Parent Pages new website

Source: TELEGRAPH

Elton John has splashed out on a hoard of luxury items for his newborn surrogate son, including a £200 designer cradle that connects to an iPod.

By Victoria Ward 7:35AM GMT 31 Dec 2010

Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John, who was born on Christmas Day, will be treated to the best that money can buy. Sir Elton’s staff were spotted picking up the MamaRoo rocker, as well as boxes of top of the range toys and clothes, in Los Angeles, where the baby is staying. The rocking chair has five motion settings such as a car ride and a swing, a hanging mobile featuring designs inspired by famous paintings and an iPod dock.….Continue Reading

Source: DAILYMAIL

Droids with human faces wheeled into class to teach English.

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 11:08 PM on 28th December 2010

Pupils often assume their teachers don’t really exist outside the school gates, now robot classroom assistants could make this a reality.Almost 30 egg-shaped robots have started teaching English at primary schools in South Korea. The 3.3ft high machines have a TV panel that displays a female Caucasian face and can wheel around the classroom while speaking to the students. The robots are also able to read books and dance to music moving their head and arms. But despite appearances the robots, developed the Korea Institute of Science of Technology, are not autonomous beings.….Continue Reading

Source: TELEGRAPH

Children are growing up thinking that marriages are not meant to last because so many professional footballers have high profile affairs, experts have warned.

By Tim Ross, Social Affairs Editor

England internationals such as John Terry and Wayne Rooney, whose alleged infidelity was reported in the tabloid press, are role models for millions of teenage boys, according to Reg Bailey, who is leading a government review of the sexualisation of childhood.

He raised concerns that the actions of pop musicians and footballers may be creating “norms” in behaviour for children and indicated that his review for the Department for Education would consider the issue.

Mr Bailey’s concerns were echoed by Relate, the relationships support group, which offered to work with the Football Association to help limit the damage that footballers’ infidelity will have on the future marriages of millions of fans.….Continue Reading

Source: Guardian >> Read full article and comment

• Baby son born to surrogate mother in California
• Couple could face legal issues in UK over payment

By Helen Pidd

When the Beatles imagined their lives aged 64, they sang of knitting sweaters by the fireside, doing the garden and balancing grandchildren on their knees. Three months off that landmark birthday, Elton John might have partly retired from the pop music industry, but he is set to be busier than ever after becoming a father for the first time. The singer announced today that he and his partner, David Furnish, who is 48, have become parents after using a surrogate mother in the US. The boy, Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John, was born in California on Christmas Day, weighing 7lb 15oz, John’s LA-based publicist confirmed. The name Levon is the title of a track on John’s 1971 album Madman Across the Water.….Continue Reading

Source: DAILYMAIL

Music teachers have been told to avoid physical contact with pupils because of fears of accusations of paedophilia.

By TOM KELLY
Last updated at 1:12 AM on 29th December 2010

The Musicians’ Union has released a video, backed by the NSPCC, calling on members not to touch students. It said the policy would protect tutors, who face immediate suspension if an accusation of inappropriate touching is made and often have their careers destroyed even if they are found to be innocent. But teachers have branded the film a ‘hysterical overreaction’ and say it is likely only to heighten children’s anxiety about paedophilia.….Continue Reading

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Matthew Warchus spent two years turning Matilda into a musical. So was it hard work? Not compared to Lord of the Rings, the director tells Maddy Costa.

By Maddy Costa

For many theatre directors, transforming Roald Dahl’s 1988 novel Matilda into a musical might feel daunting. But Matthew Warchus appears to be taking it in his stride. There’s no arrogance in his composure: it’s simply the unexpected benefit of having spent four years heaving the behemoth that was the Lord of the Rings musical on to the stage. “It’s made everything else feel straightforward – in a good way.” Now that confidence has been justified with huge ticket sales and rave reviews. The production looks likely to transfer from Stratford to the West End next autumn.….Continue Reading

Source: INDEPENDENT>> Read full article and comment

The future of music in state schools is in peril, with councils across the country laying off music teachers ahead of swingeing cuts to budgets.

