In my first blog, I wrote about the unnecessary exploitation of children through diet, which consists of substantial levels of inappropriate food, food that brings about a reaction in the human body, always with considerable, negative and worrying consequences.

We are slowly poisoning our children by filling their bodies with sugars and red meat.

The ‘burger society’ is not a new. It is decades old now, and as I consider the deep underlying facts in this connection, I am reminded of a teacher when I was young, who carried out a presentation in the school chemistry laboratory, using a mangle, several pounds of red meat, several pints of milk, a dozen or so chocolate bars and other confectionery. He laid them on a lab. table.

He then spoke a little about diet, which was quite interesting for me, since I am from a large family and we rarely had much to eat which contained quantities of protein. It was only a few years before that I was nipping down to the shop with a ration book to buy necessary food for the 15 people that sat around my supper table. I should just mention here that my school nickname was ‘skinny Whiting’.

After my teacher had ascertained our monthly intake of food, especially the items listed above, he proceeded to cook these raw foods using a Bunsen burner and a saucepan. It took two double lessons to fully cook the lot, and then he issued the food amongst us! I was ravenous and was hopeful of receiving a ‘fair share’. It was approximately 1pm and we sat down to eat. Food devoured, we left for lunch play and later went home. I had to walk home 4 miles as I was so bullied on the school bus, that I dared not ride one! I burned off much, or all, of the food with the trip home on foot.

In the morning, my teacher produced the same food, in duplicate. He mixed the first pile together in one lump, and pounded it into goo! He then cooked the second pile, as he done the first day.

This time, he produced the mangle, and proceeded to mangle the first, mixed-up pile, uncooked, and we watched the fat dripping out of it as it was squeezed in the mangle. He put it through a very tight mangle five times, and fat exuded each time. He then mangled the cooked food, and we watched the fat dripping out of that. Both containers were then placed on the table. The fat from the raw meat, and the fat from the cooked meat, seemed of a similar volume, but what happened next was very alarming. He put the two quantities of fat into two large glass jars, containing cold water, and placed them on the window sill. There they rested overnight.

In the morning, when we came to school and met him in the lab., the jars were placed on the desk, and we watched in horror, to see the fat had separated, and a white mass of fat was on top of the water, in each glass jar, and was welded to the sides. We were asked to eat the fat! Everyone declined!

Devouring quantities of red meat has a very strong affect on children and can seriously affect their behaviour. It creates anger, aggression and unacceptable behaviour, especially when eaten in quantity, and without a balanced diet. Children who eat white meat and fish do not suffer this diffident behaviour.

Separating sugar from other ingredients in chocolate bars and sweets, produces significant quantities of sugar goo, which when eaten, is sickly to the taste. The whole process of digestion turns food into soluble sugars, and the taking in of excessive and unnecessary quantities of sugar, has a very noticeable affect on children. Children do not need to see that adults act out of a total lack of dietary understanding by tempting parents to buy, and children to want, boxes of attractively packaged ‘sugar’, under various interesting names, sometimes names of planets, or names that conjure up exciting images for children! Taking in such quantities of sugar is slowly causing addiction, for it is with such things that true addiction begins….

My advice is to avoid all but tiny quantities of red meat, and if you have to eat it, only eat it with a balanced diet. Get children to eat lots of greens, and don’t buy sweets or chocolate confectionery at all!

Children should be given what they need, not what they want!

Graeme Whiting

The race to arm with Trident seems to be so much more important than our nation’s wellbeing. Law and order, health, political change, help for those who have contributed for decades to the wellbeing of this country, all seem so far away. Can we rely on politicians to get Britain back to work, to give every young person in the land a decent and child-centred education, or is this another quick fix, destined to bring about little or no change to the decaying society in which we are trapped?

Educational reform is a must for the future. Children in this country must be given an education based on creating freethinking young people, able to take their place in the world with dignity, with integrity, and with joy.

I await the signs that the talk leads to real action.

