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.

18 years on since founding the school, almost fifty students have now achieved university entrance, and the principle of avoiding state examinations until university in favour of The Acorn School’s system has been applauded by universities and even by OFSTED!

My old friend and mentor, Samuel Dubrovic, who, had he lived, would be 125 years old today, once gave me a great piece of wisdom. ‘What education must strive for, for the future, is morality’. In this school can be found children who smile, who love learning, and who make a choice to value themselves, one another and all around them. In this school you will find the very best of the family values of our society, and the vision of Sam Dubrovic lives in this small country school.

The school has been in existence since 16th September 1991, when it was founded in my conservatory, with four children. Since that first day, the school has grown in strength and number, and I feel extremely proud that children receive an outstanding and child-centred education, with the highest standards. It has at times been a real struggle, but through the continued and total support from my wife Sarah, at every stage, the school has thrived.

The school is situated in a privately owned, purpose-built, Victorian church school. This ownership enables us to offer a unique education at a fraction of the price it might cost if the building was mortgaged or rented.

What you get when you place a child at this school? An unequivocal commitment to every child, and individual education, offering the very highest standards. Although I am not really motivated by what the government feels about the school, it was reassuring that in the OFSTED inspections of 2005 and 2009, it was considered to be Outstanding.

The Acorn School is a place of excellence, and achieves values that are not achievable in government or public school education.

I am so proud of what has been achieved here. I welcome visitors, who can freely meet the students and speak with them. We hear from many visitors, that the uniqueness of the education can be experienced upon walking into the school.