It's Always More Complicated

But I am so, so fed up of people who use 'silver bullet' when they mean 'magic bullet'!

Silver bullets kill things, werewolves, mostly, right; or just generally Bad Guys when fired by the Lone Ranger.

Magic bullets Do Good - like curing sifilis, thank you Ehrlich and Hato, they are targeted remedies.

Also, however hyperliterate I am myself and have been from a young age, I don't think it's the panacea proposed here: There is a silver bullet for childhood happiness: a love of reading.

Just because she (and I and I daresay many of you who are reading this) found our happy place in reading, doesn't mean it's going to be that for all children.

I am entirely there for emphasising the role of pleasure in reading, for

meeting children where they are. It means allowing children to read books that might be perceived as too old and too young for them; it means relishing your child’s love for comics and heavily illustrated books

But I don't think this is For Everyone any more than Going Out and Playing In the Nice Fresh Air.

And on that, I really liked this: Children should have a right to play in the streets, alleys, pavements and car parks of their neighbourhoods. Refers to a letter about children playing in streets, etc, rather than in designated playgrounds and parks:

It assumes that children should be “taken” to designated play spaces, rather than allowing for the possibility that children should be able to access playable space without adults. And, finally, it fails to acknowledge that parks and other green spaces afford only certain kinds of play, and that children demand – and deserve – diverse spaces for diverse forms of play, not just ball games, swings and slides.

You know how people going woezering about kidz these days being stuck to their screens and not playing out Like Wot They Useter?

Turns out that actually, No, Not Like That: people don't like kidz these days doing Ye Trad Thing of playing in the streets.

UK families tell of threats and police warnings over children playing in street: Readers say they are afraid to let children outside after warnings from authorities and neighbours’ threats

Cars, dog poo, and delivery drivers: why children don’t play out anymore: Guardian readers lament their kids’ loss of freedom and the contrast with their own childhoods

Okay, while reading may have been my preferred pursuit as a child there were times I also liked riding my scooter up and down the street - and we could go to nearby green spaces, or walk down to the sands, and no-one got into a panic. Fewer cars, though, even if there was certainly dog poo.

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Do we feel that this guy has possibly been brought up without contact with other human beings while being exposed to a lot of rom-coms? Because this is Not The Problem that needs solving: The Pear ring: will this social experiment really disrupt dating? A new startup is hoping to eliminate the need for dating apps by encouraging singles all over the world to wear a small green ring.

Given that women who find themselves in positions where they are likely to get hit on by hopeful blokes actually wear fake wedding rings....

Now, if this was something like a mood ring that would reflect the wearer's feelings...

Not, we think, that that would necessarily deter the kind of bloke that thinks single = looking for Ro-mance, no?

I can't help feeling that sometime, years ago, I read some sff story with this horrid dystopian premise.

Why playtime for adults won’t bring your childhood back.

Is this a thing? No, really, is this a thing?

If you live in Seattle, you may now participate in something called Adult Recess, which aims to recreate the joys of an American school break time, with kickball, hopscotch, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches – but minus the bullying. “I thought back to the last time when I really had fun, and it was these games when I was a kid,” the event organiser told the Wall Street Journal. This is the latest iteration of “kidulting”, a word that should be outlawed but which does pinpoint something real. San Francisco has an adult recess, too, and you can play with Play-Doh at one library in Ohio. There are also several examples of what Americans call “sleepaway camps” aimed at grownups, including at least one in Britain. Oh, and there’s an adult ball pit in Shoreditch, east London, because of course there is.

You think that what you enjoyed about being nine was playing swingball, tag, and grandma’s footsteps; but what you really enjoyed was not having a mortgage or rent to pay, no mouths to feed, no marital tensions to negotiate. The other stuff was just how you filled the resulting acres of free time; it was how you expressed your freedom, but it wasn’t the cause of it.

And one of the really great things about Being A Grown-Up is, No More School Playground.

Many years ago - many, many, many years ago - I read Joanna Cannan's I Wrote A Pony Book (which certainly dates from before the 1977 given as its publication date on Goodreads, 1950 seems more like it), in which the schoolgirl protag writes a pony book and her bestie illustrates it. And when they go and see a publisher, he likes it but says isn't the heroine of the book rather miserable and unchildlike? and our heroine asks how he was as a child, and he says, strange and moody and unchildlike, and she says, that's how young people are, not the happy bunnies that adult writers of kiddie-lit make them out to be (not in those exact words). On the other hand, protag and her bestie are also shown as being a bit estranged from their fellows at boarding school...

Via a comment in yesterday's post by hunningham:
How to Read More: The Simple System I’m Using to Read 30+ Books Per Year

It is to point and mock at Little Mr Gradgrind, C21st incarnation:

Now, there are plenty of excellent articles on the web, but generally speaking, the quality of good books is better. Books typically have better writing (more tightly edited) and higher quality information (better fact-checking and more extensive research). From a learning perspective, it’s probably a better use of my time to read books than to read online content.

