.
Even the staunchest supporters and defenders of Cancer Cat’s right to live have come round to saying that it’s time to have her put down. Seeing her looking so manky and grubby, so weak and thin, her ear blackened and bloodied by cancer, the consensus now seems to be that it’s time to call time on her wretched little life, lived as it is within the confines of a conservatory.
However, in a week when the issue of assisted death has coincidentally been so much in the national news and consciousness, I’m not convinced.
I observe Cancer Cat through the glass kitchen door as she crouches sleeping on the blanket in her box, and I think - this is the way it is with old age. Out in the wild, where she’d be prey to predators, she’d have been taken and eaten years ago.
Here, where she’s safe, she ekes out her days and weeks in a state of inactive sleep and semi-sleep, and who am I to judge that she’s in pain and that she should be killed?
I’m not against mercy-killing, and if there was clear evidence that death would be a merciful release, then I’d do it. But the vet, when consulted, said only that the cancer in her ear wouldn’t spread to other parts of her body, and that it’s no longer seen as necessary to amputate a cancerous ear. By implication, therefore, she should be left alone to get on with the rest of her life in the best way she can.
This week the UK authorities ruled against prosecuting a couple who had helped their son to die, on the grounds that it would not be in the public interest . He’d been in a state of complete paralysis since breaking his neck whilst playing rugger.
He had no quality of life at all, since he couldn’t lift a finger to do anything for himself. No doubt he could also observe that taking care of his needs was having a very detrimental effect on the quality of life on offer to his parents, his carers. He’d had enough of just existing, and wanted to die.
This week Sky TV broadcast a documentary featuring a 59 year old man who was terminally ill, who’d asked for his assisted death to be shown on TV, so that people could see for themselves that dying in this way is not unpleasant and distressing, other than the fact that a human life has ended. Inevitably this TV ‘first’ caused an almighty ruckus.
Today the Observer published an editorial on this issue:
“Parliament needs to address the moral case for assisted suicide”.The government must anticipate the need for a new law and establish a commission of enquiry to recommend what it should be. Otherwise, while the issues continue to be debated in the media, cases will come to court and conflicting precedents set on the basis of particular circumstances. But justice requires that, on such a difficult ethical question, the law be based on universal principles. The proper place to establish those principles is Parliament.http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/14/assisted-suicide-house-of-commons
Somehow it’s clear-cut when you have a human being who is clearly expressing a desire to die. It’s a more complex business when it’s a dumb (or very dumb) animal that’s not even communicating clearly with body language.
What to think, for instance, when the cat goes for several days refusing to eat anything, and doesn’t even make an effort to keep herself clean, and then has a day like today when she enthusiastically crunches up a pile of her favourite food, chicken bones, and spends a whole hour cleaning herself and her manky ear?
-----------------------------------------------------
Tax Havens Revisited.In the Observer today Nick Cohen gives over the whole of his column to the issue of tax havens: ‘These vile tax havens have had their day’.
After giving the Barclay Brothers a pasting for their activities on Sark, Cohen goes on to say,
[Sark is not] the only British territory to become the modern version of pirate statelets of the Spanish Main. In a list of 37 'suspect jurisdictions' drawn up by American politicians pushing a 'Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act' through Congress, 11 are under British control - Alderney, Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Sark and the Turks and Caicos islands. Since 1997, Labour has not shown the slightest squeamishness about allowing the Barclay brothers and their kind to avoid the taxes that you, dear reader, must pay on pain of imprisonment. Ministers had the sovereign power to stop them, but in the bubble years they would do nothing that threatened the City, which routed so much of its business offshore. The energy they put into defending rich men and rich companies is shameful to recall. Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK was not exaggerating when he said that, after the departure of George W Bush, Gordon Brown will be 'the most important supporter of tax havens in the world'. Accountancy Age added: 'Sarkozy wants to launch attacks on the havens, the Germans want to target Switzerland in particular, and seemingly only one major country, Britain, led by Gordon Brown, who in opposition made his name pledging to crack down on tax avoidance, is standing in the way.'I could despair about his hypocrisy, but I will leave the polemics for another day, because the world in which politicians regarded tax havens as necessary adjuncts to the all-powerful financial markets has crashed, and overdue reform may be coming.Barack Obama is among the sponsors of the proposed American assault on tax havens. 'We need to crack down on individuals and businesses that abuse our tax laws so that those who work hard and play by the rules aren't disadvantaged,' he said in 2007. He will certainly ally with Germany and France against Britain after he becomes President next month.They understand that tax havens allow multinationals and local kleptomaniacs to siphon off Africa's wealth to Guernsey, Jersey and their competitors. So widespread has the looting by the African elite become, that a study for the Tax Justice Network concluded that the hell holes of sub-Saharan Africa were a 'net creditor to the rest of the world'.The dismantling of offshore finance is a necessary precondition for African development. And for our development, as well. I get a sense of renewed radical self-confidence. Ideas that were impossible to contemplate in the bubble seem common sense now.If they were to decide that Sark and the failed economic model it represents were not so quaint after all, they would be on the side of the honest taxpayers and international progressive opinion, and against African dictators, tax-dodging multinationals, money launderers, organised crime and the Barclay brothers.Labour is talking a great deal about the need to make 'tough choices' at the moment. This is not one of them.http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/14/sark-barclay-brothers-labour ---------------------------------------------------------
Making Schools EnjoyableDesert Island Discs last week featured Prof. Marcus du Sautoy, the new Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, who is taking over that post from fellow-atheist Richard Dawkins.