By Richard Garner, Education Editor

Teachers and heads of local authority music services have already been threatened with redundancy as a result of the Coalition Government’s squeeze on council spending. At least 64 councils – one in four – have already issued redundancy notices to staff, according to the Incorporated Society of Musicians. Deborah Annetts, its chief executive, who also chairs the Music Education Council, said: “Hardly a day goes by when we don’t hear of a new threat to music services. ”It can be redundancy or it can be changes to teachers’ conditions – leaving them with less hours.”….Continue Reading

Source: GUARDIAN

Alice Douglas’s children have spent much of the year competing in high-profile television talent shows. They say they have benefited from the experience but, she asks, was she right to expose them to the glare of celebrity at such a young age?

By Alice Douglas

One day in May this year, Hero, my 11-year-old daughter – a budding musician – decided to do a quick internet search for music competitions she could enter. Little did I know that within a matter of months this would lead to both Hero and her younger brother Tybalt appearing in separate television series before millions of people and immersing the whole family in the dizzying world of television talent shows.

Hero went on to become a nightly fixture on Sky’s Must be the Music, performing alongside Dizzee Rascal, Sharleen Spiteri and Jamie Cullum in front of 13,000 people at Wembley Arena and a TV audience of millions, while Tybalt won the BBC series My Genius Idea with a device he invented after a friend from school was killed by a car while on his bike. The device warns car drivers on rural roads if there is a bike, horse or broken-down car round the next bend.

That afternoon on the computer, Hero didn’t just launch herself into living rooms all over the country – she took us with her.….Continue Reading

Source: TELEGRAPH

A song written by a music teacher from London has emerged as an unlikely contender for the Christmas number one spot in the music charts after becoming a hit on the video-sharing website YouTube.

5:41PM GMT 14 Dec 2010

Rock ‘n’ Rolling Snowman, written by James Michalos, has been named as one of top ten contenders to make the Christmas charts by internet search engine Yahoo!. Mr Michalos, 34, a singing teacher at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, wrote the tune after getting sick of hearing the same Christmas songs every year. A video of the song, performed by Mr Michalos’ band Plastic Snow, has now become hugely popular on YouTube, boasting more than 6,500 views in under a week.….Continue Reading

Source: DAILYMAIL

She has a retinue of stylists and a penchant for avant garde fashion, hangs out with the likes of Beyoncé and Jay-Z, is a regular on the talk show circuit, and has stormed the British charts with her debut single.

By CLAIRE COLEMAN
Last updated at 10:42 AM on 13th December 2010

And she’s still only ten years old. Meet Willow Smith, daughter of Hollywood royalty, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, and the new, new thing on the international music scene. She looks like a pocket-sized version of pop star of the moment Rihanna, yet it’s not just her edgy choice of clothes, but also her swagger and attitude that’s very apparent in the slickly choreographed video for her single, Whip My Hair.….Continue Reading

Source: TELEGRAPH

Music teachers are being told not to touch the fingers of pupils learning to play instruments.

By David Harrison

The Musicians’ Union has produced a video telling teachers: “It isn’t necessary to touch children in order to demonstrate: there’s always a better way.”

But the video has provoked a storm of protest from teachers and campaigners who attacked the guidance as “madness” and said the video – which features a man teaching a child the violin – as a “grossly caricatured version of teacher-pupil contact”.

The video, called “Inappropriate Demonstration”, shows a lesson in which a pupil fails to play the right notes.….Continue Reading

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Gill Sutherland and her husband love music – but are their radical tastes leaving no room for their kids to revolt?

By Gill Sutherland

The only time my dad was “on trend” was by accident. After 20 years in the army, he got promoted to major. Bowie ruled at the time, so having a dad called Major Tom was pretty glam. Tom and Maureen, my Scottish working-class parents, were always spectacularly unhip. Even though they were in their 20s in the 1960s, youth culture passed them by. They’ve never even owned a Beatles record. But I wouldn’t have been without my immensely straight parentage – it gave me the gift of rebellion … Readers, I was a punk rocker. I listened to the rowdiest of rackets, dressed diabolically and revelled in being misunderstood by the previous generation. Refusing to grow up, I somehow fashioned a career out of my misspent youth and got work at Just 17 and Smash Hits magazines before graduating to that bastion of cocky adolescence, NME, where I met my husband, Steve.….Continue Reading

Source: TELEGRAPH

The 10-year-old pop sensation daughter of Will Smith has been groomed for stardom.

