Articles

In praise of wild camping

In praise of wild camping

The Herald Magazine. Hiking off into the purple yonder with nothing but a sleeping bag and a loo roll – that is camping as it once was and, for some, what it is becoming again. There’s a resurgence in so-calledwild camping in Scotland as the countryside access laws bed in. Forget the designer floral tent with matching curtains, the elegant plastic wine goblets and the pre-cooked lasagne – leave them at home where they belong and head for the horizon with just a toothbrush in your pocket.

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

A new system for reading music

Every Good Boy Deserves Failure.   And All Cows End Gorily – or is it Eat Grass? Generations of children have struggled over mnemonics designed to help them translate five black lines and a series of dots into music. Some accomplish this feat; some – like me – remember little except these disjointed sentences. But that could soon be history, according to a charity that’s introducing a music notation system to the UK from Finland that is accessible enough for the youngest children to understand. “A revolution in music education is under way,” says Brian Cope, of Drake Music Scotland.

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.

Sustainability

SUSTAINABILITY has become a touchstone of modern Scottish politics.

Once a dish associated with the lentil-supping, tree-hugging fringe, it is now served with almost everything on the political agenda. More than a buzzword, “sustainability” is becoming a kind of new-age industry with a legion of civil servants, engineers, academics employed in thinking of new ways for Scotland to move towards a huge 80% reduction in carbon emissions in the next 30 years.

THE PRE-TEEN PROM

IT IS prom night and the young people are dressed to the nines – the girls in elegant dresses, make-up and heels, the boys in tuxedos or kilts. Stepping out of the stretch limos and Humvees their parents have hired, they are excited, all ready to celebrate leaving school –  primary school, that is. Their average age is 11.

Across Scotland , the pre-teen prom – an American-style celebration to mark the end of primary school – is catching on. But while some parents like the idea others are concerned . Which is it: rite of passage or too much, too young?

Stories to help obese children

Unlike the obese children often pictured when weight problems are discussed, ordinary chubby children can be much harder to spot as having a problem. Evidence shows that parents, teachers and even health professionals can struggle to identify the children whose body mass index puts them at risk of weight-related illness. This is presenting something of a problem in Scotland, where a government programme is requiring every health board to get a certain number of overweight children into treatment programmes.

Kenneth Skeel

Artist, nationalist and activist; Born September 12, 1946; Died May 19, 2008..

KEN Skeel, who has died aged 61, was a veteran of the campaign for a Scottish parliament, free thinker and raconteur.

His wit and courage never failed him and after hearing he had terminal cancer he jokingly told his partner, Nell, that for his funeral arrangements he wanted to be thrown into a smouldering volcano.

Americans at St Andrews

American accents mingle with Scots and posh English in the narrow streets of medieval St Andrews, a hotspot for US students, with 1,160 undergraduates and postgraduates. That’s more than one-seventh of the university’s entire student population.

The X-amination Factor

Rows are forecast across breakfast tables this morning as parents try to persuade teenage children that their English exams are more important than the X Factor.

Scottish heads are furious that the ITV show scheduled its first auditions for 10,000 hopefuls in Hampden Park football stadium yesterday, the day before the Scottish equivalent of GCSE English. The second round, involving thousands of hopefuls, is due to take place today in the same venue.

The rector of Dingwall Academy, Graham Mackenzie, spoke for many when he said: “This is appalling. I have seen a copy of the letter the children have been sent. In big bold letters, it congratulates them for being selected. It tells them this is their first step on the road to stardom and that this decision may change their lives. It also tells them to rehearse and practise to impress the judges.

A taste of freedom

The smile on the boy’s face said it all. Sailing single-handed across a sea loch would be a special moment for any child. But for Reggie Fernie, who uses a wheelchair, it was an adventure he never thought he would have.

It was a moment to treasure for the staff at Carrongrange special school, too. The school is pursuing the new freedoms offered by Scotland’s curriculum for excellence to work with other children’s services in the area to radically extend its outdoor programme for pupils with special needs. Seeing the effect has been an education, says the head, Gillian Robertson.

Last-ditch battle for the future of Edinburgh’s historic waterfront

As developers plan to make Scotland’s capital’s 15 per cent bigger, city architects draw up their own bid to save its cultural soul

A massive redevelopment of Edinburgh’s waterfront which will increase the size of the city by almost 15 per cent is attracting widespread opposition.

The last and biggest phase of the project, turning almost 300 acres of docks into 16,000 homes, is expected to get outline planning permission in July. But critics are mounting a last-ditch attempt to get the project ‘called in’ for scrutiny by the Scottish government.