Price on the grounds that she is not a ‘maid’. That had me in fits.

But all is well that ends well. I won’t spoil the ending too much but I can tell you that somehow most of the plot of Pride and Prejudice is restored and both Elizabeth and Amanda get what they desire most.

I think there are some who have taken this mini series far too seriously. It is a bit of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it and thought it was very imaginative. Those savage critics who dug into this deeply should be wary of succumbing to the defects of Darcy and Elizabeth – in the former a propensity to hate everybody and in the latter to willfully misunderstand everybody. In the words of Jane Bennet – laugh as much you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion!