Deke

Posts tagged with "special"

What are "Special needs"?

Tuesday, September 14, 2010 6:51:49 PM

education, politics, schools, special ...

If you're here expecting something purvey, go away, you're wasting your time here. This is an education thing.

It seems that if school pupils are, for some reason, performing badly, they may be subnormal in some way and require special needs tutoring. So one school declared that every child who they thought wouldn't do well in their GCSEs as requiring special needs tutoring. The government think this is cheating. Not all of these kids are special needs, they say, some of them are just... erm... well, not special needs anyway.

Now me, when I was taking my GCEs I got stung in the eye by some flying stingy thing and came out with a gigantic growth of some kind right in my eye. I passed all the exams I took before the sting, and failed all the ones I took after. I guess my special need would have been a chance to put my exams back by a couple of weeks.

And this prompts me to ask, what are special needs? I can see the afore mentioned school's point. If someone's not going to pass their exams then they are in need of something to help them improve, isn't that something a special need?

Not when the government are paying for it apparently.

2 comments

Special relationships. Every home should have one.

Thursday, February 5, 2009 3:13:52 AM

UK, special, miliband, USA ...

I guess there was always an assumed special relationship between the US and the UK although the first time my attention was drawn to it was by the reports of a certain 'sexual tension' between Thatcher and Reagan, it kinda faded during Bush the firsts 4 years but Clinton seemed to get on OK with us, in fact he was of serious help in solving the 'Irish problem'.

Strangely, when Clinton was replaced by Bush II the special relationship seemed even stronger. Where you would have expected them to be like two magnets of reverse polarity Bush and Blair actually became almost as one. It was special relationship at first sight.

Now great store is being placed upon the fact that Brown was the first European leader to be 'phoned by Obama, and, get this, he was also the first leader to be contacted by Obama for something other than necessity! Oh good grief... Today (Technically yesterday I guess, it's getting late), just to be on the safe side, Miliband and Clinton got together to reaffirm the special relationship, live and in living colour on TV in your gaff.

Oh yes, and the US government has told a British court that if certain details concerning a Brit currently residing in a detentionary hotel situated in Guantanamo Bay Cuba are revealed during the course of proceedings, they will break off all sharing of intelligence with Britain, which would probably hurt us a lot more than them, since they seem to ignore us except when we're offering them a load of bilge that they need as an excuse to invade Iraq.

I wonder if Miliband and Clinton chatted about it before going public with their celebration of the special relationship.

Me, I can see the possibility that there may be a similarity in the ambitions of the 1st and 4th wealthiest nations in the world, but I have another theory for the special relationship.

We both speak English.

2 comments