Rowena Hopkins

I recently found myself a Quebec pen-pal, with the hope that corresponding in French might boost my confidence so that I might feel more confortable speaking it. Also just to keep using French which I am ashamed that I rarely do despite living in a predominantly Francophone area. I find that I really am struggling through and taking ridiculously long periods of time writing simple sentences that I know how to say but I just can't spell. Even with all the effort I put in my letter was returned with corrections to nearly every other (silent) word ending. His letter on the other hand was almost perfect with the only errors being silly glitches with plurals and grammer. He is clearly the better linguist of the two of us, but I'm wondering is French has more words that are difficult (due to silent letters) to spell whilst English has more bizarre spellings - which can be looked out for and therefore avoided. Certainly my reading of French is infinitely better than my writing because of the issue of spelling. Bantu languages (from East and Central Africa) are increadbly easy to read and write once you accept that r and l are totally interchangeable (!). The only really difficult sound is Mw - pronounced Mga (with a kind of pop at the start). A little traumatic when nearly all the greetings being with the Mw sound! and c if often promounced 'ch'. other than that words are read as they are written with the emphasis often being placed on the penultimate syllable. Virtually all nouns end in a vowel, which is always pronounced, meaning that my name, Rowena, poses no major pronounciation issues, but nearly all other european names gain and 'i' 'a' or 'o' at the end ot make them easier to say e.g. Ryani, charlotti, louisa, davidi...... the phrase Ndashaka kugura icarotti icumi - I want to buy ten carrots illustrates this rather well. Rowena

Has anyone else ever tried to read a map in Southern Ireland. The names on the map are in English whilst more often than not the road signs are in Gaelic. We took 4 hours to make a 1 hour journey on one occassion because the english name of a place had 4 letters whilst the Gaelic one had about 20 and we just couldn't believe it was the same place! The result was going round in circles and passing the same group of sheep in the same field at least a dozen times:-) Ever taken the ferry to the port near Dublin pronounced Done Leery but written Dun Laoghaire ? Rowena

Tractor trailer will always be a sticking point for me. A tractor trailer is a tractor followed by a trailer - NOT an articulated lorry. Also, a trailer is a thing that you attach to the back of your car to put stuff in to transport, not something you go on holiday in...though they do of course both trail... Then there is the pavement. Try passing your driving test in a country where you MUST drive on the pavement! Ah the list is endless and probably concludes with fannypack. Rowena

One occasion in Rwanda when I was very grateful to have put some effort into learning Kinyarwanda came when I went into my kitchen and discovered that it was full of bees. I rushed out in blind panic and grabbed the first capabale person I could find at the school. He was a builder and spoke no English or french but by flapping my arms frantically making buzzing sounds and uttering 'Mu Rugo, Mu Rugo" (my home, my home) he quickly got the gist and went to bring a stick, a rag and some matches which he then used to smoke the bees out. After a couple of years using Kinyarwanda to bargain in the market became second nature. Several times at the end of a heated bargaining session during which i brought the price down from white person price to Rwandan price, the vendor would first look put out, then grin and say 'Uri Umunyarwanda' (you are Rwandese) which was a huge compliment. I also started to be referred to as 'Umuzungo wangye' (my white person) rather than just Umuzungo (white person) which I also felt very flattered by. By making an effort to learn their language I began to feel much more accepted as someone who LIVED in Rwanda rather than just visiting. Rowena

