We have a friend staying at the moment who acted as an officer supervising the vote and subsequently acted as a teller, actually counting the votes.
His experience - admittedly in a down market area - should give pause to all those who think Democracy is alive and well in Britain.
His first observation was that nearly all the voters were over 50 - including some dragging their oxygen bottles with them, but determined to vote all the same. There was a very - very - small number of people who were first time voters, who regarded it as all of a bit of a lark. The 25 -50 year olds were to all intents and purposes non-existent.
The next bit is seriously scary. Of the approximately 300 people who voted in that ward, more than 30 could not read or write. Some had brought friends to help them. Others asked my friend to read the list and had him point to each in turn. One woman had brought her 15 year old daughter and her truculent boyfriend. The younger element cut up rough when the mother and my friend would not let the daughter actually do the voting.
Only about 25% of the potential electorate turned up. So probably something like 30% of that ward of voters could neither read nor write. What amazed me was that any of the illiterate turned up to vote. I regard that as an absolute triumph.
More importantly,I find it utterly disgusting that we continue to turn children out unable to read or write.All the social engineering in the world won't help these people without literacy and communication skills.
Bliar was right with his triple enunciation of Education. The only problem was he thought that was all he had to do - oh, and spend extra billions to no effect. I suspect that literacy in the UK is now worse than before the last war, and probably since mid-victorian times. The one thing our forebears were sure about was that the 3 Rs ( sic) were critical to progress.
So I don't care what your politics are. It's time there was a complete rethink about how we are going to educate our children - even to the point of teaching them nothing else until they can read and write.
Without it, we as a nation will be utterly sunk in another couple of generations.
1 comment:
I absolutely agree with you about education. It's all very well for the Tories to muck about with the system, abandoning grammar schools and going for academies etc. Who cares? What is key is that the children actually learn stuff. We are already seeing the effects of dumbing down in terms of indigenous economic performance although it's overshadowed by immigration. The quality of teaching needs to be improved plus there should be smaller class sizes, strong discipline and streaming.
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