Layer 447 . . . The Rights of the Child, Education, Michael Morpurgo, Schools, the Dimbleby Lecture, Lessons in Hate and Violence, and the Need for Apologies.

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Continuing with yesterday's economics theme, the following articles are very good summaries of the case for Keynesian approaches, and the case against Friedmanite economics:

The Economy: We Are All Keynesians Now

Friday, Dec. 31, 1965

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,842353-1,00.html

from 2008

The End of the Age of Milton Friedman

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-madrick/the-end-of-the-age-of-mil_b_94228.html

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Children and Education

The wellbeing of children, the brainwashing & indoctrination of children, the education of children, and the abuse of children, are subjects that every one of us should be concerned with and pay attention to.

I'm still seething about that insane 'Tiger Woman' and her abuse of her own children. [see last blog] I'm even more seething about people like her who encourage other parents (and teachers) to put extreme pressure on children to achieve academically at the cost of their overall wellbeing, at the cost of their right to a proper childhood, and their right to a proper education.

I'm now seething at a programme that was broadcast by Channel 4's 'Dispatches' team this week -

Lessons in Hate and Violence

Dispatches goes undercover to investigate allegations that teachers regularly assault young children in some of the 2,000 Muslim schools in Britain run by Islamic organisations.

The programme also follows up allegations that, behind closed doors, some Muslim secondary schools teach a message of hatred and intolerance.

The programme is presented by reporter Tazeen Ahmad.

Dispatches: Lessons in Hate and Violence will not be available on 4oD at this time, due to an ongoing police investigation concerning subjects featured in the programme.

http://www.channe4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-80/episode-1

There are clips of the actual programme on the website, where Salahuddeen Ali has commented:

Great documentary. I am a muslim and I find this issue of muslim teachers/schools abusing children worthy of broadcast and investigation. As a muslim child growing learning the Quran, I was beaten and whipped. This is a fact. I read many muslims comments saying they're unhappy about this report. Well I hope they realize that when abuse is applied to children in their faith schools it will not be hushed down in respect to their image. Children's rights are above any faith, group or agenda. Thank you for this brilliant work.

Mohammed Abdullah commented:

Although I have not watched the full program I believe it is right to bring these issues to the forefront just like one would do with racism. Indeed there are preachers in Mosques and Madrasa's preaching Islam without the proper knowledge of the subject. We can deny the truth much as possible but these problems do exist I myself have experienced this. Those preachers only have a tunnel vision of religion and do not have a broader knowledge of this world. Those preachers who spread hatred, corruptions and mischief in the land they need to be bought to Justice. Al Quran Surat Al-M?'idah: Chapter 5: Verse 33: gives clear punishment for those who Spread hatred, Corruptions and Mischief on the land. I would like to praise TAZEEN AHMAD for this brilliant work.

The programme had used hidden cameras to film teachers and teachers' assistants barking at children and indoctrinating them about the vileness of non-Muslims - shouting at children who weren't concentrating hard enough on their Koran-reading. Worse than this, they were shown kicking and slapping children for not working hard enough.

The children worked in isolation - not speaking to or collaborating with any of their peers in their learning.  During unsupervised break times some of the children were aggressive and abusive to one another.

But let's be clear - this model and this pattern of learning exist in many other schools throughout the country, where children learn through didactic instruction, learn by rote, learn in isolation, and have an unbroken diet of uncreative, meaningless cramming.

It's a disgusting fact that more and more children learn in ghetto schools of one sort or another - instead of learning alongside children of all backgrounds and abilities. This is something the 'free schools' idea is meant to promote. The Tories have been searching for ages to figure out a way of giving public money to private and independent schools in order to reduce private tuition fees, and this a perfect wheeze for doing it. These people really do have a sense of entitlement to exclusive schools which are subsidised by public taxation, and which are run by the parents whose children benefit from them. People like Toby Young want control of the curriculum, the management, the recruitment of staff, and the style of teaching - and they don't give a toss about what more enlightened people say about the learning and wellbeing needs of children. Their sole aim is to have a neighbourhood school for their own children, run by the parents, which doesn't charge fees, and which will guarantee 'rigour' and a smooth passage to the Oxbridge college of their choice.

