We do not have a STEM problem

in this country. We have a language problem, an arts problem, a creativity problem.

The "person of the year" is an astronaut and, dare I even say this, a female astronaut at that. She is the first person to be an astronaut under the flag of this country. (Yes, you can forget Andy Thomas apparently - he trained with the Americans.) 

Now this "person of the year" is speaking up about the need for people to do STEM - science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  This is what is expected of her, no it is doubt one of the reasons she was chosen for the role.  I have no arguments with that. We need scientists and mathematicians and the technicians and engineers and other professionals which go with all the employment in those areas.

The problem is that none of this can happen without language and nothing will develop without creativity. The would be scientist, mathematician, engineer or technician needs to be able to read and read well. It is not sufficient to be able to read the instructions on the box and put the widget together. The widget has to be put together and used. If we want that person to build a better widget then they need to know how the widget works and why it was made that way. They need to know this before they can use processes like logic and creativity to improve the performance of the widget. It might appear to be as if it is all grounded in science and maths and engineering but in reality it is not. That comes next. It begins because someone has the language and the capability to apply language to the problem.

I said this recently on a mathematical project page set up by an Oxford mathematician. I was howled down by people who tried to tell me that mathematics was more important than language. They appeared to completely ignore the fact they were using language to argue their case. They ignored the fact that unless they understood words like "one" and "two", "multiply", "integer", "division" and more they could not even begin to find a square root or calculate a Chi square. The Oxford mathematician agreed with me but it left me feeling alarmed by how little importance some people place on the ability to use language or how essential it is in order to participate in the world. 

A speech pathologist once said to me she was always amazed by how hard some people with severe communication disabilities will try to communicate. I do not find it amazing at all. I expect nothing less. It is why I will go out of my way to overcome communication barriers and help others to do the same. It is our ability to communicate in multiple ways which marks us out from so much of the animal kingdom. 

We need people who can read, who read with understanding and who read for enjoyment as well as information. People need to be able to read critically, to think about what they have read and assess it. They need to create their own ideas from what they read, hear and see. This cannot be done without language. This is what we need to base the education of the young on. 

We are being warned the government plans to spend less on libraries this year. That is wrong. We should be spending more, much more.  

Don't blame the majority for

the decisions of a minority.

The Israeli President is coming to visit and the pro-Palestinian "action group"(s) are making it clear that they are not happy with the invitation. They want him "disinvited". If he does come they want the government to arrest him and send him of to the International Court of Justice at the Hague. 

The pro-Palestinian groups have been active for many months now. They have been disrupting traffic, transport, businesses and other people's lives with the support of the law. They have claimed a "right to protest". They do not like what is going on in Gaza. 

The vast majority of people do not like what is going on in Gaza. How could they? It is the most appalling and distressing mess. But who is really responsible for this? Is it every person in Israel? Is it every Jew around the world? Is the President to blame?

I don't know as much as I perhaps should about the powers of the President of Israel but how is he supposed to halt government decisions? I doubt he can. As I understand it his role is largely ceremonial. Is he then to take the blame for all the decisions of the Netanyahu government? What about the Israelis themselves. By no means all of them voted for the same government but are they all responsible? Some of them at least have been protesting about what is going on. If there was an election held tomorrow would the government change? It well might. Who becomes responsible then?

And on the other side who is responsible? There was an election you say. The people of Gaza voted Hamas in. They are responsible. Really? What sort of election was it? Free and fair or manipulated? Is the destruction of Gaza what they voted for? How many of them would have settled for returning the hostages immediately in return for peace but have never had the opportunity to say that?

We have an election coming up in this state. I will vote. I am required to vote. The law says I must vote. My vote is just one vote. It is quite likely the candidate I vote for will not succeed and that the government will not be of my choosing. Do I have to take responsibility for all decisions made in the future? Do I accept a democratic result or must I go on protesting? 

Where does my responsibility end? If I want to blame someone else do I object in a civilised, quiet manner or do I need to protest loudly, perhaps violently? 

 

  

"Little girls wear pink"

my maternal grandmother informed me as I told her I did not want to wear pink, that I did not like pink, that I wanted a blue dress. 

