My daughter’s primary school teacher recently got a “beach teaching” qualification and she now has one school day a week on the beach, rain or shine. I was really pleased about that anyway as the school doesn’t have a lot of outdoor space for the kids to run around, but this gives me even more reason to be happy.

I scoffed at first, but I guess the qualification is about water safety and things, just in case?

I know what you mean - I also had a bit of a similar reaction at first - but as I understand it's how to run lessons on a beach without classroom teaching materials to hand, how to use things on the beach in the context of certain subjects etc. Also, I said "qualification" which probably makes it sound grander than it is - she just went on a 3 or 4 day course.

You should've stopped at the scoff. Someone qualified to handle children in a classroom and in field trips is already qualified to take them to a beach.

I think you may be misunderstanding, which is perhaps understandable given that I didn't unpack what it meant - see my sibling comment. But scoffing without asking for more information isn't a great strategy for learning.

> But scoffing without asking for more information isn't a great strategy for learning.

See the dart game scene from Ted Lasso:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ4YSXv6Xkg

I grew up in a beach town and gone to the beach in kindergarten all the time with the school without any special certifications. In the event kids go into the water there's always a lifeguard on duty already so otherwise it's the same as any other school outing, I'm not sure what the difference would be from leading a group of children in a city walk for example which to me looks way more dangerous.

Making kids go to the beach in the rain isn't a great strategy either.

Rain is a good thing

I was told reading was my problem too...except I was only nearsighted in one eye. My right eye couldn't focus clearly past the length of my arm, but my left one had no trouble at all. For years, I wore a plain lens for the left eye, and when I was old enough, switched to wearing only one contact lens.

They confirmed it wasn't that I was reading only with my right eye, and it's obviously not like my eyes got different amounts of sunlight, given that they go everywhere together, so I've always been suspicious that that was a lazy answer.

> I was told reading was my problem too...except I was only nearsighted in one eye.

I got glasses before kindergarten, and I needed them for longer than that.

Later on, I did end up spending a lot of time in childhood reading, but I was myopic before I could read.

‘Explanations’ like ‘you read too much’ have always struck me as obvious nonsense in my case.

Interestingly, reading is usually done indoors.

Yes; among other reasons, sunlight reflecting off the white pages of a book is bright enough to injure your eyes.

The basic Kindle model is grey and can be comfortably read in sunlight, and yet somehow people are convinced that the "PaperWhite" model is better...

What ever the name says, it isn't paper white. Actually, I think there is little difference, the difference is the light, which makes the PaperWhite look whiter in normal light and enables reading in dim conditions.

Perhaps some people read significantly more indoors or shade than direct sunlight

The grey background doesn't make it any harder to read. It's just less bright.

The Paperwhite is called that because it has background lighting via weak LEDs.

I can’t find the article atm, but read about a school who is trying that out right now, I think they started in the pandemic.