Article taken from BBC online Learning languages 'boosts brain' Learning languages enhances the brain, scientists believe. Researchers from University College London studied the brains of 105 people - 80 of whom were bilingual. They found learning other languages altered grey matter - the area of the brain which processes information - in the same way exercise builds muscles. People who learned a second language at a younger age were also more likely to have more advanced grey matter than those who learned later, the team said. Scientists already know the brain has the ability to change its structure as a result of stimulation - an effect known as plasticity - but this research demonstrates how learning languages develops it. It means that older learners won't be as fluent as people who learned earlier in life Andrea Mechelli, of University College London The team took scans of 25 Britons who did not speak a second language, 25 people who had learned another European language before the age of five and 33 bilinguals who had learned a second language between 10 and 15 years old. The scans revealed the density of the grey matter in the left inferior parietal cortex of the brain was greater in bilinguals than in those without a second language. The effect was particularly noticeable in the "early" bilinguals, the findings published in the journal Nature revealed. The findings were also replicated in a study of 22 native Italian speakers who had learned English as a second language between the ages of two and 34. Lead researcher Andrea Mechelli, of the Institute of Neurology at UCL, said the findings explained why younger people find it easier to learn second languages. Impact "It means that older learners won't be as fluent as people who learned earlier in life. "They won't be as good as early bilinguals who learned, for example, before the age of five or before the age of ten." But Cilt, the national centre for languages, cast doubt on whether learning languages was easier at a younger age. A spokeswoman said: "There are conflicting views about the comparative impact of language learning in different age groups, based both on findings and anecdotal evidence." However, she said it was important to get young people learning languages in the UK. Only one in 10 UK workers can speak a foreign language, a recent survey revealed. But by 2010 all primary schools will have to provide language lessons for children.

In reply to Audrey, I'm not entirely sure about Swahili but in Kinyarwanda there are words for blue, green, red, white, black and yellow but pink, purple and orange are not concepts that they understand. However, there are about 20 words for different shades of brown. The reason for this is that the Banyarwanda love cows and keep enormous herds of them for prestigue reasons as much as anything else. In order to be able to distinguish between the different brown cows in a herd of several hundred it is useful to be able to describe them in terms of their brownness. Needless to say this was not something that I even considered adding to my vocab! These cultural colur issues proved to be almost overwhleming when trying to get students to be able to identify compounds based on the colours resulting from different reactions. I had to introduce them to the concept of turquiose, royal blue (loyal brue), canary yellow, buff, purple, pink, orange etc etc. In the end I invested in a set of colouring pencils and made a colour chart on the wall so that they could match their solution to the colours listed. The problem not being that they couldn't 'see' the blue, simply that they didn't know where green and blue ended and turqoise began. Understandable considering. I'm not sure I could tell you the difference between beige, tan, oatmeal and buff:-) Following on from Grahams descriptions of the cultural hurdles of Hungarian, in Kinyarwanda the word for brother is different depending on whether you are a man or a woman. I recall intrucing a male friend as my brother once hoping to deflect suggestions that we might be a couple and was greeted with hoots of laughter. The reason was not, as I thought, that they didn't believe me, just that they thought it hilarious that I thought I was a man:-) There is the same problem with sister, then there is the issue of whether the sibling is older or younger than you..etc etc Something which I found interesting is that the word for Mother is 'Mama' and no, they did not get the word from the white colonists, it is a Bantu word used throughout East and Central Africa. I am assuming that this is because the first sounds a baby can make is 'Mama' or something similar. The word for Father however is not 'dada' (I don't recall what it is but its something quite tricky). However the word for older sister is 'data'. Perhaps because the second sound a baby learns to make is dada/data and the second person who looks after the child in African culture is an older sister. My favourite linked words in Kinyarwanda are Inyama = meat Inyamaswa = aminal so we all know what animals are for:-) Rowena

