It makes me feel dirty. I’ve already posted one link to Facebook, and balked at posting another, because I hate it, and it makes me feel dirty.

But if I don’t, then I’m standing by and letting liars and bullies have the last word about what happened to the poor child, and I’m letting them tar me with their slanderous, defamatory brush, and I’m letting them abuse her memory almost as badly as her body was abused in life. Insult added to injury, when injury was horriffic enough.

You need to know that Khyra Ishaq was not home educated. Many news articles have implied that she was, over the last nine months or so, though I am relieved to note that most of them have dropped that angle, when it became apparent that she wasn’t. The BBC, however, are still touting the line of the Labour machine, that she was home educated, that there was nothing the authorities could do, that the only thing that could have saved her was the introduction of the faltering legislation that has this week been signed off by the Commons, and moved on to the Lords.

Guess what, folks? It isn’t true. So much of it isn’t true, it’s difficult to know where to start, but let’s start with “Was Khyra home educated?”

When a child is registered to a school, and the parents wish to end that arrangement, there is a set procedure. It is laid down in law, it is neither difficult nor complicated, but it is necessary. The parents must write to the school, stating clearly that the child is to be taken off the roll, since s/he will, from that point forward, be recieving their education at home.

It has to be a letter. It doesn’t have to be recorded delivery, though some would recommend that it should be, as protection from accusations of truancy amid claims that letter did not arrive. It just has to be a letter, and it has to be sent to the school.

On receipt of the letter, the head has a legal responsibility to notify the local authority. What the LA choose to do with the information does vary from area to area, but generally speaking, parents are likely to hear from them within a few weeks, with a request for some reassurance that education is taking place.

As far as I can gather, from the various things I have read, including this FOI request, that letter was not sent. But guess what? The local authority didn’t know their own legal procedures, and deregistered her anyway. The school, at one point, had a telephone conversation in which the parents told them of their intention to home educate, but that does not make for a deregistration. The local authority, later, recieved a letter of deregistration, but the local authority CAN’T deregister a child – only the school can. They all muddled their own procedures, and behaved as if she were home educated, but she was not.

For months and months, Khyra was, or should have been, on the roll of her school, but was not attending. She hadn’t gone anywhere, they knew where she was. Teaching staff went to her house to try and see her, but failed. The school, who were actually very worried about her, reported her to social services, who by all accounts, went to the house once, got no answer, and never tried again. The neighbours knew that odd things were going on, including leaving Khyra outside in winter in her underwear, but did not see fit to play the merry hell with social services that really should have been played.

That child was let down – not so much by the school, though some training issues appear to have arisen there, too, but certainly by social services, by her community, and most importantly, BY HER PARENTS.

Guess what, folks? It was her mother, and her mother’s boyfriend, who killed her. Nobody else. It was them. They did it. Nobody stopped them, and plenty of people could have at least tried, but ultimately, their contribution would not have been required if those two people had fulfilled their legal and moral obligation to feed her. To FEED HER, for crying out loud! The blame lies with them.

Where the blame does not lie, is with me. Khyra had a whole community around her, and that community failed to save her. Her father failed to save her. I, however, am not a part of that community. I did not know Khyra. I wasn’t there. There was nothing I could do. It is not my fault.

The thing is, even if Khyra HAD been home educated, and it’s perfectly possible, given a slightly more robust investigation of the procedure by her parents, and even if Schedule 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill had been enacted into law, SHE WOULD STILL HAVE DIED. Schedule 1 allows for two days a year spent with the family – less, by the time travelling time, report writing, and so on, are factored in – and Khyra was starved in five months. Schedule 1 of the CSF Bill is about giving local authorities carte blanche to arbitrarily reject the provision that home educators are making for their children’s learning, on the basis of a wide range of equally spurious reasons. It is about taking responsibility for the education of children away from parents, and handing it to bureaucracies. It is about, incidentally, setting the legal precedent for YOU, oh school-using friends who think this doesn’t affect you, to be unable to choose the school that is right for your child, that fits your belief system, or even that accepts your cheques.

