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Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

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cesare said:
Personally I don't agree that domestic science should be abolished in schools. Children need to be equipped with skills for all aspects of their adult lives not just paid work. Also, abolishing domestic science feeds into the devaluing of domestic work. What I do think, though, is that all aspects of domestic science should be taught to all children. Food and nutrition, laundry and cleaning, household money management, DIY and repairs, first aid, child and pet care, gardening etc, (and I haven't listed these most obvious examples in any particular order of importance).
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In the late 1980s when I was in school we were taught how to wire plugs, stuff about loan interest, basic nutririon, first aid, how to change a wheel etc. I got the impression we were bending the National Curriculum a bit by the way wiring a plug got squeezed into Physics, mind.

Do they not do this any more (I know that in England they didn't do a lot of this even back when I was in school)?

Of course we covered all the skills necessary for paid work too ie. showing up on time and not asking awkward questions...
 
cesare said:
Personally I don't agree that domestic science should be abolished in schools. Children need to be equipped with skills for all aspects of their adult lives not just paid work. Also, abolishing domestic science feeds into the devaluing of domestic work. What I do think, though, is that all aspects of domestic science should be taught to all children. Food and nutrition, laundry and cleaning, household money management, DIY and repairs, first aid, child and pet care, gardening etc, (and I haven't listed these most obvious examples in any particular order of importance).
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tbf much of this is still taught - the 3 schools I worked in a couple of years ago all taught cooking/nutrition, two of them did sewing (and the 3rd may have done, I was only there for a term), they all did budgeting/money management as part of tutoring / pshe (it's called something different now, I forget). I think child (and maybe pet) care was also done as part of pshe stuff (along with sex education, drugs and so on). DIY & repairs gets done in whatever they call CDT classes (again I forget - "design technology" maybe?). One of the schools offered pupils certificated first aid courses, they may well all have done some first aid in pshe.
Also, PE teaches about (umm..) body science (er.. there's a proper word here) which includes some nutritional stuff focused around exercise needs.
Never split by gender though, except PE.
 
Wiring a plug was part of our physics curriculum too.

I remember a few days later the hoover bust and I checked the fuse by swapping it with the one in the kettle. My dad got home and I told him the hoover was bust and that it wasn't the fuse. He gave me a cynical look and asked me how I knew it wasn't the fuse and then he looked all proud. :D
 
It's good that it hasn't been abolished. How it's incorporated seems to be different but it sounds pretty sensible. I don't know enough about how it works in education now though.
 
ymu said:
Wiring a plug was part of our physics curriculum too.

I remember a few days later the hoover bust and I checked the fuse by swapping it with the one in the kettle. My dad got home and I told him the hoover was bust and that it wasn't the fuse. He gave me a cynical look and asked me how I knew it wasn't the fuse and then he looked all proud. :D
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My mum taught me how to wire plugs :D
 
I don't think there are easy solutions to the child care issue in capitalism or any industrial society. Prior to industrialisation, childcare was done alongside other work with other people. Now, we have the isolation of childcare whether that's in a domestic setting or a nursery employing low paid women, both are cut off from the world of other work and involve a very circumscribed view of childhood and a concomitant devalued view of what it means to look after children.

I'm in favour of free child care but I wonder who would be employed to care for the children? What kind of facilities are deemed essential? Would the children be allowed to take risk? Participate in 'adult' activity, learn to cook, hammer nails? How educated would the staff be? What kind of education do they need? Views of children and childhood and childcare are informed by observation and research but are also ideological. There are very different views of young children internationally - who decides which view is the most appropriate, appropriate for who, serving whose needs?
 
Red Cat said:
I don't think there are easy solutions to the child care issue in capitalism or any industrial society. Prior to industrialisation, childcare was done alongside other work with other people. Now, we have the isolation of childcare whether that's in a domestic setting or a nursery employing low paid women, both are cut off from the world of other work and involve a very circumscribed view of childhood and a concomitant devalued view of what it means to look after children.

I'm in favour of free child care but I wonder who would be employed to care for the children? What kind of facilities are deemed essential? Would the children be allowed to take risk? Participate in 'adult' activity, learn to cook, hammer nails? How educated would the staff be? What kind of education do they need? Views of children and childhood and childcare are informed by observation and research but are also ideological. There are very different views of young children internationally - who decides which view is the most appropriate, appropriate for who, serving whose needs?
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yep this is true. The whole thing is based on mothers 'going out to work' and anything else being just not good enough. It doesn't really suit anyone the way things work just now. Except for the bosses of course.
 
cesare said:
My mum taught me how to wire plugs :D
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Same here, my dad is feck useless with anything practical. Typical academic, can't even put up a shelf without taking a day off to prepare.

Although he was always given the job of things like skinning and gutting rabbits, unblocking the toilet, and cleaning the gutters.
 
firky said:
Same here, my dad is feck useless with anything practical. Typical academic, can't even put up a shelf without taking a day off to prepare.

Although he was always given the job of things like skinning and gutting rabbits, unblocking the toilet, and cleaning the gutters.
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My dad does a lot more nowadays including decorating, which he'd never do when I was a kid.
 
