Home schooling - anyone else had a bit of a shock??

[Big J]

8 minutes ago, breffni said:

What's next? Stop teaching kids with learning disabilities as they don't contribute much? Did you not suggest planting the uplands in Sitka Spruce? Maybe you should go back to school if that's what you think is good idea. 

Moorlands, in the form that we find them now, are not natural landscapes. Far from it. Given that there is limited ecological benefit of maintaining them in their present state, and that they are ecomomically useless (in their present state), I'd say planting them with sitka is a bloody good idea. In the UK we import 80% of our timber, and the likelihood is that in a post covid world that imports will be hamstrung to a presently unknown extent. If nothing else, surely if makes sense to grow the timber we need on our doorstep rather than import it from afar. One of the main fuels for the CHP plant in Kent is imported eucalyptus chip from New Zealand, for instance. 

 

Plant the flat lowlands with fast growing fuel timber (euc, willow, pop etc), plant the hillsides with native broadleaf for habitat and biodiversity and plant the uplands with softwood for structural timber. Simples. The UK's 13% forest cover is laughable.

[Stere]

Sounds like you want to Bring back the welsh knot and canning for speaking Welsh.

 

 

Welsh Not - Wikipedia

EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

 

How about all the 1000's of other smaller languages around the world and regional  dialects? Dead languages? world would be boring place without the cultural diversity if they all died out.

 

.

[breffni]

40 minutes ago, Big J said:

Moorlands, in the form that we find them now, are not natural landscapes. Far from it. Given that there is limited ecological benefit of maintaining them in their present state, and that they are ecomomically useless (in their present state), I'd say planting them with sitka is a bloody good idea. In the UK we import 80% of our timber, and the likelihood is that in a post covid world that imports will be hamstrung to a presently unknown extent. If nothing else, surely if makes sense to grow the timber we need on our doorstep rather than import it from afar. One of the main fuels for the CHP plant in Kent is imported eucalyptus chip from New Zealand, for instance. 

 

Plant the flat lowlands with fast growing fuel timber (euc, willow, pop etc), plant the hillsides with native broadleaf for habitat and biodiversity and plant the uplands with softwood for structural timber. Simples. The UK's 13% forest cover is laughable.

What about any wildlife that lives in open moorland? Or the lowlands you're planning to plant? 

[Squaredy]

2 hours ago, Big J said:

Languages are tools and allow the speaker access and participation in societies that speak them. My point with regards to Welsh is that everyone who speaks Welsh also speaks English. And English is also spoken by another 1.5 billion people, so objectively, it's a much more useful language. If the time and expense of teaching someone Welsh was put into one of the World languages, the children growing up there now would have far broader horizons.

 

Also, anecdotally from contributors to this thread, it appears that the English teaching is suffering to an extent due to the Welsh teaching. I may of course be wrong.

 

The UK is woefully awful at languages as a whole. Compared to our European neighbours, we're generally pretty mono-lingual. The Swedes teach English from an early age with a third language being taught slightly later. As such, they all have pretty much perfect English by the time they leave school. 

There is no denying the logic of your argument, Spanish or French would be a far more useful language.  But as has been pointed out local cultures are also important and of course in Wales there is a strong resentment to everything being anglicised due to hundreds of years of blatant repression from Westminster governments.  This is why the Welsh language society has a lot of power.

 

 Is it really a good use of resources to put so much emphasis on Welsh language?  Is it really money well spent to have reversing warnings on dustbin lorries in Welsh and then English in Cardiff (a largely English speaking area)?  For an English only speaker they may have been run over by the time the warning gets to the English version!  
 

My wife and I sent our kids to a Welsh language school largely because they have a much better reputation and because they say it helps with learning generally to be bilingual at an early age.

[difflock]

My take on the teaching of minority languages, for which there is apparently passionate burning support for in the local communities, is wtf does its teaching  then need to be so generously government funded?

Surely passionate volunteers and parents at home could pass it on, IF there is such community support?

And bilingual road signage is just plain stupid, especially if safety related.

And dont get me started at the mulitlingual written signs and other shite within the "underfunded" NHS.

Marcus

[Mick Dempsey]

If the Welsh really wanted to piss off the English they should teach them modern languages with the same fervour that they teach Welsh.

Imagine a bright young generation holidaying, doing business and influencing the world at large whilst their English peers stood by, dumb as posts.