The OFSTED inspectors, who are bogged down with government recommendations, state regulations, ‘nannying’ protectionism and ridiculous legislation that is not thought out, are making a mockery of education inspection in this country. This archaic and outdated system is responsible for assessing all the schools in the land, even successful private schools that stand or fall by the quality of the education that parents are buying, even when their ethos is completely different from that of the state.

OFSTED is frighteningly bureaucratic! It interferes in education that may already be successful, quoting what the government thinks, rather than truly evaluating what they find. OFSTED inspectors are expected to judge a school ‘cold’ without ever having visited it before, except for a contact visit the day before an inspection! It is not the hardworking inspectors who are at fault. They are often experienced and able teachers, who are pleasant and nice to deal with. It is the system itself that is the problem here.

OFSTED makes recommendations, observations, quotes laws, and dwells on the Health and Safety elements that have made the lives of children in our society lack adventure. Children may not take part in ‘dangerous’ activities unless they are wrapped up in cotton wool, so tightly that even the national game of conkers forbidden in most schools.

The Acorn School’s recent OFSTED inspection did little to encourage the excellent education we provide here. It was more concerned with trivia such as doors, locks, gates, fences, lavatories, etc., than with the ‘cut and thrust’ education offered, to every child, in the classroom.

The school was awarded a ‘good overall’, with a number of ‘outstandings’! One of the reasons for failing to receive ‘outstanding’ overall was that high metal railings, high enough that a child could not be lifted over them by a devious passer-by, do not surround the school. At 4′ tall, the railings that adorn the school’s front playground, and which were installed in 1882, are considered too low. The quality of the education that takes place within the ‘fortress’ seemed to be of secondary importance to school security!

The inspectors pointed out that we had one lavatory too few and that our doors did not have locks on them and key pads for the children to use to gain entry to their classrooms. After nearly one hundred and twenty years of education in the current school building, suddenly our very middle class town of Nailsworth needs to lock the children into their own school, and surround the playground with high steel railings, in case a child is stolen!

An outstanding school is, apparently, one that is safe, follows the Health and Safety guidelines to the letter, has building security as paramount, above and beyond the actual educational ethos of a school.

This formulation of ‘risk assessment’ is a farce! In a country where there is such an outrageous risk to children from illegal drugs, alcohol and nicotine, all of which are freely available, with the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the western world, why does the government not carry out and manage with real consequence, risk assessments in this area? Great Britain holds the record for an outrageous teenage culture, that is despised the world over!

We have now installed locks to every door, having been threatened with an official letter by OFSTED, raised the railings and installed another lavatory. We have satisfied OFSTED with the mandatory letter confirming what we have done. Should I now hope that they might visit again and change the overall rating to ‘outstanding’, or will we have to wait until the next inspection?

I must confess, that after over forty-five years in education, and twenty as a headmaster, I despair with the obsession with what is and what is not, safe!

I believe that education at The Acorn School offers the highest educational standards in the land. The school is full of polite, well-mannered and extremely presentable children and teenagers; is decoratively beautiful, fully equipped; and offers a balanced education that fits young adults for direct university education with no state examinations. The Acorn School is the only school in the land that has achieved that honour. (OFSTED was impressed with our record but seemed to be unaware that such university entry was even possible). This school is full of confident young people who are fit, enthusiastic about school, and who care for one another. The by-product of those values is that it achieves what few other schools achieve in respect of a balanced education, which fits its senior students for life!

This country has a very low quality of state education, with brilliant teachers trapped in an archaic system that does not work. The bureaucracy is appalling, and is destroying children’s right to an education that realises every student’s potential, and works towards developing that potential through an education system that is sensible and child-centred. Does this have to continue, or can OFSTED put an ‘outstanding’ stamp on a school without such ‘prison-like’ measures being enforced!

Britain has such a poor and un-stimulating system of education that children are losing out, failing to reach their true potential, and are struggling to achieve entrance to a university system that is poor, over-subscribed, far too expensive, and with a bachelor’s degree being awarded with little challenge!

OFSTED is a manifestation of the shambles that education has become in this country. It is little wonder that the teaching unions are opposed to this ridiculous inspection system continuing into the future. (NUT Conference, 4th April 2010).

