A deep dive into why the aesthetics of a book cover shape our reading experience — and whether that judgement is fair.
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The Herald
FOR many Britons, Dresden still conjures up thoughts of the Allied bombing and firestorm that razed it during the Second World War. But it is a shame that more of us don’t visit this magnificent regional capital today to see how it has risen, phoenixlike, from the ashes.
MADNESS is a creative way of dealing with pain, ” argues Rufus May, a recovered schizophrenic who used to hear voices urging him to kill himself. He and Dutch psychiatrist Dirk Corstens told a conference of mental health workers in Dundee recently that they need to explore more creative ways of dealing with voice-hearing.
Mental health professionals travelled from as far as Italy to hear about the “voice dialoguing” technique, in which, at its most extreme, the mental health professional engages with the voices themselves, in the first of a series of seminars on recovery.
Hearing voices – for instance after a bereavement – is a surprisingly common experience. Corstens says: “My aunt, who had lost her husband, used to sit on the bed and talk to him every evening. She could hear him talking back and that was a very reassuring and happy experience for her.”
I believe I speak for others at the Herald when I say I am utterly heartbroken and furious at the massacre of our once great newspaper. This whole issue is about far more than the fate of one group of newspapers. It affects us all in Scotland.” This cri de coeur posted anonymously on the allmediascotland website was prompted by news that one of Scotland’s two quality national newspapers is facing its third round of budget cuts in three years, this time to cut the annual budget by between £2m and £3m. One hundred jobs will also go from the three titles, the Herald, its Sunday sister and the Glasgow Evening Times. The Herald had been set a target of making 39p per pound for shareholders and, because it had fallen short, cost-cutting was deemed necessary – management had even asked staff for suggestions on how to save money.
“The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket,” wrote the novelist Joseph Conrad in The Secret Agent in 1907. A century later, the insight retains its resonance as British police are being asked to train local forces to fight terrorism in far-flung locations. Police officers seconded from UK forces are being dispatched to help their counterparts in trouble spots in the Middle East, the former Yugoslavia, East Timor and Africa.
Now officers on international secondment are being offered an online course in peace studies to help strengthen their contribution. The postgrad certificate – in international policing: peace support operations – is being offered for the first time this year by Stirling University in collaboration with the Scottish Police College and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It draws on ideas from education and politics.
While schools in some parts of the UK debate the issues surrounding burqas and niqabs in the classroom, Scottish educationists have their own human rights dilemma, centred on Twixes and Caramel Wafers. When a headteacher and school board attempted to ban sweets in packed lunches at an Edinburgh primary, some parents objected and the education authority forced the school to back down.
INVOLVEMENT in volunteering is having a dramatic impact on young people, the voluntary sector and the unemployed, according to ProjectScotland. In just over 18 months the national volunteering scheme, which launched in 2005 and is based on the successful AmeriCorps programme, claims to have changed the perception of volunteering among the young.
It also claims significant benefits to businesses, participating charities and agencies, and the volunteers themselves.
According to figures revealed to Herald Society, involvement in ProjectScotland halves a young person’s chance of being unemployed, increases fundamental communication skills and enhances the ability of voluntary groups to make a difference.
“Captain, the engines cannae take much more” – the catchphrase of “Scottie” of Star Trek was based on the stereotypical, highly trained Scots mechanic. Albeit in a futuristic guise, this was the kind of chap that in days of yore Dundee Technical College prided itself on turning out. The college, founded in 1888 for the training of mechanics, as shown in the stone carvings on the front of its original home, moved on to navigation, which explains the ship’s bridge that stands on its roof. Now, reincarnated as the University of Abertay Dundee, it specialises in biotechnology and computer games. It was Abertay that trained the creator of Grand Theft Auto.
IN THE pre-dawn darkness of a winter’s morning, I often hear bumps as my nineyear-old, having jack-knifed out of bed, gallops downstairs to enter Runescape, an internet game that mimics an alien world, complete with three religions, its own monsters, myths and quests.
For him, tapping on the keyboard is obviously the equivalent of the wardrobe route to Narnia as utilised by the Pevensie children.
In an effort to understand what I am dealing with here, I have tried playing it myself, but it doesn’t work as well for me; I fumble and stumble, unable to control my “avatar” (the screen image representing my character online), unable to complete the simplest quest.
I, you see, am a digital immigrant, and like a non English-speaking mother who gets her children to do the shopping, I have to ask for my son’s help with apparently simple tasks.
Morag Henderson found her time at university very hard. A single parent of two, with no supportive ex-partner on the scene, no money and mild dyslexia, who left school with few formal qualifications, she says: “I thought about dropping out all the time.”
