AS a fifty-something, one of the things I loathe is being told to "move with the times". Clearly, we are in the territory of Grumpy Old Women here and I don't much like that category either.
For one thing, there are sound grounds for believing that moving with the times is just as unlikely to produce a good result as being stuck in the past. And for another, I am selective. There are some things I welcome about the here and now but ther
e are other developments which any fool can see are headed inevitably for disaster.
Unlike those people who think everything modern is good, everything old-fashioned is bad and who cannot stop themselves hurtling towards the 22nd century, I think I can see good and bad in both.
It's an age thing, of course, and I'm not alone. Anyone who has been on the planet long enough to make comparisons between different decades will have learned that some things work, and some things don't.
The absolute refusal to learn from the past or to accept that our parents and grandparents ever got anything right is partly to blame for the fact that kids no longer set great store on the advice of their elders.
If the Young Master tells me once more that: "Things are different now mum – you don't understand," before dismissing anything I say as the ravings of a Victorian lunatic, I think I will scream.
However, you expect that sort of attitude from teenagers. It is less forgivable when it comes from those who govern, form crucial policy and force the rest of us to go along with them.
Education is a prize example. Nearly half of Scotland's 14-year-olds fail to meet basic requirements in writing. More than one third fall below the basic standards for numeracy and reading. Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop is wringing her hands over that, even as she plans to reorganise the exam system . . . again.
The answer to this appalling drop in standards has been abundantly clear for decades, and has been proven in West Dunbartonshire. For ten years the education authority there has been running a project where they returned to the traditional reading and spelling methods of 50 years ago. And guess what? They all but obliterated illiteracy, reducing the number of school-leavers who couldn't read from 28 per cent to almost zero.
Ageing readers, like myself, will recall that neither poverty nor parental inadequacy could stop anyone in their primary school mastering reading, writing and arithmetic thanks to old-fashioned teaching systems that would have scoffed at the idea that education was meant to be "fun".
Admittedly, there's not much fun in rote learning; reciting times tables over and over; learning ten new spelling words every night at home; reading several chapters of a book each night, and facing daily tests on everything next morning. But unlike the zany, fun, holistic, experimental systems that followed . . . it worked. I'm sure West Dunbartonshire hasn't quite gone that far, but they have "borrowed" the core method from the past in actually teaching children how words are constructed rather than expecting them to absorb whole words by some mysterious osmosis. I'm fed up hearing educationalists and 21st century experts say things are different today, kids are different, it won't work the way it used to and we have to move with the times. They've been proved wrong.
The big question is why the ten-year pilot hasn't been rolled out across the country.
It's wonderful that in recent years, genuine disabilities such as dyslexia have been diagnosed and recognised so that tailored learning systems can be put in place. One up for the modernists.
But when the means exist to make sure almost all other youngsters leave primary school with a good grasp of the three Rs, why aren't we grabbing it with both hands?
Is there a conspiracy against literacy? Or is it just that so many people are blind to the fact that the old ways often turn out to be the best?
Not a burning issueI AM utterly bewildered by Government plans to ban under-18s from using sunbeds following revelations that children as young as eight have been allowed to bake themselves in these lethal ovens.
Despite the claims of the industry, there are no safety measures that can be imposed to guarantee them harmless. True, the fair-skinned, the freckled and the redheads appear to be at greater risk but that doesn't mean sallow brunettes don't get skin cancer. And as for the age restriction, using sunbeds up to the age of 35 increases the risk of malignant melanoma by 75 per cent according to Cancer Research UK. Comparisons with smoking are flawed. There's no great government revenue loss at stake and it's doubtful whether more than a handful of sunbed users in the UK could claim to be "addicted" in any clinical sense.
There is simply no argument against banning them altogether.
The full article contains 839 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
