Baby On Board

It's not uncommon, at least where I drive, to see a "Baby On Board" sign stuck to a car's rear window. I've been wondering. What does this sign really mean?

I've somewhat assumed up to now that it means, "Please don't tailgate me as I have a fragile occupant in the car". In that case, the sign has no effect on my driving as I don't tend to tailgate anyone. Doesn't seem to effect anyone else's either.

Or does it mean, "Watchout for random things thrown out the windows?". Not too helpful. More likely it means, "Driver hasn't slept well and may drive erratically". However, in that case, the sign should be on the front window. It could mean, "I have a baby in the car and that's why I'm driving so friggin' slow". But in my experience, cars displaying "Baby On Board" don't drive slow. They're usually on hatchbacks with a harried mother stepping hard on the gas pedal. Maybe "Baby On Board" is just a form of proud display by new parents? Misguided but harmless I guess. It could also mean "Don't park close to me as I might bash my door into your side trying to get my baby in and out of the car". This seems to be the most useful meaning and I certainly avoid parking next to anyone with the "Baby On Board" sign.

Energy Security

I predict that "Energy Security" is going to be one of the big political and media catch-phrases over the next decade. It's inevitable as the oil supply can no longer meet market demands and energy prices keep rising. It will become paramount for each country to establish stable sources in order to protect its economy.

You could argue that the US occupation of Iraq is a move to ensure energy security. Chinese corporations are beginning to buy foreign energy companies. The UK is edging towards a pro-nuclear policy. Dirty fuels are back on the table as an option. And no where will be off-limits when it comes to searching for the last patches of oil.

And no one knows how much oil is left. Certainly the UK has run out of North Sea oil and will soon be a net importer.

Be ready for some nasty politics as competition between nations increases. And in a world based on globalisation, if you don't have energy security, you don't have food security either.

Food Poisoning

Arrgghh! The kids and I are down with food poisoning. Been sick for two days; what a pain. We believe it was some chicken I bought last Monday. Definitely fowl play!

Learning for Sustainability School Conference 2005

I attended the Learning for Sustainability School Conference put on by a local education authority yesterday. It was aimed at people in various local educational roles and since I'm a school governor, I got an invitation. There are many groups promoting sustainability and the conference was an effort to bring these many groups together.

Sustainability is all very well and good but I was very sceptical about how it could be integrated into a learning environment. If we want to achieve sustainability, I believe it needs some pretty radical changes and not just some greenwash in a classroom. How far were they willing to go?

Turns out that Education for Sustainability is already defined as part of the UK National Curriculum :

Education for sustainable development enables people to develop the knowledge, values and skills to participate in decisions about the way we do things individually and collectively, both locally and globally, that will improve the quality of life now without damaging the planet for the future. (The National Curriculum, 1999)

Not bad. Can't really argue with that.

The proposition at the conference is that Education for Sustainability must be pursued by a whole school approach where the entire ethos of the school is based on seven principles:

• 
  
  Interdependence


• 
  
  Citizenship and stewardship


• 
  
  Needs and rights of future generations


• 
  
  Diversity


• 
  
  Quality of life


• 
  
  Sustainable change


• 
  
  Uncertainty and precaution.

It's not just a taught subject. It's a way of threading together multiple topics. It's a perspective at which to look at everything that's done. It's an ethos and organisation prinple for the whole school.

The WWF has developed a useful education framework called Pathways. In their workshop, there was some inspiring case studies of schools that had fully embrassed this sustainability ethos (St Crispin's). It provided a nice roadmap for how to move a school forward. Meanwhile, the local borough is trying to embrace and extended this framework and promote it to the local schools. I need to read it still. There are some other interesting initiatives such as EcoSchools and FACE.

I even had a chat with a Senior Countryside Ranger about natural play and that article I had read in the Ecologist. He basically agreed that school grounds were generally not be used effectively.

I warmed up to this entire effort but had one concern. I raised the issue of ethical consumption with one of the speakers from Ofsted, Leszek Iwaskow. Was teaching about ethical consumption part of the sustainability agenda? I was impressed that he was all for it and even used it as an example in a later talk. It would be a great way to engage kids in secondary schools.

Sometimes, I do feel that Education for Sustainability smacks of "here, kids, we've had a party, spent your inheritance and don't have the political will to do anything about it so you better start thinking about how you might fix it". But it's better than the status quo and might raise a generation that has the political will to make the difficult decisions ahead.

