Tim Atkinson's Blog, page 57

What's wrong with children's television?

In the second in an occasional series in which I put the world to rights (you can find part one - what's wrong with education? - here) I'm going to turn my attention to a form of entertainment in which I'm something of a reluctant expert - children's telly.



Let me begin by repeating what I've often said before, namely that most of it is astonishingly good. Any medium that can teach a two-year-old the concept of symbiosis or inspire such creative feats as the construction (out of a shoe box) of a racing garage deserves full credit and I'm full of admiration for the creative energy and educational content of the vast range of children's output.




But there is one problem. One problem common to all channels, a problem that cuts across all styles and types of programme and a problem that consistently undermines the visual and educational content of otherwise excellent endeavours.




That problem is this - the narrator. Or the voice-over artist or character or sometimes even the script itself. Whether it's the unfeasible accents of Greendale or the panto-Yorkshire vowels of Mr Bloom, the absurd third-person fluting of the flying Cheebies in Waybaloo or the faux-boy voices of Mike the Knight or Tree Foo Tom (both, I suspect, voiced by a woman) the most annoying thing on children's TV isn't what you see or even necessarily what is being said, it isn't the often excellent music or the frequently stunning graphics. No. It is what you hear.




As I'm not in the habit of watching attentively for the entire duration of most children's programmes it's the sound - in isolation - that I'm most familiar with. I've written before of the confusion this can cause when popular voice artists moonlight and end up doing several different characters (sometimes in the same show). Many of them are excellent, but it is increasingly obvious (to me, anyway) that the soundtrack is the Achilles heel of many a show.



I thought things might improve when Michael 'man of a thousand voices' (all of them his own) Angelis was relieved of all but the narrating duties on Thomas the Tank Engine. I thought things might get better when that colossus of the children's TV voice over, Mr Bernard Cribbins (just listen to him narrate the Wombles!) returned to the screen.



But no. We might have less of Mr Michael 'me rabbits' Angelis but we have a lot more silly faux-northern nonsense, whether it's the absurdly flat cap (no one up here sound like that, trust me) Fat Controller or the ridiculously regional Rosie.




But there is a solution. There is hope. And it is this. All future programmes must by order of the authorities be narrated by either Stephen Fry, Simon Callow (have you heard his audio recording of Roald Dahl's 'The Witches'?) or the aforementioned Bernard Cribbins. Frankly, once you've heard that Holy Trinity of Television (and they've all got the pedigree) nothing else comes close, except perhaps the delightful Derek Jacobi. 



And unless you're the supremely-talented  Rob Rackstraw (Spud, Kwazii, etc) all voice artists should have a 'less is more' clause written into their contracts. And in no circumstances should they attempt to do a regional accent unless it is one they have personal experience of. Especially if they're employed in any capacity in Greendale. Or in Mr Bloom's nursery.




So there you have it. The problem, and my solution. I offer it up to TV programme makers free if charge and without restriction. 



After all, it's got to be better than my alternative solution...

Thomas Cook World Book Day App

Here's a fun way to choose holiday reading material! Simply enter your holiday destination plus favourite book genre in this handy online app and it will suggest what reading matter you should take away on holiday. As someone who never fails to find packing books one of the most troublesome tasks when going away, this could be really useful! Give it a go. You can either try it for yourself right now right here or on the Thomas Cook website.







The Thomas Cook Holiday Book Selector

Dad in a Box

Stumbled across this the other day when disappearing down the rabbit hole of twitter links and couldn't resist sharing it. It's the little girl's third birthday and she's got a very large (surprise) present. If you've not yet seen this, you'll love it...

Win an Abra-ca-Debora Pancake Day Hamper!

Next week is Pancake Day or Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras) and one of my previous incarnations as an RE teacher it was always an easy lesson to prepare. In case you were absent that day (and in case you're remotely interested) here are some of the most commonly asked questions about Pancake Day, with answers in varying degrees of seriousness...



