David Willetts - shadow education secretary - apparently told the audience at a Daycare Trust Conference that if the government wants to encourage mothers back to work, then it needs to provide a high quantity of care for long hours.
If it wants to help children's cognitive development, on the other hand, then what's needed is a high quality of care for a shorter period.
So, let's just break that down a bit. If it's long hours that are needed, we should just focus on quantity, not quality. So what will that actually be like for the children in nurseries for those long hours, then? Does anyone really think that if you are going to put a child in nursery for 10 hours a day so a parent can work, only the quantity of hours matters, not the quality of the nursery?
And if we want to help children's cognitive development then we should offer them high quality care. So whatever happened to high quality early education? Isn't it education - with good care, of course - that helps children's cognitive development?
Thursday, 21 June 2007
Monday, 18 June 2007
Introvert at work
Ages ago I completed one of those schedules that's supposed to tell you about yourself.
In this case it was really quite useful and interesting. Whilst I was working with a consultant at the Tavistock Centre I completed the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
I can't remember the details of the findings, but I do remember coming out very clearly as an introvert. It was a little shocking. I thought, here am I, supposed to be running the place, and this schedule tells me I'm an introvert, someone happiest closed away in a darkened room.
The consultant helpfully explained to me that the Jungian concept of the introvert is a little different to my idea, and anyway being able to think clearly and analytically about things might be rather a useful quality. Though I don't think it helped me much with girls (or boys) as a teenager.
Looking back, I can see how the type of person I am made my first year in my current job very hard - I am a schemer, a designer, an organiser. In a place that's going off the rails I lack the ability to get on and sort things out quickly, person to person. If a blaze had started up in the staffroom, I would have probably taken the time to think about the different approaches to managing fires.
But after that year of hell, the plans, designs, strategies, started to work out pretty well.
But not long ago I found myself back in that somewhat lost, thoughtful, drifting space you really shouldn't be in if you are supposed to be running somewhere. It was all set off by the thing I hate the most, which is money and making sure a big capital project is all OK and I won't end up remortgaging my house because I can't read a spreadsheet.
That drifting feeling is hard to live with, it's to go on as if I'm feeling alive when I have it.
And it struck me that I don't think I've ever read much about feeling lost, cotton-wooled, depressed at work when you are supposed to be in charge. For me it's like there's something wrong at the front left hand side of my brain. The events going on at work are muffled. I find myself thinking that the world is weary, flat, stale and unprofitable.
Later in the week, all the figures added up. The building project looks like it is going ahead. Something isn't there any more, in the front of my brain, left side.
In this case it was really quite useful and interesting. Whilst I was working with a consultant at the Tavistock Centre I completed the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
I can't remember the details of the findings, but I do remember coming out very clearly as an introvert. It was a little shocking. I thought, here am I, supposed to be running the place, and this schedule tells me I'm an introvert, someone happiest closed away in a darkened room.
The consultant helpfully explained to me that the Jungian concept of the introvert is a little different to my idea, and anyway being able to think clearly and analytically about things might be rather a useful quality. Though I don't think it helped me much with girls (or boys) as a teenager.
Looking back, I can see how the type of person I am made my first year in my current job very hard - I am a schemer, a designer, an organiser. In a place that's going off the rails I lack the ability to get on and sort things out quickly, person to person. If a blaze had started up in the staffroom, I would have probably taken the time to think about the different approaches to managing fires.
But after that year of hell, the plans, designs, strategies, started to work out pretty well.
But not long ago I found myself back in that somewhat lost, thoughtful, drifting space you really shouldn't be in if you are supposed to be running somewhere. It was all set off by the thing I hate the most, which is money and making sure a big capital project is all OK and I won't end up remortgaging my house because I can't read a spreadsheet.
That drifting feeling is hard to live with, it's to go on as if I'm feeling alive when I have it.
And it struck me that I don't think I've ever read much about feeling lost, cotton-wooled, depressed at work when you are supposed to be in charge. For me it's like there's something wrong at the front left hand side of my brain. The events going on at work are muffled. I find myself thinking that the world is weary, flat, stale and unprofitable.
Later in the week, all the figures added up. The building project looks like it is going ahead. Something isn't there any more, in the front of my brain, left side.
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