"Blue is for boys," she told me.

"It's for girls too!" 

I can remember being smacked hard for saying that. Nana was determined that I would be a "little girl" and that I would wear something pink and frilly. 

I still "hate" pink and frills. 

Nana made the dress of course. That is how things were done then. Your mother or your grandmother or your aunt or someone you knew made your clothes. There were no chains of Target or KMart or BigW back then.

I can remember that dress. It was made from a cotton fabric I think was called "haircord" and it was printed with tiny pink roses all over it. Yes, it was "pretty" I suppose. I remember the same fabric and same design also came in other colours, blue, yellow and possibly green. I would have been happy enough with blue or yellow. I did not like pink. Add in a frill of broderie anglaise "lace" that Nana thought looked "very nice" and I loathed it. The frill tickled.

It was my "other" dress. It was not my Sunday dress. That was green robia spot voile and smocked across the yoke. The smocking was not there just for decoration. It was there to make the garment last from one summer to the next. I wore it when I was two and then when I was three. The hem must have been lowered but I remember nothing of that. 

Yes, I was arguing about not wearing pink at age two. We were in the drapers which was just down the road from where my paternal grandparents lived. Nana must have come down on the train from the other side of the city. My mother was there. My paternal grandmother was there and Nana was there. Nana would get her way of course. If she did not then she would sulk and not do a good job of the dress. (She  was a good dressmaker.) 

I was reminded of this yesterday when a three year old I know appeared in front of me. She was wearing a pair of overalls that were a miniature version of an adult workman's work overalls. There was a spanner in one of the pockets and a small hammer in another. Her mother smiled and shrugged and said, "Her choice. I thought she might want to wear the pink ballet skirt."

"No, today is work. I am going to work," we were told.

As a garment the overalls were very practical apart from the difficulty of getting them on again if she "needed to go". She can pull them off her shoulders but not get them on again. Fair enough. They get flung in the washing machine. There is no need to worry about "spoiling" them. Oh, I would have loved to wear those.

Nana went on insisting I wear pink and that meant Middle Cat wore pink because clothes were passed down.  We had other clothes of course. Clothes were often passed around until they were no longer fit to be worn. Other pink things must have appeared but I do not remember them in the way I remember having to wear a pink frilly dress because it was what Nana wanted. 

Much later I remember my mother buying two dresses for my sisters. They must have been "on special", perhaps shop samples, from a drapery that was regarded as rather "exclusive". I do remember the sale sign across the window because of a black mark on it. It was still rare to buy clothing that way but those dresses were good. One was the colour of milk coffee. The other was a very pale teal. Both were embroidered around the borders but must have had deep hems as well. They lasted my sisters a long time, the way clothes were meant to last.  Me? Nana had made me yet another pink dress. It was made from pink nylon and "it doesn't need ironing". I loathed it but had to wear it. 

Grandma had brought up two boys and knew about practical clothing. She made shorts and overalls and knitted us traditional ganseys in the pattern her mother in law taught her. We girls had smocked dresses for "best" but there was never anything pink apart from the pink in the grub roses embroidered into the smocking.

Years later Grandma and I talked about this and she told me, "Your grandmother was dressing herself, not you." 

She was right. I still don't wear pink.  

  

There is a house being built

on land behind the group of units in which I now live. I was aware of it mostly because there were "fence" problems and the owner of the land in question was not being cooperative. 

It now turns out there may have been very good reasons for him not to be cooperative. He has been actively avoiding anything happening on "his" land until the footings were dug out and the foundations laid. That has now occurred and he, smilingly, came up with an offer to pay his half of the fencing costs. 

What he had not done was deal with the issue of a drainage pipe which flows from the units and the surrounding properties on to his land. Apparently it is "not his problem" because "it isn't there". It is apparently not on the paperwork at the local council and they are responsible for allowing building works to go ahead. 

The neighbour who came in to see me about all this told me the council has informed him the council says their records only go back to 1970. That seems very unlikely but this is what they are claiming. The units were built in 1966. As far as they are concerned the pipe does not exist. Really?