“When somebody makes you feel like a fool, when somebody is so terribly cruel, you can feel your anger down deep in your soul, you can hold on to the feeling or you can let go.”
Verena, a German student serving delicious apple soup at Aberdeen University’s volunteer fair trade cafe, doesn’t do e-books. “Screens give me a headache. I love to read books and I write on paper.” Whether people like Verena are technophobes who will be left behind by the gradual evolution of the library into the “e-brary” is not yet clear.
WHEN retired lecturer David Harding sets off for Spain later this month, it will be without travel insurance, though not through choice.
A boy tries to light dry grass under a pyramid of twigs. Eventually, it catches and he lies on his side to blow the embers into crackling life. Tonight he and his friends will dine on a thin stew made of thistles and heather leaves, cooked over the fire. They will sleep in a makeshift bivouac on a bed of ferns.
‘As an unusually sunny summer term winds to a close at Queen Victoria school in Stirlingshire, punctuated by band practice, sports days and preparation for a ceremony to be attended by Princess Anne, the only cloud on the horizon is the dangers facing troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For all 280 boarders at this secluded spot, set in 45 acres of greenery, are the children of men and women in the services, many serving overseas.
School’s out for summer – but there is a lot of angry rhetoric still rumbling around the corridors. Scotland’s largest teaching union has threatened to ballot for a strike if the Scottish Executive fails to accept its demand for maximum class sizes of 20 across the board. Its members say this will lead to better attainment, especially for disadvantaged children.
And yet the Scottish Executive argues that research into the educational benefits of small classes is inconclusive and that it may not be the best use of resources.
Do we need obedient children? No. What we need in the 21st century is creative, questioning, challenging children who can think for themselves. We no longer need to prepare them for a
life of kowtowing to the old bowler hat, the gaffer, the policeman, the dominie, the sergeant-major. That world is gone for ever. Belief in unquestioning obedience began to subside as the world assessed the aftermath of the Somme and the Holocaust, and it will never come back.
We need to produce young people who are immensely flexible, self-sufficient, full of cheek and confidence. We need to leave behind the put-down and the threat in the same way that we have put away the tawse and the cane. We need to learn to cope with to as well as fro, to listen as well as to teach, to cherish the bright spark and not to seek to put it out.
‘History is more or less bunk, said Henry Ford. And that view appears to be gaining ground.
Not in St Augustine’s high school in Edinburgh, where it is one of the most popular subjects, with 65% of pupils taking it to exam level. There, the subject is compulsory until the third year. “History should be part of everyone’s secondary education,” says Andy Gray, the headteacher. “We have a right and a duty to pass on our story.”
However, at least four secondary schools in Scotland have now dropped the subject altogether in favour of other social science subjects that they say pupils find more relevant, and in which they do better.
‘See that building over there?” My guide points down the road to a white monolith whose large windows dominate the surrounding landscape. “That’s the social work department. And, see, if you were a battered wife going in there to seek help, your man could stand here and see you going in and out and in every one o’ they rooms. You’d get the hiding of your life when you came out. It’s like a lot of things in Easterhouse, it’s not very well thought out.”
Residents of this sprawling Glasgow housing scheme, one of the most deprived in Europe, have their reasons for being sceptical of grand visions intended to improve their lives. But, in the case of a primary school reorganisation that is to shut 10 schools and four nurseries in the area, replacing them with three “campuses”, they are less sceptical than actively angry.
You don’t have to be an aunt Sally to see that this is exactly the kind of school the white paper in England is aimed at creating.” Gordon Smith, head of Jordanhill school in Glasgow’s West End, is describing why he has to be careful what he says just at the moment.
In his role as president of the Scottish Association of Headteachers, Smith describes why Scotland can’t have more schools like Jordanhill. While with his other hat on, he talks about how great it is. It is a difficult line to tread.
IN France, “give us our daily bread” is a saying that still stands and the trip to the boulanger for a mouth-melting fresh baguette is a cherished part of life. The French like their bread fresh, traditionally made and free of preservatives, which means it goes stale very quickly. In Italy or Greece, the stuff is dipped straight into olive oil and eaten with every meal. In Arab countries, it comes flat and chewy while in some parts of Germany it is black and made with rye.
In contrast, British bread is mostly awful. As a result of our weekly supermarket shopping habits, it comes in stay-fresh foil packets. Bizarrely, it rarely goes stale but it can become mouldy and still feel soft thanks of to the crumb-softening enzymes within the mix.