On moving to Rwanda and chosing to learn the local language of Kinyarwanda (a Bantu language with some similarities to Swahili) I felt that vocabulary and pronounciation would be the two most important things to work on considering that for a while a least i was planning on simply pointing at things, naming them and saying a number. Sadly this does not work in languages with 15 different 'genders' and which take the plural at the start rather than the end of the word. For example umuhungo - the singular of boy abahungo - boys The numbering system then changes depending on the 'gender' so umuhungo umwe = one boy abahungo abirir/atatu/ane/atanu = 2/3/4/5 boys (notice the a at the start) ibishyimbo bibiri/bitatu/bine/bitanu = 2/3/4/5 beans (bi at the start of the number this time). So when I went to the market and pointed to a jerry can and said "amajericani umwe" when what I should have said was "ijericani imwe" they simply didn't have a clue what I was talking about having got both the gender and the plural/singular bit wrong. This is one of the cases where grammer needs to be taught from day one or you will simply get frustrated and give up because no-one understands you! The 'r' 'l' problem I think is pretty universal. My students often wrote about plotons and erectrons and in the end I told them that if they thought it should be l to write r and vice versa as they consistently got them the wrong way round. In Kinyarwanda itself r and l are totally interchangable so that you can greet someone by saying either 'Muraho' or 'Mulaho' and they will not even notice the difference. I took to switching it up on a regalar basis in conversations in English just for fun and even took to introducing myslef as 'Lowena'. A friend was told that in Africa they have animals with the same name as him. His name is Ryan. On one occasion I was walking away from school when I caught up with a bunch of older boys who clearly should have been in class. When I asked them why they weren't studying they replied "It is OK madam. We have erections". I have to admit to finding it hard not to check;-) Rowena p.s. I learnt Kinyarwanda and Swahili initially purely for survival purposes as I lived in a tiny village where virtually no-one spoke English or French. My first priority was 'things that you can buy at the market'. Certainly with the grammer issues involved it would have made far more sense for our teacher to teach us entire sentences or phrases rather than individual words which then changed depending on a multitude of different factors. Size was also relevant umugore = woman akagore = small woman abagore = women Isashe = bag akasashe = small bag Greetings were obviously also a priority (changed not only depending on the time of day but also how many people you were greeting and whether they were more or less important than you) along with how to say please and thank you...which didn't take long to learn as Rwandan don't say please and rarely say thank you! In the end it became as much about learning about the culture as it is about buying a 4 small bags of flour.

The local university here offers a degree course in Translation. Bearing in mind that half the province is bilingual and grew up speaking both French and English you would think that most people would be capable of translating but very few actually manage to get onto the course. Perhaps the translators for conferences came from a certain, more educated background, as well as being brought up bilingual. Here, where it is effectively the norm, I can't imagine our bilingual roofer translating at a conference! I think New Brunswick is an interesting example because people from all walks of life are bilingual and not just those from families who took the time and care to make sure their children spoke more than one language. On a different note, to get a job with the Canadian Government i.e. well paid, you must be fluently bilingual in French and English. This has caused some contraversy because perfectly capable people are turned don't because their French or English is not quite up to scratch. Our current Prime Minister is an Anglophone who, to me speaks great French, whereas the previous one, Jean Cretien was a bilingual Francophone but blundered his way through many speaches in English and became the butt of a multitude of jokes as a result. I doubt the same jokes were made about him by French speakers. Perhaps the current Prime Minister, Paul Martin, is mocked by the population of Quebec. I find it interesting that intelligence is so often preceived via a persons ability to express themselves clearly to the extent that our ex PM was considered by many a Buffoon even though to have got where he was he can't have been. Whilst working in Rwanda I stated that my students inability to pass exams had nothing to do with their intellegence and everything to do with the fact that they couldn't speak, read or write english! My programme director replied that they can't be very bright if they can't speak the language they are supposed to be studying in. A statement I found disturbing. In the near future I am going to be tutoring kids who have recently arrived in Canada as refugees or the children of economic immigrants. They are decribed by the school boards as being 16 but having the ability of an 11 year old. I would rephrase that to say 'perceived abiliy'. Rowena

OK, I'm not pretending to be an expert on languages, and maybe some students may well find French or German easier than English. I'm just glad I'm not the person who has to persuade them to try:-) I agree that being monolingual these days is a total disaster and envy all the bilingual people here. That said my husband is an Engineer, bilingual and generally very bright and yet he consistently flunked all of his French and English classes at university and makes mistakes constantly in both languages. I do sometimes wonder if it might be nice for him to feel confident in one language rather than shakey at two. A Ugandan colleague of mine could speak 5 languages but felt that he could not confidently make a speach in any one of them. Maybe I'm clutching at straws to make myself feel better ;-) but has any research been done regarding whether constantly using two languges means that you use a very simple, limited vocabulary in both rather than enriching just one. Or is it just engineers:-) Also a good friend of mine who is fluent in French only learnt the language properly later in life when she moved to France. When she spends time in France she says that she 'loses' her English and vice versa. Is this a phenomenan limited just to people who learn languages or can it affect people who grow up speaking both but then spend time in a monolingual region? Rowena