1. Why 'pancakes'?

The usual answer is that it was an attempt to use up all the rich foods that would otherwise have gone to waste during the fast of Lent (which begins the day after, Ash Wednesday).  Hence the name 'fat Tuesday' (Mardi Gras) in some parts of the world.



2. Ok then, why is it always on a Tuesday?

Ah, slightly more complicated, that. But basically, because Lent (which begins when? Come on, I've told you once!) is the forty day (ok, it's more than forty straight days but Sundays don't count, right?) period leading up to Easter. And Easter is the traditional 'moveable feast' as it has to be based (for historical reasons) on the phases of the moon. And as we know, lunar and solar months are different. 



3. And why 'Shrove'?

Bit technical, that one. It comes from the word 'shriven' which basically means 'to be forgiven' and refers to the need to 'fess up before fasting. So, 'Shrove' Tuesday means 'confess-your-sins-and-be-forgiven-ready-for-fasting' Tuesday. Shrove Tuesday is shorter, obviously.



4. Tossing. Tell me about tossing.

Well the story goes that housewives busy with their pancakes forgot the time and had to make a dash for the church to receive absolution (forgiveness - see above) in time - taking their pancakes and their frying pans with them. Personally I think that's possibly one of the most far-fetched pseudo-explanations in history so here's my theory: everyone knows how hard it is to toss a pancake and what a mess it can make of the kitchen if it goes wrong. So do it outside and if the worst happens, the birds will clear the mess. It's a short step from that to running - back inside, having tossed (successfully) - to feed the family before the pancake goes cold.  



5. Sounds a bit far-fetched to me. Are you sure?

Of course not. But if you think that's far-fetched how about the traditional Irish custom of pancake crocking - basically going from door to door demanding pancakes and threatening to throw broken crockery at the house if unsuccessful. Don't try this at home. 



Instead, why not try winning one of these fabulous Abra-ca-Debora Pancake Day Hampers? I've got one to give away to the lucky reader who leaves the most entertaining pancake-related comment or anecdote below (criteria: Charlie's amusement as measured by breadth of smile or length of laughter - judges decision final!) before pancake day itself, next Tuesday March 4th. And in the meantime why not pop over to the Abra-ca-Debora website and get some inspiration for the big day from their fabulous pancake recipes.



Happy Tossing!

Scouting for boys

Well, well... or dyb dyb (and yes, that IS the way to spell it as it's short for 'do your best', the Scout Master's injunction to all young Scouts to which they heartily reply 'dob dob', short for 'yes of course, sir, we will do our best and certainly not allow our woggles to go wonky...)



But I digress. As I do rather a lot.




Today, February 22nd, is a very special day in the history of Scouting, Guiding, Beavering and Cubbing to say nothing of Brownieing and Rainbowing. Because on this very day in 1857 Big Chief Baden-Powell himself was born. Happy Birthday Skip.









Powell was an army officer, veteran indeed of the Boer War where one of his less auspicious claims to fame involves the invention of the concentration camp. A firm believer in fresh air and clean living,  B-P refused not only to sleep in the martial bed but shunned the martial bedroom entirely, preferring to sleep on the balcony in all weathers and at all times of year.




'We say to a boy, come and be good' he writes in his manifesto of the scouting movement. 'Well, the best class of boy - that is, the hooligan (yes, he really did say that!) replies I'm blowed if I'm going to be good'. (The term 'blowed' might well be a euphemism or a more polite substitution but is in any case not to be understood in the modern sense of the word, just to avoid any confusion). 




'But we say to him,' Lord B-P goes on, 'come and be a red Indian and dress like a scout, and he'll come along like anything.'




And they still do (come along like anything) 100-odd years later. And if that isn't a cause for celebration then I don't know what is. 



So, is your son or daughter a Guide or a Beaver, Rainbow or Scout? I never quite made it myself, giving up after Cubs. Wasn't even a sixer, either. Did make seconder though. And had fun in the gang show. 

