andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2012-01-05 11:00 am
andrewducker) wrote2012-01-05 11:00 am
Entry tags:
- advice,
- bureaucracy,
- business,
- care,
- children,
- china,
- clivebarker,
- comic,
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- education,
- efficiency,
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Interesting Links for 05-01-2012
- Why "vi" works the way it does.
- How To Be More Interesting (In 10 Simple Steps)
- Loch Ness is a giant spirit level that shows Scotland bending with the tides
- You can't run people at 100% efficiency 100% of the time.
- Childhood in the UK - better than every before.
- A Man. A Van. A Surprising Business Plan.
- Google+ Is Going To Mess Up The Internet
- Not everyone is happy to see cenobites
- This is pretty much how I feel about Tom Cruise
- The People's Front of Scientology are not happy with the Scientologist People's Front.
- If you asked Calvin's Dad about periods...
- The Name of My Next Band
- Social Care Services to be merged into the NHS
- How to graduate from MIT (or get through pretty-much any challenging situation)
- Prozac increases neuroplasticity - which is why it increases the effect of counselling
Happy kiddies
It's good to highlight the positive, but talking about 'this negative myth-making' like this seems... well, a little dismissive of what seem to be actually quite good reasons to think that British kids have been doing unusually badly in terms of subjective and material well-being. It's very nice that they're doing better in various ways now, but I'm always wary of people lauding the fact that things are now in some ways better-than-awful.
Re: Happy kiddies
For the country, policy agendas are constantly distorted by half-truths and downright misinterpretations of reality. The worst example was in 2007, when Unicef published a report suggesting that the UK was at the bottom of a league table of developed countries for childhood wellbeing.
The report created a huge storm of outrage. Politicians of every stripe scrambled to respond.
But if you flick to the technical blurb at the back of the document, the researchers themselves admit that the data was partial, used research conducted differently in different countries, and was quite old. In fact the UK data was so old that it pre-dated many of the policies introduced to improve the situation.
Yet despite its many flaws, the report pointed the policy agenda towards a range of issues that probably do not need tackling. In the process, it deflected attention from the children who really do have difficult lives and badly need help.
Re: Happy kiddies
Re: Happy kiddies