Elaine King

my views are my own

[Claire Hanna @ClaireHanna]

Drumcree isn’t Green or Orange, it’s Past v Future.

[K A C E Y @KaceyMusgraves]

The world feels a lot less sparkly all of a sudden.

[liam cunningham @liamcunningham1]

If you find yourself asking why isn’t the world doing something to stop the genocide in Gaza and you have not spoken up, they are taking your silence as approval. Whether you’ve 2 or 2 million followers speak up FFS!
Silence is complicity.

[Elaine King @elaineymac]

@ProfJDMcMullen Thank you so much for this ❤️

[John McMullen @ProfJDMcMullen]

Rare visit here to share something we wrote for schools following the racist violence in NI last week 👇

https://t.co/qJOsnTzWla

[BBC Newsline @bbcnewsline]

The mother of a boy who died after a severe allergic reaction in school is pressing for new legislation to protect pupils in Northern Ireland. Helen Blythe has been campaigning for compulsory training for teachers and a requirement for schools to have a dedicated allergy policy.

[Naomi Fisher @naomicfisher]

This time of year, we put our 16-year-olds through a coming-of-age ritual. We make them sit in rows and write down things they have spent the last two years trying to memorise. We pit them against the clock, and prevent them from talking to each other. We tell them that this is the most important thing that they will ever do and their future life depends on it.

We don’t just do this once. For most of them, we make them sit in rows and write things down between twenty and thirty separate times in the space of about six weeks. Maths, English, History, French, Biology….Again and again, they have to keep at it. Each time, we tell them how important it is and they better not have an off-day or be ill.

Then we take their papers and we rank them. For some, the result will be accolades and glory. For others, failure and retakes.

We know for sure that this will always be true, because these rituals that we call exams are designed to rank them. A third will always fail. There would be no top grades if we didn’t also have the bottom. It isn’t possible for them all to pass.

And yet, every year, we talk as if this was not true. We pretend that it would be possible for them all to succeed, if only they and their teachers worked harder. Politicians talk about raising standards and accountability. We pretend that the problem is them not working hard enough, not an exam system designed so that hundreds of thousands fail. We blame them, not the exams.

For the truth is that we have a coming-of-age ritual for our teenagers which involves a third of them being told they haven’t met the grade, that they are not good enough. We launch them into adult life telling them that they will carry the stigma of not understanding quadratic equations for ever. We put them all through intense stress, and then when some of them cave in we say they have anxiety and send them to see a therapist.

And then we’re surprised when many of them say they just can’t carry on, that they don’t see the point. They don’t see potential in the future for themselves.

We need to take a step back and ask ourselves why we do this to our teenagers. For the problem isn’t our young people. It’s not their fault that a third of them fail and many are chronically stressed. The problem is what we make them do. We’ve designed a coming-of-age system with a very high cost in human misery.

Every year a new crop of teens will come of age, and despite their distress we just push them harder. We need to ask ourselves whether this is really the best we can do for our teenagers. We urgently need to think again.

[Dr Karen Treisman, MBE, Clinical Psychologist @dr_treisman]

Used this as a springboard for enriched expanded conversations this week. For myself, for someone I’m supervising, for a team working with birth parents in a child protection context, and for a group of teenagers. We are going on to plant seeds, add the layers of each identified ones, draw or make the plants- expand to garden metaphors, reflect on the thorny bits and much more.

[Elaine King @elaineymac]

@hazelwoodni Well done a great appointment!

[Jen Hogan⚡ @jenhoganjourno]

The latest episode of the Conversations with Parents podcast with @colnoc77 is a must listen for parents.
Colman Noctor: ‘Behaviour is always the signpost to a problem. It is very rarely the problem’

https://t.co/Tts3bU6VeS

[Elaine King @elaineymac]

@CastlewellanGAC Good luck focus!!!

[Jvnior @Jvnior]

🇪🇸 BREAKING: Spanish PM Pedro calls for the IMMEDIATE ARREST of Netanyahu

He said: "Netanyahu launched the worst possible unjustified attack against Lebanon. His contempt for life and international law is intolerable. He is a criminal that must be arrested immediately.”

He also adds that the EU will suspend its Association Agreement with Israel very soon.

This is what true leadership looks like.

[Pastor Ben @BenjaminPDixon]

Crashing out is the only appropriate response to our tax dollars being used to create horrors where babies see death so much they do this

[Sarah Creighton 🍂 @Saraita101]

I'm glad people are talking about violence against women and girls in Northern Ireland but some of you went to Washington the other week to shake hands with a rapist who has also been credibly accused of raping children

[Elaine King @elaineymac]

@LawCentreNI Congratulations Owen🎉

[Thomas Niblock @thomasniblock]

Loughmacrory. A first ever senior title. Some achievement, and demonstrates what is possible. Congratulations 👏🏼

[Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده @RamAbdu]

The first Swiss journalist to reach Gaza under the army of genocide lost his temper at the horror he witnessed, saying: “Humanity was destroyed here.”

We renew our call on international media and investigators to pressure the genocidal state to allow immediate access to Gaza.

[Elaine King @elaineymac]

@HussainShafiei And we all said 'never again'

[Elaine King @elaineymac]

@yousef_ki1 .

[Ben Cohen @YoBenCohen]

After 47 years, Jerry has made the difficult decision to step down from the company we built together. I’m sharing his words as he resigns from Ben & Jerry’s. His legacy deserves to be true to our values, not silenced by @MagnumGlobal #FreeBenAndJerrys