1984 was good, but The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is even better. Its vision of the future is more believable, though extreme, and therefore more horrifying. If you need anything to convince you that mixing religion and politics is a bad idea, then this will do it. This sinking feeling in my stomach became more and more pronounced as I progressed through the book and I had this overwhelming urge to rush out and demand that EVERYONE read it immediately before it was too late. I also loved Catch 22 not only because of its anti-war message but also because even though it touched the depths and made me aware of how fragile humans can be, its conclusion is so wonderfully positive proving that life changing novels need not be depressing. I'm a huge reader. Living in Africa for 4 years demands that you find alternative forms of entertainment and at one point I was reading a book a day. This of course is a wonderful thing as had I not been forced to I might never have got back into a habit broken by too many science textbooks and becoming sick of the sight of written words. I strongly believe that non-fiction should be as well written and gripping as fiction or it can suck the reader right out of you. Rowena

Having been in Canada for over a year now I find that I am trying to speak three languages - British English, Canadian French and Canadian English which is quite different to American English. For example, Canadians spell English pretty much the same way we do - Programme, Centre etc etc however there are so many American words entering the Canadian language that I have to keep correnting myself according to who I am speaking to To a friends here "So, you like my pants, I bought them in the mall. Yeah, there were ten bucks off. Sure, I'll show you where. We can stop for a coffee" To a friend from England "So you like my trousers, I bought them in the shopping arcade. There was a ten dollar discount. Of course I'll show you where. We can stop and have a nice cup of tea" ;-) Needless to say i usually come out with a total jumble of trunks/boots, gas/petrol, sneakers/trainers, cookies/biscuits (another almost french word they dont understand!) and no-one has a clue what i'm talking about! I think Graham has made the crucial point here. French speakers are grateful when people speak french to them. English speaking people expect others to speak English Rowena

Oh yes and getting back to the point;-) When I was teaching a bottom set in the UK it was pointed out to me that thee kids would be so much better off when they didn't have to study French any more as they were struggling enough with English. I was inclined to agree. Supporting that arguement is that here in New Brunswick whilst the majority of the people are bilingual very few of them can speak both well and hardly any can write both. If anything people feel that coping with two languages means losing the ability to speak and write one language well..... Incidentally apparently New Brunswick has the lowest literacy rate in Canada. They have French and English immersion here both in Primary and Seconday school which I think is a wonderful scheme as the language teaching does not take away time from their other studies. However, you have to be in the top part of the year to participate so the lower ability students are affectively stigmatised by not getting into immersion. Also, its expensive to run and its so difficult to find French Immersion teachers that I imagine that they aren't all perfect. I have met a number of Anglophone students who went through the system and still can't speak or write French, but I'm sure they understand more than if they had not participated at all. The New Brunswick system may not be prefect but I favour it over that of the UK. Starting to learn languages at an age when you are most insecure is just foolish. Languages are so stressful because you have to speak and can't hide in your books. Accents are foreign and threatening and sound downright foolish coming from the lips of a Brit. No wonder UK teenagers hate French and German.....but I doubt that they would feel the same way if they got over that hurdle earlier in life. For as long as I don't speak French here I feel very ignorant. New Brunswickers may not speak French and English perfactly but at least they can communicate which is more than I can do! And listening to them slipping effortlessly between English and French just makes me sick with jealousy. Rowena

