Sunday, October 20, 2013

Neeps & Tatties


October is nearly gone.

The weather is fast turning dreich. Snow is visible on some of the lower alpine peaks. Winter tires are being fitted, skis are being cleaned of dead spider’s webs and the whole countryside around me is peppered with large piles of dirty looking root vegetables.

Everywhere I look they are there. Sitting quietly and unobtrusively beside a road. A muddy war zone behind them which was until very recently a pretty field sits testament to uprooting horror they have endured over the last few weeks.

I for one look forward to lathering salty butter on some freshly harvested baked spuds but if October is the time for the potato harvest then how can I still eat chips, wedges, mash or roasters in July?

If I buy a bag from the local supermarket, within a week or so they either start getting soft and squishy or start growing creepy green tentacled feet. Is there a potato preserving trick I am missing or are there other secret things going on behind the scenes which facilitates this modern miracle?

Are they flown in from some poor southern hemisphere third world country leaving the locals to starve? Is there some fiendish scientific group from Belgium creating non October sourced tatties with chemicals and tested on Beagles drugs?

I honestly don’t know the answer to this, and given the answer is most likely out there very easy to find Google, I also clearly don’t care too much about it.

I get my creamy mash every month of the year if I want so why should I care where it comes from or if its loaded with chemicals or other such preservatives?

I don’t but the other common thing about October is the amount of children wrapped up and playing in the streets. October brings with it the October holidays. It seems only a few sleeps since the Summer holidays drew to a close and I’m pretty sure only the blink of an eye before they are breaking for Christmas, then half term, then Easter and I think you get my point. 

All in, by my rough and ready reckoning, it tots up to 13 weeks off school.

As a child, I would long for the moment the school bell would ring and the long endless summer would begin. We would run out throwing books in the air and start a spontaneous song and dance routine just to show how gleefully happy we were. The teachers would stand and watch, shaking their heads, smoking and planning a summer of hippy gatherings or union mischievousness.

I could be wrong but I understood that the October holidays were specifically there to help with the aforementioned root vegetable harvest. I'm so old that I actually picked potatoes during the October holidays. This was in the dim and distant past before they invented a machine to do it.

When most countries were agricultural societies the extra labour from school kids was required to deal with the peak harvest times and thus, October holidays and Summer holidays were invented. The other holidays – Christmas, Easter, are obviously there for other reasons. I have no idea at all about half term.

So if my chips are able to reach my plate without the assistance of child labour then why do we still maintain an agricultural cadence for our school holidays?

The vast majority of working parents don’t work in agriculture. 
The vast majority of working parents don’t get 13 weeks holiday a year so there appears to be a huge gulf between society and the current schooling system.

This issue exists in most countries. The UK and Switzerland are not alone with this and I don’t understand why.

Michael Gove, the current Education secretary for the UK, proposed earlier this year to try to take some steps towards fixing this and was torn to shreds by the National Union of Teachers. The basic thrust of his argument was that the agricultural based holiday schedule had no place in a modern Britain and he wanted to change it.

From what I managed to pick out from the hefty smelly lumps of vitriol thrown back at him is that the agricultural link has been debunked. One argument I saw on a teachers website told me that the longer holidays were a reflection of the standing of teachers in society – i.e. a reward for being a professional. 

And back in 1863 this was considered a valid argument.

I have seen nothing which discusses the effect of longer or shorter time in school on children. What I would like to know is if we reduced the school holidays to say, 25 days a year, would a child’s brain explode from all that extra learning. Would familial structures as we know it melt away? Would we create a generation of geniuses or just dull boring people? Would crime go down? Or up?

And would teachers be dropping from exhaustion having to work the same amount of time as the rest of the population?

What would really happen? 

That is aside from allowing working parents to not have to scrabble around finding childcare to cover the weeks when they still have to work.

I would contend nothing. 

Well nothing apart from a Thatcher-esq confrontation with the NUT that is.

I get 25 days holiday a year.
I work from about 8.30am till whenever I decide to stop in the evening. Sometimes whole weekends are lost. I am not complaining. This is my choice. I could simply choose to not do this and I am fairly compensated for the intrusive nature of my work. Most professional people I know work in a fairly similar way.

I don’t know any teachers though.

In the run up to the 2013 summer holidays my older son told me he wasn’t bothering to go to school for the last week of term. This was because they just sat in class playing games or watching films. When I questioned this with his step-father and mother they essentially confirmed this telling me his time would be better served helping out at home. I couldn’t agree more if this is what happens in school as they ramp down after the three weeks of hard study since Easter but I cant say I’m not concerned.

Surprisingly I have a great deal of respect for teachers. They do a job I couldn’t. The thought of trying to educate a room full of sulky shoe gazing smelly teenagers is one of my many versions of hell. My latter years in the British school system were harpooned by the long lasting and bitter teachers strikes and I know this has slanted my view on the role unions play in general. Since then I have had many interactions with unions through my day job and the view formed 28 years ago hasn’t changed much over the years.

I still have a great deal of respect for the job teachers do though.

What I have serious issues with is the militant unhelpful lazy arsed unionistic blocking of anything which might somewhat resemble change. And the bloody complaining.

So here is the Mike Shanks 3 point plan to change this immediately;

1. Stop complaining about any out of hours work required. Everyone else does it.
2. Burn your union membership card.
3. Cut the school holidays in half.

The benefits would be multiple:
  1. People would stop moaning about teachers. Myself included.
  2. You could quite justifiably ask for more money.
  3. The extra time could be used to teach children other less academic stuff like sports or culture.
  4. There could be classes on how work in the real world really is (note; probably best to get outside help in for this one)
  5. There would be significant savings for working families on childcare.
  6. Families could all take holidays at the same time.
  7. Crime would drop. Probably.
  8. Children would most likely leave school with a much higher standard of education. 

I can’t think of anyone who would lose out in this alternate crazy world.

Its a win, win, win solution and should be implemented immediately.

And as an added bonus it will have no impact whatsoever on the all year round supply of genetically modified mashed tatties or neeps from Bora Bora.

So there.

2 comments:

  1. Well - you make a good albeit lengthy point Mike. However I do think particularly very small children do need regular breaks. Mine are all done in by the time the holidays come around. They DON'T need 7 weeks in the summer though!! Caroline Hyde - yes it is me!

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  2. Brevity was never a strong point of mine Caroline. Agree on the regular breaks but maybe they can be filled with other less tiring/academic stuff. Not sure the NUT would share these sentiments though and I guess this is my fundamental issue if I am being honest.

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