1:57PM GMT 10 Dec 2010

Willow Smith, the 10-year-old pop sensation, has almost been manufactured for a life in the spotlight. She made her film debut in 2007 in I Am Legend, playing Marley Neville, the daughter of Will Smith’s character Robert and followed this up with an award-winning performance in Kit Kittredge, An American Girl.….Continue Reading

Source: TELEGRAPH

Willow Smith is the latest in a line of children who have had pop hits.

1:59PM GMT 10 Dec 2010

Willow Smith, whose single Whip My Hair is battling for the No1 slot in the UK charts, joins a list of celebrated musical child stars that includes Michael Jackson, Lulu, Stevie Wonder and Britney Spears. But here’s three that may not have people rushing out to listen again to their ‘hits’…

Jimmy Osmond

Jimmy Osmond, the youngest of the nine Osmond children, remains the youngest performer to have a No. 1 single in the UK Singles Chart, with “Long Haired Lover from Liverpool” in 1972, when he was nine. He is currently playing Buttons in Cinderella at the White Rock Theatre Hastings.….Continue Reading

Source: TELEGRAPH

“But it seems that, far from simply copying the grown ups, this generation of junior superstars are the style setters.

BY TELEGRAPH

Take 10 year-old Willow Smith, daughter of Will and Jada Smith, whose single ‘Whip My Hair’ is already an internet sensation with 3.7 million views ahead of its December 6 release.….Continue Reading

Source: DAILYMAIL

A lesbian couple who advertised for a sperm donor are embroiled in a bitter ­custody battle after the baby’s father demanded access to the child.

By ANDY DOLAN
Last updated at 12:04 AM on 10th December 2010

Civil partners Stacey and Kate Cassin are trying to block their daughter’s ­biological father from gaining full ­parental rights.

The women advertised for a sperm donor on a gay website because they could not afford ­hospital IVF treatment. They claim to have reached a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ with donor Mark Hartill, a musician, that he would not be involved in the child’s upbringing.….Continue Reading

Monkey Music in SOLIHULL introduces music to very young children in a way they can easily understand and enjoy.

Source: DAILYMAIL

There was a time when rock stars were working-class heroes. They came rampaging out of the back streets of industrial towns and the council estates of inner-city London.

By DAVID THOMAS
Last updated at 9:03 AM on 6th December 2010

They revelled in drugs and debauchery, seduced groupies by the dozen, threw TVs out of hotel windows and thoroughly ­outraged the establishment.

Public schoolboys, on the other hand, were brought up to run the country, become captains of industry and win Nobel Prizes.

They did not have groupies. They had jolly nice girlfriends called Fiona, whom they later married. They certainly did not become rock stars.

How times have changed. For these days, the charts are not so much full of pop music as posh music.….Continue Reading

Source: BBC NEWS

Disney’s Tron Legacy has premiered in the UK with director Joseph Kosinski hailing the film as ”a true 3D movie” with the actors wearing fully illuminated, specially designed suits.

6 December 2010 Last updated at 00:10 GMT

Stars Jeff Bridges and Olivia Wilde met fans at the event in London and praised the concept of the film and the futuristic musical score by electronic music duo Daft Punk.….Continue Reading

Source: DAILYMAIL >> Read full article and comment

Stores face legal threat over adult imagery.

By GERRI PEEV
Last updated at 3:51 AM on 6th December 2010

Companies targeting children with sexually themed imagery face prosecution under a crackdown on the sexualisation of the young launched today.

Retailers that refuse to discontinue obviously sexual products aimed at children – such as pole-dancing kits and padded bras – could be prosecuted under laws being considered by ministers.

And raunchy music videos could be banned before the 9pm watershed as part of an investigation into the explicit images used to sell pop music to children.….Continue Reading

Source: Guardian >> Read full article and comment

Research for the Social Market Foundation confirms the adage ‘It’s not what you know, but who you know’

Anushka Asthana, policy editor

Social networks have been identified as the key reason why young people from affluent backgrounds secure more jobs in popular professions than poorer peers.

