Should we not be asking ourselves, 'How have children got through many years of compulsory schooling and yet are unable to read simple text?' This is surely an indictment of both the educational system and society at large? In our schools younger children have a little garden and are taught how and where to plant seeds and how to nurture them. Even when I worked in the toughest inner city schools we grew beans tomatoes and salad crops. The children made sandwiches and soups with them. We baked bread with them and taught them very basic simple cooking from the age of five years. As communities we need to address this issue. Lots of schools have mums and dads coming in after lessons to run cookery classes with the children or teach them basic woodwork. We can't rely on the state to provide everything, a lot of it is up to us as parents/grandparents.
If we have whole sections of society, and let's face it we do everywhere, that are disaffected and feel abandoned, then we have gone sadly wrong. We have excluded them and left them without hope of creating a better life for themselves. We need the best teachers in the worst schools, we need inspirational head teachers who have the vision to show these youngsters that they can achieve so much more than their parents and grandparents. We need to pour money into the most deprived schools and equip them with state of the art technology, to show the pupils that they are valued and respected. we need to impose the highest standards of behaviour and the most rigourous standard of teaching and learning. If anyone doubts this can work I have seen it personally where failing schools, with low morale and falling rolls have been turned around to be hugely successful and oversubscribed, and the pupils with low expectations and no interest have been proud to say that they are pupils of that school. Education is everything!
