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News
News update: March 2009
The past
few weeks have been very busy. I worked in Liverpool at 3
different colleges, at a school in Keswick and ran a large
conference in Leeds. I have also worked in Manchester,
London and beautiful West Wales for their Career Service. I
am about to do the keynote address at a Kent Bullying
Conference and will be making 2 inputs to the SEBDA
Conference at the end of the month.
Doodling
in Class is Good for the Brain
A study
published in the journal, Science, which was conducted by
scientists from the University of British Columbia found
that being surrounded by the colour blue helps students to
be more creative, imaginative and to take more risks. Being
surrounded by red helped students to concentrate more and to
absorb more complex information.
New
Scientist (14/02/09) discusses whether you can indeed tell a
person’s character from their appearance (physiognomy). It
confirms that first impressions are highly influential –
within one tenth of a second of seeing an unfamiliar face we
will have made a judgement about the person’s character.
Once the judgement is made it is difficult to shift that
opinion. New Scientist found that different people come to
the same conclusion on the same face.
At Brock
University in Ontario, Canada, research was conducted on ice
hockey players and linked facial features to the time
players spent in the ‘sin bin’ for violent acts. They found
that a wider face in which the cheekbone to cheekbone
distance was unusually large relative to the distance
between the brow and the upper lip led to more time in the
‘sin bin’.
Men with
wider faces have higher concentrations of the male sex
hormone testosterone in their saliva. One unanswered
question is whether people judge men with wider faces as
being more aggressive. Evolution has led to us making a
judgement that wider faces
often belong to people who are likely to be more aggressive
and likely to attack us because their face shape tells us
that they have higher testosterone levels.
The Youth
Justice Board, in new research, has suggested that violent
offences carried out by girls aged 10-17 has risen from
6,000 in 2001 to 23,000 in 2008. More and more girls are
involved in violent attacks, many caused by binge drinking.
1 in 3 girls in the research aged 15-16 admited they binge
drink. In 2007-8 the total number of offences involving
court action for girls aged 10 – 17 was 58,500 and showed a
10% increase over 2 years. Nearly 4 in 10 crimes committed
by girls involved violent crime.
Cinema
Age Ratings for Video Games Demanded by Parents
74% of
parents are concerned about the content of some games and
believe that they should be overseen independently according
to research conducted by the British Board of Film
Classification. 82% of parents said they thought it would
help them if film ratings were used. Currently the BBFC only
rates games with an adult theme. Most games are rated using
a voluntary industry rating system.
A report by
the United Nations has shown that 44% of British children
aged 15-16 admitted experimenting with the drug (compared
with just 10% in a number of other European countries).
Professor Ghodse, president of INBC (International Narcotics
Control Board) said softer laws on cannabis had ‘given the
wrong message to young people’. The drug was downgraded from
Class B to Class C but following evidence of the link
between cannabis and mental illness it was re-classified.
Under 16
Pregnancy Rate Rise
Data from
ONS (Office for National Statistics) showed an increase in
pregnancy in under 16s from 7.8 conceptions per 1000 girls
in 2006 to 8.3 per 1000 in 2007. Nearly three quarters of
these 8196 pregnancies in 2007 were in 15 year old girls. We
must continue to provide good quality sex and relationship
education in schools to help reduce the rate. Tom Harris MP
has recently suggested that a number of teenage girls
deliberately get pregnant to gain independence by getting
accommodation and income support. These attitudes and
motives need to be challenged as we are in the third and
fourth generation of teenage mothers.
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