Great meeting...

...organised by Family and Youth Concern on Saturday. First speaker Mrs Irina Tyk, headmistress of Holland House School in Edgware - a fresh, amusing speaker who challenged the cliches that abound in the education scene today. She's set up The Butterfly Project reading course for children using the phonics method, to which people are now returning after discovering that the various "let's pretend" methods don't work, and she's author of Culture in the Classroom, on which subject she spoke. Among other things, she mentioned the difficulty of teaching children who have not been given any concept of right and wrong - this robs them of points of reference, an understanding of morality, and an ability to grasp many things. She emphasised the need to encourage children to have the confidence to look widely, to challenge the recieved statements they get from TV, and the limited packaged-version of soundbites they recieve through the narrow tube of that sub-culture.

Next speaker was Ray Lewis, a former prison governor who now runs the Eastside Young Leaders Academy in the London Borough of Newham.

This is a scheme, in one of the poorest parts of London, for giving troubled young boys a fresh start, so that they don't drop out of school and lose all life's great possibilities. An inspiring and invigorating message. There are some good things going on: with strong links with some of the famous Public Schools chools of Britain, the Young Leaders initiative has recently sent two boys to Rugby School....Ray Lewis is now now assisting new Mayor of London Boris Johnson on youth projects. He was very, very funny about daft bureaucracy and the collosal waste of money involved in various stupid official youth schemes. The Young Leaders Academy involves, among other things,a recognition that boys are different from girls and have their own specxific needs, and am introduction to church and to Christian worship...

We also met foster-parents Owen and Eunice Johns, who have fallen foul of new horrible policies forcing them to accept that homosexual activity is normal and to teach this to any children in their care. They are refusing to do this and after years of dedicated service as foster-parents are now being blocked...


Much lively discussion on all of these and related topics...but a general sense of anxiety as to what the future will bring, now that family breakdown in endemic in Britain, and so much social policy reinforces this. It was good to hear encouraging stories, but goodness, these are rare and the heavy hand of bureaucracy is mostly used to crush independent initiative and to force complaince with anti-marriage and anti-family policies...

London was en fete for the Trooping of the Colour, bright sunshine, hordes of police, various Tube stations closed etc, and I struggled with a heavy case down Picadilly to get to this meeting...but it was well worth it.