Good News and Bad News at the Grammar School

The good news:

We heard today that Charlie has got into the Grammar School which Ant and Bernie go to, which is a relief. (And yes, it is a state Grammar - some have survived the comprehensive debacle...)

They are doing well there - and entrance is by competitive examination with no preference for siblings, so there was no guarantee he'd go there.

The bad news:

We went to the 6th form evening the other day, as Ant needs to start thinking about her choices after GCSE.

One of the subjects she's considering is History (16th Century) and I was leafing through a text book on Luther and found some extraordinary inaccuracies and biases. Inaccurate in that it stated that Catholics believed that priests re-crucify Christ at every Mass (which they don't) and biased in that it said: 'they even believed that Masses could be offered for the souls in Purgatory') that word 'even' is clearly a bias. An unbiased writer would have written 'they also believe...'

However it was not the occasion to go into battle (Anna assured me) and I am confident that Ant can deal with such prejudicial text books if she pursues History.

But it did remind me of the need to keep an eye on the stuff the kids are given to study: we simply cannot expect the schools to vet tests that are approved/recommended, and we cannot trust those who do the approving/recommending to be accurate, objective and unbiased (or even properly educated, I fear...)