Thinking thinking

I am liking this one. A thinking skills exam paper.

Liking an exam paper! I reveal my nerdy, girly swot, knees-together inner core here, huh?

But this is different! No, really! The questions are interesting! It's all about assessing arguments of plastic waste and finding out where the statue is.

I am sure stuff like this is the answer to home education. Even though I don't know what the question is.

But I like it. And I wrestle Squirrel to have a go.

Squirrel remains, at 9am, subdued and bleary-eyed (probably from the Tixylix-vodka mix the night before), but in a perfect proto-language state for me to seize the moment, and embark on this new, parentally-misconceived home ed project, where working through the entire 50 questions in 1 hour 30 minutes seems like a breeze.

Because by now, out of bed two hours earlier and three black coffees in, I am all ebullient enthusiasm about an exam paper that puzzles over high-speed vehicles and traffic cameras.

And wow, do I feel smug. My parent-educator identity is considering how a worthy paragraph on what speed a Volvo is travelling is of infinitely more value in oh so many uncountable ways, than the back of a cereal box advertising a plastic space lord.

By Question 3, Squirrel's face is sinking into the cornflakes, but I can see the social prestige my little girls could acquire by mastering this thinking skills lark. My ambitions are boundless. With clear thinking, who knows? Straight into Oxbridge, then with the right social contacts my low-born offspring can be projected to the literati of British society. To levels even beyond Melyvn Bragg.

Imagine. Squirrel, after doing her daily thinking exercises for the next five years, will evolve beyond knuckle-dragging her way into Mark One, and slide gracefully into the cultured Donna Karan-dressed power networks of the creative, thinking elite.

Give it a mere ten years and Tiger will be propped up on Newsnight delivering nuanced and complex reasonings about serious and worthy matters, such as women in the Renaissance, or badger culls.

Shark will power her way through the social and cultural intelligentsia to change the way this world thinks about seaweed.

Then my superego really kicks in. Because of course. It is the answer. Acquiring thinking skills is the key to persuasion, politics, and power.

I bet they do not give these thinking skills exam papers to the future workforce slaving away in the factory comp at the end of the road; but I'm certain all the public schools get their future politicians to swot up on stuff like this as part of their entitlement training for PPE and striding about the world, ruling it like they think it's theirs.

Breathe deep, Squirrel, because you're just about to meet them, eyeball-to-eyeball.

Well, Squirrel has wandered off now to acquire thinking skills in her own way. By dressing Arseface in a plastic bag, strapping her to a cardboard box, and chucking her off the roof.

Hmm. I have no one to play with. Maybe you'd like to have a go.