But if they want the next generation to continue to live in an open air museum or a ‘reservation’ they’re going the right way about it.

 

 

[Mark Bolam]

I couldn’t help but think of this -

 

[Big J]

3 hours ago, Stere said:

Sounds like you want to Bring back the welsh knot and canning for speaking Welsh.

 

 

Welsh Not - Wikipedia

EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

 

How about all the 1000's of other smaller languages around the world and regional  dialects? Dead languages? world would be boring place without the cultural diversity if they all died out.

 

.

 

I'd not advocating the eradication of minority languages, rather that I don't agree with their promotion over what is clearly a more useful and universal language (English). That money would be far better spent on teaching world languages.

 

2 hours ago, breffni said:

What about any wildlife that lives in open moorland? Or the lowlands you're planning to plant? 

 

We're planting either grassland or arable fields at low level, neither of which have much ecological value. With the moorlands, exactly how biodiverse do you think they really are? 

 

2 hours ago, Squaredy said:

There is no denying the logic of your argument, Spanish or French would be a far more useful language.  But as has been pointed out local cultures are also important and of course in Wales there is a strong resentment to everything being anglicised due to hundreds of years of blatant repression from Westminster governments.  This is why the Welsh language society has a lot of power.

 

 Is it really a good use of resources to put so much emphasis on Welsh language?  Is it really money well spent to have reversing warnings on dustbin lorries in Welsh and then English in Cardiff (a largely English speaking area)?  For an English only speaker they may have been run over by the time the warning gets to the English version!  
 

My wife and I sent our kids to a Welsh language school largely because they have a much better reputation and because they say it helps with learning generally to be bilingual at an early age.

 

The resurgence of the Welsh language seems to have more to do with resentment towards the English than any practical application, which I think is unfortunate. I'm happily in favour of it to be taught as a minority language, and supported within the community, but it's genuinely useless in an international context. It's not a good use of government resources at all, and that money would be far better spent on upskilling kids in other ways (other languages, other subjects, vocational learning etc). Parts of Wales suffer from uniquely awful deprivation and lack of economic opportunities, and anything that can be done to benefit the populace as a whole has to be worth considering. Being able to "caution, reversing lorry" in Welsh when there is an English sign right next to it doesn't fit that criteria! ?

[struie]

16 hours ago, Big J said:

I'm going to sound like an ignorant bellend, but can someone possibly explain to me what the point of learning languages like Welsh is (or Gallic in Scotland)? It's a genuine question, if you'll allow me to explain.

 

Given that the objective of learning a language is to communicate with other people, I've always struggled with the notion of learning a language that isn't widely spoken, unless it's in order to live in a country where it's exclusively spoken. So for instance, learning Finnish is a requirement to live in Finland, but there are only 5.5 million Finns. 

 

However, in the case of Wales and Welsh, everyone already speaks English, which is a perfectly adequate way of communicating with 1.5 billion other English speakers. Welsh is only spoken by just under 1 million people. 

 

Surely, if you're going to go to the effort of learning a second language, it ought to be useful outside of the context of your community when everyone in that community already speaks English. Just seems like a wasted effort to me.

 

I understand that there is a cultural and historic angle, but I've always taken a very practical approach to learning new skills. If it doesn't serve a purpose, I'm not interested.

 

Be kind in your responses! ?

you just answered your own question.

[breffni]

2 minutes ago, Big J said:

 

I'd not advocating the eradication of minority languages, rather that I don't agree with their promotion over what is clearly a more useful and universal language (English). That money would be far better spent on teaching world languages.

 

 

We're planting either grassland or arable fields at low level, neither of which have much ecological value. With the moorlands, exactly how biodiverse do you think they really are? 

 

 

The resurgence of the Welsh language seems to have more to do with resentment towards the English than any practical application, which I think is unfortunate. I'm happily in favour of it to be taught as a minority language, and supported within the community, but it's genuinely useless in an international context. It's not a good use of government resources at all, and that money would be far better spent on upskilling kids in other ways (other languages, other subjects, vocational learning etc). Parts of Wales suffer from uniquely awful deprivation and lack of economic opportunities, and anything that can be done to benefit the populace as a whole has to be worth considering. Being able to "caution, reversing lorry" in Welsh when there is an English sign right next to it doesn't fit that criteria! ?

There are massive problems with the lack of biodiversity in the uplands of Britain but planting with conifers is hardly going to improve that situation.