So that's why Susie Green left

[DistantVworp]

Charity commission launches formal inquiry into Mermaids:
twitter.com/SexMattersOrg/status/1598666394610147329?s=20&t=x_Supvwk6lHkKBR7a-ESSw

About bloody time!

Thank you for the book rec!

A very interesting turn this thread has taken and as a teacher, one that really resonates with me.

In the classroom, some children are unable to do anything unless you show them how to do it first! This includes looking up things in book indexes, providing their own pens, knowing the date, what colour to colour in their pictures. You give them a worksheet and they cannot read or follow the instructions themselves, you have to spoonfeed them every step, and this includes high ability classes!!

For instance, if I am giving out sheets I refuse to read through the instructions with them, I make them do it themselves. If they don't understand the first time I make them read it through again. I refuse to hand out pens - if they forget, they have to find another student to lens them a pen. And if the info is in a book I refuse to tell them the page, they need to look it up and find it themselves.

It's amazing how hard some kids find this. And I find it so frustrating, if there is another adult in the room, like a TA, that they'll immediately run over if summoned to do exactly what I have told the kids they have to do for themselves....

I wholeheartedly agre @RedToothBrush

Another who saw this as a teacher. Failure is a great educator.

As is pain. Small pains, scrapes, scratches, falling off things, being hurt is the only effective way of learning how to risk assess.

@rabbitwoman my last Ofsted I was told, specifically, that I was retarding the ability of my students to learn the information I was asking them to learn by not giving them book, chapter , page information. "Research X and Y" was, it seems, cruel and unusual punishment! Adult students, post compulsory education, Subjects of their choice!!!

The whole forest school and risky play thing in the early years is about human need to experience risk. Genuine risk. To learn to recognise it, assess it, and respond appropriately to it.

You also see similar ideas in the Montessori idea of giving children real things, instead of childish approximations of them. And having them learn to do real tasks.

There is a book by Colin award written in the 70s where he argues against keeping children confined to ‘fenced off child ghettos’. These ideas have long histories.

The thing is that safeguarding isn’t merely about keeping children safe (in the ways people assume it might be). It’s not about wrapping them in cotton wool. It’s about doing proper risk assessments and considering how to help children to learn to keep themselves safe.

Obviously you don’t send a group of toddler into the wilderness with guns and little else and hope they survive. Weird all or nothing ideas lead to stupid situations like mermaids where the choice is posed in
such stupidly polarised ways (dead sons or operations to produce a daughter, for example).

Safeguarding is about managing the risk and supporting children in appropriate ways to do things in safe ways (increasingly as they get older). So you put sensible measures in place to support them and ensure the risks are reasonable. Children can learn about cutting wood if you provide small saws that they’re able to use, and wood that will be easy to cut. If you supervise them and talk them through it. if you talk about what’s safe and not safe. And so on.

Over time even young children can learn to make quite sensible risk assessments of their own - they learn to receive risk and assess their own capacities more accurately. They learn what kinds of support they need and what they can do on their own. You might need to keep revisiting this and progress is not linear (not least because children’s bodies and capacities change and this affects their ability to perceive risks and affordances in the environment, so they have to keep relearning). Crucially though, they learn how to reassess and how to adapt by doing this.

All this ‘they’re so vulnerable they must be protected from anything but affirmation or you’re literally killing them’ actually, and ironically, leads to the kinds of safeguarding failures we’re learning about in mermaids’
practices. We actually make them far more vulnerable than anyone ever needs to be.

Still sad that this is a school thing. Not affordable or accessible for some. It used to be life.

@SamphiretheTervosaurReturneth

As this is deeply buried in a thread, I will tell you I was reported to my school a few weeks ago via anonymous email for my anti trans views as expressed on twitter.

However, our newly released transgender schools guidance only came out in September, and was based on advice from the sex matters school's guidance on their website. The person who very confidently complained about me obviously had no clue that I was in complete alignment with our new guidance and they were not.....

@rabbitwoman That is priceless 😄Similar here, too complicated to go into, so, very short version: crisis centre threatened with 'doxxing'. The women running it laughed!

Just wanted to say that I'm finding the discussions about child development really fascinating. And in a way gets to the nub of things, and the confusion therein.

Some people seem to think that being safe is all about cotton-wool protection against all bumps and scrapes including emotional ones, which then ironically leads to them fighting against safeguarding. IMO my role as a parent and a responsible adult is to safeguard children and vulnerable people, which is not the same as the fluffy cotton-wool version that others envisage.

Great discussion. Taking notes

Very good discussion about early development in children. My kids both went to a Montessori nursery (not specifically chosen, it was just the most convenient one to use). Everything was about independence and the children learning to do things for themselves - they had to have a pair of slippers at nursery for indoor use and were expected to take off their own shoes and put the slippers on (as well as hanging up their coats and bags on their designated, child-height, peg). The nursery workers said they would rather the child took 10-15 minutes doing it all for themselves than just do it for them - though obviously they would help if really needed!

Also, when they moved up to the pre-school room they were served lunch and snacks with real crockery and water glasses - no plastic plates! If a plate/glass was dropped and broken, no fuss was made and the child was helped to clean up the mess. They learned very quickly how to be respectful and take care of things.

Sorry for the derail!

My initial reaction was like @rogdmum - they knew it would be leaked.

However upon mulling it over, as the phrase 'safe spaces' keeps coming back to me, does the report state things that the trustees know damn well shouldn't have been happening, like for example referring people to bad places and to struck off doctors for illegal drugs, which they know they are responsible for and telling the staff this will make them all 'literally lose their shit'? I think the safe spaces are for the Trustees not the staff. They can't blame SG for everything.