The entire system needs a complete overhaul. OFSTED needs scrapping, and all assessments of children should be left to the head teacher of each individual school, who, together with the skills that lie within their teaching staff can appropriately assess each child. That’s what teachers want, and that is what children need!

It cost a quarter of a full time teacher’s annual salary at Acorn, to pay the two inspectors for the two days they spent in my school! That could have funded a secondary school-age student for a year’s education at The Acorn School!

This is a fast-changing world where commerce, industry and cyber rule the world, and that means our children! Humanity is changing so very fast that many new developments take place each day that we cannot hope to understand enough to make a judgment as to whether they should be in this world. I think the world has gone mad!

VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES

This week’s question posed on BBC television’s ‘The Big Question’ was, ‘are violent video games damaging society?

When I was a schoolboy I used to ask my teachers about things I didn’t understand, and the response they gave me to the many questions I asked, shaped my life. I can still remember some of the questions I posed and the replies I received. There was never a question about challenging what the teacher said.

In today’s world, the pending release of the latest violent computer game creates queues of thousands of adults (!) outside the shops eagerly and enthusiastically waiting for the launch. This ‘launch’ is reported on the national news, alongside main world news, as though it is as important. This is directly promoting these games.

Many teachers, as well as police officers and other professionals are amongst those queuing. To my mind if teachers are buying these games, and as I have heard, even swapping them with their students, then things are already out of control? I also heard that a large number of game addicts take the week off to play these games, solidly, the week after they are released!

The companies that produce these violent computer games have a mandate to design games to evoke the atrocities of terrorism!

However, intelligent parents who are struggling with this new world need not worry, because we have a ‘straw-clutching’ government, who will carry out their usual habit of jumping in when it is all too late to save children, and when society is already changed for the worse. We are used to learning the hard way!

A youth leader on The Big Question, Simon Jay, stated very clearly that when youngsters watched such games in his youth clubs, they went outside and demonstrated aggressive and hyperactive behaviour. He is absolutely clear about the effects. So am I!

Many of these games also degrade women, and the so-called censors have a lot to answer for. We should have parents, not civil servants, to vet these video games? Maybe we should look into the lifestyles of the current censors, to see if their children are part of the video game culture. I am sure they get lots of freebies to try out!

I suspect their children are! If they are, they will have a one-sided view! Let professionals and credible teachers, experienced parents and community leaders, be enrolled onto the censorship panels. One better, let me be the sole censor of all video games, and I will ban the lot! They are just no good for children and we parents want to give children what is good for them!

To the children who are addicted to these games, the wrong messages are contained in the many violent scenes. To them the pictures are real and therefore represent what happens in the real world. Things that are portrayed in these games do happen to some extent, but not everyday in every house!

Let me remind you that the makers of the military training videos are invariably also the makers of violent video games on sale to youngsters. This is a repeat of the other addictive ‘for sale toys’, such as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, Pokemon, Cyber Pets, and the millions of other ghastly trends that meet our children. Introduced into an addictive society is extremely damaging. Human beings are being changed, and changed in childhood, ready to become the irresponsible parents of children yet to be born, with absolutely no idea what a human being needs to experience. Commonly used advertising slogans contain words to appeal to the modern child; Ninja, Cult, Addict, Death, Murder, Blood, Suicide! These words can be found on the advertising for violent games.

I am so very pleased that in The Acorn School, exposure to such things is unacceptable (even at home and in the holidays) and it is a condition on entering the school that parents agree to this.

Despite our boundaries, the OFSTED reports of 2005 and 2009 for The Acorn School, rate this as an outstanding school, with the highest standards that enable children to enter university with a 100% success level, without state exams! Read the school’s OFSTED report to see what can be achieved in a world where there are almost none! Parents have to be brave to send their children here, and to be prepared to stand for the rights of their children.

I have invited the government to listen to my views and visit the school to see how it all works, but they are apparently too busy, (or perhaps afraid) and certainly not open-minded.

I can educate a child here for less than it costs to educate a child in the state system! What does that mean?

I quietly think they may be of the opinion that I am stark raving mad!

