Date published: 2008/07/05
The BBC says:
A large slice of England's children may be left "globally illiterate" because schools are not educating them about the wider world, a charity claims.
A survey of nearly 2,000 children for education charity DEA found one in five had not discussed problems or news stories from around the world.
And only 50% said it was important to have people of different backgrounds living in the same country.
Another meaningless survey. Needless to say, every educational special interest pressure group on the face of the earth always complains that their pet interest is somehow neglected and believes that schools should be forced to divert precious time to their special interest. And it is trivial to come up with a survey which allegedly proves that the special interest is being "neglected".
With reading, writing and maths it makes sense to insist on some standard, with most other things it should be left up to the schools. Here, in particular, does it really matter if one in five students has allegedly "not discussed problems or news stories from around the world"? Does it matter if "only 50% said it was important to have people of different backgrounds living in the same country"? Indeed, is it "important to have people of different backgrounds living in the same country"? There are many countries which get by perfectly well without this happening (certainly to the extent that it happens in Britain).
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