Firstly with reference to your comments about Montreal, well don't be surprised to find English speakers there as there is a huge English community! There is an English Language medium univeristy, English language schools and the English culture florishes. If you want to speak French in Canada you need to go to Quebec City or somewhere truely purely Francophone, which Montreal isn't. Here in New Brunswick there is an interesting mix of Francophone and Anglophone and Moncton, my nearest town, is technically entirely bilingual. Very handy when shopping as all the food labels are both in French and English allowing you to pick up masses of vocab very quickly! However, you will find many Anglophones who cannot understand a word of French and yet all the Francophones speak or at least understand English. I found the same phenomenon in Rwanda which is also technically a bilingual country (in terms of European languages of course!). The question is 'why is that?'. Is it a case of English being more useful, more easy to pick up the basics of, more heard? We have radio and TV both in French an English and French Acadian music is very popular....So is it something more political? The French speaking people here are known as 'Acadians' who are a group of French people who moved to Canada but who refused to allign themselves either with the British or French Monarchies. They then found themselves persecuted, discriminated against and eventually deported (to Louisiana amongst other places - hence the term Cajun). They effectively have no 'homeland' as they are spread throughout Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland, and so the only ties that really bind them together are cultural - their French Language, their music and Catholicism. Bearing this in mind, why do they all speak English? maybe because had they not learnt it they would never have got jobs - in the way that most black South Africans had to learn Africaans to get anywhere in life. And if you want to hear French spoken with a 'different' accent then New Brunswick is the place! Most French speakers sound like they come from Cornwall! and a typical greeting sounds like ' Sor- vo.....or?'! My husband is a native French speaker and yet on Honeymoon in Nice the locals found my terrible french easier to understand than his, though they did keep complimenting 'the american' on how well he spoke French;-) And finally, on the issue of pronounciation, people here don't know what I'm talking about when I pronounce Tomato the english way! Now, come on, if I can understand Tomato with an American accent surely they can figure out Tomato with an english one...but apparently not! This is even more bizarre considering that the french for Tomato has almost the same pronounciation as the english.....the tomato sauce thickens! Rowena p.s. depending on whether the station is French or English here interviews in other languages are overdubbed but you can still hear the original in the background. Now, I can cope with this seeing as my French is so basic that i can shut it out, but what if you are truely bilingual. Surely it drives you crazy having two conversations going on at the same time!?!

In response to Johns posting ages ago (!), I do think whether to have children or not is also an issue for the male partner. This is something shared by both members of the couple (thankfully my husband does not want children either), but what it has to do with the rest of the family, I don't know! Parents pushing their children into having children can only be disasterous. It creates a sense of resentfulness which will most likely be directed at the children who of course did not choose to be born. It is most certianly not something to be decided by society. My husbands grandmoeth had 11 children over the space of 30 years. She was denied access to contraception and with an alcoholic husband there was little she could do to stop herself from being contantly pregnant. By the time she was pregant with her last child her oldest children were threatening to castrate their father! Most of the children were farmed out to other childless relatives and Nuns to bring up. Is this a family?!? My Mother is law had to beg to be allowed access to contraception after having her third child and not wanting any more children by her (also) alcoholic husband. The panel of doctors did agree to allow her under the circumstances but it does beg the question of who is responsible for their reproductive rights. The woman, or society? Pharmacists is America have been known to refuse contraception to women on 'moral grounds' because they do not agree with family planning. The birth control pill is now being targetted as a form of abortion. The spin of will of course be more abortions if the pill becomes restricted. Families are all very well, but they must be wanted, and in the good old golden ages of limited contraception they were not always wanted and placed undue hardship on the parents. Rowena

What to say. I'm sorry that I'm one of the dreadfully selfish people who does not feel the need to have kids because of the detrimental effect that it would have on my lifestyle. As a woman I have a number of choices. a) have kids and effectively give up my career in order to try to raise them as well balanced human beings b ) have kids and not give up my career resulting in feeling of intense guilt that I don't spend enough time with my children and that maybe they have a stronger bond with the nanny than with me (though you don't often come across men feeling the same guilt that they never see their kids). c) don't bother to have kids. Don't screw up either their or my life. I opted for option 'c' because I know of some many women who have chosen options a or b and have either suffered the guilt or only got thier lives back when they hit 50. Why on earth should I give up my freedom in order to raise girls who will in turn give up their freedom to raise more girls who will give up their freedom....when does it stop?!? All mothers with daughters want for them to have the opportunities that they never had, but then their daughters go and opt to have kids and put the same pressure onto their kids to actually do something with their lives other than breeding. I'm chosing to break the cycle. The world is already over populated so I have no guilt about this. I went to university twice in order to have a career, something that men take for granted. Were I to find an occupation into which I could integrate child rearing (my mother succeeded in this one by becoming a kindergarten teacher) the maybe I would consider having kids, but until that day, yes, it is about me. I make sacrifices in other ares of my life such as international charity work, which I would not be able to do if I had a gaggle of kids around my ankles. If people want to have kids that is entirely up to them, but I refuse to feel guilty because of wanting to live 'as a man'. Rowena