SpineyNorman said:
You realise that just because people don't like identity politics that doesn't mean they don't think it's worth fighting for womens and minority rights don't you Laurie? Identity politics is just one specific (and IMO ineffective and counter-productive) way of fighting for those rights.
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Precisely nobody on this thread has argued that women, BME, trans-genered people etc, don't face prejudice and that we should fight such discrimination.

The discussion has been how identity politics/privilege theory are used to attack the working class, and whether there is anything useful in them at all.
 
cesare said:
My dad does a lot more nowadays including decorating, which he'd never do when I was a kid.
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With regards to decorating he was given the job of painting the ceiling and glossing. Everything else was my mum, especially the wallpapering. He'd still be there now if he was allowed to paper.

Gotta say though, the pair of them with the help of one of my friends decorated my house top to bottom in a weekend without my knowledge. I only told my mum what I wanted and she remembered it, came back on the Monday and everything was painted. Couldn't believe it. Second best present ever :D


My dad's still quite poorly so it's my mum / brothers that do it all now. Frustrating.
 
This is a bit odd. I do everything...unless it needs a CORGI cert or something. Not as bad as my dad, mind. He even fixes his own shoes. He's got a pair from 1968 which he wears most days. We also used to eat all sorts of crap when I was a kid...weird thing is it's fashionable now. I brought this girl round when I was about 15. We were going to the pictures....Think it was Quadrophenia...She nipped up to the bathroom before we left and started screaming like a banshee...we ran up and she was just pointing at the bath and gibbering. My dad hadn't told me it was one of his 'cookery nights'...he was soaking 5 pigs' heads prior to their 4 hour simmer and transformation into pies and brawn.
 
thing is checking your privilege etc is actually a really useful concept when used correctly, and there have been times when certain elements of the left have completely ignored issues of racism or sexism within its ranks, you can see this now in the case of julian assange for example and the reaction to the case by well known figures such as george galloway (yer i know he's not real far left but he is seen as such by many people).

however, to say that everyone who questions the theory behind it, or who questions the way it is used by you and the rest of the liberal/trendy left journalistic bubble laurie, is racist and sexist, plainly shows you have no concept of what you are arguing about
 
I remember when I was a little kid my mum would buy a pigs head from the market, boil it up in a big pan before finishing it off in the oven. Fucking rank.

Still eating war food in the 80s.
 
frogwoman said:
thing is checking your privilege etc is actually a really useful concept when used correctly, and there have been times when certain elements of the left have completely ignored issues of racism or sexism within its ranks, you can see this now in the case of julian assange for example and the reaction to the case by well known figures such as george galloway (yer i know he's not real far left but he is seen as such by many people).

however, to say that everyone who questions the theory behind it, or who questions the way it is used by you and the rest of the liberal/trendy left journalistic bubble laurie, is racist and sexist, plainly shows you have no concept of what you are arguing about
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It would be a lot more useful if it was applied to class as often as it should be. @lauriepenny, check your fucking privilege.
 
Ronnie Rubashov said:
This is a bit odd. I do everything...unless it needs a CORGI cert or something. Not as bad as my dad, mind. He even fixes his own shoes. He's got a pair from 1968 which he wears most days. We also used to eat all sorts of crap when I was a kid...weird thing is it's fashionable now. I brought this girl round when I was about 15. We were going to the pictures....Think it was Quadrophenia...She nipped up to the bathroom before we left and started screaming like a banshee...we ran up and she was just pointing at the bath and gibbering. My dad hadn't told me it was one of his 'cookery nights'...he was soaking 5 pigs' heads prior to their 4 hour simmer and transformation into pies and brawn.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'm the same, can't remember ever calling pros in to fix anything. I'm a bit shit with wiring but I just get my old man to do that for me.

Corgi pisses me off cos mine's well out of date now (and I never had any household appliances anyway) so it means that one of the things I'm best qualified for I can't fucking do. I used to love doing gas, me. I'd pressure test it when nobody was looking and then go round with a lighter pretending it was how I checked for leaks lol
 
I remember being a toddler and having live lobsters clacking their pincers on the floor of the kitchen whilst my mum got the big Calderon up to the boil.
( the fishermen would drop a couple off on the way back from unloading on the quay.
I also remember a class at primary school on how to change a washer on a tap.
 
she lives in a bubble where everyone is mates with each other and those connections help get her jobs and tv appearances and it means that her views get listened to, a big part of that is to do with what school and university they went to and what opportunities they were given within those environments.which in turn was affected by parental expectations etc

its quite sickening especially because alot of their writing is just in jokes between the others and saying constantly how great each other all are. and this is the left in the 21st century? really? ffs
 
His other big favourite was ox heart...like footballs. And 'boiling fowl' which were ropey old chickens you had to boil for 2 hours before you could get your teeth into them. They looked especially unappetising. If you think of your average chicken as, say, Michael Buble, then these little fuckers were Iggy Pop.

And I should add, in deference to my dad:"tripe...for the dogs!! Blasphemy!". That said I never eat it any more if I can help it...just never had the nerve to tell him it's rank...especially honeycomb.
 
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