Richard Dawkins' Victory on Pasty Tax

I may have become completely confused by the issue by now, but I'm still backing Michael Gove's attempts to put  Richard Dawkins into every school in the country. Although I'm not sure whether Dr Richard will be so keen when he finds out he has to have Gove's name printed on his spine.

Still, a further twist in my understanding of the whole affair comes in this BBC news story.  It would appear that Dr Richard has managed to get the pasty tax reversed - at least that's the only explanation I can think of for why he appears to be posing in front of a huge cheese & onion slice.

Learning by Rote

I enjoyed Yewtree's comments on Atheism and meditation, but it's her sensible comments on learning by rote that particularly raised my interest.

It has been assumed, certainly since the 1960s, that rote-learning is bad. But of course there are things you really need to learn that way. If an electrician is using resistors, it's far better that they simply learn what the colours mean, rather than carrying out a series of experiments every time they want to use a 75Ω. A football referee who learnt the rules of the game by trial and error would not be massively popular among the players and the fans - although he or she might end up on the Premier League list. And we learn road signs from the Highway Code by rote, not by driving into quays, shooting into the air while going over humped-back bridges or overtaking on double white lines. There are places where experimentation, experience and flexibility are great things in education. And places where maybe, on the whole, you're better not.

Assemblies of a Broadly Beaker Character

It is a requirement enshrined in English Law, and presumably signed by the fair hand of Our Queen, that schools provide for a regular act of worship which will mainly be "of a broadly Christian nature".  I hope I've quoted that correctly.

Being occasionally invited to conduct assemblies, I find that a Beaker approach is best.  It is of a "broadly Christian character", I am quite a broad character,and given the lack of specific Christian knowledge within schools in general (I am not talking of schools in the Milton Keynes or Mid-Beds areas in particular), and given the diversity of children's backgrounds and political sensitivity of schools - I would guess that something woolly, well-meaning and unspecific is just what a lot of ministers around the country are providing.  Something that is indefinitely deist, tries to inculcate a sense of goodness, but steers clear of any discussion of sin, redemption and Jesus.

Of course, you may know better.

Meanwhile, we've agreed that our local Beaker Secularist is definitely not taking any more assemblies.  After his last outing, when you may remember he informed a group of primary-age children that there was no Santa, he is on a special "unofficial" blacklist of people that they'd rather not see back.  In fact, he may be the blacklist.

Peaceful, Liberal Conflict Resolution

In the end we had to do something about Ludwick and Bloodwort.  Frankly they were really getting to us, strutting around the place wearing their notorious "Mauve Shirts" (all the other colours have gone) and telling us we had to be out by tomorrow lunchtime.

As mentioned previously, our normal conflict resolution methods of pretending we didn't really disagree, patronising people and saying that all paths lead to the truth didn't work with people who keep poking you in the ribs and insisting that actually they're right and you aren't allowed to have an opinion.  And we'd forgotten how to use the skills of intelligent debate and actually finding the flaws in other people's views.  So we've had to resort to the Gulfing Room.

I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to say what happens in the Gulfing Room.  But I can tell you that it came about through the  application of my Psychology degree with Hnaef's interests in Theology and Electronics.  It approaches these disagreements at the psycho-spiritual and emotional level.  I think you could say it's therapeutic rather than educational or informational.  And that's all I will say.  However, when our two would-be dictators crawled out, smelling faintly of lavender oil, we knew we'd done the trick.  At the moment Ludwick is out in the garden burbling that the rabbits are secretly gnomes, while Bloodwort is enjoying his "Sufi'ism for Beginners" workshop.

The Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley would like to express their thanks to those two late, great English authors, Douglas Adams and PG Wodehouse, for having the original ideas we stole for this posting.