The Prof is obviously a brilliant guy, mathematically-speaking, and also pretty dynamic in many ways. He seems to pride himself in having developed a taste for classical and operatic music at a time when his contemporaries were getting into punk rock. He clearly enjoys the mathematics of complex music, and his music choices were all abysmal, boring and turgid.
The only part of the programme that made me feel pleased I’d listened to it was when he described his time living in Guatemala, and his child’s experience of school there. (And credit to him for sending his child to a local school, and not an ex-pats only ‘international’ school. Maybe that’s something to do with having attended a state comprehensive himself.)
Kirsty wondered what the school had been like, and he said, “Schools are so much more fun in Guatamala - they ran a farm, did woodwork, and so on.” This is a man who believes that maths can be fun when it’s approached in the right way.
So bloody shame on Britain for failing to provide schools that are even as good for kids as those in poor bloody Guatamala. But nobody here even gives a damn about schools being fun places for kids, where learning takes place within meaningful contexts. Kids deserve so much more than the pompous misguided shits who run our system, who care only for high ‘attainment’, regardless of how it’s achieved or how badly our methods impact on our kids.
--------------------------------------------------------
Greece Revisited Yiannis Yiatrakis, who preferred to leave his study of abstract mathematics to take to the streets of Athens last week, is quoted in the Observer today: “It's like a smouldering fire - the flames may die down but the coals will simmer. One little thing, and you'll see it will ignite again. Ours is a future without work, without hope. Our grievances are so big, so many.”
Reporter Helena Smith goes on to say,
“The orgy of violence that has gripped this beautiful land masks a deeper malaise. These are a lost generation, raised in an education system that is undeniably shambolic and hit by whopping levels of unemployment - 70 per cent among the 18-25s.Often polyglot PhD holders will be serving tourists at tables in resorts. One in five Greeks lives beneath the poverty line. Exposed to the ills of Greek society as never before, they have also become increasingly frustrated witnesses of allegations of corruption implicating senior conservative government officials and a series of scandals that have so far cost four ministers their jobs.It began with one death, one bullet, fired in anger by a hot-headed policemen in the heart of Athens' edgy Exarchia district on last Saturday.No one thought they would wake up to a revolt in the streets. But the death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a tousled-haired teenager from the rich northern suburbs was the match that lit the inferno. If the killing had happened in any of the capital's wealthy satellite suburbs, the reaction might well have been more subdued. Exarchia, however, is Athens' answer to Harlem (without the racial component). It is here that anarchists, artists, addicts, radical leftists, students and their teachers rub shoulders in streets crammed with bars and cafes that are covered with the graffiti of dissent. It is Athens's hub of political ferment; a backdrop of tensions between anti-establishment groups and the police. Within an hour of the boy's death thousands of protesters had gathered in Exarchia's lawless central square screaming, 'cops, pigs, murderers,' and wanting revenge. Theirs was a frustration not only born of pent-up anger but outrage at the way ministers in the scandal-tainted conservative government have also enriched themselves in their five short years in power. Now the million-dollar question is whether protests that started so spontaneously can morph into a more organised movement of civil unrest.With daily demonstrations planned in the weeks ahead Greek youth are not going to give in easily.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/14/greece-riots-youth-poverty-comment ----------------------------------------------------------
The Olympics of Education - Marjorie Scardino, The Guardian, Thursday December 11th.
Learning To LearnFinland was top science performer and second in reading and maths in the latest results, announced last year, while South Korea was first in reading and Taiwan topped the maths table. Study the winners and you'll see that success isn't tied to class size, facilities, study time or money. The key is simply the winners' care for and attention to their education system, focused in three important areas.First, individualism. In Finland students start school later and spend fewer hours there than almost anywhere else, but schools emphasise "learning to learn", not to get a job or a university degree. They focus on personalised, diagnostic assessment that works to "support and guide pupils in a positive manner", as the Finnish education board phrases it. Second, technology. High-scoring countries like South Korea use technology to make connections and to share information. Teachers share ideas online and parents become more involved in their children's instruction. The South Korean education minister recently said access to technology over the last 10 years has changed how their students relate to teachers, so they question rather than merely absorb. And finally, teachers. Probably most important, the best-performing countries tend to set great store by how they select and train teachers, starting a virtuous circle that elevates teaching to a noble and honourable status and attracts the best. "Are You the Right One?" Singapore's education ministry asks aspiring teachers visiting its website. Only one in five applicants is admitted to teacher education, and of those who train, nine out of 10 become teachers. Applicants are advised that "teaching is not for the short term" and are assessed for communication skills, willingness to learn and "the passion to teach and the belief that you can make a difference".We're intently focused right now on how to relieve a severe economic contraction. But perhaps we're not looking in the right place. Our long-term economic health might revolve as much around the classroom as the boardroom, the trading floor or the halls of parliament. One effective long-term economic stimulus package might be a massive teacher recruitment, development and reward programme. That would repay the taxpayer - and all taxpayers of the future - many times over. And it would help boost us to the very top of the most important champions' league.http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/dec/11/primary-maths-science-politics Well said, Marjorie Scardino. It really is simple, and so obvious that anyone with half a brain has known this for decades:
* Put the emphasis on the enjoyment of learning for its own sake, and on learning how to learn - not on learning for tests or extrinsic rewards or the job market.
* Make teaching a proper profession again - a noble and honorable status - and make sure you attract people who know how to be creative and how to make learning interesting and exciting.
* Use computers and the Internet to the full, and enable students to pursue their own interests and learning objectives as independently as possible.
.
