Canopus

I had a fascination for electrical machinery as a kid and my collection of electrical stuff included a very unusual mains plug and socket. I had no idea what the plug and socket was supposed to be used for as I had never encountered one in use anywhere. Today I rediscovered the plug and socket and separated them for the first time in over 15 years. They are both made by a company called Wylex. The plug is round with a white base and a dark brown cover. It has a round central earth pin and flat live and neutral pins to the right and left of the earth pin. The live and neutral pins are slightly offset to prevent the plug from being inserted in the socket upsidedown. The plug also contains a 20mm fuse. Has anybody ever encountered these plugs and sockets anywhere? If so then tell me more about them. I don't think they were for domestic use. I read many books on electrical wiring as a kid and there was no mention of these plugs and sockets anywhere. Before the BS1363 rectangular pin plugs and sockets were introduced shortly after WWII, round pin plugs and sockets in 2A, 5A, and 15A sizes were used.

I am starting to wonder if people with AS are of any commercial value in the 21st century. In other words, will they get jobs. I am sure that in times gone by, people with AS were highly valued by society and having AS could even be a passport to a prestigious career that one would probably not have ended up with if they were NT. These might be a few isolated cases but they serve to illustrate the point: 1. The government of ancient Egypt was always on the lookout for people with academic or intellectual skills in a society where over 90% of the population was illiterate. Highly skilled people often ended up becoming architects, engineers, or accountants whilst NT people with few skills chiselled stone out of quarries or worked in agriculture. 2. In Europe during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, intellectuals were given lots of support by governments and universities to pursue careers in things like maths and astronomy. Many of these intellectuals including Isaac Newton must have had AS. 3. Scientists and engineers working in government agencies including NASA and the SDI were the driving force behind the Space Race and the Cold War. A possibility exists that if it wasn't for these single minded geniuses then the Soviets would have turned the entire planet communist! Where does this leave people with AS in the 21st century? The answer is that there are no more big government projects and almost everthing now is privatised and commercialised. The private sector does not want single minded experts. They want flexible people with lots of different skills including team building and public relations. This places people with AS at a serious disadvantage.

I am fully aware that many kids know more about computers than their IT teachers know. IT is a stupidly trivial GCSE and a testimony to this is that even 6 year olds are capable of passing the exam with good grades. Not many people qualified in IT or computer science want to go into teaching because the pay is so poor compared with industry and the careers are dead end. The only opportunity to move up the ladder is to become a head teacher and many teachers would rather teach than involve themselves in admin duties and bureaucracy. Therefore the teaching profession generally takes people who only have minimal knowledge of computers and are unlikely to know how to program unless they studied the subject in their own time. There is also the problem of what programming language to use. Back in the 1980s it was BASIC because most schools used BBC computers and they had an inbuilt BASIC interpreter. Some schools used FORTRAN or Pascal for GCSE computing during the late 1980s and early 90s. What language should be used today? If a proper language is used then I would go for Java.

Neither did my school much to my disgust. The least the school could have done was enter me in for the exam and told me to study the subject and do the coursework in my own time. The teachers and the head fully well knew I was computer obsessed. To make matters worse at least half the school wanted to take the computing GCSE.

1. It isn't part of the National Curriculum. 2. It isn't officially part of the GCSE IT course although it's possible to write a piece of software for the GCSE IT coursework. Most students do something easier like designing a brochure with M$ Office. I read somewhere that the International GCSE IT covers programming. Do exam boards think foreign kids are cleverer than British kids?

Something interesting crossed my mind today. The number of school leavers over the past 20 years that became computer programmers is vastly more than those that became professional footballers. Therefore should schools be teaching computer programming rather than football?

PHSE is a load of old cr*p. It isn't an examined subject and was probably introduced to brainwash kids into the government's way of thinking.

I suppose it's possible to strike a deal that your son can use the computer but the first thing he must use the computer for is his homework.

When O Levels were about to be replaced with GCSEs, a rep from my LEA informed my parents that these "new style" exams won't be in my favour. The O Level questions were along the line of "factorise this equation". The GCSE questions were wordy and included real world scenarios to detract from the centrepiece of the problem. To make matters worse I had an O Level maths textbook and was already used to the style of the questions in that book. Maths at school tended to have wordy questions.

It definitely warrants an investigation. If it does turn out that team sports are not part of the National Curriculum then it means that kids are not forced to participate in them during PE lessons regardless of whether they have disabilities or medical conditions or not. Schools and PE teachers can make every excuse under the sun about lack of resources or that team sports are the only choice available. In reality it is just a case of ingrained culture and old habits die hard.

I'm not sure if there is any hard and fast legislation on who can and can't look at work kids produce at school.

