Key role for schools in tackling drugs crisis

Madam, – Your leader (Findings mean it is time for action, Courier, August, 17) quite rightly highlighted the appalling problems caused by drugs, but said drug abuse was “fuelled by poverty and inequality”.

In my experience, any kind of abuse – alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, drugs – has nothing at all to do with poverty or inequality.

People living in Britain today do not know what real poverty is.

Their grandparents and great-grandparents did, but our nanny state ensures most Britons today no longer need to go hungry.

If there is hunger and homelessness, it is usually the young, the feckless and the mentally ill who still suffer today.

There is certainly inequality, but are we all expected to earn the same as professional footballers and pop stars?

Socialism is the politics of envy.

The strange thing is that very left-wing politicians who wrecked the Scottish education system in the name of social engineering, equality and to help children from poorer families enjoy the same education as the children of the rich, have severely damaged the chances of the disadvantaged.

I and my parents before me – all of us from lowly backgrounds – had a far better education in Scotland’s state schools before 1960 than today’s working-class children.

I also had a lot of experience of Dundonians living in what were then called slum clearances.

Most worked very hard, but some chose to spend their money on the then addictions of fags, booze and gambling.

They were not quite so deadly as cocaine and heroin, but they still kept their addicts poor when they could have been well clear of the poverty line.

My father was brought up in chaos in Aberdeen and ended up several times in the Poor House.

Yet both his mother and his father enjoyed good incomes, my grandmother being a highly skilled weaver and my grandfather a mason. It all went on booze. The old Scottish education system helped save my father and his brothers and sisters. They all went on to lead decent and reasonably prosperous lives.

Part of the solution comes back to education.

Our schools, since they became comprehensive and discipline became more relaxed, lend themselves to pack rule.

Scottish schools helped save my dad and many others and levelled the playing field for them when it came to competing with the children of the rich.

Scottish schools could save the day again, but we must scrap the social engineering and get back to basics.

A return to the Dundee schools I knew in the 1930s and 40s would be a good start.

George K. McMillan. 5 Mount Tabor Avenue, Perth.