US Edition Families with teenagers are getting on so well in Britain today. By "today" I mean today, right now, after a long bonding weekend reading about the Myerson family. It's a good feeling: our kids don't throw flower pots at us, we don't write intrusive books about them – you can almost feel the love. So what a bore that Dr Paul Kelley of Monkseaton High School has chosen this very moment to pop up with his Theory of the Teenager and the Lie-in to set us at each other's throats again.
Dr Kelley, a headmaster of radical views, is putting such faith in a trial by Oxford neuroscientists, with which his pupils were involved, that he is planning to reschedule his school's day so that teenagers no longer have to roll out of bed much before 11. The research indicates that they are not being lazy – absolutely not – but are biologically programmed to sleep: getting them up is injurious to their academic performance and health. He reckons his school will get more top grades if everyone takes it easy up to round about lunchtime.
He's right, of course. Having to get up to go to school is an unpleasantness, one of the few that are left. The rest have all been ironed out. Various electronic devices have killed off the threat of even a moment's boredom. Facebook means teenagers can socialise madly even when stuck at home. School shoes come with toys in them, medicine is delicious, even toothpaste tastes of bubblegum – because everything, at all times, must be Fun.
In that context, an alarm clock and a repetitive, yelling parent is, indeed, an anachronism. It's not an easy job, waking up teenagers, but at least it's finished by 8am. Dr Kelley's 11am start would make it difficult for a parent to have a job, or even younger children. Well, we'll just have to give them all up, I suppose.
This is the same headmaster who recently proved that a science GCSE could be taught, to A* standard, in one day. That may be possible, but that's not "education". The point of a science lesson is to learn some science, not to swindle a quick qualification out of the system. And one point of a school and a timetable is to produce adults who can function in society; not an entire generation that has a string of A*s, but feels entitled to be buried in a duvet till lunchtime.
When did a yob stop being a yob?
Leila Deen is still very pleased with herself after the custarding of Peter Mandelson, and says she has only met support wherever she goes. That's not surprising. You have to be a real thug to throw something, at point-blank range, into an unsuspecting stranger's face, whatever your political differences. Of course people give her the thumbs-up and keep their distance: the woman is scary.
We all know that Mandelson is not a politician who enjoys universal popularity, but still the reaction to Ms Deen's assault has been interesting. Those sections of the media and public life normally against the "yob culture" seem nevertheless to find it a right laugh, simply because they prefer this particular yob to her victim. Surely a yob is a yob, however green its politics, or its custard.
Observing Lent
Unusually, and uncharacteristically, I am observing Lent this year and have given up chocolate, sweets, cakes and biscuits. It is astonishing how many hours have been added to my day. Time that is normally spent dunking, grazing, nipping to the shops or climbing on to a chair to root out an old packet of chocolate buttons from the bag of a long-distant children's party has suddenly become free.
I could write an opera, learn a language. According to Dr Kelley's methods, I could take about 20 GCSEs. Or, once the children have gone to school, for the sake of my health, I could just return to bed.