Reference. The Times Educational Supplement (TES) Friday 6th. November – The Acorn School. My philosophy put succinctly!

Graeme Whiting – Remembrance Day 2009

Children and young people seem able to dominate their parents, and society, all too easily. If the youth of today wish to take over a village, town or city centre to engage in all sorts of unacceptable practices, then they can, almost without consequence. Those who pay their Community Tax (adults) are almost denied the right to have an evening in their local community, because of ‘youth behaving badly’!

The entire Human Rights criteria has gone mad. Adults, who pay for this society in which we live, seem to have less and less power to preserve the quiet of our communities, and the police seem to be increasingly liberal minded.

DECLINING STANDARDS IN SOCIETY

One-third of all teenagers claimed to have been unconscious from binge drinking in the last year (BBC ‘The Big Question’ today).

One teacher on the same programme suggested that it was alright and acceptable for a teacher to be seen in public, intoxicated, showing his midriff, and also claimed that it had absolutely nothing to do with his ability as a teacher. Complete hogwash!

Teachers have to ‘walk the talk’, as they are role models for those they teach. They have a responsibility to set moral examples for the young, and to take exception to inappropriate behaviour, but only when they have learned to set the right examples themselves.

In The Acorn School we have a Parents’ Charter, and teenagers have to choose to uphold the charter (as do their parents). The charter specifically states that drinking alcohol under age at all, even after school hours, smoking cigarettes at all, even after school hours, and taking any form of illegal drug at all, even after school hours is not acceptable. Students wrote the charter, and all uphold it. It is quite simple; if the young people of this country value their education, such principles are not only very easy to monitor, but to uphold. The education must be valued, and it certainly is at The Acorn School!

What seems quite ridiculous to me is that the vast majority of young binge drinkers are breaking the law, and there seems to be no punishment. Young people are controlling society, and we have absolutely no way of changing this trend except to have school like this available to everyone. Schools are too big, too impersonal, unwieldy, and also demonstrate through the ridiculous state education system, that standards are so low that almost all young people can pass examinations.

At The Acorn School, state examinations are not offered for the reason that they are narrow, too simple, and a totally unreasonable way of assessing young people.

I exonerate from blame almost all teenagers who are struggling to find a sense in society, and who are therefore compelled to find their own identity in celebrities. The false impression in television programmes that fame is just around the corner has a lot to answer for! We do not offer facilities for young people, who will therefore get into trouble seeking their own threshold experiences on the streets.

Young people rule their parents! If they want to drink, they drink! If they want to smoke, they smoke! If they feel that taking drugs is what they wish to do, they do that! Television, films, modern music and celebrities encourage these things almost every second of the day. The images that present themselves to the young are responsible for the breakdown of the family. Many young people steal, swear, abuse police, hold up roads ambling drunk through the local community, threaten the old, and seem to be absolutely oblivious to what is decent and respectable. In a way there is a war in this country! Yet, young people are full of potential and could achieve a considerable amount more than they do!

Anthony Giddins, in his latest book on sociology, stated that ‘the world changes in thirty seconds, more than it had changed since the beginning of time.’ Anthony blames the cyber age for this. He is right! ‘X’ boxes, violent computer games, mobile phones by right, sod the drinking laws, money without earning it, indicates to me that we have sold our young people down the river.

Children have the right to be able to grow to adulthood, without experiencing the freedom that adults do, and to be treated as developing human beings. Children need to be saved and protected. I do not condone the yob culture, but education, politicians and the family have given rise to it! Long live children!

By using the Route B entry through UCAS, our students apply using the school’s internal assessment system and wait for a university interview to be offered. I am delighted to say that, yet again, we have had no student refused entry to the course they have chosen, unlike the large number of young people who will be disappointed that their grades have not been good enough to enter their chosen course in university.

LEAGUE TABLES

In 2004 the government announced that it was to change the criteria for league tables. It was not to be the GCSE and A level successes, but the percentage of young people who pass on, after leaving their school, to university.