I usually wake up, drink a glass of water, write down 3 things I’m grateful for, and read 20 pages of a book.... As of today, I’m 100 pages into my 7th book. At that pace (7 books per 10 weeks) I’ll read about 36 books in the next year. Not bad.

Here’s why I think this pattern works: 20 pages is small enough that it’s not intimidating. Most people can finish reading 20 pages within 30 minutes. And if you do it first thing in the morning, then the urgencies of the day don’t get in the way.

Finally, 20 pages seems small but adds up fast. It’s a great average speed.

If time allows, I’ll read at other times as well.... But regardless of what happens during the rest of the day, I still get my 20 pages in each morning.

What if you woke up an hour before you needed to each day and worked on yourself? How much better would you be at work, in your relationships, and as a person?

We do not think that the concept that reading can be a pleasure and something one does not grind through at a 20-page a day rate (honestly, that sounds like the reading-reducing maintenance diet for the reading addict, no?) but pursues avidly in any spare moment has really crossed his horizon: '[I]nvest in yourself. Before your life turns into a whirlwind of activity, read a book that will make you better.'

I sure hope this young man does not come across one of the pieces abou the value of playfulness - such as this one encountered recently - because he'll then have to schedule in some time to be freely and spontaneously playful. Or his head might explode...

Give the guy a P G Wodehouse and see what happens.

Though, ghastly though the above may be, I am also vaguely creeped out by this: Outlaw Catalog of Cagey Optimism. No, really, I am not entirely on board with the concepts such as:

* AGGRESSIVE SENSITIVITY. Animated by a strong determination to be receptive and empathetic.

* ALIGNMENT WITH THE INFINITY OF THE MOMENT. Reveling in the liberating realization that we are all exactly where we need to be at all times, even if some of us are temporarily in the midst of trial or tribulation, and that human evolution is proceeding exactly as it should, even if we can't see the big picture of the puzzle that would clarify how all the pieces fit together perfectly.

Toys and gender, yet again: Francis's study, Gender, Toys and Learning, funded by the Froebel Educational Institute, is thought to be the first in more than 20 years examining the educational value of toys and their impact on learning. Am not surprised, given the ghastly gendering of playthings widely reported and the pinkification of stuff for gurlyz. Though I rather want to codslap the researcher, who sounds like a classic humourless education researcher and whom I feel like referring to as Ms, or possibly Dr, Gradgrind:

Francis purchased several of the items that her study found were most popular with the age group, and analysed them in detail for their potential for learning. She found that, at best, girls' toys - dolls and teddy bears - made for imaginative and creative play. Only Baby Annabell, the lifelike doll, offered any kind of learning experience.

"Of the girls' choices," Francis says, "the learning potential was limited, and there was little that could be related to skills development that relates to the curriculum, although Baby Annabell provides well-developed information on the needs of a baby and how to meet those needs."

The play choices for boys, however, were far more diverse and included cars, models of action heroes and popular television characters. And while dolls and teddy bears were sold with little external packaging, that covering boys' toys was "busy", denoting action and speed with strong colours and wording that evoked excitement and machismo. Instructions for use were often technical, requiring boys to draw on their literacy skills, and provided knowledge and activities around construction and technology.

And a related report in the Notebook section of the Education section:

We were going to tell you, in a bit of a huff, about some tips Notebook had spotted on helping your child to read. "Until the day your daughter expresses an interest in rocket science or your son gets into showjumping, you won't go far wrong if you try them out with these kinds of books," began the spiel from Leapfrog on its We Love to Read website. It went on to suggest that boys "like reading to have a purpose, for example books that show you how to make things", whereas girls "enjoy a bit of fantasy, magic and make believe - princesses, castles and so on", and "like sparkle and glitter". But the advice has disappeared. A bit of digging around reveals that an angry blast of emails from parents (including a good few from mumsnet.com users, whose daughters actually seem to enjoy science) has resulted in the withdrawal of the tips from the website and leaflets to schools.

Cannibalism, incest and murder - why have fairytales got so dark this Christmas? Surprise, surprise, Lyn Gardner reports that that was how fairytales useterbe, before Disney got their hands on them and twee-ed them up.

Checking for and treating head lice is up to parents. But some are now calling for the return of the nit nurse. You know, there used to be some kind of peripatetic school nurse/health visitor person service when I was a wee tot in primary school (carefully making my way past the dinosaurs and the sabre-toothed tigers), and while she certainly did the checking for nits thing, with something like a plastic knitting needle dipped in disinfectant, I'm pretty sure she did other health- and sanitation-related checks as well. Interesting that the apparent memory is only of her examing for nits. Had I been a local educational authority health worker of the period, I think I would feel aggrieved.

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And on a more *adult* note, apparently the most viewed article on the Guardian website:
Paris life models make nude protest to demand respect ... and better pay
• Strikers brave freezing outdoor temperatures
• Row began over ban on tips in city hall art classes

In front of the tastefully decorated Christmas trees outside Paris city hall's culture department, the naked and goose-pimpled models demanded a pay increase, proper contracts and, most of all, respect for their craft as they held trade union banners in the pose of Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People.