Being enrolled at school did not save Khyra. Being a long-term truant certainly didn’t save her, since no-one quite noticed. Serving up the education of my children on a platter, in the wake of an unjustified, unsubstantiated, just plain incorrect moral panic over children being “seen” certainly wouldn’t have saved her. It won’t save anyone.

I’ve talked about my family before, I’m sure, but this week I’ve found myself thinking about extended family as a form of identity, all over again.

My granddad was the eldest of six children, which meant that my dad grew up in something of a clan – he had two siblings, and ten cousins on his dad’s side of the family, to say nothing of a stack of cousins and second cousins who were from his mum’s side. Families in those days had a lot of proximity about them. They all lived within a few miles of one another, in North Liverpool, and the ones who didn’t, didn’t go too far – Aunty Gwen lived in Parbold, Uncle Alf moved to Rainford, but mostly, they were less than ten minutes apart by car. Also, those of them that held on to the faith of their childhoods, tended to stay in the one church.

My dad’s generation, of course, were the baby-boomers (he only discovered this about himself recently, I can’t imagine where he’s been). They were the ones who did the 11+, and saw driving their own car as less of a privilege than a right, and would move towns for a job, and be the first in their family to own a house. My dad’s cousins were much more geographically disparate. We lived in various bits of East Lancashire when I was growing up, and Tim moved from Southport to Altrincham, and Phil spent about fifteen years in London, which was as close to the edge of the earth as made no practical difference to the rest of us.

Some of the cousins lost touch, at that point. There are at least four or five whom I know I would not recognise if I met them in the street – although one of that group is my “friend” on Facebook, and lives ten minutes walk from my house. I’ve not been round, though. A core, who stayed in Liverpool, also stayed in the church, and helped to create a kind of home base there, that the rest of us came back to, periodically. My grandparents and two of their children went for a communal living approach, pooling their resources to put three generations into a lovely big Victorian house in the suburbs. The house became another sort of base – there was always someone in, there, and when you arrived, you instantly felt part of the big family, probably just because a good proportion of the family were there already.

That house is where the Christmas parties were held (Boxing night, every year), with all the little traditions, including the one where Father Christmas arrived, and handed out presents to everyone (for hours…) in return for a rendition of Away in a Manger. One year, my granddad stood in for Santa by appearing in drag as a Christmas Fairy – drag isn’t something I would ever have associated with him, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, and as far as I know, it has never happened before or since. Increasingly, for me, part of generation number three of the ever more separated, and ever more numerous family group, the Christmas party was the only time I ever saw most of those people. We have less and less in common, and less and less to tie us together.

And yet, we are still tied together.

I heard a story, today, of one of my dad’s cousins, who’s immediate family had drifted away from the group, and who, now in her fifties, is missing her family, to the point of feeling quite resentful about it. It touched me. I don’t know this woman from Eve, but if she has discovered a need in herself to reconnect with the Family (that makes us sound like the Sopranos, and nothing could be further from the truth), then I’m pretty sure we have space for her. Why not? She belongs with us. She should have been here all along.

For various reasons, the Christmas party did not happen last year, and isn’t going to happen this year. It remains to be seen whether two years out will mean the end of it, forever. I’m really not sure how much effort is reasonable to expend, in an attempt to bring together a group of people who otherwise get along fine without each other. To bring any real substance to those relationships, I’m pretty sure we’d have to meet more frequently than that, and I’m equally sure that if someone were to do something off-the-wall, like host a family open house once a month, nobody would show up.

The fact is that our family is too big, now. Including spouses, there are knocking on for fifty living descendants of my great-grandma. So, it’s hardly surprising – the family is losing it’s structural integrity, because in modern life, when we live so far apart, and have such busyness to contend with, it takes all our energy to maintain our closest family links. The second cousins once removed are just once removed too far.

That kind of makes me sad. I’d like to find a way to fix it, to make it possible for the group identity to continue, because it’s a key part of my own sense of identity, and I suspect, I’m not the only one. I’m just not sure that it’s possible.

As ever, this post started life as a Facebook status, and if someone hadn’t gone “Huh? What you blethering about?” it would probably have remained as one. Facebook is bad for my writing, it really is. Anyway.

