Well my computer has died, well i am hoping that its just the battery as £1000 is at least a months worth of the states gone! Besides my plan to save has hit a bit of a hurdle as my main employer the Brenin appears to be very quiet at the moment, what with the recession and a new budget that seems to have the UK on the brink of ruin, with thousands of people looking down the barrel of redundancies its not surprising that work is thin on the ground. Its been two months since I did any work there!
Its not just the Brenin, I have heard on the grapevine that at the Association of Head of Outdoor Education Centre last meeting that it is a mini crisis that is hitting the industry. With LEA centres appearing to be hit as schools try and find savings, it would appear that Outdoor Education will be one of the big losers. Even before this happened Llanrug OEC was already on thin ice, and if we are not careful there may well be a moritorium on any number of the OEC that North Wales houses. There are 10 I can think of, off the top of my head and probably more. All these places employ not only instructors but cleaning and cooking staff.
A brief chat with a owner of a ‘adventure’ attraction drove home the fact that times are getting hard. As they are having to work twice as hard to get the same amount of work they got last year!
Outdoor Education did a lot for me, and speak to any number of young adults and many of them remember the residential and outdoor ed trips with a fondness and see it as a having tangible benefits to the real world, be it personal and social skills, or learning that nerves and fear are part and parcels of life, or simply the skills of looking after themselves when mum or dad isn’t there. There are so many reasons that outdoor education should keep its funding.
On the flip side there seems to be more and more work/money being thrown at ‘Youth at Risk’ and naughty kids. I often run into or chat to friends where two adults to one child ratio is the norm. Hundreds of thousands is ploughed into this end of the market. It seems counter intuitive to me as if you reward any behaviour that behaviour will become reinforced and strengthened. So how taking a kid thats been naughty and treating them to a two month all in holiday in the hands of two instructors just seems criminal. Bang them up and spend the money on the good kids who should be rewarded and not punished by taking funding away from Outdoor education.
Anyway rant out for now!
As a teacher of 16yrs and the organiser of a school CC for 10 much of this ‘rant’ rings too true. For a long time now I’ve been perplexed by the amount of money that is squandered on poorly behaved and ‘difficult’ children, it’s too short sighted. Yes, there are disadvantaged children who never have the opportunity to build self confidence and social skills but they are so readily overlooked because they are not causing ‘problems’. Bad behaviour may be the consequence of a lack of confidence, neglect or a whole host of ‘disadvantages’ but it is not an excuse. Experiencing the outdoors with ‘real’ outdoors people has a profound effect on all young teenagers I have worked with, in the same way it had with me when I was a lad. Lets hope this financial debacle gets sorted quickly and all bankers get lost forever on a weekend team building course, then the rest of us can get on with our lives!
For someone who claims to be academic ( a Msc no less), your comments about difficult children and outdoor education is very short sighted. Done correctly outdoor education and theropy can have a profond affect on the lives of young people. I myself have seen kids, often vicitms of abuse and neglect make leaps and bounds in their behavour and be able to make positive decision in their lives.
Far from a holiday these trips are often hugly challanging for young indivduals and often the most difficult things that have been asked to do. There are often underlying reasons for poor behavour that can be addressed in such programs, and positive steps can be made to ensure further crimitality is prevented- offering financial advantages to the country.
I’d recommend reading some articles by Rob Cooley or Simon Priest to gain a better understanding of why these programs are not holidays- rather theraputic interventions offering klids with poor starts a fresh chance- after all there is no such thing as a bad kid, only a kid with portential.
Go work along side a theropist with some criminal kids on the hill for a month and then see what you think.
Hi Lawrence. Of course you are right. My point was about the way these courses are funded. Seeing that the government is about to start slashing funding from education, I personally would prefer to see main stream education receive the millions of pounds spent on ‘at risk kids’ then simply throw good money after bad. I will try and look up these articles, unless you have a copy you can send me as I am not in academia anymore so can’t get hold of some of these things.
I would be interested to see what measures they employ? I personally believe having two people ‘look after you’, even if you are at risk, does little to prepare someone for the ‘real world’, where there bosses won’t give a shit about what happened to them in the past only what they can do at work ‘now!’.
My Lifeinthevertical blog is where I rant, for scientific (Msc Stuff) I usually post it on my coaching blog.
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