The water supply company also says "not our problem" because "our responsibility stops at the street". This is despite the fact that the pipe would have been put in by them when water was connected to all the surrounding properties.

It is a drainage pipe and the building works are lower than this unit so I am assuming water flows in that direction. Yes, it will flow on to the property. The pipe must direct the flow of the water from the neighbouring rooftops? I am no physicist and I am no engineer but it just seems to me you would want to avoid this sort of situation. It would be wise to get some advice? It would be wise to cooperate with your neighbours to be on this matter?

No, the owner has had the builder block the pipe with concrete. It was filled in when they laid the foundations. It was filled in against advice from a much more knowledgeable plumber.  Where will the water flow now? According to the owner of the land it is not his problem. The manager of the units is trying to do something about the situation. We have had no rain for weeks now but I suspect we might have a problem when it does and the water has nowhere to go. It might also mean the land beneath the new building dries out and damages the foundations. 

It is a potential muddy mess.  

  

If we want children to read

then they must be taught to read. I would have thought this was obvious but apparently it is not. It seems some parents believe the process can now be left entirely up to "day care" and "kindy" (kindergarten) and "pre-school" or wherever else they put their precious little ones to be "educated". Parents no longer have "time" to do anything like this.

I know I was lucky. My parents were teachers. I might have driven my mother to distraction but she did put the words for everyday items on them, on the 'fridge and elsewhere. If I wanted a word I could ask for it. It would be written on a piece of paper in her excellent "infant school" printing and it was there. All I had to do was learn it. 

I knew my letters early because the Senior Cat read me my bedtime stories as soon as I started to take an interest in the pictures in books. I cannot remember that but one of my earliest memories is sitting on his lap in front of the wood burning stove. He has his left arm around me. His left hand is holding the book and his right hand is pointing to each word as he reads it to me. I cannot have been more than eighteen months old. And yes, I do actually remember that. I can feel and smell the memory of it as well. They say you need words to remember and I must have had those words. It isn't the clearer, sharper memories of later but it is there. I have similar memories of other happenings. 

I didn't "just pick it (reading) up" of course. My parents contributed to the process. When my brother came along I was there to help. He was another early reader. My sisters were not as fast. My parents had more to do and the Senior Cat was doing a university degree part time. That alone tells me that parents need to be involved. 

Most parents would not be able to do what my parents did. They are not trained teachers. Quite possibly their children would not be as interested in learning to read but it does not mean that nothing should be done. Every so often there will be another news item about the importance of reading to children when they are young. It is one of those things that "everybody knows" is important but is still largely taken for granted. It does not always get done.

It does not always get done because parents are now "time poor". If both parents are working full time then there is very little time left for parenting. Your child(ren) will be brought up by the staff at day care in whatever form it takes. The lucky children will be those who are left with caring and able grandparents who take them off to "story-telling" at the library and have the time to satisfy the curiosity of the child who wants to know what something "says".  It is not just that of course. It is the individual interactions which matter, the playing with words. I heard a child saying "beat" the other day. Her grandparent responded, "heat" and the child said "cheat". It was a game between two. It was fun. 

All forms of day care have a place but none of them are quite the same as individual adult time devoted to words when it comes to learning to read. That is only a start of course. There is much more to it than that but it still matters and there are too many children missing out on it. 

 

 

 

The "Thriving Kids" program

outlined by the government is supposed to reduce the cost of the NDIS scheme. Whether it will or not is yet to be seen.

I was talking to a young mother yesterday who was worried her three year old son "might be autistic". He was running around and around the park adjacent to the library pretending to be a pilot. 

"He just keeps going like that all day. At kindy (kindergarten) they keep telling me he has to learn to settle down and listen to instructions and do what he is told. They are worried because he can't count properly past ten and he doesn't know how to read anything. He can read his name but he can't write it and they say..." 

"Does he sleep at night?" I asked. It felt exhausting just watching him.

"Oh yes, that's not a problem."

"Do you read to him?"

"Yes, it's why we come here on Wednesdays. It isn't a kindy day so we come to the toy library and I always get some books for him. He will listen to a story...I mean he will wriggle around but if you ask him then he has been listening. He can tell it back to you."