These schools may be less hate-filled than those shown on the C4 documentary, but just as negative in their effect through causing fragmentation of the system, entrenching privilege, promoting ghettoisation and destroying the rights of children to a proper childhood and an enjoyment of school and of learning itself.

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Morpurgo

Michael Morpurgo is an exceptional human being, and a great champion of the rights of children. He was rightly given the honour of delivering the Dimbleby Lecture on BBC TV this week.

In this year's Richard Dimbleby Lecture, Michael Morpurgo explores the increasingly urgent issue of children's rights, and investigates the wrongs that young people have to endure.

One of Britain's most popular children's authors, Morpurgo has written over 120 books and more recently he has become a campaigner on behalf of children, both at home and abroad. In this role he visited the Middle East where he witnessed, first hand, the difficulties children face in times of conflict.

His most well known book, War Horse, was recently dramatised to great critical acclaim and it is now being made into a Hollywood feature film by Stephen Spielberg.

Related Links

    * Wikipedia: Michael Morpurgo (en.wikipedia.org)
    * Michael Morpurgo: Home (www.michaelmorpurgo.com)
    * BBC Scotland: Authors Live - Michael Morpurgo
    * BBC News: Entertainment & Arts: Michael Morpurgo on War Horse and beyond
    * BBC News: Entertainment & Arts: How to operate a War Horse puppet
    * IMDb: War Horse (www.imdb.com)
    * BBC News Magazine: How children's war fiction has changed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ymf57

Seven days left to view this.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ymf57/The_Richard_Dimbleby_Lecture_15_02_2011/

The Rights of Children - summary of the lecture

UN Convention on Children's Rights - do we live by it?

Only two countries have yet to ratify this convention - Somalia and the United States.
 
The right to survival, access to healthcare, liberty and education

These rights are woefully neglected.

3.5 million of our children in the UK are mired in poverty.

Some of the most vulnerable have been appallingly treated.

We must tackle the impoverishment, neglect and exploitation of children.

The Yarls Wood detention centre - a deeply shameful institution - injustice was done to children put in this prison.

"Motherland" - a play by Natasha Walters.

"12 big men banged on our door. They took us to a police station."

We lock up asylum-seeking children, even though they are innocent of any crime.

The rights of children are flagrantly ignored.

"Are we doing the best for our children? No - and we are all to blame."

Librarians are the unsung heros of the book world. Unglamorous
people like this make a real difference to children's lives.

The younger the children, the less status for the people involved. Primary school teachers are the worst paid.

We have a short-term target-driven mindset. We need to go back to the needs of children. We need children to burn brightly and shine.

What we actually do is corral them and stifle them - we put them in places where success and failure [in tests and exams] is all that counts . . . Fear of failure is what does the most damage. We're like Mr Gradgrind in Dickens' 'Hard Times', whose notion of education was to ram 'facts' into children's heads . . .

We may not beat children any more, but I wonder how far we've moved on since Gradgrind . . .  We still have classes that are twice the size they should be - far too big for teachers to make proper relationships, particularly with children who are already disengaged and alienated.

New Zealand ranks 4th in the OECD education rankings, and doesn't have league tables. Finland ranks 2nd, and children there don't begin formal schooling till the age of seven. Britain ranks 20th.

We must remember that we are preparing children NOT simply for employment, or for the common good, but for the difficult decisions they will have to make in their personal lives, for the moments when they will have to take responsibility for themselves and for others, when they will be tempted to have inappropriate sex, or to take drugs, or to bully someone, or carry a knife, or throw a brick through a window . . .

There is no league table for mature behaviour, for the quality of relationships, for self-worth and for self-confidence.

The quality of their relationships is the most important factor in any child's life.

We must allow children to go 'off-piste', and we must trust them.

Forget the league tables and the targets, and let's break free of the shackles of a narrow curriculum - it's time to focus on the commitment and the talent of the people who touch our children's lives.

But we can't leave it all to the teachers. People from all walks of life can make a contribution.

