h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My youngest son is really bright but hasn't done one iota of work for school for about four years. I have no idea how he manages. He will be 17 in a couple of weeks. By the German system he is just embarking on his 3rd last year.

Last week he had to prepare a presentation on any subject (current affairs) for sociology. They were to take a newspaper article and embellish on it.

He chose to talk on Northern Ireland and the troubles. He put a great deal of work (work? him?) into it and in the end knew far more than I did. He went back in history to the 12th century to try to get to the bottom of it. We printed off maps and diagrams for the overhead projector. I took him to the copy shop and paid for that - the rest he did entirely on his own.

In the end, he had more than enough material for the 30 minutes and got 13 points out of 15. That's not absolutely perfect, but not bad considering he's not bothered with anything for all this time.

He definitely seems interested in politics. Although, when I asked him on the morning of his talk, before he went to school, he did admit "I still don't know what they're actually fighting about!"




Thanks to Lucky for her contributions. Can't tell you exactly how much he used of it, as the final contents were secret. (typical boys)

well done him. Bob Geldof got started by his Dad giving him & his siblings scenarios to debate

"I still don't know what they're actually fighting about!"

It seems sometimes as though nobody ever told them that the thirty years' war is over. The one that started with the defenestration of Prague*, that is.

But the good news is that the unionists and nationalists have at last stopped fighting each other. Now they are just fighting among themselves.

If I were to choose one word for what they're actually fighting about it would be: turf.

*The Defenstration of Prague: two men were thrown out of a window in the Hrdcany Castle in Prague on 23 May 1618. I've just learned to my surprise that neither man was seriously injured as a result; they lived on respectively to 1649 and 1652. http://members.aol.com/eurostamm/prague.html