Meanwhile, maybe they should add survivalist courses to the National Curriculum. If it's all too little, too late then they might just need it.

Bonfire Night at Windsor Race Course

Guy Fawkes Day was last Saturday; there were fireworks displays all over the neighbourhood. We took the kids to the Fireworks Extravaganza at Windsor Racecourse. They had a big funfair which was outrageously expensive. The bonfire was huge and so far away you couldn't even feel the heat. The fireworks were good but I've been spoilt after being a regular at the Vancouver Fireworks Festival.

I wouldn't go to it again. I've decided Bonfire night is more fun at a smaller local level. You should be able to get close to the fire, light sparkerlers or maybe a firework or two yourself. The point is to be a participant rather than a spectator.

Actually, after watching the Timewatch show on the gunpowder plot, I now realise how un-PC this 400 year old celebration is and the burning of the Guy is a real anachronism.  He wasn't even the ring leader; just the first to be caught and tortured. You could call them terrorists that committed treason. However, the state was viciously persecuting Catholics taking innocent lives along the way. You could call them freedom fighters striking at their oppressors who refused them any political engagement. Same old story.

Kids With Mobiles

My daughter recently turned 10. Her big present was a mobile phone I bought second-hand off ebay (a Nokia 6100). Needless to say, she's been over the moon having acquired such a "grown-up" device. I'm sure it gives her bragging rights with some of her friends but she's not allowed to take it to school - school rules.

Honestly I'm not a big fan of raising techno-kids despite being a geek myself. I've refused to buy any of the handheld gaming platforms no matter how cool they are. The tamagotchi's were a mistake but thankfully their batteries have died. There are better things kids should do with their time and imagination. A mobile phone was previously out of the question too.

However, the mobile phone is more for myself really. I figure I can now feel more at ease letting her roam out of sight knowing I can call her anytime. I'm not sure that's freedom or just a really long leash.

As an aside, I lost my mobile a few weeks ago and have now got another one I bought off of ebay (yeah, I'm shopping on ebay a lot now). I'm on the same number as before. If you want R*'s number, drop an email to me.

Battery or free-range children? A generation supervised.

Tim Gill published an excellent article in the October 2005 Ecologist magazine entitled "If You Go Down To The Woods Today" that I found very thought provoking. Can you recall your favourite place to play as a child? I've asked quite a few people this question and the answer is almost invariably somewhere outside and away from adult supervision. It was just somewhere you mucked about.

The article goes on to attack the current status quo of tight supervision of children in highly structured play environments. The underlying concern is that if the current generation is not so engaged with nature in childhood, how well will they fight to protect the environment? It's an interesting question and the article concludes with stories of communities that have ripped up playgrounds to plant natural play areas for kids to play in. It makes me wonder what other ramifications there might be with this kind of childhood.

Two issues raised by this article have really resonated with me: 1) freedom to roam and 2) unstructured outdoor play.

It's totally true that my kids have had far, far less freedom to roam than I did growing up. I roamed the neighbourhood far and wide. My kids stay within our property. I grew up playing around ponds, woods, creeks and hills. My kids have a small landscaped backgarden. It's rather boring so they play inside instead. Sad isn't it? I feel guily that it's my fault.

Of course it's not only my kids that are raised like this. All their friends are much the same. Some might have the advantage of a larger property or local streets with very little traffic. It does seem to mark the whole generation. Maybe what we have is a generation of paranoid parents fed fear by the media. I don't think the streets are less safe than before.

So now I'm struggling with thoughts about how to give back some freedom to my kids and get them outside just mucking about. It's worth reading the article and Tim Gill's website on rethinking childhood.

Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Nick Park, Steve Box, 2005)

Wallace & Gromit rule! Great movie - everything you've come to expect from Nick Park. Will have to watch it on DVD to catch more of the in-jokes. Don't miss it.

Windsor Great Park

Went out with the kids and a friend today and made our first stab at geocaching. We were heading for an Autumn walk in Windsor Great Park anyway when we figured we might as well try and locate this geocache. It wasn't there but it was a fun challenge. Will have to try again sometime and maybe put our own cache together.

The kids also practised firing a slingshot with crab apples and searched for conkers. It's half-term and I'm looking for projects to keep them occupied.

