Education is partnership with parents

CHILDREN spend approximately 1,000 hours at school per year, a relatively short period. Time is finite. Priority, certainly in primary schools, must be given to teaching the basic skills such as literacy, numeracy and science. The National Curriculum rightly focused on these areas.

Unfortunately, successive education departments have imposed ever more targets with resulting overwhelming paperwork. The 1,000 hours will not stretch, hence huge gaps appear in the curriculum and a “rounded education “(Robert Walden ISA) is simply impossible to deliver.

Children spend the majority of their formative time in the home environment. Surely this is where the gaps needed to provide a “rounded education” should be filled? Teachers should not be expected to address all the ills of society. The profession is now sadly losing many excellent teachers who cannot do the impossible. “Amoral children” are not the product of schools.

A child’s “rounded education” is the result of teachers and parents fulfilling their respective responsibilities.

Alternatives to prison

From: Terry Morrell,Prunus Avenue, Willerby.

FURTHER to a number of letters and the Philip Davies column (The Yorkshire Post, May 20), may I suggest that it is time for the “punishment to fit the crime”.

Yes, it is unlikely that capital punishment will ever return to the UK but we need to ensure that in certain cases incarceration for the rest of life means just that.

On the other hand, there are many situations which do not require imprisonment.

There has to be a case for inflicting personal punishment to wrong doers by removing their assets, suspending their rights, stopping state benefits or making them work for free for the community and exporting foreign criminals.

Chemical castration is another option for certain crimes which would not only be degrading to the offender but ensure future safety from their behaviour.

Prison is a very expensive option and an insult to the taxpayer, who having been offended against then has to pay the price of punishing the criminal. Should people in prison pay for their own keep?

There are a number of questions that the Government could tackle in a real bid to resolve what has become a thorny and expensive problem.

Unfortunately, many of these options are not available to us while we remain in the EU and unable to make our own laws and rules and avoid compliance with the human rights situation.

Only way to the EU exit

From: David Nutt, Huby, Leeds.

I SUPPOSE it is inevitable that proponents of our continued membership of the EU will become ever more shrill in their panic as EU elections loom.

The views of your Devonian correspondent Tom Jones (The Yorkshire Post, May 16) are so wrong-headed that one suspects a mischievous intent.

He states that “likely working deals” will have to be struck with a number of dodgy alien political parties when an enlarged Ukip representation arrives in Brussels – or is it Strasbourg? Nigel Farage has publicly rejected any such relationships, but bearing in mind the objective of Ukip to exit (not to destroy) the EU, a denial seems hardly necessary.

The glaringly obvious point, Mr Jones, is that our exit from the EU will be achieved entirely by appealing to the common sense of British voters, and would in no conceivable way be assisted by any cooperation with or interference from, any foreign political parties.

A song for Yorkshire

From: Trevor Anson, Little Heck.

THE launch of your Environment Awards stirred me to finally release a long bursting suggestion that The Yorkshire Post should pick up an angry cudgel and show what Yorkshire itself can do after yet another sickly Eurovision Song Contest debacle.

Songs were meant to be heard not watched, but present TV producers and sound engineers appear to have been weaned in a discotheque of flashing lights, screaming flesh-coated singers and dustbin lid rhythms.

It would be very cultural and easily economical for The Yorkshire Post to promote a Song for Yorkshire competition with the top prizes being the simple kudos of recognition.

Meadows of remembrance

From: John Dunning, Bishop Burton, Beverley.

THE loss during recent years of many of our traditional hay meadows, notable for their wild flowers, is, rightly, much lamented.

Is the creation of miniature replicas worthy of consideration?

It should be possible by following traditional management to transform stretches of roadside verges into wild flower areas, speeded up by scattering seeds. To take the idea further they could then become remembrance areas for this year’s First World War centenary.