Schadenfreude

Here's a shocker.

Then a large part of me thinks, doesn't the glossing, filling in, making up, using assumptions happen anyway, if you're gripped by the drama of composing those words, and paid a good salary to do it?

But maybe I'm not so forgiving; because here I am, about to jump on the bandwagon of recrimination, dig up the past, etc etc. In mitigation, I'll admit the indefensible: enjoying, amongst it all, that naughty moment of Schadenfreude.

You can probably guess why. (Surely it can't be that I harbour injustices, nor seek level scores for tiny grudges and petty resentments! No way!)

It was the one article Johann wrote that I've always held in a special place.

The article driven by a writerly need to provide an eye-popping, roller-coaster of a read. The one where home educated children made it to the top of the list for totally unwatched kids heading towards criminality.

Our turn for the 'polemicising'; the demonstration of our 'errors and idiocies', showing up our 'wrongs', so that we can 'get it right' and 'reduce our wrongdoing'.

And it was a great read. Didn't matter that sticking the knife in the home ed world didn't help the article make the serious points it could have made.

On the home ed issues, the writer failed to think through the implications, missed the points about law, misrepresented kids and parents, confused roles of welfare and education, glossed over legal parental duties, showed scant understanding of key issues in special needs, education, or indeed, having responsibility for kids, and so helped undermine the important points to make about minors held in prison and detention centres. A big fail.

Of course I could not hold people to account for one article. I wouldn't stand up to scrutiny for a second!

But once again, thanks, Johann. Score levelled. Please make your writing great with incision and precision rather than through cheap shots with kids.