Rosa Parks

It was Rosa Parks whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man in 1955 triggered the start of the Civil Rights Movement. She died a few days ago on Oct 24, age 92. A truly inspiring story. Amazing that racism was so deeply entrenched only fifty years ago.

Canadians not so different from Americans

Horror of horrors but that's the conclusion of a study published in Science Magazine this month comparing perceptions of national stereotypes to the results of averaging countrymen personality tests. The study was conducted by the U.S. National Institute on Aging by 87 researchers across 49 countries by gathering NEO-PI-R self-reports from 3,989 people.

I haven't got ahold of the original study but it's being widely reported around the 'net.

Canadians have always had a problem defining a national identy and part of the Canadian myth building is "we're not American". The perception is widely agreed upon across Canada but it doesn't hold up to measurement. There are certainly cultural differences but those differences aren't due to personality traits. It would be interesting to test whether there's a measurable difference in the average West Coast and East Coast personality.

It's also turns out the British stereotype is completely unfounded. Rather than reserved, stalwart and conventional, they're measured to be extrovert and generally open to new experiences. Meanwhile Germans think that they're conscientious and industrious and they measured out as conscientious and industrious. However, it's the Poles that turn out to be the people that know themselves the best. 

This article has more details on the methodology and takes a look at it from the perspective of ethnic jokes...

 “Heaven is where the police are English, the cooks are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and everything is organized by the Swiss. Hell is where the police are German, the cooks are English, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and everything is organized by the Italians.”

Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (David Miller, 2003)

I love the "Very Short Introduction" series put out by Oxford University Press. I've just finished reading the one on Political Philosophy. The topic sounds daunting but it's written in a very clear readable manner. The chapters covered are:

• Why do we need political philosophy?
  
• Political authority
  
• Democracy
  
• Freedom and the limits of government
  
• Justice
  
• Feminism and multiculturism
  
• Nations, states and global justice

I found the last chapter on global justice particularly interesting. In contrast to cosmopolitanism, which is admittedly utopian, he outlines what I would consider a realistic vision of a world built on global justice:

"Political authority would rest primarily with nation-states, but they would collaborate to ensure that the costs and benefits of international cooperation were fairly distributed. Each political community would govern itself according to its own political traditions, and schemes of social justice would likewise vary somewhat from place to place. But everywhere human rights would be respected, and in cases where they were threatened, either by natural disasters such as drought or by oppressive regimes, other states would work together to ward off the threat. Some states would be richer than others; this would not be unjust provided that it resulted from political choice and cultural decisions rather than from economic exploitation. Some states would also be more democratic than others, but even those peoples who did not control their governors directly would identify with their government and feel that it represented their interests and values." (p130)

Sounds promising to me. I believe this vision has its roots in the political liberalism of John Rawls. Looks like it would be worth reading more about his ideas (e.g Original position).

I find books like these are very good at helping you test and strengthen your own opinions. I've been taking a closer look at where I stand on political issues and political philosophy gets right to the fundamentals.

Apple Day

Yesterday we dropped by the annual Orchard Open Day at Cross Lanes Fruit Farm in Mapledurham (just north of Reading). The kids tried the traditional apple peeler, saw the displays on apple growing and bee keeping, tasted lots of apples and had a go at the games. We also tagged along on a tour of the orchard by the owner, Gill Franklin, who is obviously very passionate about apples (trivia: the Romans introduced apples to England).

What makes Cross Lanes special is that they grow 60 different obscure British apple varieties (and some pears and plums) and take tremendous care to get the greatest flavour from them. It's a bastion of good practice and does its best to help keep local production alive.

Each apple variety peaks at a different time and are usually on sale for just a few weeks. The rolling harvest means that the apple season is stretched out from  August to December and then that's the end. There's no gassing of the apples and putting them in storage for 10 months. These apples aren't covered with pesticide residues and are truly flavourful.

The kids tried a dozen varities and settled on a bag of Red Devils that they're now taking to school. Next month, I'll have to remember to pick up a bag of Jesters when Cross Lanes show up at the local farmers' market.

Shopping Rights

Nice article on your shopping rights in the UK. There's also the DTI Fact Sheet on the Sale of Faulty Goods. No, haven't had any problems lately. I was just following links from the latest issue of Money Saving Expert.