… well a whole issue of Scholar & Feminist anyway.
Al the big isues are there: “where are the women bloggers”, sex and audience, pseudonimity, pedagogy, race, class, “mummyblogging” – a pretty good wrap-up for anyone wanting to read about the current state of the feminist blogosphere, or wanting to write a paper on it!
You might wonder why recent studies indicate Britain’s youth are the most unhappy in Europe. A story today in the Sunday Times sums it up nicely: A 2,200-pupil high school is being built in Peterborough, under the “flagship” academy schools programme (so the local authority – and hence the local, democratic council, representative of the community won’t have any say in its running).
This school will replace THREE current schools, so pupils will be going from relatively small communities to be all mixed up in a huge one. But the real misery clincher is this – there will be NO PLAYGROUND – no space in which to chill, relax, take some time away from structure.
“We are not intending to have any play time,†said Alan McMurdo, the head teacher. “Pupils won’t need to let off steam because they will not be bored. 
Miles Delap, project manager at the academy, said: “For a school of this size, a playground would have had to be huge. That would have been almost uncontrollable. We have taken away an uncontrollable space to prevent bullying and truancy. 
There will be a 30-minute lunch period when pupils will be taken to the dining room by their teacher, ensuring they do not sneak away to run around.
In those three quotes there is so much to unpack it is hard to know where to start. There is fear – teenagers must be kept strictly under control at all times; there is planning – everything, every second, must be strictly managed; there is desire to turn these children into nice little corporate automata.
I certainly wouldn’t want to live in a house near this school; when the kids escape they’ll explode out of it like cork from a pressured bottle. And that will be used as an excuse to demand more controls…
You might have noticed that I’ve been around here a little spasmodically lately, and anyone who knows me might have noticed that the bags under the eyes have hit the jawline; that’s in part because I’ve been involved in the major redesign of the Guardian Weekly, which has gone from tabloid to half-Berliner (“micro” I believe in American), as well as going full-colour in the European edition, and with the complete font and design change that went with it (so we again finally reflect the appearance of the Guardian).
Anyone in newspapers will appreciate that’s been rather a big job: I’ve written about the process, and about how the news gods had a good laugh at my expense, on the editors’ blog on Guardian Unlimited.
But, it’s out tomorrow, it doesn’t look half bad overall, and it’s done – just got to do it all again next week…
Here’s Jenny Cogan, our production editor, and the designer John-Henry Barac mugging it up for the cameras beside the press. J-H has also blogged about the process.
… a passing Green Party person stops to give you directions to a polling day committee room, not because you are wearing a rosette or other party paraphenalia, but simply because you are on a bicycle, and in this part of the world that’s pretty unusual.
Today is election day in Wales, Scotland and many English local areas (the biggest set of local elections on a four-year cycle).
I’m off to rural Bedforshire to help out with an operation there. Elsewhere there’s a lot going on in Norwich (video link), Brighton, Huddersfield, and many other places…
Good luck to Green Party candidates everywhere!
It is huge, it is ginormous – a tremendous percentage of the feminist blogosphere is here, on the Carnival of Feminist No 37, now up on KitKat’s Critique.
I was going to start counting the number of posts – it must be getting towards treble figures, but it is too late in the day, and anyway, much better to read a selection than count!
And don’t waste time over here – please go over there and check it out!
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