When I read this I was aware that our school is at the very bottom of the current league tables – we don’t do state examinations! However, in the new system we would be at the very top, as 100% of our students gain university places. Thank you to the wonderful British government’s educational Tsars!

Somewhere in the offices of government, officials are finding themselves in their offices with time on their hands when they can invent new legislation. This blog is not to undermine the powers of government, but I feel that it is time for some sort of statement from people of this country that might instil some common sense. Adventure is gone, the opportunities for young people to develop a healthy body and mind through undergoing challenges are few and far between, and the beautiful countryside of our country offers only a handful of young people the challenges they so need.

Society is becoming obese! According to the media over 30% of teenagers in this country are overweight, and seem to take almost no active part in sport and physical education. These young lives, the future adults of our society, are controlled by the rules of the HSE and so youth leaders dare not take young people into difficult terrain, or lead them into challenges as they used to, for fear of litigation.

A SIMPLE MATHEMATICAL CALCULATION

In pondering this decline in standards of health and the lack of outdoor challenges for our young people, I am aware of the results of a simple calculation that I did this afternoon.

There are 6m children at school in the UK. From various articles I have learnt that each one spends about £2.20 on morning break, £4.80 on lunch, and about £2 on after-school confectionery. None of these ‘treats’ are necessary, and the conventional packed lunch, for many in our schools, is long gone. Purchasing unnecessary treats seems to be the norm.

So, 6m young people spend £9 a day to live! That equates to £54m per day, £270m per week or £10bn each year! Has the world gone mad?

We are creating a society that fails to make a stand for children to receive the challenges of youth, and that does not understand how utterly vital it is for our youngsters to have adventure as part of their lives.

Health and human science seem to only be taught to very few. How can we change this in our schools and bring politicians into line with what is actually required, and not what might create a good impression in league tables?

Those days of school bliss have long since gone, and I am greatly disappointed in the achievements of the government educational systems of today. Our once great nation can no longer be proud of its attainments in the educational sphere, and the entire process of education has been so watered down as to be failing our young people. I blame the examination system that is totally unable to assess the true children it is supposed to be testing. It is archaic, simplified to the extreme, and actually quite meaningless. Knowledge is absolutely no use at all unless it becomes part of the human organism. Learning to pass an examination is a waste of time!

Just before I sat down to write this blog, my doorbell rang. The door was open and I shouted to the bell ringer to enter. A northern accent responded in a rather nervous and startled manner, so I rose from my easy chair, took a few steps towards the door, and saw a young man, shaven headed and rather blank-faced, with his eyes set down deep in the dark sockets of his head. He was holding an identification card, and declared that he was on prison release. It became immediately clear that here was a poor fellow, ready for my ‘never before received’ spiel! He had become the victim of our modern society, drugs, alcohol, fags, sex and violence. He said he had two beautiful young daughters, and he said they meant the world to him. He also said he could not read or write. I asked him what he wanted and he said he was on a government release scheme and had to prove himself, as part of the programme. After listening to his story, I was gently fuming, and deeply upset.

Many young people are let down by our society, and in particular the education system, designed by ministers who haven’t got the faintest idea about childhood, what human real achievement and uprightness really mean, in the modern world? After parting with a few chosen expletives, I wished him well and he left, respectful, a little tearful, and dragged himself onto the main road. He paused as a passing car hooted at him, aggressively, turned towards me and said, with full conviction ‘You should be a politician’! Perhaps I am?

So many young people with great potential, once babes in arms, lose their way in an unguided and un-centred society. There seems to be little hope for so many……

Although I have been working well with my local county educational body and listening to their excellent advice, I have reservations about what the government is trying to do to parents’ rights. In my opinion, it is the right of every parent to have their children educated as they choose.

The Acorn School has used a system of educating from kindergarten to adulthood to educate the children and young people who come to this school. The OFSTED reports judge the school as outstanding, yet they wish to force me to change my vision to suit theirs!

I urge every child-loving adult in the land to fight this new legislation vigorously, and give children the right to receive a child-centred and loving education, such as they receive here, chosen by their parents.

I shall be watching to see how schools similar to Acorn, make a strong stand against the EYFS.