¨Excruciate the brats¨ is my favourite quote from Graves of Academe.  It also seems to be what the British schools are determined to do.  Some of them have taken up with this weird Brain Gym movement.  Possibly its main advantage is that it might not be fully compatible with creationism.  Since I’m a free woman at the moment, I’ve been reading this article and the accompanying comments until late into the night and laughing.  I do think there is hope for us Brits.  If only because we’re a bunch of cynical, sharp-tongued, sarcastic, arrogant gits.  Our collective soul – oh gods, I don’t mean that – we don’t really do collective or soul very well… anyway our whatever is laid bare here for all to see (particularly in the comments, where people tend to let themselves go a bit).

Actually Brain Gym is a cunning ploy that only the Americans could have come up with.  You take a common sense idea that everyone knows already, dress it up in sciencey sounding garbage (not troubling to be too accurate, it’s the general ambience that counts), then excruciate the adult’s bank balances.  As a home educator (fancy title, eh!), I find that sending my kid down the mail box achieves similar effects to those promised by Brain Gym and costs me less than nothing.