The Measureman

what was it Einstein said? Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted? something like that. And then we have Pisa, with all its problems, trying to rank nations and being hopelessly misinterpreted by selective quotation anyway...

So it was very cheering, and rather encouraging, to find this huge mural of the "measure man" in a Silkeborg school in Denmark, created by artist Malene O'Shea.

I particularly liked the way this monster, with its measuring scale arms and legs, is shown capturing the joyful butterflies of children's handprints. How true...  but we do have such much better ways of helping map progress these days - it is just sad that they are rarely widespread just yet.

journeys to school

Journeys to school vary - in Denmark's Silkeborg I was delighted to find all these toboggans outside the school i was visiting. I have shown this image to a few schools around the world and children's faces light up - yet more evidence of how useful it is to create that important "sense of other" through Skyping and Facetiming and so on school to school. See each others' cultures helps us to understand each others' cultures...