Incentive for pupils to take science and maths

We are seeing a decline in pupils taking science and maths. The government is reviewing an incentive scheme that pays the pupils who decide to take science and maths. Is this the right thing to do? I don't think so. I can fully imagine the government using this scheme because they have introduced a similar scheme to reward pupils who decide to stay on at school rather than leave early. Why rely on money? Science and maths are very important subjects which should already be an incentive for children to take. The government must look at why the subjects are unpopular and try to fix the imbalance by tweaking things accordingly. A common reason is that other subjects are easier. So two immediate options. Either make science and maths easier or make the other subjects harder. Another option will be to reward pupils with more points for taking science and maths (the points should closely follow the hardness of the subject).

Another problem is that science and maths are taught without any applications. Surely we can design these subjects so that pupils can see the relevance to society. Even better, introduce maths and science more to the other subjects to reflect how they cover different subjects. This should be done at an early stage so that the teachers can cope.

1 in 58 police patrolling the streets

I read today in the Sunday Telegraph that only one in 58 police are patrolling the streets at any given time. This is based on the result that each police person spends about 14% of their duty time patrolling the streets. There are about 150,000 police and around 2500 are patrolling the street.

The reason for this is blamed on the amount of paper work that they have to do which appears to have steadily increased by the government. This is just difficult to fathom. Surely the police in other countries spend much less time on paper work and spend a greater amount of time outside patrolling the streets?

I have mentioned about reintroducing smaller mini police stations around the country. Considering the area of UK to be 245,000 sq km and having three in the mini police station, we can have 50,000 covering just under 5 sq km each. This is of course a trivial calculation but on the surface, it looks feasible. I have assumed a uniform density of these mini police stations so a more appropriate spread of them will make the idea even more attractive.

Dog poo on my shoe

Dog owners, please can you pick up your dog's poo. Today, I spent some time cleaning off the mess off my shoe. Although this is a nuisance, I am much more concerned about my daughter falling ill. I have heard that some dog poos contain worms that can cause blindness (if say a toddler rubs their eye with a dirtied hand). I am sure the dog owners that leave the poo on purpose do not understand the severe consequences. I do believe that if the dog owners are told of the dangers of dog poo, they will all clean it up. Should there be signs erected in the park that succinctly explains the consequences?

I would like to know why they do not clean it up in the first place. Are they too lazy? Do they think that the rain will miraculously wash it away so that their efforts will be pointless? If they have a garden, do they leave the poo lying about without cleaning it up? I cannot believe all the owners that do not bother cleaning up the mess in public places will act in the same way at home. So why the difference? Do they think that a public area is not their responsibility? Any way you look at it, they lack moral values.

There is such a thing called the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005. So it is against the law to leave the mess behind.

Dog owner takes another dog owner's dog

I have written negatively about some dog owners in my previous posts. I just wanted to say that I am not biased. I was in the park with my daughter and we were playing in a pretty packed playground. A dog owner was playing with a child and the dog was waiting outside. I was busy with my daughter but I noticed that another dog owner was concerned about this dog all alone and decided to take it with her. She had apparently called for the rightful dog owner but without a response. I alerted the incident to the rightful dog owner who had been engrossed in a game with the child. She managed to get her dog back just in time.

Youth, 16, knifed to death as gang chants 'kill him, kill him'

The article with the above title caught my eye today in the Daily Telegraph. The gang included boys and girls but the police have arrested 7 males - four 13-year-olds, two 15-year-olds and a 21-year-old. Murders of youths are fairly common these days but this story stands out because so many people were indirectly (or you may really say directly) involved. Did they really want him killed or the chant was just to scare him? It appears that they had hammers, bats and knives to go through with the killing pretty easily. Perhaps they were used to scare him?

If they all valued life, the death would have been avoided. I feel that children these days do not value life as much. They seem to treat it as one of those things. Killing someone is no big deal. I can only imagine that, to develop such an attitude, they are surrounded by events that trivialise killing. The TV, music, films and computer games have all trivialised killing and are still doing so. Surely it is time to reverse this trend and put more emphasis on how valuable life is. We cannot just rely on education to instill such a view. We need the cooperation of the media as well.

This is all linked to our moral values declining. Although killing is one of the worst outcomes, there are other less extreme cases of the moral decline. For instance, my front tooth is dead because someone at my secondary school punched me in the face. He distracted me by saying the teacher was looking at us in the class room. I turned to see but the teacher was looking at something else and as I turned back, I was hit (very naive of me I know). This is clearly a difference in moral values. I was aware that punching someone in the face can be dangerous. You can severely disfigure someone and you can even kill someone. I have never punched someone else in the face. This puncher obviously did not have the proper moral values. He did not show any regret or anything after the event. This happened just because I pushed him when he said some insulting words to me.

How did the puncher have such moral values? I have blamed the media above but on second thoughts, I have been acquainted with such material from a very young age (since maybe seven). It must be the way my parents brought me up. I think nurture has a lot to do with it but nature also. Some people are more violent than other people and if they want to have better moral values, they need to be taught more than others.

Although I have said that the media has not affected me, I still think that some people will be affected. Is it difficult to have scenes in movies where a fight is about to erupt but they come to their senses by thinking of the consequences? Why can't games promote how to prevent fighting (you can do this by awarding more points to the player for doing so)? Why does music need to glorify violence?

I suppose it is to do with the children being rebellious and so naturally gravitate towards material that show the most rebelliousness. I don't know if we can control this rebellious streak but instilling the proper moral values will nevertheless be invaluable.

Politician waste light

The media has recently remarked on how Government buildings are lit up over night. This is not because there are people working late. Are they trying to scare off a potential burglar? All this during the time when they are asking the public to be more energy efficient. How can we entrust the country in the hands of such morally inconsistent politicians?

Woman with a dog destroys toddler's ball

I have no prejudice towards people with dogs in general but here is another incident I encountered involving a dog owner. As the toddler was playing with his ball, a dog grabbed it and destroyed it. The owner just apologised and walked off. The mother had to say to her son, say bye bye to the ball. How can someone just destroy someone else's property and walk away like this? Is it not common courtesy to at least offer compensation?

I was also involved in a similar incident when I was around maybe 15. I was playing tennis when a youthful looking dog bounded into the court and grabbed one of the new balls (which I rarely bought but I digress). After it had deposited enough saliva and exercised its jaws enough by gnawing, the ball was ready to be placed in the bin. The owner who was much older than us just said an empty apology and walked off? I was quite taken aback by this nonchalant behaviour but I managed to draw his attention to the fact that a tennis ball in the UK is very expensive and asked for some money to contribute towards it. He just made another excuse and walked off.