Let's have more trips, visits and outings, more time in theatres, concert halls and museums, and let's get them out into the open air, tramping the hills . . . all this should be an integral part of their education, a right of every child - not an extra. It will pay dividends in the end.

What we absolutely do NOT need is to be closing down our libraries, cutting down our youth services and our provisions for special needs . . .

Let's give children the time to dream, to listen and to learn.

Too many of us, and too many children, are disengaged and alienated.

I shall continue to speak up for the rights of children as best I can.

"I hope you understand the enormity of my fury."

"One day we will apologise for Yarls Wood, and for the bureaucracy of neglect."

Very well said, Michael. 

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One day we, the English - not the Scots or the Welsh, since they don't have them - will apologise for SATs, for league tables, for bureaucratising and micro-managing teaching and learning, for national 'strategies', for the narrowing of the curriculum, for depriving children of their right to learn in a stimulating and creative environment - learning at their own pace, pursuing their own interests and passions, finding their own voices, developing all their intelligences, developing the habit of joyful lifelong learning.

How many of us have continued to speak up for the rights of children, in spite of the pressures to ignore them, in spite of the pressures to return to Gradgrindism? How many  have kept their heads down, for fear of government agents and inspectors, for fear for their futures in their careers and in education? How many have been bullied and cajoled into silence, and how many have been converted willingly into the education Newspeak, and the language of attainment, SATs, value added, strategies, NLS, NNS, targets, payment by results, monitoring, challenge and all the rest?



How many parents and how many paid professionals have even a half of Michael Morpurgo's vision for children, and even a tenth of his determination to stand up for children's rights?

How many need to hang their heads in shame?
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Layer 425 . . . Education, Facts, Knowledge, Feelings, Gove, Gradgrind, Idiocy, Pedagogy, Ritalin, Curriculum, Intelligences, Zen and Lifelong Learning.

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"Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!"

Thomas Gradgrind-Gove - Hard Times

http://www.fidnet.com/~dap1955/dickens/hardtimes.html

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Prescriptions of Ritalin as a controlling drug for UK children are currently running at 600,000 per year. A pundit on the Today (R4) programme thought that there's no problem with this -  if the end result is that there's an "increase in educational performance". No need to discuss what we mean by "educational performance" of course - we all know and agree that it simply means improved test and exam results in pursuit of arbitrary targets and league table scores.

So there we have it - there's no need to concern ourselves with moral, ethical, social and psychological issues - just focus on the child's ability and willingness to "settle down", become more passive, submit to traditional schooling and cramming for tests, and just say alleluyah for hitting the test and exam targets.

The presenters on our flagship news programmes allow their pet pundits to get away with this stuff. No wonder we're such a fucking dumb nation.

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Confirmation, finally - as if it were needed - that Michael Gove is completely and utterly stupid. He's also an elitist and an evil bastard. He's demanding that the National Curriculum be reduced to a focus on "facts and knowledge".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9367000/9367626.stm

This man presumably has access to the huge body of work which tells us that Gradgrindism ("Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts") is not only futile, not only alienating, not only pointless, not only ridiculous - it's also counterproductive in the 21st Century in a huge number of ways. He's either not read about, or doesn't understand, the need for a New Learning Revolution.

The sole point of Gradgrindism is to sort out the academic goats from the non-academic sheep, and determine which of our children will go to university (if indeed that's what they want to do) and which of them will go to the elite universities. It has no other purpose.

It doesn't serve the needs of commerce and industry, which need individuals with imagination and creativity, and people with their social and emotional intelligences working effectively. 

It doesn't meet the needs of society in general, which also needs all of the above.

It doesn't meet the needs of individuals - to become rounded people who are capable of reaching their full potential, to become lifelong learners who enjoy learning for its own sake, to become active citizens, to become fully evolved human beings, etc.

It's profoundly depressing that an arrogant and ignorant little jerk like Gove is now calling all the shots in English education.

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-20-fully-evolved-humans.html

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/05/layer-44-eyes-and-ears-of-community.html

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/05/layer-48-eevnin-stannad-standards-evil.html

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Chapter II — Murdering The Innocents

THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir — peremptorily Thomas — Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind - no, sir!

