Comments on: Family, character and class – the Cameron view

By: mas

mas — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:39:24 +0000

Hi Matthew – no I’m not and we’re going to need all the contacts we can get so thanks for those. At this stage I have 26 willing volunteers from a previous project I ran and we’re having lots of frantic conversations online. Things are taking shape rapidly though so I’ll be looking to rack peoples brains and build links in the very near future.

By: Matthew Kalman

Matthew Kalman — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:27:54 +0000

Hi Mas,
Just wondering if you are in touch with Miranda McKearney at the Reading Agency or Jonathan Douglas at the National Literacy Trust?

I’d certainly recommend them both – inspiring and energetic people, who might be able to help you, somehow…

Matthew

By: mas

mas — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:44:29 +0000

@Matt – I’m just starting work on a new project based around encouraging children/young people to read to younger siblings/friends – it’s very early days so can’t give much detail yet but if anyone’s interested in that please get in touch via info[@]yomo.co.uk – I was looking to list it on the RSA networks projects thingy but that seems to have disappeared – or have I missed it?

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:32:38 +0000

Surely the point is that it is no good JUST giving people money to drag them a tiny bit above the poverty line, there are social issues around child-rearing and education that are just as important. If you give some (and I stress some) poor parents more money they will not spend it on books and read to their children. But it turns out that reading to your children is massively important developmentally.

Now, making parents read to their children may be no business of the state. But the New Labour idea that you can turn kids around by spending money on their education/employment training whilst ignoring the social harms of bad parenting and bad socialisation is utterly bankrupt – hence youth crime is up and social mobility is down. These social harms are life-changing and entrench inequality.

It’s a difficult problem to solve this, but it is a social as well as an economic problem, and a large part of socialisation is parenting. Welcome to social policy in the 21st century!

By: Matthew Kalman

Matthew Kalman — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:45:57 +0000

Hi Mas,

That book you’ll be reviewing – Nurtureshock: Why Everything We Thought About Children is Wrong – certainly sounds intriguing. (Amazon says it won’t appear until early Feb).

I love the line about it being ‘the Freakonomics of childhood and adolescence’!

Though I must admit I’m a wee bit wary of journalists writing rather as if they’re scientists of some sort (see my past comment about Gladwell making up nonsense to attack Charles Murray with – which just detracts from the real criticisms…).

I started reading “The Sexual Paradox: Troubled Boys, Gifted Girls and the Real Difference Between the Sexes” by Susan Pinker a while back – another interesting book around this area – and Pinker actually is a developmental psychologist, or something like that.

Re homework…

My other’s half’s going to have a chat with my older son’s teacher on Friday, as he’s not that keen on doing that many of the learning to read exercises he’s meant to be doing at home.

He’s only 4 – but is meant to be reading 100 words by the end of this school year, I think.

Yikes.

Maybe he should do a year or two’s sledging before he learns to read…?

A la Scandinavians…?

Matt