C.E. Jottings

Love is as relevant to person centred plans, one page profiles, risk assessments as a stale Jaffa cake.

Love and Dignity. Two words. Two blog posts from Mark Neary (See "Blogs I read" just to the right of here, below the Live Traffic Feed and CE Blogs). "Love Baffles" - "Love is as relevant to person centred plans, one page profiles, risk assessments as a stale Jaffa cake." "Dignity My Arse" - "Fundamental values like dignity become corrupted, so their only value to the corrupted professional is to mislead or cover their own arse. Or both. Whether you... Read more →

Changing work of Educational Psychologists

I've been reading an interesting account of the transformation in the work of Educational Psychologists that makes me wonder why they and Conductors are not more often seen as natural allies. I do not suggest that their interests or assumptions are identical, just that there might perhaps be more scope for dialogue and finding common ground. In their earliest practice (1913-40), EPs in the UK worked at the behest of doctors who identified children, to test and diagnose and make... Read more →

Frank 'Typhoon' Tyson, flat wickets and motivation

It's not about cricket - I promise! Frank Tyson was the fastest bowler of his day, his greatest season 1954-55, for England against the Aussies in Australia. That would be just about the time I as a boy was starting to take notice. He rather surprisingly retired from the game at the comparatively young age of 30. One factor, his obituarist in The Times wrote last week, was increasing frustration at having to bowl on unresponsive Northamptonshire pitches. Tyson himself... Read more →

Vulnerable to nonsense and worse

I happen to believe that words matter. In the summer before I went up to University College London to read English Language and Literature, we were sent a reading list. On that list was "The Use of English" by professor Randolph Quirk. In it, Quirk set out 12 uses of language, one of which (from memory) was to convey thoughts. Below, Quirk added a 13th to his list, that some people use language to disguise the fact that they have... Read more →