A report by the Social Market Foundation (SMF) finds that informal recruitment through word-of-mouth is particularly prevalent in the creative industries such as advertising, architecture, design, publishing and journalism, where the cliché that “it’s not what you know but who you know” appears to ring true.….Continue Reading

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If Miley Cyrus and today’s child demographic-snaring acts have their roots in anything, it’s 60s bubblegum pop. Bob Stanley looks back at the genre that took the rage out of rock’n'roll and invited in the tots.

by Bob Stanley

There are several classes in the school of rock in 2010. Nursery kids can learn the rudiments at a class like Monkey Music; they progress on to a TV theme compilation like CBeebies Song Time; then step up to Australian “pre-school Fab Four”, the Wiggles (who, as of 2008, had sold 17m DVDs and 4m CDs. And featured Creedence Clearwater Revival’s John Fogerty on one of their albums). Eventually, they graduate to the Disney stable – Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers and the like – and their aspirational California powerpop.

The seeds for this ruthless partitioning of the kids’ pop market were sown in the 60s. Before 1964, rock’n'roll had been a purely teenage concern, but the Beatles changed the rules. Their records were as much nursery toys as teen booty; when Don Draper sent his secretary to buy “some Beatles 45s” for his daughter, he certainly didn’t care which ones she listened to. And the following decade saw records made for kids that were of a quality not seen before or since. In the States in the late 60s, a genre called bubblegum was an astutely kid-orientated extension of moptop pop, and its apogee was the Archies’ Sugar, Sugar, written by Brill Building veteran Jeff Barry in 1969.….Continue Reading

Source: DAILYMAIL

His ten-year-old daughter’s got a hit single and a tour on the way. His son’s made a £180m movie. Are Will Smith and his wife making their children grow up just a little too fast?

By NICOLE LAMPERT
Last updated at 2:56 PM on 2nd December 2010

At the American Music Awards, one of the biggest nights of the music calendar, the Smith family are all working hard on the red carpet.

There is mum Jada, sashaying in her draped Pucci dress, and actor son Jaden, 12, his adorable smile just visible under his insouciantly placed cap.

But stealing the scene is the new star of Will Smith’s family. Her name is Willow and she is just ten years old. Dressed in a cute grey, cut-off jumpsuit with sexually suggestive belts and straps, she waves at the adoring crowd. Some have applauded this latest outfit as another example of her amazing fashion sense; others may simply deem this get-up inappropriate for a child.….Continue Reading

Source: TELEGRAPH

In the unlikeliest combination of the year veteran lush Shane MacGowan teams up with the clean cut Priests.

2:00PM GMT 01 Dec 2010

…Watch Video

Source: BBC NEWS

The stars of the Spider-Man musical – the most expensive show to be staged on Broadway – were left dangling in mid-air in its first preview performance.

30 November 2010 Last updated at 09:41 GMT

Lead Reeve Carney and actress Natalie Mendoza were suspended at different times over the crowd as flying stunts went wrong, audience members said.

The New York Times said the $65m (£41.8m) show was stopped five times and ran for more than three hours. The music for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is by U2′s Bono and The Edge.….Continue Reading

Source: TELEGRAPH

With music by U2′s Bono and The Edge and being staged in the sprawling Foxwoods Theatre on 42nd Street,

By TELEGRAPH

With music by U2′s Bono and The Edge and being staged in the sprawling Foxwoods Theatre on 42nd Street, New York, the musical Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark has taken years and a reported $60 million to accomplish.….Continue Reading

Source: DAILYMAIL

An eight-year-old child breakdancer from Hawaii has become an internet sensation with his impressive moves.

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 6:34 PM on 28th November 2010

Angelo Baligad – known as Lil Demon – is already taking on competitors more than twice his size and several times his age.

