Social Affairs

Albie Sachs Interview

Life sentences –  GUARDIAN SOCIETY 

The celebrated South African judge is still setting liberal precedents with a ruling that parents should not be sent to jail, because of their children’s rights – which, he tells Jackie Kemp, has important lessons for the UK.

Albie Sachs, South African writer and judge. 

Albie Sachs: ‘Judges are the storytellers of the 21st century’. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe

 

Albie Sachs – lecture transcript

This a slightly abridged text of the lecture given by the ANC veteran and South African constitutional court judge Albie Sachs at the National Gallery of Scotland on June 25 2009 in Edinburgh, transcribed from my shorthand note.

Tobermory’s Tweecher

The Herald June 16 2009

NEW HORIZONS: Social networking and blogging are an increasingly important part of classroom life for both pupils and teachers.
The pen has always been a mighty instrument. But in this internet age, when daily musings are so freely dispensed through Twitter, Facebook and blogs, it is easy to forget the power of the written word. The brightly painted town of Tobermory on the Isle of Mull has recently been reminded of this, after the local paper published a series of messages that had been sent by Lynne Horn, a principal teacher at the local high school, through the social-networking site Twitter.

Teachers banned from Twitter after indiscreet tweet

Teachers banned from Twitter after indiscreet tweet

Council imposes ban after teacher’s comments cause outrage in rural community

from the Guardian Education online

Fellow ‘tweechers’ have responded angrily to the ban

Tweeting teachers in Scotland are incensed by reports that Argyll and Bute council has banned teachers from blogging about their work.

The move came after tweets written by a teacher appeared in the Oban Times.

Comments made by the head of the language department at a local high school, to her friends on Twitter – “Have three Asperger’s boys in S1 class: never a dull moment! Always offer an interesting take on things” – have caused outrage.

Pressure mounts on Scots

Media Guardian

Scotland’s national newspapers are in crisis as readership falls, jobs are cut and London-based titles muscle in.

Scots, once the biggest consumers of newsprint in the world, are losing the habit, with the slump hitting home-grown titles the hardest. The writing could now be on the wall for one or all of the three daily Scotland-wide titles, the Scotsman, the Herald and the Daily Record.

Kitchen Nightmare on Lismore

Education Guardian

What children put into their mouths at lunchtime has become one of the touchstone political issues of our age and a money-saving plan by Argyll council in Scotland to shut six Hebridean island school kitchens was recently shot down by parental anger.

Mechanical enginering at Dundee

From the Guardian University Guide

The University of Dundee has motored up the mechanical engineering tables, coming from outside the top 20 last year to third place.

This is the first year that students have built a formula student racing car to race in a university competition at Silverstone – a project that the department head, Robert Keatch, says they are hugely enjoying and which is helping their team-working skills.

Cracking cocaine

Most of the pupils at Girvan academy are smartly dressed in school uniform, shirts and ties, and it seems an unlikely place to find juvenile cocaine experts.

But this school in Ayrshire has piloted an anti-drugs programme on cocaine that is to be rolled out across Scotland. Pupils have worked with the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency and Learning Teaching Scotland (LTS), the government-funded body that develops the curriculum, to come up with a programme that focuses not on the health risks of cocaine use but on its environmental and social damage.

Kathleen Marshall Interview

What they long for is people who care’ – Education Guardian

Kathleen Marshall, the first UK children’s commissioner to leave office, tells Jackie Kemp she has never been a fan of playing safe

The ground-floor office a few doors up from the Scottish parliament on Edinburgh’s Holyrood Road has neat venetian blinds and two doors. One is unashamedly dull. The second, smaller door, is shiny, has a bejewelled handle, and is painted with images of mermaids and enchanted forests. Just inside, where other offices have coatstands, is a cardboard wishing tree. Someone has written on one of its paper leaves in a round, firm hand: “I wish I had more one-to-one time with key children.”

Louise Richardson Interview

Louise Richardson Interview

Education Guardian.

Louise Richardson, the new head of St Andrews, will bring ‘American attitudes’ to admissions and to red tape, she tells Jackie Kemp.

University of St Andrews

St Andrews University … Louise Richardson was previously the dean of a Harvard college

School-age drinkers with adult problems

A prominent Scottish professor will denounce the use of education cash to fund “mumbo jumbo” in a public lecture tomorrow.

Professor Sergio Della Sala, Professor of Human Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh, will use part of a prize-winning public lecture to voice his concern that Scottish schools are paying thousands of pounds to train teachers in controversial techniques such as “brain gym” and “neuro-physiological psychology”. The professor – the first winner of a prize for science communication, named in honour of Tam Dalyell, which will be awarded by the former MP tomorrow – is angry public money is being paid to those he called “pranksters”. Prof Sala says he is “outraged”

A nativity play for our times

All the fairytale-land characters have come together to put on a nativity show. Little Red Riding Hood is playing the part of Mary, Goldilocks is Gabriel, the Three Little Pigs are the wise men and watch out for the innkeeper – it’s the big bad wolf!”

Living with Grandma

The little badge was unearthed from a corner of my mother’s ancient sewing box the other night, when she was sewing similar ones on to my children’s scout uniforms.

Pupils’ orchard project is ripe for harvesting

Councillors entering Glasgow’s magnificent Victorian city chambers will have to be careful not to upset the apple cart as 120 varieties of local apples, harvested by the city’s children, will be put on display on Friday.

More than 1,000 fruit trees have been planted by the city’s schoolchildren, many in or near their playgrounds. The children plant the apple and pear trees, watch them grow and harvest the crop.

What is French for green?

“Ca c’est typique! Tu ne comprends pas qu’on vit dans une société de consommateurs?” Pupils from Shawlands academy in Glasgow staged a play about the politics of conservation on an unused island in Pollok Park, an island they reclaimed themselves, wading out in welly boots to cut back the shrubbery and create a natural auditorium.

The Litter Pickers, which featured an argument between Greek goddesses Aphrodite and Hestia – in French – won the school a language award, and was gamely performed alfresco despite skies that threatened rain.

The crack team

Get on the website of a budget airline to book yourself a holiday and, while you are at it, fool around with the site code so that you can pick your own price. For tomorrow, show your workings. That is the kind of homework students on a new MSc in ethical hacking at Dundee’s University of Abertay might be set. Although, of course, the website they use won’t be a real one but a cod version for in-house use set up by a tutor – or even a fellow postgrad.

Why is the telly such a turn-off?

Nine o’clock is known to broadcasters as ”the watershed”. It is the magic hour when small people are presumed to be in their beds and their parents, having started the dishwasher and swept a tidal wave of coloured plastic into the toy cupboard and wedged the door shut, are sitting down, putting their feet up and reaching for the remote control.