Lindsay James

Mum of two. Freelance Journalist and Copywriter. Vegetarian. Likes to run. Cannot find her marbles.

[Lindsay James @Linusby]

Stop the world, I want to get off. Some of the comments on here! Seriously, we can go to the gym and also put a dress on at times you know, it's not one or the other 😂

[TaraBull @TaraBull]

True or False?

[Parody Nigel Farage @Parody_PM]

Oh fuck off! How am I supposed to out parody that?

[Dave Lee @davelee1968]

I wish the Tories the best of luck getting my kids to join the army. I can’t even get the fuckers to water the plants.

[Lindsay James @Linusby]

@oxfordgolfcons On the positive side, Sunak's now found a way to get more 18 year olds to vote!

[Lindsay James @Linusby]

I honestly feel like they are trying to lose. While the proposed plans aren't as scary as you'd first think, I can't see any 18-year-old voting for this, and very few parents.

[Rishi Sunak @RishiSunak]

Opportunity. Community. Security.

This is why I would introduce a bold new model of National Service 👇

[Naomi Fisher @naomicfisher]

Imagine you start a new job and they send a strict dress code, down to the colour of your socks and style of your shoe. They also send you a list of equipment which they say you must have every day. Some of it seems a bit strange - two green pens?- but off you go dutifully to Smiths and equip yourself.

On the first day, you’re lined up with your colleagues and inspected. Anyone whose clothes aren’t exactly according to the dress code is told they’ll have to work an extra half hour. Same for any missing equipment. The penalties add up - wrong colour socks and missing protractor? One hour after work.

You’re a bit concerned at this because you had arranged a lift home and if you have to stay late you’ll miss it. You check your clothes and equipment, all seems okay. You pass the check, but the woman next to you has the wrong shoes. She’s distressed at the news that she’ll be staying late - she had plans later. Tough. She starts worrying about how she’s going to get new shoes to avoid the same tomorrow whilst also staying late at work. You don’t know how to help.

You get into your office and look around at your colleagues, but there’s no time to chat. On the whiteboard is a list of expectations for the day. You must be on task at all times and this will be monitored through your computer. Toilet breaks are limited to particular times and you’ll be queuing because it’s the same time for everyone. Eyes must be kept on your computer and this will be tracked. You must sit facing forwards and not slouch. You must use a regulation ruler whenever you read a document. If you break the rules, you’ll be kept after work the same day.

You’re told that if you get too many ‘after works’ then you’ll spend a day in the Quiet Room where no one will talk to you for the whole day and you can’t eat lunch with your colleagues or go to the toilet more than twice. You start to feel a sense of unease. You’re worried about whether you can comply and what will happen if you start gazing off into space or rocking on your chair.

The office is very quiet. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ says your manager. ‘People here appreciate our structure and clear boundaries. You’ll do the best work you have ever done here because no time is wasted. We’ve set it up so you don’t have to worry about making decisions, you just do what we say and concentrate on your work’.

You think perhaps this isn’t the right place for you, but they remind you that you’ve signed a five year contract without a get out clause. There are no other options. You are powerless.

What effect would that have on you? Would you be happy and relaxed at work? Would you be motivated and doing your best for those five years? Might you feel anxious and trapped or resentful and angry?

And why would we think it would be any different for our kids?

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

People who accidentally found their doppelgängers in museums - a thread 🧵

[Lindsay James @Linusby]

I have never watched Game of Thrones and never will. Probably.

[Lindsay James @Linusby]

Mazagine instead of magazine, lemony instead of Melanie and glubs instead of gloves. All words my children may have stopped using, but I will use forever more.

[Lindsay James @Linusby]

@iamjakamo Watch the latest Louis Theroux series and then you'll know 🤣

[Lindsay James @Linusby]

You're next on the karaoke.

[VeryBritishProblems @SoVeryBritish]

What’s your personal five-word horror story? Mine is:

“Come and have a dance”

[Olaf Falafel @OFalafel]

Roses are red
Violets are blue...

[Jenny Doesnt Know @HighlyIngenious]

What’s it called when you want a snack but you just had one

[Lindsay James @Linusby]

I can't get this out of my head. That poor poor boy 😢

[BBC News (UK) @BBCNews]

Bronson Battersby: Review after boy, two, and dad found dead https://t.co/s6bXy3brPg

[Lindsay James @Linusby]

@vanillablack1 Fairly sure this was the menu when we visited. It was absolutely amazing 👌

[Lindsay James @Linusby]

Agree entirely. My daughter had major surgery. Her attendance has obviously been impacted which means she misses out on many reward events. It's not right.