The tiny dancer spins on his head, somersaults and supports his body weight with a single hand during the dance off contest.….Continue Reading

Source: Guardian >> Read full article and comment

Lego hats are all the rage – so could Leo Hickman and his three-year-old make a better one than Will.i.am from Black Eyed Peas?

by Leo Hickman

^‘It’s silly,” says Jacob, the family’s Lego aficionado. “That doesn’t work.” He’s got a point. My three-year-old son is looking at a picture of the Lego hat worn to the American Music Awards at the weekend by Will.i.am and he’s already spotted a design flaw. Quite a major flaw, in fact: it is impossible to make such a hat with normal Lego bricks.

Father and son, united in frustration at how a Black Eyed Pea could display such a poor understanding of the square-edged symmetry that underpins Lego’s genius, empty a box of Lego on to the kitchen table and set forth on making our own hat.….Continue Reading

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Two new albums – one sampling vintage TV shows, the other featuring spooky sounds made by schoolkids in the 70s, should delight and disturb younger listeners in equal measure.

By Simon Reynolds

One thing I’ve always wanted for my music is for it to appeal to children,” says Ian Hodgson of Moon Wiring Club. “An ideal listening situation would be a family car journey. I think children would like all the voices and oddness. If you present kids with fun, spooky electronic music, then they might grow up wanting to make it themselves, like I did with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.” Hodgson’s friend and collaborator Jon Brooks, aka the Advisory Circle, goes one better with the debut release for his label Café Kaput, which consists of spooky electronic music made by schoolchildren in the 70s.

Brooks and Hodgson originally met through MySpace. They rapidly discovered that they were “probably variations of the same person”, according to Hodgson, with a shared passion for vintage 70s and 80s TV (not just the programmes but their incidental music and theme tunes). The friendship soon became an alliance. Brooks has done the mastering for all four Moon Wiring Club albums, including the brand new and brilliant A Spare Tabby at the Cat’s Wedding. Hodgson, in turn, has done the artwork for Café Kaput. A full-blown collaboration between Moon Wiring Club and the Advisory Circle is in the pipeline.….Continue Reading

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A burst of Christmas pantos doesn’t mean children’s theatre is in good health. We urgently need more original work.

BY Mike Kenny

So it’s nearly Christmas again. I’m OK if I keep my head down and get on with what I’m doing, but invariably someone will mention the flowering of children’s theatre and I come over all “Bah, humbug”. And I’m spitting feathers and dribbling bile. Again.

I’m getting so sick of people telling me there’s a boom in theatre for children. Where is it? This is the time of year when theatre remembers the children’s audience exists. There’s panto, but, can we agree for a start that panto doesn’t count, it is to theatre what karaoke is to music. I wouldn’t be without it, I like a laugh as much as the next miserable old so-and-so, but everything about it says “Don’t take me seriously. I want you to forget your daily lives, not look at them.”….Continue Reading

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Will Smith’s daughter Willow has one of the hit songs of the year, and Jay-Z says she’s at the start of an ‘incredible journey’. But is it all still too much too young, asks Caroline Sullivan.

by Caroline Sullivan

Willow Smith only turned 10 in October, but you’d hardly have guessed it from watching her on the Ellen DeGeneres show on US television last week. It was the debut TV performance of her first single, Whip My Hair, and she pulled it off with the unsettling poise – and

voice – of someone twice her age. DeGeneres accurately called the track “one of the hottest songs of the year” – it sold 137,000 downloads in the US in its first week and is expected to be a hit here, too.….Continue Reading

Source: TELEGRAPH

Critics say the Suzuki method is no way to learn music. But can millions of children – plus their fanatical parents – be wrong?

By Richard Johnson

I printed off a reward chart on my computer. My six-year-old daughter would get a sticker for every day she practised the violin and, when the chart was full, she would be allowed a pizza on ‘family film night’. At least that was how it happened on the parenting website. How it actually happened I don’t know, because I was in the kitchen. But I heard the sound of ripping. The chart, I think – in half. Followed by a huge wail. Violin practice clearly wasn’t going well. Maybe it was time we tried Suzuki.….Continue Reading

Source: TELEGRAPH

Catherine Warren is in year 11 at Bristol Grammar School, working hard towards her GCSEs and looking forward to life in the sixth form.

By Rod MacKinnon

With ambitions to become a psychologist, she also enjoys the more creative aspects of school life, taking part in musical and dramatic performances.

