SADLY, I cannot fully agree with all the fine sentiments expressed so well by William Scott (Letters, October 27) regarding the route out of child poverty.
I too found the Milburn Report findings interesting, especially in that the definition of poverty it tends to use is that of children living in households where the income is less than 60 per cent of the median income ("Milburn in living wage call as child poverty rises in Scotland", The Herald, October 21). It is therefore relative poverty often being referred to and it is difficult to imagine how the concept of relative poverty could ever cease to exist in a capitalist democracy.
I suggest that very few people become teachers in order to produce more rats for the rat race and convince some they can be king rats. That would imply the prime directive of teachers to be political rather than professional. This is the inherent danger of what appears to me to be Mr Scott's be-all-you-can-be type of philosophy which goes back to the Victorian and Edwardian traditions of self-improvement and was reinvigorated with a sharp edge in Margaret Thatcher's era.
I believe that the human mind which creates the unique creative qualities of each individual should be stimulated by a curriculum appropriate to the individual's learning profile. I envisage schooling should be considered as a medium in order that young people can develop and internalise their own interests and enthusiasms as a self-fulfilled, as opposed to a self-seeking, adult. I feel that attaining the excellence Mr Scott encourages in our achievements should be a picture taken of oneself - a "selfie" assessment - not simply a critical judgment of you by others based on what will usually be microscopic evidence of potential.
I believe that Alan Milburn's State of the Nation 2014 report is itself self-contradictory, as all such reports often are, in promoting the notion that if more children from deprived backgrounds went to university it would somehow make society less elitist. Clearly universities are neither designed to meet the needs of all school leavers nor would one expect everyone to wish to go to one. The constant drive for this higher intake under the cloak of inclusion conceals the real outcome which is greater divisiveness in our society. Confusingly the report even accepts that some universities are themselves elitist within their own insular academic world. Additionally the report is founded on a constant stream of assumptions regarding value judgements about what is deemed good for the young in poverty. I suspect what it really means is advantageous for promoting the political view of what represents human assets.
Bill Brown,
46 Breadie Drive, Milngavie.
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