I listened to all of this as he turned a perfect somersault in the grass to "land". He was talking away using words like "landing gear" and "flaps" and "throttle". It all sounded perfectly normal to me. He seemed to me to be a healthy and active little boy with imagination and the apparently excess energy of childhood. 

But apparently there are "problems" at kindergarten level. He does not fit into the required groove or hole. He is a round peg that can turn around and around and the hole is square. It does not want him to roll around. Someone has suggested he "might be autistic" because he does not fit neatly into the expectations and requirements of the kindergarten. He is not learning the way they require children to learn. 

Of course I do not know the child at all. There may be other problems, problems the mother did not want to mention. Still it seems to me that having a very active and healthy child with an active and healthy imagination should not be seen as a "might be autistic" problem. The idea of putting him on some sort of medication "to calm him down a bit" was worrying the mother. It would worry me too. 

Is this how we treat three year old children who do not fit into the requirements being laid down?  

  

 

  

So interest rates are up again?

And the government is blaming everyone but themselves? Why am I not surprised?

I spent most of my time yesterday morning going to and from the bank. To get there requires pedalling to the station, catching a train changing to another train and then pedalling again at the other end. (Yes of course you do the same in reverse to go home again.) I arrived at the bank during the shopping centre's "quiet hour" - the one which is supposed to cater for people with "sensory needs".  It was not particularly quiet.

I had to actually go to the bank because all attempts to do what needed to be done could not be done on line. Please allow me to explain how much of this is a government induced problem which causes a rise or two in the cost of living.

First, it should not have been necessary to go that far in order to actually go to a bank. There should be a bank nearby. There were once four banks in the immediate vicinity. Now there are none. There were four ATM's outside the shopping centre. Now there is one. There is another inside run by a private company that charges people each time they use it.  All this has been done in the name of things like "electronic banking", "efficiency", "time saving", "reduced costs"... I could go on. Has any of this actually made life easier? No, it has reduced human interaction.

It has also increased the possibilities for fraud, greatly increased those possibilities. Oh and don't think about using the ATM unless there are plenty of people around or you might find yourself being held up by a teenage gangster looking for a bit extra to spend at the fast food places across the main road.

So, "reverification" of my bank details are necessary because now I could be anyone at all. After the failed attempts to do it in other ways and a now angry email from the bank I gave in and decided to go. The one thing I was refusing to do was "make an appointment".  Thus I made the trip by trike and train. Two trains? Yes, our public transport system tends to go in and out of the city, not across the suburbs. There is one "connector" bus service which does a loop but I cannot take the trike on the buses and it would involve even more time and buses. The entire system is designed to encourage the use of cars.

Oh yes, cars? Most people have access to one. They can drive. They have a licence to drive. It has "photo ID". You can use it to prove your identity. I do not have a licence to drive of course. I have a "proof of age" card. It also has photo ID. It is issued by the same people who issue the driver's licence cards. To get a proof of age card you have to provide a hundred points of ID which means at least two things like your passport, your birth certificate, your Medicare card and (wait for it) your licence to drive.  It is supposed to be an alternative to the licence to drive when you need to provide ID...except sometimes. The bank will not take that form of ID on line. 

So there I am, sans "appointment". I tell the service officer at the "welcome" desk why I am there. He starts to say I should have an appointment and I tell him, politely, that I am not going to make one because I happen to know that they have appointments available right then. (I looked that up before I left.) His shoulders sag. Is this going to be a difficult customer? He looks my details up. There is a flag on them saying I have already put in a complaint. The complaint was polite. It was reasonable. If they accept my suggestion it will, I hope, make a change to bank policy and life a little easier for all of us without a licence to drive. 

"Plenty of time," the nice female officer tells me. She groans when I tell her what the problem is...and agrees with me that reverification of details is largely due to fraud caused by the lack of face to face transactions. The idea that my proof of age card is not adequate for reverification purposes on line is something which causes her to sigh in frustration and mutter imprecations about inefficiency and more. I was on my way home when she actually phoned me to say that the bank has now accepted my proof of age card as ID...but it still cannot be done online. 

I hope my new passport turns up soon. I might need it as ID.