And Catherine has also helped us to appoint our new Director of Drama.

When we make teaching appointments at BGS, students have their own panel (albeit with a member of staff sitting in), devise their own questions and a nominated chair feeds back to the appointment panel at a debrief at the end of the day.….Continue Reading

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With job prospects scarce, some enterprising graduates are tapping into the help and financial support of their parents to buy business franchises

by Rebecca Smithers

While most fellow graduates are fretting over job advertisements and application forms, and coming to terms with the brutal reality of months – if not years – of unemployment, Emma Luxton spends her days leaping around playing “musical bumps and statues” with toddlers in church halls and in front of nursery classes.

Just months after graduating with a degree in drama from the University of Exeter in June this year, the 22-year-old is running her own business, and clearly loving every minute of it. Luxton, who had a bit-part in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and has also worked with makeover guru Gok Wan, has taken up a franchise with Pyjama Drama, providing drama and play classes for two- to seven-year-olds.

“I am very happy and this feels absolutely the right job for me,” she explains. “I decided, some time ago, that acting was not for me and teaching was what I wanted to do.”….Continue Reading

Source: DAILYMAIL

Most women remember giving birth as a joyful moment in their lives, but when I look back it is with pure horror.

By LAURA KEMP
Last updated at 1:56 AM on 18th November 2010

It was an experience so bloody, so gruesome, that it remains a nightmare for me.

I thought I was prepared for childbirth. My pregnancy had been textbook, my mother had delivered me at home without any pain relief — a progressive thing to do in 1974. So why would I be any different?

But instead, three years on, I’m scarred by what I went through delivering my beautiful son Paddy.….Continue Reading

Source: TELEGRAPH >> Read full article and comment

Angel eyes the Christmas No 1.

By Adam Sweeting

The battle for the Christmas number one is always bloody and brutal, but who knows – if she can get past the rustic rappers from the Yeo Valley commercial, Bryn Terfel and Bing Crosby singing White Christmas and the X Factor contingent, this year it might be Isabel with her lulling version of Michael Jackson’s You Are Not Alone.

That’s Isabel the Choirgirl, as Decca has rather long-windedly dubbed her. Her real name is Isabel Suckling, and she’s a sparky, blond-haired 12-year-old chorister plucked from the ranks of the Choir of York Minster after Decca launched a nationwide hunt for talent.….Continue Reading

Source: Jamaica Observer >> Read full article and comment

BY DONNA HUSSEY-WHYTE Sunday Observer reporter husseyd@jamaicaobserver.com

Sunday, October 31, 2010

According to Thompson and other community members, the two, 34-year-old Pamela and 36-year-old Claudette, were at a call box at the front of their community on Eighth Street when a man who had recently been released from prison shot Pamela with whom he had had an argument.

Realising that her sister had been shot, Claudette reportedly ran, shouting for help. The gunman aimed at her and fired. Pamela died on the spot while Claudette succumbed to her injuries two days later.

Thompson, who said he raised all his 18 children — 13 girls and five boys — single-handedly, said the incident broke his heart and it still weighs heavily on his mind.

“All of them grew with me without any woman. It was me and them alone!” he said proudly. “My wife left when the youngest was a year and two months. And all of them advance in school.”

To support them, he said he did a number of jobs, mainly tailoring.

“I used to make their uniform and have a neighbour who love to plait hair, plait their hair,” he explained. “I used to cook for them. Yes man, me do all of the cooking.”

NO parent likes to bury his or her own child. Imagine then, the devastation of 100-year-old George Thompson who lost his two youngest children to gun violence five years ago.

“I almost drop down over the tomb to see the two of them burying at the same time,” Thompson told the Sunday Observer in an interview at his home in Greenwich Town. “When the bwoy kill them mi brain just start sing. A pure religious music just singing in my head. Mi head just a sing and that make mi relax.”  … Continue reading

Source: DAILYMAIL

‘First time I’ve laughed for a while’

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 5:39 PM on 13th November 2010

Lily Allen has started the healing process following the tragic loss of her baby.

The 25-year-old singer, who has been in hospital battling septicaemia, tweeted this afternoon ‘First time I’ve laughed for a while’ after posting a photograph of an advert asking for musicians for a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band on her page.