Today, I watched High Society for the umpteenth time. The film is essentially a remake of the pre-war classic The Philadelphia Story, which is a better film, but doesn’t have the songs. Much of the script is lifted, word for word, but it loses some of the depth, in order to fit in Frank, Bing and Louis Armstrong displaying their jazz wares.

In both movies, we have the rich, beautiful, uncompromising Tracy; the ex-husband and neighbour from her brief first marriage, Dexter; George, the fiancé whom she plans to marry the following day; Seth Lord, Tracy’s father, who has lately separated from his wife to pursue a liaison with a dancer in the city; and the two society reporters, Mike Connor, a cynical Angry Young Man with a chip on his shoulder, relating largely to being too poor write serious literature, and his long-time girlfriend, Liz, who has not yet married him because he “still has a lot to learn. I don’t want to get in his way for a while.”

At the beginning Tracy is angry – angry at Dexter for the failure of her marriage to him, angry at her father for running away with the dancer. She is criticised by both for her unfeeling, uncompromising expectations, both of herself, and of those around her. Indeed, her father subjects her to a speech in which he blames her lack of affectionate understanding of him for his affair. George, on the other hand, is enthusiastic about how “untouched” she is by her previous experiences, and sees her as unblemished and worthy of his adoration.

During the course of the film, and on the eve of her wedding, Tracy gets extremely drunk, and pretty much throws herself at Mike, the reporter, who has, in turn, become somewhat infatuated with her. She resents George’s attempts to cover for her inebriation as intrusive and fun-less, so sneaks out of the party with Mike, back to the house, where they talk passionately, kiss, and go swimming, before she passes out, and he brings her back to the house.

Waiting at the house are Dexter and George. Dexter has guessed enough of the developments to seek to shield Tracy from being discovered by her fiancé, knowing that she would be unlikely to remember events in the morning, in any case. George is mystified, and a little worried, by Tracy’s disappearance from the party, and is looking to reassure himself of her safety. Discovering her in a dressing gown, being carried back to the house by Mike, scandalises him, and he is unable to reconcile himself to her apparent indiscretion.

The following morning, Tracy remembers nothing of what happened, but finds enough clues to suggest to her that she might have (must have?) indulged in a one-night-stand with Mike. George, when he arrives, clearly believes the same thing, and is very angry. After a while, Mike proffers the information that nothing happened, save for a kiss and a swim – Tracy, still smarting from earlier criticisms, asks if she was too cold and unattractive for him, but he insists he was very attracted, and was instead prevented by a sense of honour, in recognition of the fact that she was drunk.

George, at this point, sees Tracy’s honour as restored, but she points out that her sustained chastity is due to Mike’s honour, not hers, and as such offers her no credit. That George accepts her because he sees her as still unspoilt, she says, is worth much less than his willingness to accept her as spoilt would have been. She assures him that she is not good enough for him, since she now realises that she cannot live up to his standards for her, any more than she could live up to her own. George leaves, and Dexter steps into the breach, again demonstrating his willingness to both accept her in her fallen state, and to work to help her in that state. She remarries Dexter, promising to be more understanding and accepting of the human weaknesses of both of them.

So, that’s the story. It took longer to summarise than I anticipated, but never mind. The thought that struck me, as I watched it, was that the ultimate lesson of the film appears to be that people are fallible, and should be held to low standards. The scene between Tracy and her father particularly irritates me – how dare he suggest that SHE is to blame for HIS infidelity? It’s not even that he blames his wife, in the classic “My wife doesn’t understand me” mold – he blames his adult daughter for failing to pander to his vanity, his inner need to be thought wonderful by a pretty young girl. It’s all a bit icky, when you think about it, to say nothing of entirely unfair. But ultimately, Tracy comes around to this point of view, and marries the man whom she considers fallible, but who loves her in her own fallibility.

