Motherload

I found the BBC Radio 4 Programme broadcast yesterday ('The World's Best Teachers') captivating and inspiring. It was all about Doug Lemov's techniques for teaching, which focus on gentle, non-invasive interventions helping children and students to bring their attention back to the classroom. Teachers can stay in control of their own emotions, and children don't feel yelled at and coerced. I found it inspiring for so many reasons. When I was a university lecturer, we were never given any teacher training at all, which is why university lecturers are, on the whole, poor teachers. All my teaching was based on having done a load of acting and improv as an undergraduate – I acted my way through. On the whole that worked fine, unless I was in a sticky situation with one student, or wasn't as familiar with the material I was trying to teach. I did have a year in the classroom, in France, in a Lycée Technique in the Vosges. I was 21, on a year abroad during my un...

Thank goodness I saw Helen McCrory's sublime Medea courtesy of National Theatre Live  last week. Otherwise I might find myself becoming complacent about being happy in motherhood. Yup, I am that age. I cannot go out to the theatre any more, because of young children, recession (don't tell me it's over), and exorbitant ticket and babysitting fees. But I CAN go to the local cinema with a friend and some popcorn, and sit amongst a throng of grey-haired ladies and gentlemen, all pretending we are what we once were, and down on the South Bank. It is a strange experience to hear big-voiced theatrical projection and see facial expressions meant for the back of a proscenium theatre, brought to you in close up on a cinema screen. An old friend of mine was also in the production, and frankly, looked as if he was gurning. Others have assured me that from the stalls, he was excellent. So it is not a perfect transmission of the theatrical experience, but it would not have matte...

Jacqueline Rose's review of a recent glut of publishing on motherhood makes, as ever, brilliant and thought-provoking reading. But, oh dear, I struggled to read it — not remotely because what she says is somehow inaccessible or highfaluting, or jargon-filled (the usual accusations made against 'academic' writing, mostly without bothering to read it). What she says is limpid and multi-layered, suggestive, provocative, and I agree with it. I struggled because there is just no bridge today between academia and other areas of life, and it causes me pain every day. She opens on Tim Minchin's Matilda , noting the wry critique he offers of vicious perfectionism in childrearing. Music to my ears. Try, however, actually saying anything like this about Matilda in Muswell Hill. What it means here is the summer workshop at the local performing arts centre, populated by little girls, whose parents are assuring them constantly that they are (and must remain) miracles while pus...