It’s the first time Lily has taken to Twitter since thanking fans for their ‘kind messages’ after she miscarried the baby she had been expecting with boyfriend Sam Cooper.….Continue Reading

Source: INDEPENDENT >> Read full article and comment

The digital revolution means instant access to music, games and videos.

By David Crookes

While the trend today is to slap on a pair of 3D glasses and peer into the future, some people prefer to put on specs of the rose-tinted variety and look back with a fond smile. Every generation, as it ages, has a yearning to turn back the clock and return to simpler times. You may find it hard to let go. Or you may like to reminisce in a shared moment over a glass of wine. Perhaps you actively attempt to keep things exactly as they used to be in the belief that life was infinitely better back in the day. Nostalgia, it has to be said, comes in a variety of flavours.….Continue Reading

Source: GUARDIAN

Report also found men who spend more time with their children and work similar hours to partners are less stressed.

Amelia Hill
Thursday 4 November 2010 20.20 GMT

It will be music to the ears of working mothers everywhere: fathers are happier when they do more of the housework themselves, spend longer with their children and have working partners who are in the office just as long as they are, a major new study has found.

The best way to de-stress a father is for his partner to share the weight of domestic burdens with him, rather than ironing his socks, making his breakfast and taking the lion’s share of responsibility for the kids.

Researchers hope the interim findings from the study, called Work Life Balance: Working for Fathers?, will prompt employers to re-evaluate myths about work – so that women cease to have their careers blocked by bosses who assume they will be primary carers of children, and men are given more opportunity to change their work-life balance.….Continue Reading

Source: DAILYMAIL

Sent one more than 1,000 text messages is banned for four years from the classroom.

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 7:25 AM on 5th November 2010

A woman teacher was struck off for four years today for sharing a shower with teenage girl pupils before a school concert.

Music head Debbie Lloyd-Jones was banned from teaching over her improper relationship with girls aged 13 to 16 – including sending text messages saying: ‘I love you.’

Disciplinary panel chairman John Collins ruled it was ‘inappropriate behaviour’ for Mrs Lloyd-Jones, 29, to have stripped into a bikini to shower with girls….Continue Reading

Source: Guardian >> Read full article and comment

Central Bedfordshire council threatens to make music lessons the preserve of the rich. And it isn’t just classical at stake.

Tom Service Tuesday 2 November 201016.39 GMT

Ominous news from Central Bedfordshire Council that they intend to stop funding their music service (Bedfordshire Youth Music service) from 2012. The effect of this is that if you want to have access to the county’s network of youth orchestras, bands, choirs, instrumental music teachers, Saturday morning music centres – etc, etc, etc – you’re going to have to pay much more for them, and many families simply won’t be able to afford the cost of keeping their children in local music-making. You can join conductor Michael Rose’s campaign against the cuts here. Rose worked with Bedfordshire’s music service from 1972-1990, and as his letter to his MP, Tory Mark Lancaster, says, there’s a larger significance to what’s happening in Beds. As Rose writes, Bedfordshire is the “canary in the mine”.….Continue Reading

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Ambergate school offers a ‘bespoke service’ for children with special needs – including visits to No. 10

Chris Arnot
Tuesday 2 November 2010

Last Easter term was probably not the best time to invite Gordon Brown to lunch. An election was looming and the former prime minister was even busier than usual. But Callum Wilson, 13, issued the invitation anyway. He has become rather preoccupied with writing to politicians, having recently added a framed photograph of David Cameron to a collection that also includes George W Bush. And Brown? Well, his staff politely invited Callum and his classmates from Ambergate Sports College in Grantham to Downing Street instead.

“We weren’t allowed into the house, but we were waved past all those security people,” Callum says. “I was quite excited because I thought it was a beautiful place. If I could change anything, I’d straighten up that 0 on the number 10. It’s a bit wobbly.”….Continue Reading

Source: TELEGRAPH >> Read full article and comment

Singer Lily Allen has lost her baby, the singer’s spokesman said today.