Then I started thinking about the Church. Historically, the Church has fallen into two main theological camps – the “evangelicals” and the “liberals”. Traditional evangelicalism has tended (gross generalisation coming up, bear with me) to value “righteousness”, or sinlessness, very highly, and to tend towards an intolerance of sin, and consequently of the sinner. It’s a stereotypical image, isn’t it, of the stern Free Churchman, preaching against the evils of cinemas, and alcohol, and of playing football on a Sunday? The liberal end of the church, upon which the evangelical wing has been inclined to look with disdain, have more of a history of acceptance of such things (catholic churches are likely to own bars, rather than condemn them), and therefore of people who indulge in them. It comes down to balance. The bible advocates a need for righteousness, for the renunciation of sin, but it also advocates a need for love, for compassion, for forgiveness. Every Christian has, at some point, to work out how to manage the tension between those two essentially contradictory positions. It’s fairly safe to say that in 2000 years of Christianity, no-one has quite got the balance completely right – everyone leans slightly too far in one direction or the other.

So how is that the 1956 musical romantic comedy is playing out these eternal tensions? And, ultimately, the film comes down on the side of 1 Corinthians 13 – “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” Love is a word of complex connotation, in Hollywood, but they use words like “compassion” and “understanding” instead, and they mean the same things. They mean the acceptance of people for who they are, not for who you think they ought to be.

Which makes the film a good deal deeper than I’ve previously given it credit for.

The Guardian article that Kevin shared yesterday fascinated me.  The link doesn’t work, for some reason, but the article is here. The summary is that, by means of fast moving, punchy, 20 minute presentations, repeated three times, with a ten minute break between each for some physical activity (juggling, apparently), they can cover an entire GCSE syllabus in three days.  And cover it well enough for pupils to then pass the exam.  The results weren’t quite as high as  by traditional methods, but the trade off between that, and the astonishingly small amount of time it took is probably acceptable by the standards of most business models, for example.  And if you fail, you can always do it again – the following week, if you like!

The article is full of excitement over the amount of time that is wasted in schools, and how much more efficient this system seems to be, and thereby stands the problem.  The education system that we’ve evolved is, as we’ve discussed, in large part about childcare.  It’s concerned with keeping children out of the way of their economically productive adults, so they don’t prevent the economic productivity from going on.  Within that structure, there is no advantage in making education efficient.  Which is odd, because the text of the education act makes parents responsible for ensuring that their children receive an education that is both efficient and full-time (either by attendance at school or otherwise).  And I’m starting to wonder if an efficent education, is, by definition, not full-time at all.

It’s all reminscent of the days when we (well, not me, I wasn’t born) were told that technology would give us all free time.  We’d all be working three day weeks, or less, because the technology would get the necessary work done in a fraction the time, and we’d all be wondering how to fill our new leisure time.  Except it didn’t happen, did it?  For a while we had some people working as hard as ever, whilst the others couldn’t find jobs at all, and lived in poverty.  Then we had economic boom, in which we successfully invented work for everyone to do, most of which is completely unnecessary. We created call centres, and all forms of bureaucracy, essentially to keep us all busy.  And of course, the childcare industry, which is built on the need to cover all the time we spend doing non-work.  Heaven forfend that we could earn a living wage in three days, and take the rest of the time off.

If I’m ever in a position to do so, I shall run a three-days-a-week business.  One where part time work is the norm, and where people can go home when they’ve finished what they were asked to do.  In the war, when people were asked to contribute to the war effort by working seven days a week, productivity actually went down.  And in the seventies, when the power went out, and businesses went to three day weeks, it didn’t. We’re all working far too hard.  It’s not necessary.  But for as long as you’re all doing it, it is necessary, because the the amount of time you work, and the amount of money you earn doing it, is what sets the cost of all the things I need to live – house prices, and food, and petrol, and clothes, and all the rest of it, are set based on how much money you have to spend on them.  The harder we work, collectively, the more expensive things get.  We don’t get any advantage from it.  So, I’m saying, let’s stop.  It’s not necessary, and if we all stop together, we don’t have to starve to bring about the change.

So, yes, let kids study GCSEs in three days.  If that’s how long it actually takes, then let them do that, and then stop.  Have fun. Spend time with their families. Learn things that they want to learn, from a position of having the time and energy to do it. But the idea of a generation of children with time on their hands is a terrifying prospect to the powers that be, and I’m guessing they will strain every nerve to avoid it happening.  Look out, Monkseaton High School.  This isn’t a revolution that you’re going to be allowed to start.