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      Boarding schools can do tremendous harm. Charles Spencer’s bleak memoir proves it | Gaby Hinsliff

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 08:00 · 1 minute

    Many boys educated privately hand their trauma to the next generation – and, dangerously, to those who are raised to govern

    Charles Spencer was just eight when he was sent away from home. Even before being packed off to boarding school, he was largely raised by nannies, in the remote aristocratic manner of the time. Lonely and vulnerable at his prep school, Maidwell Hall, which he describes as rife with schoolboy bullying and savage ritual beatings from masters, he was easy prey for the false comfort offered by a matron who he says sexually abused him from the age of 11. Later, he lost his virginity at 12 to a sex worker.

    It’s the kind of story that if he’d been born to a struggling single mother on a council estate would arguably have prompted a speedy referral to social services, and when the now Earl Spencer started writing out these memories he suffered a breakdown . But the resulting memoir, A Very Private School , is about more than one personal tragedy or one school. This bleak educational culture, he argues, was the petri dish in which so much of Britain’s current ruling class grew during the 1970s and 80s; a regime originally designed to cauterise young men’s emotions before sending them off to exercise power over far-flung corners of the British empire, and whose influence seemingly lingered well after the empire itself was gone.

    Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

    Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here .

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      Childcare expansion in England may not meet parents’ expectations, says charity

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 05:01

    Survey by Coram found nursery costs and dwindling places will put pressure on government plans

    Rishi Sunak’s plans to expand childcare provision in England are at risk of not living up to parents’ expectations as nursery costs surge and available places dwindle, a charity has warned.

    The cost of 25 hours a week for a child under two has risen by 7% on 2023, with the most expensive area being inner London where the average cost is £218 a week, the latest annual survey of the Coram Family and Childcare charity found.

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      pubsub.blastersklan.com / slashdot · 01:18 edit · 2 minutes

    Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: Last October, tech-backed nonprofit Code.org publicly called out Indiana in its 2023 State of Computer Science Education report, advising the Hoosier state it needed to heed Code.org's new policy recommendation and "adopt a graduation requirement for all high school students in computer science." Having already joined 49 other Governors who signed a Code.org-organized compact calling for increased K-12 CS education in his state after coming under pressure from hundreds of the nation's tech, business, and nonprofit leaders, Indiana Governor Eric J. Holcomb apparently didn't need much convincing. "We must prepare our students for a digitally driven world by requiring Computer Science to graduate from high school," Holcomb proclaimed in his January State of the State Address. Two months later -- following Microsoft-applauded testimony for legislation to make it so by Code.org partners College Board and Nextech (the Indiana Code.org Regional Partner which is also paid by the Indiana Dept. of Education to prepare educators to teach K-12 CS, including Code.org's curriculum) -- Holcomb on Wednesday signed House Bill 1243 into law, making CS a HS graduation requirement. The IndyStar reports students beginning with the Class of 2029 will be required to take a computer science class that must include instruction in algorithms and programming, computing systems, data and analysis, impacts of computing and networks and the internet. The new law is not Holcomb's first foray into K-12 CS education. Back in 2017, Holcomb and Indiana struck a deal giving Infosys (a big Code.org donor) the largest state incentive package ever -- $31M to bring 2,000 tech employees to Central Indiana — that also promised to make Indiana kids more CS savvy through the Infosys Foundation USA, headed at the time by Vandana Sikka, a Code.org Board member and wife of Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka. Following the announcement of the now-stalled deal, Holcomb led a delegation to Silicon Valley where he and Indiana University (IU) President Michael McRobbie joined Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi and Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka on a Thought Leader panel at the Infosys Confluence 2017 conference to discuss Preparing America for Tomorrow. At the accompanying Infosys Crossroads 2017 CS education conference, speakers included Sikka's wife Vandana, McRobbie's wife Laurie Burns McRobbie, Nextech President and co-CEO Karen Jung, Code.org execs, and additional IU educators. Later that year, IU 'First Lady' Laurie Burns McRobbie announced that Indiana would offer the IU Bloomington campus as a venue for Infosys Foundation USA's inaugural Pathfinders Summer Institute, a national event for K-12 teacher education in CS that offered professional development from Code.org and Nextech, as well as an unusual circumvent-your-school's-approval-and-name-your-own-stipend funding arrangement for teachers via an Infosys partnership with the NSF and DonorsChoose that was unveiled at the White House. And that, Schoolhouse Rock Fans, is one more example of how Microsoft's National Talent Strategy is becoming Code.org-celebrated K-12 CS state laws!