Thanks B-P. Long may such innocent fun continue.

Smoking ban in cars with kids? Bring it on!

I know it'll be difficult to enforce. And I'm a firm believer in the principle of not passing laws unless you're prepared to make a reasonable effort to ensure that they're followed. Heaven knows there are enough laws out there (or there are here) that no-one seems to want to police, like dropping litter, letting dogs foul the footpath or getting blind drunk in the park. Did you know it's also illegal to import Polish potatoes? Or that putting a stamp on an envelope the wrong way round is considered an act of treason?





But I digress. Freedom to put someone else at risk ain't freedom in my book, and just because you're behind the wheel of your car doesn't mean you have the right to put other people in danger. You don't have the right to offend my eardrums either with your axle-shaking music or your mortar-sized exhaust that makes your car sound like a fighter jet. You don't have the right to risk clipping my bike as you drive by because you've got one eye (and one hand) on your mobile phone; you don't have the right to park your car across the footpath forcing me and my fellow pedestrians to walk on the road; you don't have the right to jump the lights or race or do any of the other things that put life and limb in danger. And that's why you're not free to indulge in such behaviour. Because such things are known dangers, as is smoking. And moaning about your civil liberties doesn't make a jot of difference.




Protesting that banning such behaviour is an infringement of your rights or a dictatorial extension of the state are well wide of the mark too. This is not the same as protesting against a risk-averse, health and safety obsessed and creeping nanny-state. Personally, I do think kids should climb trees, play conkers, swim in rivers and so on. Because they're fun. Risky, yes. But fun. And you can't tell me that being made to breathe others people's tobacco smoke is 'fun'.





So, bring it on. Bring on the ban. Add it to the long list of other cherished liberties we've lost, like the right to beat our wives, the freedom to send our kids up chimneys and the liberty to lock up those whose views we disagree with.




And let's repeal a few hundred other silly laws to make sure there's some chance of enforcing it.

Bring on the smoking ban in cars with children

I know it'll be difficult I enforce, and I'm a firm believer in not passing laws unless you're prepared to make a reasonable effort to ensure they're followed. And heaven knows there are enough laws out there (or there are here) that no-one seems to want to police, like dropping litter, letting dogs foul the footpath or getting blind drunk in the park. Did you know it's also illegal to import Polish potatoes? Or that putting a stamp on an envelope the wrong way is considered an act of treason?But I digress. Freedom to put someone else at risk ain't freedom in my book, and just because you're behind the wheel of your car doesn't mean you have the right to put other people in danger. You don't have the right to offend my eardrums either with your axle-shaking music or your drainpipe-sized exhaust that make your car sound like a tractor. You don't have the right to risk clipping my bike because you've got one eye (and one hand) on your mobile phone; you don't have the right to park your vehicle across the footpath forcing me and my fellow pedestrians to walk on the road; you don't have the right to jump the lights or race or do any of the other things that put life and limb in danger. And that's why you're not free to indulge in such behaviour. Because such things are known dangers, as is smoking. And moaning about your civil liberties doesn't make a jot of difference. Protesting that proposals like these are an infringement, dictatorial extension of the state are wide of the mark too. They're  not the same as protesting against a risk-averse, health and safety obsessed nanny-state. I do think kids should climb trees, play conkers, swim in rivers and so on. Because they're fun. Risky, yes. But fun. And you can't tell me that being made to breathe others people's tobacco smoke is 'fun'. So, bring it on. Bring on the ban. Add it to the long list of other cherished liberties we've lost, like the right to beat our wives, the freedom to send our kids up chimneys and the liberty to lock up those whose views we disagree with. And let's repeal a few hundred other silly laws to make sure there's some chance of enforcing it.

On this day...

Today would have been the 85th birthday of one of my favourite writers and columnists, Keith Waterhouse (6th February 1929 - 4th September 2009). As well as being the author of sixteen novels (including Billy Liar) Waterhouse wrote a twice-weekly newspaper column for many years and was one a Fleet Street's most respected and most read journalists.



