App Nonsense, Bashing Avocado, Are Teachers Social Workers?

Exercise Excess and Apps

Girls Running, Walberswick Pier, Philip Wilson Steer, (1860-1942) 
Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

Sports psychologists say that apps for running can be dangerous and that the NHS must recognise that too much exercise is a bad thing.

They say that more people are “over-indulging” in exercise at levels just shy of addiction. In part this is driven by the prevalence of fitness tracking apps and trackers on watches and smartphones. The apps are designed to keep people engaged and provide positive feedback, but Martin Turner and Andrew Wood of Staffordshire University say that this can lead to psychological harm as people’s self-worth becomes tied to the amount of exercise they do.

…Although such apps and devices are not designed “to get people addicted”, Dr Wood said that they were “designed explicitly to get people engaged with them and tap into people’s basic social psychological need to feel competent about what they are doing.”

(The Times, 2019)

Run for enjoyment. Why not leave the apps at home?

*Here’s a harsh truth about fitness that you don’t often hear – exercise sucks. For some of us anyway…Worst of all, tedious though it is, for most, exercise is beyond beneficial, it’s vital – health, wellbeing, weight, the lot – so we slackers just have to park our bad attitudes and crack on…Why not just tell people the truth: it’s a relentless boring nightmare and you’re going to have to do it anyway.

…Perhaps this approach (“Hate every second, do it anyway”) would at least put fitness where it belongs and stop people becoming disheartened about their endorphins refusing to rush. If those like myself have more realistic expectations, then we might just get it to work.

(Barbara Ellen, The Observer, 2019)


Avocado on Toast

The Kitchen, Isabel Codrington (1874-1943)

Photo Credit: Russell-Coates Art Gallery and Museum

[CC BY-NC-ND)

In an interview with Grub Street, the food writer and broadcaster Francis Lam suggested it might be time to end the bashing of avocado on toast or, more accurately, the bashing of those who eat it.

“I’m tired of hearing people shit on avocado toast,” he said, conjuring an unfortunate mental image. “I’m tired of people feeling like the thing they want to do in food isn’t OK.”

Over the past couple of years of unsuccessfully trying to avoid listening to Radio 4 comedy, I’ve noticed that mentioning avocado has become lazy shorthand for either “feckless millennial wasting their money” or “young person stuff”.

Wherever the word “hipster” goes “avocado” is sure to follow and nobody seems willing to give up either gag. Lam’s point is about food snobbery more than anything and I’m aware that adding my voice to any avocado sentiment in these hallowed pages is asking for the kind of pain that usually accompanies a slip of the knife on the stone. But surely some other food, such as jackfruit or seitan, is ripe for its moment in the comedy sun.

(Rebecca Nicholson, The Observer, 2019)

I’m afraid I’m a little behind in all of this. I haven’t eaten avocado on toast. Does that make me a social or gastronomic leper? Is the avocado mashed or sliced? And do you use sourdough bread or ordinary sliced? Would jackfruit or seitan be good in homemade beef madras?

Teachers or Social Workers?

John Pounds Teaching Poor Children, Henry S. Sheaf

Photo Credit: Portsmouth Museums and Visitor Services [CC BY-NC-ND]

How could it not be a source of national shame that there are food banks in any schools in England and Wales. When did it become normal for schools to wash pupils’ clothes?

…Pupils have come to this because they reflect the reduced circumstances of their families – they are merely the school-aged manifestation of peak impact austerity. Swaths of the population have been crushed to the point where basics (food, clothes, heating, hot water) have become unaffordable.

…While there has always been an element of social work to teaching, it shouldn’t be so dominant.

(Barbara Ellen, The Observer, 2019)