Published: 12:12PM GMT 01 Nov 2010

Source: TELEGRAPH >> Read full article and comment

Singer Mariah Carey will give birth to her first child next spring, she has announced on NBC television’s Access Hollywood show.

Published: 10:57AM BST 29 Oct 2010

Source: Guardian >> Read full article and comment

A kind of parental voodoo invocation is responsible for the rise of Leo, Keira and even Amelie on the list of popular baby names.

Andrew Pulver Thursday 28 October 201016.02 BST

Back in the early 90s, when I got my first job on a magazine, I sat opposite a very nice, well-spoken woman who I felt a bit sorry for, despite her apparent wealth and privilege. When she was born, presumably in the early 60s or late 50s, her name was no doubt the last word in counterculture chic or beat generation wackiness, like Starfire or Sunshine. But being called Kylie after 1987 was no joke.

The recently published list of popular baby names is testament to the effect media figures have on naming fads. TV stars are – on the whole – valued for their ordinariness, so their names aren’t especially weird. Musicians are often at the opposite extreme – names such as Madonna, Dre and Siouxsie are just a bit too distinctive to be widely adopted. But film stars occupy a perfect middle ground: as popular aspirational figures, they loom large in the popular imagination and often adopt names that manage to differentiate them from the wider mass – but not too much.….Continue Reading

Source: DAILYMAIL >> Read full article and comment

My marriage feels perfect most of the time. I’ve got four amazing children and a husband who not only remembers to buy birthday presents, but even occasionally wraps them in something other than a plastic bag.

By SHONA SIBARY
Last updated at 8:41 AM on 28th October 2010

He’s a considerate partner and a devoted father. Yet once in a while I catch myself watching him with our four blonde, blue-eyed children – all so like him you’d think I had nothing to do with them – and I feel unsure because I know, deep down, that if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t be married at all.

People choose one another for many different reasons. They might share a taste in music or a love of theatre; childhoods in the country or nomadic upbringings abroad. But we had none of these building blocks to bring us together. What made us commit to a lifetime under the same roof was the fact that, 12 years ago, I accidentally got pregnant.

At the time we were like Ross and Rachel in the sitcom Friends – having a break in a relationship that was more up and down than a flight of stairs. ….Continue Reading

Source: INDEPENDENT >> Read full article and comment

To most of us, the image of a young person going off to study music at university conjures up pictures of piano or violin master-classes, and students grappling with some of the more demanding passages of a Chopin or Mozart piece.

By Steve McCormack

But, although these scenes are still played out in university music studios, altogether different sounds, reflecting musical styles unknown until the late 20th century are now also emanating from campuses.

One of the most eye-catching examples of this development is at the University of Chichester, where the music department accounts for more than 10 per cent of the entire student population of over 4,500, and where half of all students across all subject areas come from families and backgrounds where higher education participation has hitherto been a rare event.….Continue Reading

Source: Guardian >> Read full article and comment

In July 2010, the Guardian and Amref worked with more than 400 young people…

Laurence Topham
Tuesday 26 October 2010

In July 2010, the Guardian and Amref worked with more than 400 young people from 10 primary schools in Katine, north-east Uganda, to produce an exhibition of their art that would be displayed at the Guardian’s offices in London. Artist Ben Barbour, who specialises in community projects, ran a series of art workshops for the young people….Continue Reading

Source: Guardian >> Read full article and comment

LGBT History Month has helped one school to eradicate homophobia, and it has now become a diversity training centre for other schools.

Sue Learner
Tuesday 26 October 2010

‘I’ve had pupils say ‘Miss, you are trying to turn us gay’ and I ask them, ‘do you turn black during Black History Month or Turkish during Turkish month?’” Elly Barnes, a music teacher at Stoke Newington school in north London, is used to tackling such questions. Prompted by seeing homophobia around her in school on many occasions, she now runs Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) History Month here every February.

LGBT History Month was launched nationally by the lobby group Schools Out five years ago, and Stoke Newington school was one of the first to celebrate the event by integrating it into the curriculum. But the school has now gone one step further and become a diversity training centre, training teachers from both primary and secondary schools on equal opportunity policies, giving advice on resources and demonstrating LGBT practice lessons.….Continue Reading