Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: Nerd Dad

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  • Amy Gale,

    I'm still wondering what happened to my own childhood box of Bunty, Tammy & June, Misty,my brother's Whizzer & Chips..

    Yes! These!

    Sadly, I know for a fact that mine have all disappeared back into the endless cycle of school fairs from whence they came.

    My sister and I especially liked Misty. I was just reading about these comics on wikipedia last week - apparently Misty, Tammy and Jinty were sibling comics where each had a general theme. It wasn't hard to pick this up for Misty, but I hadn't really cottoned on to Jinty being SF-ish.

    Maybe I should start a collection.

    tha Ith • Since May 2007 • 471 posts Report Reply

  • Kerry Weston,

    What's nice is that it suggests that the fact that he's been out of school for two and a half years and basically dysfunctional there for three years before that might not matter too much.

    Amazing, really.

    Yes and well done to Leo, says it like it is, doesn't he! A character all right. Interesting that he's proving himself well able to perform outside the school system - my boy, Kieran, who's in the same boat, out of school for about 4 years now, but on a new Pilot Project now doing modified Correspondence stuff, is also doing well. He consistently performs well in literacy tests, over the national average, and this from a boy who doesn't read books. Gets all his input via computer, tv. As long as he can manage his own environment & work at his own pace, he is okay.

    Manawatu • Since Jan 2008 • 494 posts Report Reply

  • Zippy Gonzales,

    When you think of how much of 2000AD's output was basically violence-porn, what Alan Moore managed to do with The Ballad of Halo Jones was pretty special.

    IMHO, the best of Alan Moore was a Future Shock about a couple of time detectives. Several frames are repeated with different emphasis as the time cops move through the story. It presaged the panel detail and composition that would continue through Moore's work, and really messes with your head.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 186 posts Report Reply

  • Amy Gale,

    I saw the 1982 movie of Swamp Thing on TV the other day. Leaving aside its general awfulness, the most striking thing for me was the realization that Ray Wise did not in fact spring into being fully-formed at the age of 40ish.

    tha Ith • Since May 2007 • 471 posts Report Reply

  • Jolisa,

    As long as he can manage his own environment & work at his own pace, he is okay.

    Seems to me this should be some sort of human right, enshrined somewhere, but I bet it isn't. Sigh.

    I'm so glad to hear about these atypical kids that by official measures aren't "up to scratch" but are perfectly capable of doing what they need to do, when they need to do it. Heroes, every one.

    And it makes me feel better about declaring today a home-school day when my big boy missed the bus. Remind me to blog about our latest run-ins with the No Child Left Behind palaver, esp given National's plans for a new testing regime...

    Auckland, NZ • Since Nov 2006 • 1472 posts Report Reply

  • Jolisa,

    Sorry, "atypical" not necessarily the right word, but you know what I mean.

    Auckland, NZ • Since Nov 2006 • 1472 posts Report Reply

  • Kerry Weston,

    Seems to me this should be some sort of human right, enshrined somewhere, but I bet it isn't. Sigh.

    Indeed. I've got a gut feeling "school" is going to have to change drastically in the coming years - I've come across a lot of families with kids struggling with v. similar issues and none of the families are what I would call dysfunctional. The Age of the Big Stick is over, but those in the top jobs still seem to be living in the past. I think they're too scared to make flexible, alternative education available in case *heaps* of students take it up and leave all those classrooms empty. The Nats have just okayed building five new schools as part of their economic stimulus package, so I guess they're still back in about 1982.

    Manawatu • Since Jan 2008 • 494 posts Report Reply

  • Mark Easterbrook,

    With the proposed national testing regime, perhaps 1984...

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 265 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    With the proposed national testing regime, perhaps 1984...

    Question a: How long have we been at war with Oceania?

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Jolisa,

    We have always been at war with Oceania?

    Kerry, I hope you're right... I'd love to see a radical reassessment of what school is for. And who it is for. Everywhere.

    Am idly fantasizing at the moment about starting a Reggio-Emilia school in my front room (I haven't studied it extensively but am getting a nice vibe from what I have read). This week's school outrage: the art gallery field trip was cancelled in favour of more practice for the standardised tests. Gaaah.

    Auckland, NZ • Since Nov 2006 • 1472 posts Report Reply

  • Kerry Weston,

    Just had a quick look at Reggio-Emilia stuff - I like. Especially the creative, community and being connected to one's environment through sensory activity ideas.


    Something that really bothers me about all the rhetoric around enhancing creativity and better quality thinking is that the politicians, business people & economists etc who rabbit on about it, have a somewhat limited idea about what actually being creative is like and want it, in a kind of neutered state, for the wrong reasons. To harness for product development & the enrichment of whoever pays and controls. No-one seems to get that controls and limits and proscribed expectations are the surefire stiflers of creative energies. Or maybe they just think we're all replaceable anyway, so just bring on another one. And I'm thinking 'creative' in the artist/scientist sense of the word, rather than making products. The world isn't ready for free-thinking collaborators.

    I think it's totally possible to develop resilience, confidence and self-belief, activate curiosity and creative potential, enhance the sense of communal belonging - all those things that the Reggio system aims for. But I don't think it's possible in the social model we have now. Good grief, when did the powers that be ever want populations that can think for themselves, develop alternative visions, question everything, believe in themselves and each other, and waste time on arty farty fun and nonsense?

    Yet, now is possibly the best opportunity for awesomely huge change. Why do nations want to waste trillions propping up a doomed system? Trillions that they could never find for useful things like decent health systems. Crazy.