Bugger - lost my post. Social Justice Collective do anti-racism and anti-oppression training.

The quotes from their clients make interesting reading: socialjusticecollective.co.uk/services

Their clients include the organisations you'd expect

socialjusticecollective.co.uk/clients

On the topic of child development, I think all children should go camping and be left to their own devices for much of the day

Children can understand risk at a surprisingly early age in our experience. Dh finds that parents are more of the problem and need reassurance for their kids to have a try. It's the often the case that the parents are as delighted with their 6 year old Beaver coping with their first time in a kayak as the kids.

DH is particularly keen on encouraging his scouts to understand the rules but to find ways that stick to the rules but find ways around them. It's the creative thinking thing which schools don't necessarily encourage. He also takes the attitude that by age 10 the kids should respect fire rather than be shielded from it. They need to learn through experimentation to a certain extent that fire is hot and you will get burnt.

He won't let them go too far though. He's also found the most troublesome scouts are the ones who benefit most from being given responsibility as they thrive off it and realise if they take responsibility they are trusted to do things more - it stops them mucking about. The natural reaction is to do the exact opposite and to remove responsibility from troublemakers.

Managed risk is the exact phrase he uses.

Its fascinating, but definitely builds upon a staged growing up and staged introduction to responsibility and self sufficiency. And taking kids away from influence of parents is a big part of that. We worry that DS won't have that same benefit and time away from his dad that some of his friends will have and the group as a whole tries to recognise this with leaders and their own kids - to enable time away from mum and dad.

We find it very odd that we know teenagers who are unable to make breakfast or cook for themselves. It's so so common though.

I think this is where the adage about a village raising a child is still relevant and has wisdom.

Kids aren't afforded the time and space to experiment away from parents and to make mistakes (and learn from them) especially with social media documenting every move.

On the topic of child development, I think all children should go camping and be left to their own devices for much of the day

I was the older Guide in sole charge of the younger one who hit herself on the head with the (back of the) axe and bled enthusiastically through her hat. Her sister poured a pot of boiling water over her foot. It all got a bit Lord of the Flies, and incidentally made me determined never to be a Guide leader.

My brother used to fall off roofs, and then later off mountains. Happy days.

Does anyone remember the experiment on TV of letting 3 pairs of children aged 5-7(?) navigate themselves around London independently?

I'd heard of the as a Japanese show, I didn't know it had been remade in this country.

My husband was 80 this year. When he was a boy of 5, in the summer holidays, his mother put him on a train from Portland, Maine, to St Lambert, Canada (just before Montreal) with a small suitcase and a brown bag lunch, and asked the guard to make sure he got off at St Lambert, where his uncle would meet him and he would stay with his grandparents. This happened every summer after that until he was in his teens. In those days you didn't need a passport to go to Canada from the USA, just an identity card of some kind (and children didn't need one anyway).

I am 72. When I was 5 and started school, my mother took me the first time and that was it. I went home on my own, and walked on my own every day after that. OK this was the 1950s and in Hull, and I only lived maybe a quarter mile from the school, with only two roads to cross, one of which had a crossing guard, but I don't think it would happen now.

DH is in his 50s and grew up in Germany. From 6 he walked home alone through the woods. Once when it snowed heavily he got a bit lost and cold and a lady found him and took him to the village where she asked a few people until she found someone who knew where he lived.

He also takes the attitude that by age 10 the kids should respect fire rather than be shielded from it

Totally agree. Forest schooling is so good for all this risk taking stuff.

I quite enjoyed watching my niece jump through fire at her Steiner school; I think that particular tradition has been banned now.

Living in Scandinavia with children going through the whole native schooling system, I could wax lyrical about children learning through doing. As it is, I'll agree with all that has been posted on this theme on the thread and sit on my hands.

I worry about my child having matches and she's 24

Lolalalalalalola

Oh dear! Mine's 9 and she got an advent calendar with candles, which she lights. She's got a little wooden tray, which she puts them on. It only took three days of me blowing them out and her getting angry, before she took onboard that you don't leave candles unattended.

I may have been a bit harsh, as they were on the kitchen table.

@Lolalalalalalola I worry about my child having matches and she's 24

I feel personally attacked by this! I'm hoping to be trusted with matches once I reach retirement age.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread, you are all so knowledgeable.

We moved into town when I was 8 (1961) and my mother was pleased that she was able to leave me to escort my 5 and 4 year old brothers the half mile to primary school. She did cross us over the main road near the house but there were two others to cross on the way (no zebra crossings or crossing guards).
Of course we also went out on our bikes all day, climbed trees, played on the canal towpath and in the station yards (until chased away) etc etc. We were nice MC children.

Red:

'Women's rights groups haven't changed their political positions. They've stood stock still and their messaging is consistent and unwavering throughout this merry shit show - Centre women and children and understand safeguarding principles.

Traditionally they shared the same political space as lefties and liberals.

What happened was they were abandoned and subsequently attacked for not shifting from this position in the name of 'progress' by woke progressive who adopted a hierarchical understanding of identity politics based on ideology rather than practical applications.

When weaknesses in this ideology were exposed, rather than addressing problems the lefties and liberals chose to shout down the women and demonise them for pointing out a problem.

But the problem doesn't go away and it has real world impact. This creates a political vacuum due to a dereliction of duty of care.

This gives rise to right wing opportunists to move unto this political ground as the sense of injustice is ripe to be exploited.

Most women's rights advocates can see this for what it is and they have no desire to change their political allegiances but are forced into a position where they can no longer support their traditional political alignments because they've been abandoned and their concerns dismissed.'

Beautifully written 👏👏👏👏