In such terms Mr Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words ‘boys and girls,’ for ‘sir,’ Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts.

Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.

‘Girl number twenty,’ said Mr Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, ‘I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?’

‘Sissy Jupe, sir,’ explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.

‘Sissy is not a name,’ said Mr Gradgrind. ‘Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.’

http://www.online-literature.com/dickens/hardtimes/2/

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I had an interesting chat with my son. He's very certain that when it comes to decisions and actions we should always trust our instincts. He's very against doing what anyone else suggests or advises.

He thinks we should all be in touch with our instincts, and prioritise them above the demands and wishes of those around us - our families, our society and the prevailing culture.

Leonard Cohen, of course, said, "I don't trust my inner feelings . . . Inner feelings come and go."

To this, my son says - when your feelings change, you should change with them. And deal with the consequences. (I'm sure Len would agree with him about that - his essential point about not trusting inner feelings was to do with the impermanence of the things we associate with 'love'.)

I think I know what my son's getting at. Ultimately we all need to develop a Zen attitude of spontaneity, authenticity, acting-without-acting, living without fear or anxiety, seeing each life experience as a positive from which we can learn something and from which we can continue to develop ourselves. Ultimately we must look within ourselves for our direction and our decisions, and not allow ourselves to be directed by others or by the prevailing culture - as long as our decisions and our actions don't harm others unnecessarily and inappropriately.

Where I disagree with him is in his referring to what I'd call a Zen attitude and a Zen life as simply 'following our feelings' or 'trusting our instincts'. This blog has discussed at length, in previous Layers, the importance of developing a distinctive 'instinctual intelligence', and also the need to become, through meditation, fully aware of our true selves - our personal intelligence. It's also focused on the need to develop other intelligences, which I've referred to as 'spiritual intelligence' (intuition, etc) and 'social intelligence' (empathy, etc.) If all of those intelligences are working well and working collaboratively, together with our intellect, then we can also become 'emotionally intelligent' and become more able to control our destructive emotions.

It's not mere pedantry or a matter of semantics to clarify and separate out these various intelligences, and to see 'instinctual intelligence' as simply a component of our whole psyche, so that someone who acts 'spontaneously' solely on the basis of 'instinct' is seen to be acting without the benefit and input of all of his/her intelligences. In essence our hard-wired instinctual intelligence just prepares us for flight, fight, freeze and sex. (Although various skills, such as driving and playing a musical instrument, can also become more or less 'instinctual'.)

Words matter. Concepts matter. Intelligences matters. Developing (and using) all of our intelligences matters very much indeed. But don't expect Michael Gove and the coalition government to understand any of that.

What a pity that their pal Anthony Seldon can't help them to see the uselessness of an Education Secretary and an education system that value "largely worthless pieces of paper" and very little else.


Charles Dickens satirised the living daylights out of a school system that killed children's curiosity and reduced children to being passive memorisers of so-called facts and knowledge - and that was way back in the 19th Century, before computers and the Internet were even imagined. The ridiculous Gove still doesn't, and won't ever, get it. The man is an absolute joke.
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Layer 411 . . . Glorious Winter Weather, Heathrow Chaos, British Business Ownership, PLCs, Gradgrind Gove, Betraying Our Children, Booktrust, Dylan's Favourites, Spotify, Trenet, and Boum!

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Day Three in Melbourne, Trott undefeated on 168, the lead more than 400, Bresnan playing a blinder, the Aussie batsmen all out for little more than 100, and with only their bowlers left to bat it'll all be over before lunch tomorrow. How long have we waited for England to play this well, and for Australia to play this badly, in Australia?


 http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/dec/28/the-ashes-2010-australia-england

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/dec/27/ashes-2010-england-australia-live

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/cricket/match/53517


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The 'Definitive Collection' of Charles Trenet is now available on Spotify. Includes 'La Mer' and 'Boum!'. C'est magnifique!

Apparently the basic (free) version of Spotify is again available to anyone who wants to download it in Britain. No 'invitations' required.

Also on Spotify I stumbled across 'The Best of Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour'. Bob's choices are, as you'd expect, immaculate.