He also penned what are probably the best Ground Rules for Writers ever written (barring, of course, my own *ahem* modest contribution...)



They're well worth reading:






Use specific words (red and blue) not general ones (brightly coloured).
Use concrete words (rain, fog) rather than abstract ones (bad weather).
Use plain words (began, said, end) not college-educated ones (commenced, stated, termination).
Use positive words (he was poor) not negative ones (he was not rich—the reader at once wants to know, how not rich was he?).
Don’t overstate: fell is starker than plunged.
Don’t lard the story with emotive or “dramatic” words (astonishing, staggering, sensational, shock).
Avoid non-working words that cluster together like derelicts (but for the fact that, the question as to whether, there is no doubt that).
Don’t use words thoughtlessly. (Waiting ambulances don’t rush victims to hospital. Waiting ambulances wait. Meteors fall, so there can be no meteoric rise.)
Don’t use unknown quantities (very, really, truly, quite. How much is very?).
Never qualify absolutes. A thing cannot be quite impossible, glaringly obvious or most essential, any more than it can be absolutely absolute.
Don’t use jargon, clichés, puns, elegant or inelegant variations, or inexact synonyms (BRAVE WIFE DIED SAVING HER SON is wrong; wife is not a synonym for mother).
Words are facts. Check them (spelling and meaning) as you would any other.

Was WW1 the Biggest Error in British History?

My latest book is about the end of the war, the period post-Armistice when the pieces - literally, in terms of battlefield debris and unburied bodies, and psychologically in terms of the lives of the men who had served - were being picked up and a broken, shattered world was slowly being reassembled.



But no book on any aspect of the First War can hope to be complete without at least being informed about its causes, and by the debate that still seems to surround them a century later. For those involved, for the families affected, for the industries and economies ruined and not least for the men (and woman, and children - as early as December 1914 British children were being added to the casualty list) who lost their lives, knowing they were fighting, suffering, dying for a purpose, for a just cause, made the hardships understandable on some intellectual level even if emotionally they were scarcely bearable.



It's not unlike the argument that still surrounds the UK's involvement in Afghanistan and the legacy our troops will leave once their mission is complete. We owe it to the 500 servicemen and women killed as well as the thousands injured to make sure their sacrifice was not in vain.



In hindsight, of course, we know that the 'war to end all wars' was nothing of the sort and that many of the millions who died between 1914 and 1918 did die in vain. We know that thousands of men went to an almost inevitable but wholly unnecessary death as the result of the failures and folly of those in command right up through the forces to the War Ministry and the British Government and the aristocracy.



But should Britain have even gone to war in 1914? What would have happened if we hadn't fought? And what would the map of Europe have been like if, at 11.00p.m. on August 4th 1914 Britain had not declared itself to be in a state of war with Germany?



That's the fascinating question posed by historian Niall Ferguson who refers to World War One as 'the biggest error in modern history' in a recent article in The Guardian. Not that he argues that Britain should never have gone to war. Just that, with a relatively tiny army and without much by way of the resources necessary for a major land-based conflict, we shouldn't have rushed into the conflict as early as we did.



Ah, but the treaties - guarantees of Belgian neutrality and verbal assurances that we would support the French. Well, as Ferguson says, it wouldn't have been the first time (nor the last) that pragmatism, realism or merely blatant self-interest had overridden international obligations.



It's a fascinating thought - the notion that we might still have gone to war with Germany - just later when we were better prepared, perhaps, and with a clearer idea both of what we were doing and why we were doing it. Yes, there were at the time vague designs on parts of the British Empire and some sabre-rattling on the Oceans, but Germany in 1914 didn't pose a serious threat to Britain's homeland security and - arguably - might never have done so.



Of course, such retrospective raking over historical coals is a luxury we can afford. Those fighting, those who had fought and those for whom the Armistice wasn't the end of the war but rather the beginning of a lifetime's struggle to return the land and themselves to normal (or as near as possible) hadn't the opportunity to seriously question what they were doing or why they were doing it. They had to believe they had fought the good fight.