    Read more of this story at Slashdot.

    Indiana Becomes 9th State To Make CS a High School Graduation Requirement
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      news.slashdot.org /story/24/03/18/2036252/indiana-becomes-9th-state-to-make-cs-a-high-school-graduation-requirement

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      Did you solve it? Lewis Carroll for insomniacs

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 16:57


    The answers to today’s puzzles

    Earlier today I set these puzzles by Lewis Carroll, who as well as writing books like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , was also a prolific puzzle setter.

    1. The Chelsea Pensioners

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      Boarding schools’ impact devastating for society, says Charles Spencer

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 2 days ago - 17:26

    Earl says public schools have at times had brutalising effect on those who have ended up in power

    Charles Spencer, the younger brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, has said the brutalising effect of boarding schools on people who have come to power has been devastating for society.

    Spencer was speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme after the release of his memoir, A Very Private School, in which he revealed he was sexually assaulted as a child at the boarding school Maidwell Hall in Northamptonshire.

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      The impact of screen time on parent-child relationships | Letters

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 2 days ago - 16:42

    Readers respond to a letter that linked a drop in children’s school readiness to the lack of interaction with the adults in their life

    It is frustrating to see a lack of understanding of the pressures that modern parents are under from readers such as Janice White, who laments seeing parents who are not engaged with their screen‑prodding children in public and draws the conclusion that it is such unengaged parenting that causes the outcomes raised by the Kindred 2 school readiness survey ( Letters, 10 March ).

    As a mother to a four-year-old and a technology ethicist, I fully understand the concerns around screen time and the complex context in which the 2023 cohort has started school: a lack of access to health visitors, the locking up of playgrounds and other socialising play areas during Covid; the lack of affordable childcare but rising cost of living meaning that any socialising childcare, preschool or playgroup takes away income and/or time from one parent; and the dire state of austerity-hit child services.

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      ‘I don’t think I developed emotionally’: Earl Spencer on the pain of boarding-school abuse

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 2 days ago - 13:00 · 1 minute

    The brother of Diana, princess of Wales, talks about his difficult decision to write about being physically and sexually abused and the resistance he faced from members of his own class

    It was one thing writing about the abuses of his childhood, Charles Spencer tells me, with half an ironic laugh; it’s quite another talking about them with strangers. When we meet in an office at his publisher, he is reeling a bit from this new fact of his life. The more sensational chapters of his memoir of a deeply traumatic five years at the Northamptonshire prep school Maidwell Hall had been splashed all over the previous week’s Mail on Sunday . The following morning, he had been a guest on Lorraine Kelly’s mid-morning TV sofa, raking over the painful detail of that long-buried past for the viewers. As a result, he says, apologising if he seems a bit strung out, he’s had two days of thumping headaches followed by vivid nightmares.

    The early responses to his book about being sent away from home to be brutalised at school at eight years old have been instructive. On the one hand he’s had a mailbox of emails from fellow survivors, praising his courage in speaking up for the generations of “privileged” schoolboys and girls who, like him, suffered serial beatings and sexual assault in the closed world of boarding schools well before puberty.

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      Young carers in England and Wales ‘forced out of education’ by benefit rules

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 2 days ago - 12:18

    Charities and education providers say young carers should be eligible for welfare when they study more than 21 hours a week

    Young carers in England and Wales are being blocked from staying in education and going to college or university by benefit rules that unfairly penalise them, according to a coalition of charities and education providers.

    The group of more than 200 organisations and representatives is lobbying ministers to exempt young carers – those aged 16 to 24 who often look after relatives – from the rule that makes them ineligible for the government’s carer’s allowance if they study for more than 21 hours a week.

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      Cambridge college unmasks alumnae who were Bletchley Park codebreakers

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 2 days ago - 11:06

    Names of 77 ex-students of women-only Newnham College who worked at Bletchley Park are revealed for first time

    They worked day and night during the second world war, deciphering Nazi messages, breaking Enigma codes and analysing top-secret military documents. But until now it was not known just how many of the intrepid female codebreakers who worked at Bletchley Park had studied at the same place, forming a hidden network of scholars who secretly changed the course of history.

    The names of the 77 alumnae of Newnham College – a women-only college that is part of Cambridge University – who were recruited to intercept, decrypt and translate military messages for Bletchley Park during the war have been revealed for the first time, in a college exhibit and roll of honour.

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