Week 7 - Monday

Well we're into the home stretch, and the last week before the Herbstferien – in British English, October half term.

I reckon there’s enough on the blog now to point people to it who might find the information useful, so I forward the link to the Swiss Schooling yahoo group, and also post a thread in the families / schools / health section of a well known forum for English speakers in Switzerland, which I have both used and contributed to up until now. Within seconds no exaggeration the thread is deleted by the moderator, with a very abrupt automatically generated message that “advertising your blog on the forum is not allowed” and “don’t bother replying to this message, if you have an issue then you must contact the moderator directly” (sic).

I wasn’t aware of their rules about “external” blogs, and the forum rules of conduct are at the bottom of the page, well out of normal eye range. I can’t make head nor tail of the blog pages on the forum and in any case why should I turn this into their blog when it’s mine ? I’m not prepared to duplicate the work of uploading it twice just so it has their tag on it.

To be honest, I’m stunned by the moderator’s action. The blog is being written specifically to help give people who are seeking information about how the school system works in Zurich the chance to watch one family go through the process in the first year. Reality TV if you like, but minus the celebrities and delinquency. Am I completely off course in thinking that this might actually be helpful to families with school age children in the Zurich expat community ? After all, I’m not peddling crack cocaine or personal services - though you might get a racier blog if I were. I might consider google ads – after all if I’m taking the time to write it, then why not get paid for it - but I will obviously filter out those I consider inappropriate – and I’ve not definitely decided to do this.

I wait 24 hours before drafting a disproportionately polite response to the moderator, who, lest we forget, managed to delete my thread within seconds of it being posted. To date, Saturday 4th October and four days later, I've not been graced with a response, so am clearly not worth even a disproportionately polite discussion of how this might be taken forward.

So, if you know of anyone seeking the kind of information that might be found here, please give them the blogspot address.

Thank you.

And it’s the forum's loss, so nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.

Whilst I’m sitting in a stunned fury over this episode, I begin to receive emails from a number of people who have started to read the blog and find it useful.

So – to all of you from the Yahoo group who have contacted me – thank you, your words have encouraged me a great deal.