Virginia Blackburn: Time off to help your kids revise is absurd
LISTENING to the radio this week there was one programme that devoted itself to the whinges of various parents and one stood out in particular: a mother who complained about the difficulty in taking time off work to help her child with his revision.
Children should be capable of doing their homework all by themselves
Eh?
Since when do parents spend their time helping with their children’s schoolwork?
Teach them to read by all means and make sure the little blighters do what their teacher says – but actually sit down to go through their homework with them?
Disturbing Video of Teacher Ripping Up Homework Berating First Grader - Charlotte Dial - New York
Quite apart from anything else isn’t the point of homework that it is supposed to be done on one’s own?
When I was growing up, once and only once did I get help and even that wasn’t with homework per se.
It became obvious that I was going to fail my maths O-level at a time when you needed one to get into a good university.
My father, whose day job was as the Fielden Professor of Pure Mathematics at Manchester University, took me aside for some intensive one-on-one tuition and in the end I just scraped through.
Homework is there to teach you hard work and responsibility
The rest of the time I was expected to get on with it on my own.
And that’s how it should be.
Homework teaches you about hard work, personal responsibility and learning how to cope without a parental hand holding you every inch of the way.
It also makes you realise that adults have more important things to do with their time than fuss over you.
This self-same generation will end up unemployable
But this generation we’re bringing up of mini-tyrants is being taught to think that it’s all about them, that nothing is more important than their own needs and that their parents will even take time off work to help them with their every whim.
This self-same generation will end up unemployable.
Their parents will have no one but themselves to blame.
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The little monarch should work alongside his subjects
My plans for Prince George
Little Prince George has just turned three.
As an ardent monarchist I very much hope that he ascends the throne.
But given increased life expectancy generally and the Windsors’ in particular, shouldn’t the young royal be encouraged to get a proper, real-life job?
There’s a very good chance he won’t become king for another six decades but so far the only option seems to have been for a prince to join the Armed Forces, which they all tend to leave in their 30s, with empty decades stretching on from there.
Prince Charles has done a brilliant job of showing what a Prince of Wales can do but when he’s king that baton will pass to Prince William.
Shouldn’t George be made aware that one day he’ll be a monarch but that it might be an idea to work alongside his future subjects first?
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People are getting lost inside the virtual reality game
I have yet to play Pokemon of any description, including this latest version in which you catch cartoon monsters by using your mobile phone.
But the fact that so many people seem to be in its thrall is tragic.
It’s a game, for goodness sake.
You can’t help but suspect that many of these people are searching for some kind of meaning in life and now that we’re no longer a church-going nation this is what’s filling the gap.
What a sad state of affairs.
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Never too posh for a dollop of mayonnaise on your meal
Another take on mayonnaise-gate and Miriam Clegg’s complaint about Sam Cam putting Hellmann’s on the table.
But this is what the very grand do.
The poshest dinner party I ever went to featured a store-bought meat pie followed by ice-cream with a flake stuck in it.
There were a few titles present at that table.
No one turned a hair.