[Naomi Fisher @naomicfisher]

Today I heard from a parent that their son was terribly upset when he got covid, because it would ruin his 100% attendance record. At the end of the year, those with 100% get book tokens & certificates in assembly. She mentioned it in passing, she obviously didn’t think it was a big deal. It was just how school worked, and last year her son had got the award.

Here’s why policies like that should stop.

What’s the problem, you might think, with rewarding those who turn up day after day? Surely it’s just a nice little treat to recognise their commitment? And book tokens! How worthy. What’s the problem with free books for kids who take school seriously enough to make it in every day?

As with all reward systems, however, we don’t think enough about those who don’t get the reward and the effect on them.

Who are these kids? Well, it’s the children with serious illness - the mum then went on to tell me that one girl in his class has leukaemia, for example. Or the disabled child. Or the child with overwhelming anxiety. Or the child who became homeless with their mum due to domestic violence and has to go to the shelter in the night, and then doesn’t make it to school the next day. Or even the child whose dad died and who had a day off to attend the funeral.

It’s the kids who find school most difficult and who have the most challenges who struggle to attend.

What happens to them when everyone else goes up to get their book tokens? They sit in assembly watching, and they are punished. They are punished because the absence of a reward acts as a punishment for them. It’s a public punishment too, everyone knows that they didn’t make the grade. No free books for them. Tough.

Whenever there are rewards, the flip side is punishment. When we reward one person, the others are punished by the absence. When we reward someone one year, and then not the next, that again the absence acts as a punishment. It makes them feel bad.

Of course, we know this. We know that children feel bad when they don’t get something and others do. This is in fact pretty well how rewards are meant to work. They are meant to motivate. The idea is that children will try harder to get the reward.

So what’s the problem? The problem is that 100% attendance isn’t about trying harder. It’s largely about luck, particularly at primary school. Luck not to get ill, luck to have a stable family, luck to be the kind of person who doesn’t find school overwhelmingly stressful. Luck to be the sort of person for whom life is a bit easier, in fact.

Rewards for 100% attendance reward the lucky, and by doing so punish the unlucky. The lucky feel good and the unlucky feel bad. And that has other consequences. Because making those who find school attendance hard feel bad is very unlikely to make them more able to attend. They are already struggling, and now they’re being punished for it.

It contributes to anxiety, because children are aware of the consequences of not getting 100%, and some of them will become really anxious about it. For others, it will contribute to their anger and their feelings that they aren’t valued as much as others.

So yes, the proud children up the front of assembly can’t see a problem, and their parents think it’s ‘just a nice gesture’, but it’s so easy to ignore the effect on the least advantaged. We celebrate the winners and the losers are invisible, shamed into silence. The winners assume that the losers deserved to lose - they say that they worked hard for their awards, and the losers couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed and so why should they get book tokens?

This happens again and again in our education system, and that’s why I keep on banging this drum. Every intervention should be evaluated for its impact on losers as well as winners. It’s not enough to pretend they could all be winners if they just tried hard enough.

Sometimes people tell me that the attendance awards helped them learn that everyone is good at different things, because whilst they didn’t get attendance awards, they did well at other things and got awards for music or creative writing. Which is nice for them, but again, let’s think about the losers. For it’s not true that in a school context everyone is good at something. It’s not true that everyone gets awards somewhere. Some children learn that they aren’t good at anything. Not even turning up.

These reward systems come up often when I talk to young people who are disillusioned and burnt out by school. The significance of book tokens goes beyond the money. That’s why it doesn’t work when parents say they’ll buy the book tokens instead, to try and lessen the pain of not getting the reward. Those book tokens, awarded in public in assembly, signify approval, status, validation - and to those who don’t get them, they signify the opposite

[Lindsay James @Linusby]

Really disappointing comments here. Luckily I don't experience this any more since I've stopped running home from town (or since I've got older, you decide 🤣), but it 100% happens and I've felt scared shitless at times.

[BBC News (UK) @BBCNews]

Woman says running is 'tainted' by catcalling men https://t.co/DFcxKJ8YzZ

[Amanda @Pandamoanimum]

My eating habits over the last few days have been like constantly putting your phone onto charge even though it's still at 98% battery life.

[Lindsay James @Linusby]

Second nap of the day complete ✔️