Matzo Balls                   by Slim Gaillard
Alimony Blues               by Eddie 'Clearhead' Vinson
Tulip or Turnip              by Duke Ellington
Midnight Hour               by Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown
Let Me Play With Your Poodle        by Tampa Red
Deep Purple                  by The Ravens
Tennessee                     by Carl Perkins
John The Revelator       by Blind Willie Johnson
Pistol Packin' Mama     by Al Dexter
Telephone Is Ringing     by Pee Wee Crayton
Mystery Train               by Little Junior Parker
This Train                     by Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Take The 'A' Train      by Duke Ellington
Good Morning Heartache        by Billie Holiday
etc . . .

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This glorious winter weather

Snowy slopes, blue skies. Ignore what you read in the papers – most people are having a lovely break

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/23/glorious-weather-christmas-break-move

by Simon Jenkins

The world is mad. Most Britons have, like me, just enjoyed the most glorious weather of the year. The western shores of the British Isles have seen a week of almost continuous sun, open horizons and star-filled nights. Freezing air has kept the early snow from melting. With brief exceptions, main roads have been open and supplies plentiful. An exquisite Christmas beckons, with snowy slopes and blues skies, a photographic negative from the usual greens and greys.

So what is the Britain we have read about in the papers and watched on the news, one of relentless, total misery? It must be one that is enmeshed in London and can't stay still. It is a metropolis of the damned, hyper-mobile, frantically trying to get into or away from itself, stranded in motorways and on railway platforms, entombed in detention centres that claim to be airports. The inhabitants all incant, "I was only trying to get away for Christmas", to a chorus of "When is the government going to do something?" An aviation company was even quoted as claiming it was Whitehall's job to keep it supplied with de-icing equipment.

The Heathrow airport boss, Colin Matthews, even said he would "give up [his] bonus" because of the snow. Most travellers could not care less about his bonus: they want a plane. As for the bonus, the truth is out. It is apparently no longer a reward for exceptional achievement. It is standard remuneration on top of salary, at risk only if it snows and is considered a risk to public relations.

Philip Hammond has been browbeaten by sufferers from acute seasonal mobility disorder, and by their media cheerleaders. It would be gratifying if, just once, a transport secretary had the nerve to stand up and tell everyone that when the weather is bad it is a good idea to leave their cars in the garage, tear up their rail passes, forget Marbella and tuck up at home with a good book. They should see their loved ones some other time. Normality cannot be guaranteed.

Simon's taken a heavy panning for this article on CiF, and of course for most people the snow and ice have been a massive inconvenience and often dangerous. However, it's good to get a half-full view of the effects of the winter weather. For many of us the snowy landscapes and cityscapes ARE beautiful - if we only have time to walk, and stand, and stare.

Maybe more people ought to re-think the wisdom of travelling during the winter, and reconsider the benefits of just staying at home. Maybe people ought to invest in better clothing, better boots, and some bags of grit. Maybe people ought to plan for snow and ice, instead of just hoping there won't be any. Maybe the people who run airports and railways and buses and ambulance services ought to re-think their priorities and do some proper contingency planning. Maybe we all should re-think our attitude to the elderly and the disabled and the housebound. Maybe we should all re-think what we do in our homes and our families, and re-think how we spend our time together. Or our time apart.

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Heathrow's chaos is indicative of a wider national malaise

We have the oddest and most regressive constitution for private ownership anywhere in western capitalism

by Will Hutton

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/25/will-hutton-british-ownership-rules

It was not Heathrow's finest hour. The pain was there to see in the pictures of thousands of passengers delayed without information, left to camp for hours on inhospitable floors. Less visible were many thousands of others, like some friends of mine, who, courtesy of the internet and the closure of Heathrow's slip roads, thankfully never made it to the airport at all. The freakishly heavy snowfall would have disrupted any world airport, but not for as long as Heathrow, which was still suffering acute delays three or four days later.

The country has never seriously debated what good ownership of assets might constitute – whether by a football club or a public company. Instead, the response to the social and economic irresponsibility of some private ownership has been to call for nationalisation and public ownership, while the response to the waste and lack of innovation of some public ownership has been to call for private ownership. There has been too little attempt to think through what the constitution and process of ownership might be that would create great owners, whether in the public or private sector, or among the many other forms of ownership, ranging from partnership to co-operatives.