It is their story I am trying to tell. And of course it's a story that knows no future beyond battlefield clearances, beyond a halting resumption of family life, beyond the slow and careful creation of the monumental cemeteries designed to stand for eternity as a symbol of a war that was still thought to have been an end to all wars.



Lest we forget!

What's Wrong with Education?

Move over Michael Gove.



I know what's wrong with education.



It's not the curriculum, nor the teaching, nor your strange belief in grade inflation.



It is this.



There are too many people doing it.



In the wake of the recent announcement that the UK's children lag behind the likes of Thailand and a host of other countries and hot on the heels of almost weekly disagreements between one educational or political faction and another about who should teach what and how and whether they should be praised or blamed for doing so, I think I might be able to help.





My solution would save money too. Here it is:



Make fewer people do it. 




Now I know why you're thinking. You're thinking I've finally flipped, that I'm showing my true colours, that I'm still demob happy after my own time away from the classroom. Well, maybe. But before you rush to any hasty judgements allow me to explain. 




It, first. By 'it' I mean the institutionalised version of education - the we-know-what's-best state-owned paradigm of one school, then another school, followed by a college then maybe and then uni. Well, no 'maybe'. Almost everybody goes to 'uni' now. But they don't have to.



For a start, 'they' don't know best. But of course they've got a vested interest in telling us they do and then in pushing everyone they can through the state-sponsored education sausage factory. And I mean everyone: there's are serious moves afoot to undermine a parent's right to educate his or her children at home should they wish. And as I've said, everyone has to aspire to go to 'uni' these days and start their careers (if they're lucky to get jobs) with huge amounts of debt. 




But here's a thought, children. Don't go! Don't do it! Don't even go to school if you can convince the authorities you're getting a good enough education elsewhere. 




Because that's the thing. Education is everywhere. But the target-driving, standard-raising, political meddling education system with its inspections and curriculums (I know I know, that should be curricula) is bidding for a total takeover. A system that blames teachers for every ill from literacy to teenage pregnancy and gives six-year-old children piles and piles of time-wasting, demoralising homework - a system that seems to value only ever-increasing numbers choosing (or being corralled) into what for many is the wrong school-college-uni path regardless of whether there are 'uni' jobs at the end for them or whether their degrees, their expensive, hard-won right to wear a funny hat have actually educated them in any significant way - a system that  demands ever more frequent, hostile inspections and pays hundreds and thousands of academics and administrators to keep the monolith moving, a system that self-evidently isn't working.








I've recently read the wonderful book about the life of war veteran Harry Patch, The Last Fighting Tommy. Actually, very little of it is about the war because Patch survived and lived a long and successful life and so his time in the trenches became a smaller and smaller proportion of his life as a whole. But in the book he describes a wonderful old way of getting specialist career training, learning a trade and becoming a useful, relatively well-paid citizen. It's called an apprenticeship (not to be confused with the educational establishment's paper-driven initiative of the same name). In it, you learned on the job at a relatively young age from someone who knew how to do it. Simple really. And if you needed to know more there was always night school. Just take the class you want, do your exam. And get on. And do it yourself, take responsibility for it yourself and (as they like to say these days - 'own' the process).




That's what I mean when I say there are too many people doing it. There are too many people doing what the educational establishment defines (and increasingly proscribes) as 'it' and there's not enough people taking their own initiative and doing any alternative. And that's because in many cases, there is no alternative. The politicians and educational establishment have got the whole thing stitched up, from age four to eighteen and beyond.



There are loads and loads of us doing the wrong thing. And that's what's wrong with education.



Actually I know what's wrong with a lot of other things too. Like politics, democracy and children's television.



But that's another story. Several of them, maybe.



So watch this space. And tell all your friends. Shoot me down in flames by all means.



But let's at least have a debate.



And let's take a bit more control of things ourselves.