Soviet-style control

Education Secretary John Swinney ignores the many complaints and criticisms about the curriculum for Excellence.

as with his adherence to the idea of the named Person for every child, he insists it is right for Scotland.

His solution to any problems in schools is to reform school governance. What has that to do with reforming a curriculum that teachers and education experts have condemned as broken? it is another diversion from reality.

Meanwhile, culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop defends the SnP’s national cultural Strategy. are we really living in a country where the Government plans cultural output?

it seems so, for creative Scotland has a ten-year plan, going twice better than the old uSSR. Miss Hyslop’s view is that artists ‘have to have a common understanding of what the country wants’.

there is no ‘what the country wants’. Scots have differing views about most things. Worse, it is not up to ‘the country’ to instruct artists about what to produce.

this is where we have reached in SnP Scotland. on the one hand, the Government supports a curriculum that dumbs down education. on the other, the Government is intent on controlling cultural output.

How have we allowed all this to happen?

Jill StephenSon, edinburgh.