• There was an interesting article on the today programme this morning about the National Curriculum, which you can listen to by clicking here.

    Master of Wellington College, Anthony Seldon is proposing the idea that the National Curriculum needs rethinking at a debate on education at the British Library tonight. Peter Hyman, a former strategist for Tony Blair, and now deputy head at comprehensive in London, agrees and interestingly points out that the real problem is conservatism that require testable knowledge to be passed down so that it can be tested and graded.

    He points out that the designer Alexander McQueen, who died this week, left school with one “o” level. In terms of education, he was a failure – in real life a a massive talent that shone despite his education. How can we let this state of affairs carry on?

    In the same programme was a report that poor children come to school a year behind middle-income children, mainly because the better off children are read to every day. Here is the perfect evidence for telling stories, yet, the National Curriculum has no time for stories, their usefulness cannot be quantified so why waste time on them. The fact that politics, religion, TV and Advertising survive on the power of story is quite forgotten in the debate, but then education is not interested in those fields of endeavour, never mind that they are the life-blood of society and human interest.

    I think we are grown up enough now to put away all the political correctness that got us here. Everyone complains about it, everyone is against it, so who is responsible for it? Surely we can now admit that we are not all the same. Can’t we celebrate our differences rather than legislate for homogeneity? Cant the clever kids be allowed to expand their brains beyond the easily testable? Can’t the thick and troublesome kids be allowed to find their talents and work on them?

    The future is too complicated for one person. It requires teamwork. We should teach children to work together using their own talents to the best and learning to recognise and utilise the talents of others. That’s never going to get done while they are all competing to pass exams in subjects that mean nothing to them.

    At last a new debate seems to be starting. Let’s hope it leads somewhere more interesting than the factory system we’ve had imposed for the last twenty years.

  • My computer got snarled up backing up stuff to DVD disc this afternoon, so I thought I’d do a quick lesson in how to draw a Hamster.

    As ever, if you like it, please rate it with the stars in the top left hand corner. If these videos are blocked at school, you can always download the video and put it on a disk to view later.

  • Just in time for St. David’s Day on March 1st, here is a lesson in how to draw a daffodil. St David is the Patron Saint of Wales. For my international readers, England is not the whole Island of Britain. Wales is on the west and Scotland is on the north side of England. Ireland is an island on its own to the west of Britain.

    Wales is a country with its own language and culture. The Daffodil is the national flower of Wales.

    I am English. I live about six miles from the Welsh border. My children went to school in Wales where they learned a bit of Welsh, my Grandmother was a Welsh speaker and I lived in Welsh-speaking, wild, West Wales for a while, when I was starting out as an illustrator. I learned a tiny little bit of Welsh in all that time. I was sat on my own for most of the time – you need to hear a language all day long to really pick it up.

    You can always draw daffodils to celebrate spring or for a Mother’s Day card – which isn’t too far off either.