Incidental Education

We’re sitting at the table doing pin craft and Amelie wants to know if there will ever be a third world war. We talk about that a bit, how things have changed since Max and I were growing up, how then it wasn’t that long since WW2 and that had been not so long after WW1 ad in some ay, people just ‘expected’ another war. We talked about how people perceived war then, how people imagined a war would be if a nuclear war now and how war feels more remote now and has more to do with terrorism now.

We found clips of the air raid siren and all clear siren on the BBC site and listened to them, noticing how differently they made us feel and wondering if the air raid one was designed to make you feel anxious and the all clear happy, or if we just feel that because we’ve heard them before and know what they both mean.

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When the Christmas rush was on, we snuck time to watch the shop through time series which was showing on iPlayer still (annoyingly we missed the last one 🙁 ) They were interesting to Max and I, because in some ways we see ourselves as the old-time traders of the net, small enough to deliver personal customer service and because the history was fascinating – and because high street in real life is beginning to be on the horizon of what we’d like to do. The girls loved them and were interested by the comparisons between the lives being etched out in the shops of the town they chose and our own life. We’re planning a WW2 week of our own next year.

I love history coming to life like that; the kids really engaged in it and loved that it was a world familiar to them. They found the concept of seeing the individual shops as being like us and the supermarket being the likes of Amazon easy to understand, the defunct  retail price maintenance system seemed like a good idea to them, given how often they hear us moaning about people who sell at a loss!

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Fran showed herself to be a girl of conviction when a certain group of activists marched in our town. We’ve talked about this in the past, though not recently, but I was proud of her when she pointed out to a group of friends that people marching because they want foreigners out of the UK is not about protecting being English, it’s about racial intolerance and offensive to many of the people they go to school with and live alongside. For herself, she could draw the comparison to the feeling she had when Home Education was under the spotlight. It’s great to have grown a 12 year old who thinks instead of following like a sheep and regurgitating anything she’s been told. Granted, what she feels is largely a reflection of her upbringing and so she’s saying what we say and believe, but I assume I couldn’t force her to be tolerant and inclusive, even at 12 🙂

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Dammit, I’ve had a fourth thing in my head for the last two weeks too. I’ve forgotten it. I’m sure it was meaningful though.