In response to John, and I know this is going off topic a lot, on my return from Rwanda I watched a documentary about a bunch of young farmers going to Rwanda to build a goat shed. This task, which would require one man and a pile of wood by normal standards seemed to require 8, yes 8, young farmers and a lot of very expensive materials which would no doubt be stolen within the week. The women were wearing tiny shorts which are totally culturally inappropriate and not one of them spoke French or Swahili. Meanwhile some healthy young african men looked on, sat on their arses and no doubt thought, "what a bunch of stupid white people"! There are people going off to Developing countries doing good work. Doctors without borders. Lawyers without borders, VSO and Peace Corps (though there is a healthy rivalry between the two programmes!). There are also lots of profit making schemes where you fundraise to send yourself and end up building walls and sheds and other tasks an African would love to be paid to do. This of course only costs your plane fare, housing, food, integration costs etc etc etc...as opposed to about five dollars if you paid an African and it would provide him with money to feed his family. Sadly most development work of this nature benefits the 'benefactors' far more than the recipients and also gives them a false idea of life in developing countries. They go home and fund raise to fling more money at a complex situation, feel pity for their African colleagues and invariably the donated money/goods get stolen. People don't value things which are free. People in developing countries need our respect not our pity, compassion or any other soft fluffy words of that nature. It is of course extremely difficult to give young people an honest view of developing countries. When they are very young they have very little to contribute in the way of skills, when they are older and possess the skills maybe they don't feel like donating them. Both PeaceCorps and VSO were set up to benefit British and American kids. Its important to remember that. PeaceCorps vols are treated like heros when in fact it is the people they help who are the heros. The Peace Corps vols get to go home at the end of their experience. They get paid. They get free medical care. They have holidays. They have a nice enlightening experience. The people they work with are still there in 5, 10, 50 years time and no-one tells them what a great job they are doing. Thankfully VSO is moving awayfrom sending English teachers and is progressing to more highly skilled volunteers. Harder to get but far more valuable in their host countries. When I went to Rwanda we were all teachers. This year they are business managers and Psychiatrists. Of course its nice if the volunteers benefit from the experience. Nice. Buts its much more important that the people they work with actually get something back from it. Something that lasts. I have been trying to find funding to support a project whereby Rwandese students between high school and university (they have to wait 6 months to a year to get their results back) volunteer in their local community. The idea stems from watching a bunch of white kids playing frisby with street kids whilst the Rwandese looked on with contempt. It is far more important, and less expensive for the Rwandese to look out for each other. It breaks down social barriers and builds a less violent country, and both the benefactors and the volunteers are African. Money well spent you might think. Try getting funding for it! There are numerous places that you apply for funds to send a Canadian, Brit, Australian, American off for an 'adventure holiday' but try to do the same thing NOT involving white kids and you hit a brick wall. Development aid is all tied and the benefactors are always ultimately white. Rowena

Have you ever tried shopping for foods that don't contain excess salt and sugar. You'll find it in everything from tinned tomatoes to cereal, from tinned sweetcorn to margerine. I spend hours in the supermarket identifying the foods that don't contain salt (Ok, so I can buy my tomatoes and corn fresh but I still want my cereal) and have come up with a list of products that it is safe for me to buy. As I said, this took me hours and the average family does not have hours to spend on their shopping. Wouldn't it be nice if the supermarkets put stickers underneath all of the products that don't have extra salt and sugar added:-) Manufacturers cannot possibly argue that its necessary to add salt to tomatoes when another manufacturer doesn't bother. Cereal is the most difficult purchase of all. I found that All Bran is the only cereal that doesn't have salt added, which is fine if you like All Bran! Even bland foods like cornflakes and special K and packed with additional extras that we don't need...and most surprisingly of all if you chose to buy your cereal from the health food section it may well be organic but that doens't mean its low in salt. Then of course we have the 'low fat' options. Better for you, you would assume, but either full of extra sugar, or corn starch (highly processed carbohydrate). Next time you are out shopping read the ingredients in the low fat Mayonaise and Yoghurt and you'll never buy low fat again. The solution? Stick to the ailes around the outside of the supermarket and only venture into the middle when purchasing toilet paper and aluminium foil. EVERYTHING in the middle is processed...and of course easy and quick to prepare. However, what so many people these days don't realise is that it takes as long to heat up a microwave meal as it does to pan fry or microwave a piece of salmon or trout, and often the fresher option is cheaper. Sadly most people don't know how to bake a potato let alone cook salmon, and that is where schools can make a difference. Its time Home Economics (or whatever its called today) got 'right on'.). Rowena

