
It seems that education is the unlucky target for his legacy building policy, with much talk of more private company investment in education (always a bad thing, there is no profit to be found in children), a rather late acknowledgement of the International Baccalaureate Diploma but more interestingly Blair has started to bang on about ‘life skills’.
‘Life skills’ have been with us since the beginning of time, it basically means being able to look after yourself and be a decent human being, however, since the early 90s various agencies across the UK have felt the need to try and teach ‘life skills’ to young people who seem to not know how to look after themselves and are not decent human beings. Frankly, it’s very silly indeed and this is coming from someone who has spent more time teaching ‘life skills’ programmes then he’d care to remember.
Thankfully, ‘life skills’ were only foisted on disadvantaged and under privileged kids because obviously middle class/wealthy kids have no need to learn how to look after themselves and to be decent human beings as they have money to negate any tricky social situations…Blair is determined to end that and seems hell bent on making sure that all British children can cook, surf the internet, manage money and enjoy the theatre.
Never mind where this is going to fit in to an already over crammed, over legislated and bureaucratic education system; I’m still pissing my pants with laughter at the hilarious thought of making children across Britain enjoy the theatre. Does he realise what a massive task he has on his hands? Solving the Iraq problem pails into insignificance in the face of convincing the youth of the nation to stop surfing the Internet (at least he’s reached one target already), get their fat arses away from the tele and huff and puff their way to the nearest theatre (no longer that near due to chronic government under funding) to sit through some subsidised piece of po-faced historical drama that says absolutely nothing to the juvenile watching it.
I’m all for getting young people into theatres but twisting their arm is not going to solve the problem of a medium that does very little to communicate to them.