This is very vague and needs further clarification. Kids with AS and ASD sometimes have meltdowns at school when stressed that are capable of severely disrupting the peace and very difficult for staff to tackle. Is this what the author is trying to imply, or are they saying that kids with AS and ASD deliberately go round disrupting lessons? Some parents are quite intolerant towards kids with AS and ASD and take a dim view of their problems. They blame it on bad parenting and a general lack of manners and discipline. Quite often these parents would like to see kids with AS and ASD punished rather than helped if they have meltdowns at school or refuse to participate in a certain activity.

I have discussed deferring education with a teacher who is knowledgeable about AS and she told me some quite interesting things. Central government and local government never recommended that parents deliberately deferred reading, writing, and maths until their kid had started school. Before the National Curriculum, primary schools set their own curriculum and taught material of the ability that most kids could handle. There were notable disparities in the difficulty and diversity of material between different schools. This was one reason for the introduction of the National Curriculum. Parents who lived in areas where pre school education was commonplace were more likely to defer education than parents who lived in areas where pre school education was scarce. This was because they assumed that they would be taught stuff in nursery and reception class and didn't need teaching at home. Nursery education was almost exclusively of a "free play" variety and had no structured lessons. Reading in reception was largely confined to flashcards and maths was counting things. Ironically, kids who had less pre school education tended to be better at reading, writing, and maths than those who had more pre school education. Kids who had pre school education tended to be better physically. Many nursery and reception teachers preferred to develop physical skills such as throwing and catching balls, colouring in pictures, and building models rather than intellectual skills. Primary school teachers during the 1960s, 70s and 80s didn't like having to teach clever kids who knew the material already. They often told parents to stop teaching their kids things at home because they will be taught them at school. It was fairly common during the 1960s and 70s for one parent to verbally advise another parent not to teach their kid too much before they started school on the grounds that their kid would be bored and fed up if they knew the material already. The prevailing attitude of parents was that kids should be happy at primary school rather than be geniuses.

Are team sports part of the National Curriculum? All I know is that under the National Curriculum a certain xx hours must be devoted to PE during a week and that every kid must get an equal chance to participate in activities.

I was often accused of having poor rhythm and handling musical instruments awkwardly at school. My primary school never really gave anybody a chance to get their hands on "proper" musical instruments. I spent a term in Y4 with recorders but found them difficult to play effectively. I don't think they are a proper instrument because they are never used anywhere except schools. I wanted to learn the piano because it only required you to move your fingers rather than do multiple actions simultaneously as with other instruments. However, the school only let kids near the piano as a privilege and the kids had to show strong musical talent beforehand which excluded me. A year after I moved to secondary school my primary school bought a batch of Yamaha keyboards for the kids to use and they were very popular.

Does anybody's kid play a musical instrument?

I have always held the suspicion that the real reason for state schools was not to provide education but to instil discipline, obedience, and conformity - with an emphasis on conformity. Kids that don't fit in with the system and their classmates get bullied and blamed as troublemakers all the time.

You must have nerve to say this. Are you serious that there was a planned political agenda in the 1950s to shape this country into what it is today? My piece on demographic changes annoyed some people and was criticised as having a political undertone.

Is this actually legal anymore? I thought that under National Curriculum rules, every kid has to be given an equal chance at every subject. Was he given any help or support to complete his work during lunchtime or was he made to complete it alone? If he wasn't given any help then the school views him as lazy. Why was reception class chosen? Sending kids to the lowest class was traditionally used as an intimidation technique.

For many years I suspected that PE varies from country to country. In the US they have baseball and basketball. Baseball is virtually nonexistant in British schools and basketball has only made inroads in the past 10 or so years. I have always wondered if some countries have PE lessons based more on physical exercises rather than team sports but can't seem to find much information.

Are there any countries that don't have team sports in PE lessons at mainstream schools?

I find it difficult to believe that an American organisation still offers new material on VHS format. Some high end video recorders will play back NTSC tapes and output a PAL signal.

Does anybody know anything about Coulter Video http://home.att.net/~coultervideo/

Many years ago I was told a really interesting story. I don't know if the person had AS or even if the story is true. A teenager was expelled from a secondary school for behavioural problems and consequently never got to sit his exams. He took up a interest in glassworking and started making models out of glass tubing. Eventually he went into business by selling models at various public events. He enjoyed what he did but the business didn't make much money. A few years later he was approached by somebody who had a relative working for NASA. A project at NASA required a skilled glassworker to make components for lasers and nobody suitable could be found anywhere in America. The customer was very impressed with the models and informed the model maker about NASA. The model maker then contacted NASA and provided information about his models. NASA was so impressed with the quality of workmanship that they ended up giving him a highly paid career making lasers. Has anybody else encountered this story before?

A favourite term of the educational psychologists who think they are the experts. The question is just exactly how is the term peer group defined? The answer is other children who by the virtue of the day they were born are in the same class at school as your own child.