Instead, with the rise of the neoconservative right, there has just been the unquestioning assumption that the best form of ownership is private; in Britain, that necessarily means our idiosyncratic variant of the public limited company. This represents the oddest and most regressive constitution for private ownership anywhere in western capitalism. British company law makes no requirement on shareholders and directors to have any obligation to be good stewards of their assets, their employees or their customers. Shareholders' rights to do what they want with their shares to maximise their immediate value is more stark than anywhere else and directors' responsibilities are only to serve the interests of these madly unconstrained shareholders.

The debacle at Heathrow is one consequence of this insouciance, but the wreckage stretches across the economic landscape. British companies think, strategise, innovate and invest their way to success far less than their competitors in different ownership regimes. They know the penalty for one wrong move is to be taken over as responsibility-free shareholders sell out to some opportunistic predator advised by London's network of lawyers, accountants and investment bankers who grow fat on the lush fees.

No other capitalist economy organises its affairs in this way. When British Airports Authority was privatised in 1986 – with the not unreasonable aim of making it more innovative and freeing it from the stultifying anti-investment rules of the Treasury – there was no creative thought about what constitution of ownership would be the best for an airport. The Americans require their airports to be owned by, not for, companies whose constitution obliges the owners and managers to put the public interest of efficient and comfortable travel first. In Britain, the issue was not even aired. BAA was simply to become a British public limited company, whose sole objective would be profit maximisation.

This self-serving ideology is betraying Britain. The public limited company is a remarkable institution. Incorporation allows the sharing of risk by many providers of private savings. In return for incorporation, the company receives the licence to trade and to make profits as long as it observes the law of the land. The public company is the great engine of capitalist growth. But the constitution of the company matters. Shareholders and directors can be required to take interests into account other than their own immediate profits. Other countries do this and prosper. Not the British.

The lesson is that ownership counts, a view that as disaster piles on disaster is at last gaining some transaction. I chair the recently established Ownership Commission to investigate how better ownership might be achieved, from both introducing mutuality and co-operatives into the public sector to potential revisions in company law for public companies. It reports next autumn. The subject matter is not just technical stuff. This Christmas, there will be people who are not with those they love thanks to BAA's priorities. Good ownership matters very much indeed and Britain has too little of it.

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Michael Gove is betraying our children yet again

The decision to stop funding Bookstart, with its free books for the young, is unnecessarily cruel

    * Editorial
    * The Observer, Sunday 26 December 2010

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/26/editorial-child-literacy-books-education 

For most book lovers, the affair starts early and the earlier the introduction is made, the deeper the affection. The benefits of parents reading to their children, as a bonding experience and as a step on the road to literacy, are well documented. Promoting that activity was the founding purpose of Bookstart, the government-sponsored programme which gives starter packs of literature to every child in the country.

The scheme is run by an independent charity, Booktrust, but it depends on a £13m government grant. The trust says that, with the support of the publishing industry, it gets £4 pounds in value for every £1 it receives in public money. It was announced last week that, as of next year, Booktrust will get nothing.

The arguments for austerity are well rehearsed. The money to reduce the deficit has to come from somewhere. A soft target for cuts is presented by this relatively new service, which has yet to embed itself in the nation's consciousness as a cherished institution. It surely would, if allowed to continue. The coalition is, in theory, committed to investment in early years development. Ministers lose no opportunity to express their determination to give children from all backgrounds the best start in life. But they have clearly decided that giving out books is an inefficient way to achieve that goal.

It is impossible to know what return the state might be getting on its investment in Booktrust. The system hasn't been running long enough to tell whether the beneficiaries are more literate than they otherwise might have been, or whether they have more vivid imaginations, or whether they love books more. Only a minister inspired by Thomas Gradgrind, the crudely utilitarian headmaster in Dickens's Hard Times, would attempt such a calculation.

In fact, the decision to axe Bookstart over Christmas suggests education secretary Michael Gove gets his inspiration from a different Dickens character… Free books for children? Humbug!

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