I was away in Africa when reality TV first hit the screen in the UK and was horrified when I can back to find that people were far more interested in these totally contrived situations than in real life. The reason, well, politics, Globalisation and environmental issues are all very complex and there is no easy answer. Also, its kind of difficult to 'hate' or 'love' the greenhouse effect, whereas with reality TV shows its all so obvious who is the bad guy/good guy. It makes people feel clever to be able to both understand and make predictions about these exceptionally simple minded shows. Basically its a no brainer for the end of a long tough day of work, and even if you get it wrong, does it really matter?! I think its got to the point where we're all a bit issued out and reality TV provides an alternative outlet for our energies and emotions. I didn't watch any Reality TV for the first year back (or any TV at all for that matter) and felt totally out of it as a result. Now I've watched American Survivor, the Apprentice, For Love or Money, something about trying to figure out whether men were gay or straight (!?!) and feel a lot more with it but certainly no more enriched for the experience. I think what you are looking for John is a Documentary. Reality TV with brains. So, I'll be watching Big Brother tonight, largely because the alternative is Hockey, Hockey, Hockey or Entertainment tonight. You see in Canada the TV is even worse than in the UK. Thank your lucky stars for the Beeb! Rowena p.s. As for the comments regarding 'young people going off to Africa and doing good work' I know its well meant but its largely a waste of time with the young rich kids having a great holiday in the sun and the Africans benefitting not one jot.... but thats another story.....

Having recently gone through the trials of the PGCE year I would suggest that the teachers currently entering the workforce often make the situation worse and not better. It may appear worse than it is bearing in mind that I did my PGCE at Oxford but the general feeling I got was that the trainee teachers believed that what worked for them would work for everyone and that means competition! Sadly what they fail to add to the equation is that many of them went to single sex grammer schools or private schools and thus their educational environment was distinctly different to that of a comprehensive. I myself was comprehensive educated and spent the entire time being thoroughly embarressed when i succeeded at anything as I knew I'd pay for it later. Its so awful when other class members try their hardest as achieve C grades and you make as little effort as possible and come out with an A. Of course they hate you when that grade and not their effort and not their enjoyment, is the goal! I then attended a grammer school for 6th form and for the first time in my life felt comfortable achieving. This lead me to believe that grammer schools are good things as they provide a safe haven for geeks such as myself....but that does nothing to hone our social skills or indeed to make us anything but exam passing machines. And so I am now involved in a project which aims to determine what exactly is important about eduction and what a good education should provide. The ability to pass exams or the ability to get on with others and work as a team? The ability to get things right first time every time or to be able to show compassion and understanding to others? Some might argue that children gain their social skills outside of the classroom but for many children school is the only real social life they have and life long habits and mindsets are developed there. It is very important that schools get it right and value the individual and not only the grades. Rowena

I read with interest about the concept of redefining 'charity' to include the likes of Amnesty International but to the exclusion of Private Schools. I was nothing short of amazed that Private Schools were ever considered charitable in the first place! When I discussed this with a friend who teaches at a Private school her response was that they cater to a large number of students that the government would otherwise have to cater too AND they let the locals use the school pool etc during the holidays. Wow, what amazing acts of charity. Perhaps if these school lose their charitable status the tax breaks they recieved could be spent on building pools and even upgrading government schools that everyone could use. Now theres a thought! Rowena

