Taking your baby for a walk

Now this little gem of research, funded by an education charity the Sutton Trust, must really have stretched the grey cells of the researchers. Come on, folks, how much intelligence/common sense does it require to conclude that babies fare better if they are facing whoever is pushing them in their buggy so that they can interact with them? I used to make that and similar observations frequently when my children were at the baby and toddler stage, but then I used a 'proper pram' and a pram seat for whoever was next up in age. As Silverback says in his blog on the same subject, it can hardly be conducive to a relaxing experience to be hurtling along, inches from the ground, headfirst towards legs, bicycles, shopping trolleys and traffic exhaust fumes. Having arrived at the same conclusion as this study thirty years ago, I am wondering if, in the interests of education and child welfare, I should volunteer (well, not volunteer exactly as I should require exorbitant fees, just as these researchers doubtless received) my services to the next survey to be undertaken.
Any ideas as to what that might be?

Siarad Cymraig?

I'm all for keeping ancient languages and cultures alive but I did think this was perhaps taking things a little too far. Welsh has been used officially for the first time at an EU meeting, when Welsh Culture Minister, Alun Ffred Jones spoke in Welsh to the Council of Ministers.
Several thoughts immediately occurred to me:
I would be extremely surprised if there are any Welsh speakers who do not also speak English.
I would also be extremely surprised if any non-Welsh people present at the Council speak Welsh.
In that case, why should it be necessary for anyone to speak in Welsh at this meeting?
Apparently, £841 million is spent annually on translation costs generally so who is footing the bill for this latest undertaking?
Silly me, I should have guessed:
"The extra costs of translation are being borne by the Welsh Assembly Government."
Translated into plain English, that means us - i.e. taxpayers in Wales.

Farewell, John

I was sad to hear the news this afternoon that John Sergeant has decided to leave 'Strictly Come Dancing' but, having read J.J.'s post, I am disgusted. The judges have been quite nasty to him over the past few weeks and I thought that last week they had possibly been told to lay off him as they were a little more positive, but this piece seems to indicate that his position has been made untenable by the other contestants. If this had happened in school or the workplace, it would have been denounced as bullying. Have they forgotten that all but one of them is going to be voted off during the next few weeks anyway? How sad that what should have been family entertainment during the weeks before Christmas should instead have deteriorated into a back-stabbing free-for-all for prima donnas.
For me, the fun has gone out of it and I'm not sure that I will bother watching the rest of the series. At least John Sergeant kept faith with the spirit in which the programme was conceived and remained a good sport throughout. It doesn't seem that anyone else did.

Baby-minding

"Ella and Mason are coming for a couple of hours," Keith announced yesterday afternoon. These are two of his grandchildren, aged two and ten months respectively. Forewarned is forearmed so I dashed around removing anything I thought might attract the attention of baby exploration and inquisitiveness. Laptops, phones, ornaments, all were removed - out of sight, out of mind, but I forgot about the imitation coal on the fire, the post-it notes pad and the ornamental grasses. Still, we had a lovely time with them and were still alive to tell the tale afterwards. It's amazing how easy it is to forget how much energy babies and toddlers need though!

It's a girl thing

I heard it on Radio 4 this morning as I was contemplating getting out of bed. Vicky Tuck, Head of Cheltenham Ladies College was being interviewed about her presidential address to the Annual Girls' Schools Conference. According to her, one reason why single sex education is more beneficial to girls is that their brains are wired differently to those of boys and a change in teaching approach to accommodate this allows them to attain better results, in maths particularly.
As a lifetime, fully paid up member of Maths Phobics Anonymous, my ears pricked up at this. It appears that girls and boys use different parts of their brains to learn, with girls veering more towards the cerebral cortex and boys the hippocampus. One result of this is that girls tend to relate more to the real world and therefore maths teaching needs to take account of this. While boys are quite happy dealing with the core properties of numbers, this tends to deter the girls; they do better if the teaching is rooted in practical aspects.
Now this not new, but it struck a chord with me. Guess what? I'm not an idiot when it comes to maths (and physics and chemistry - the same concept applies). No, I just haven't been taught properly, being thrust as I was into a mixed sex class.
So, Mr Hemmings, Mr Devonald and whoever else had the misfortune to try to teach me maths, it's all your fault. Just think, I could have been a maths genius under different circumstances.

The hippocampus, incidentally, also plays a major role in spatial navigation, but I'm not going into that one!