    Manawatu • Since Jan 2008 • 494 posts Report Reply

  • Jolisa,

    I'm with you, Kerry! Awesomely huge change sounds good. Maybe we should be over in David Slack's thread helping write his manifesto...

    Auckland, NZ • Since Nov 2006 • 1472 posts Report Reply

  • Jolisa,

    It might not work for the kids who really come alive when wired, but I'm loving this description of the Waldkindergarten movement. It gets interesting at the end, too, when the parents realise they can't possibly send their kids on to regular school, and start up a Waldschulen...

    Auckland, NZ • Since Nov 2006 • 1472 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    Just had a quick look at Reggio-Emilia stuff

    Whenever somebody points out to me that Italians must have been crazy to vote communist in such numbers, I respectfully point them to those schools. Then I show up with a tank and annex their neighbourhood.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Jolisa,

    Then I show up with a tank and annex their neighbourhood.

    I can send you google maps directions to New Haven!

    Auckland, NZ • Since Nov 2006 • 1472 posts Report Reply

  • Hilary Stace,

    I think they're too scared to make flexible, alternative education available in case *heaps* of students take it up and leave all those classrooms empty.

    I'm really interested in ideas about what is realistically possible in NZ given the current environment, busy parents, stretched resources etc. As Russell has shown, education doesn't have to occur only in a classroom. So what student centred model/s would be practical which educates those non-standard model kids but doesn't require too much parental energy or expense? And still complies with the Education Act.

    Wgtn • Since Jun 2008 • 3229 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    Then I show up with a tank and annex their neighbourhood.

    I can send you google maps directions to New Haven!

    If this particular exhange hasn't triggered some sort of flag at Langley, it means they're not doing their job.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Jolisa,

    Dammit. When what we really want is to attract the antennae of the elaborate, sweeping, omniscient surveillance apparatus of the Min of Ed, always in search of disgruntled consumers to bring back into the fold by any means necessary.

    All right, let's try that again... I'll send google maps directions, you bring fingerpaints, pine-cones, highly advanced Italian educational philosophies of a quasi-communistical bent, and some of those nice wooden pencils, 'k?

    (Hello Langley: not "fingerpaints" "pine-cones" and "nice wooden pencils").

    Auckland, NZ • Since Nov 2006 • 1472 posts Report Reply

  • Jolisa,

    Hilary: you've asked the big question. I don't know the answer but I'd love to talk around the topic in search of one.

    Charter schools are obviously a pretty labour-intensive answer (I'm intrigued by the Discovery School in Chch and would love to hear from anyone with direct experience of it; I'm thinking too of the programmes that let pregnant teens and young mothers continue at high school, like He Huarahi Tamariki in Cannons Creek). And at least as far as Wikipedia is concerned, NZ is one of the easiest places in the western world to start one.

    But there must also be smaller, versatile models too, that individual schools and parents could call on and plug in as needed?

    [Disclaimer: speaking, as always, as a total utopian, and one with no current direct experience of the NZ school system.]

    Auckland, NZ • Since Nov 2006 • 1472 posts Report Reply

  • Rich Lock,

    We have always been at war with Oceania?

    Trick question, citizen. We are at war with Eastasia and have always been at war with Eastasia. The Oceanians are our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms, and always have been.

    Report to your nearest Reggio-Emilia re-education facility immediately.

    back in the mother countr… • Since Feb 2007 • 2728 posts Report Reply

  • Sam F,

    Trick question, citizen. We are at war with Eastasia and have always been at war with Eastasia. The Oceanians are our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms, and always have been.

    Report to your nearest Reggio-Emilia re-education facility immediately.

    I lol'd so hard. All the way home last night I was thinking along the same lines.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 1611 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    Report to your nearest Reggio-Emilia re-education facility immediately.

    You will be given a wooden pencil. When you get to ten pencils, you will be given a tank.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    Shouldn't that be, when you get to ten pencils, use them to make a tank?

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    Either way, wooden pencils are a gateway to communism.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Kracklite,

    Pedestrian artwork (Ozymandias / Adrian Veidt is a bloody awful design)

    Have to say that this was deliberate, Joe. Dave Gibbons' artwork was an evocation of the artwork of 'silver age' comics, as the characters themselves were based on characters of that time. Rorschach is the Question, Nite Owl is the Blue Beetle (not Batman as most people think), Doctor Manhattan is Captain Atom and so forth. Moore did intend to use these characters, but DC was planning to revive them itself and blocked his use of them, forcing him and Gibbons to create their own.

    The artwork is itself as subversive as the story, with urban squalor depicted in a style that was originally used to show clean shiny cities and people.

    Moore choses his collaborators carefully - Eddie Campbell's work for From Hell was based on the styles of Victorian popular graphics - not Tenniel, but the street-level work read by the sort of people who lived in the East End at the time.

    And just to round out the nerdery, I watched the Battlestar Galactica pilot again the other night and that was a distinctly weird experience. Thinks: he's dead, he's dead, they're dead... shit, he led a mutiny and was shot, he's a cylon, she's a cylon too, shit, he ended up poisoning... and then he turned out to be...

    Made me realise just how profoundly effective a real plot can be, with definite irreversible changes and momentum towards a definite conclusion. I'm totally spoiled for the endless series dramas with the reset button at the end now.

    The Library of Babel • Since Nov 2007 • 982 posts Report Reply

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