I would suggest that 'getting so drunk that I didn't know what I was doing' is a great excuse for (both young women and men) not taking responsibility for their actions. I would also suggest that it is rare that they are actually completely oblivious to their actions at the time but the excuse of being 'blind drunk' allows them to pretend that they would not behave that way normally. This of course is just a way of allowing fatalism to step in so that if they do something stupid, get pregnant, sleep with their best friends boyfriend/ girlfriend, catch something nasty, and it is not their fault, just something that 'happened' to them. As a relatively young woman I can understand this tendancy in that there are so many avenues open to us today that were not there some decades ago and we want to explore them.... however, admitting to that desire the following day is not an easy task - hence the stories of being 'blind drunk'. Its simply a form of escapism in a world where so much more is expected of us than was of our parents. As far as the booze/sex link is concerned, well, once again for women its a way of denying that we made choices. Obviously we wouldn't 'choose' to sleep with a different man every weekend and therefore the blame has to go elsewhere. I think an acceptance of female sexuality would go a long way to counter this fatalism. Sadly, sexually, britains women may appear to be sexually liberated (as the covers of Cosmo etc would suggest) but we are still living in the dark ages in terms of demanding and getting what we want. Teenage pregnancy is an extension of that. How can we ask the man to wear a condom when we don't actually want to have sex with them and the sex is just happening to us? How can we go on the pill when that means admitting to want to have sex? For men to want and to enjoy sex is completely OK, but for women, well, we know what kind of girl that makes you, and cutting back on sex education in school just makes it seem all the more dirty and wrong rather than just another part of life that we need to take responsibility for. Rowena

Banning sugar and fat from the canteen may not work, but having healthy foods as an option would certainly be a good start. In one of the school I worked, the only vegetables on the menu were chips, and at another the only choices at breaktime were chips or pizza. Obvious choices for the private catering companies bearing in mind that they are ridiculously cheap to produce. If anything, privitaised canteen have already created a 'nanny state' all-be-it an evil nanny, as the only choices available are bad ones! You MUST select the chips if you want to support free trade and industry! However, I don't think making milk and fruit free is the answer. Anything which is free holds no 'value' to the people who receive it. Simply make it an option and an affordable one at that.... or don't tell the kids it's free! There is a wonderful series on Canadian TV right now about a group of primary aged kids learning how to cook, and not just packet mixes and baked potatoes but full on lasagna from scratch (making the pasta, bolognaise and bechemel sauce). The result is children knowing what goes into their food and taking a pride in their creations. Sadly so few parents know how to throw together a decent meal, or have time to do so, so the only chance kids get to learn how to cook is at school. This isn't a nanny state issue. We insist that students wear a uniform, attend classes on time and don't colour their hair pink.... just because we want to (! sorry, there are of course reasons!) so why not insist that they walk the 50 yards to school and take chips off the menu. It seems ridiculous to control matters that have no impact on their health and yet leave them to eat themselves into an early grave for fear of interfering. Rowena

The computer can be used to replace the teacher as the 'font of knowledge' allowing you to concentrate on facilitating the students own learning and helping them to improve their learning skills. My more effective lessons involved using computers because they performed a certain task better than the student/ me rather than just using them for the sake of using them. For example students can sit at adjacent computers and one can extract up to date data from a website, manipulate it and the other can record it for example by plotting locations on a map or on a spread sheet. This encourages team work and the students are able to see graphs being plotted etc as they complete the work giving them some kind of sense of where the project is going. Very often they can then come up with their own ideas about how to make the process more efficient making them feel more in control of their own learning. At the opposite end of the spectrum is making powerpoint presentations when a poster would do. The kids obsess over the graphics rather than the content. Not a useful activity. Rowena

The arguement that he always makes is that if he was lying he would be taken to court. No-one has ever taken him to court (despite publicly saying that he's wrong so its not as if they are publicity shy). Its not just him gathering material. He has a huge team of researchers who are paid to make sure the information is right, and by the looks of it most of the material for the film is simply taken from other sources so its not as if hes setting stuff up. He may write like a Daily Mirror journalist, but that doesn't mean he's as dishonest as them;-) Rowena

I guess my reponse here is going to upset a few teachers! I actually think its completely fine to take kids out of school provided that the 'holiday' is educational. For example my young sister missed a week of school to visit me in Rwanda a few years back. I doubt that anything she would have studied in school during that week would have touched the importance of the experiences she had there, but then I'm a great believer in the theory that experience if far more important than anything a child will ever read in a text book. That said, I don't think a week lying on the beach in Gran Canaria really contrituates and educational experience, or getting your hair cut for that matter! And if a child has time to do holiday work then its too much of a holiday;-) Maybe parents should have to sign forms whereby if their child fails a particular exam they take responsibility for it...... Rowena