Long may we footle

Normally, I am happy to live and let live. No, really! I even taught in a school and everything! So it's an option, right? And I was within a whisper of choosing that option myself for Shark, Tiger and Squirrel, because it seemed like the easy way out.

Until I had to prise a toddler out a toilet. It was then I realised that school was the hardest option. May as well lie in bed tomorrow morning and call it education by another name.

But recently, I became a bit cross about the school option. I feel more reluctant to shrug my shoulders and say, It's an option, right? Because don't the stories I'm hearing get worse and worse?

No longer is it good enough for primary schools to eliminate art, craft, dance, drama, music and anything which sniffs of a personal expression, they must eliminate all possibility for creative thinking as well.

So the one afternoon per month that Tinkertop got to choose a project to do? Eliminated. Because we must do more spelling. Spelling has an answer and two hours on a Friday afternoon of an open-ended project on dinosaurs has no right answer and we cannot grade you.

What are you people doing sending your kids to these institutions? It is feckin obvious that under government instruction they are bent on controlling your child's mind, determined to destroy any creative footling-about time and simply narrow down the options Tinkertop has when she reaches for that piece of paper.

It is deeply ironic when I also hear stories from Asia; the ones where industry buys in creativity from the West because oops! The state-controlled education system created armies of drones with barely a creative idea to share amongst them.

So what does the West do? Set on a course to destroy what originality we have and create a copy-culture of the 50-kids in a classroom type you can find in China.

It's obvious to me what I have to do for my own. Model footling-about time, follow fancies, indulge in passing creative thoughts, encourage whimsical what-iffery, and say to Squirrel You're spending the day sewing leaves together? Sure, go ahead. We have nothing else planned.