Bid to control cultural output

Sir, - 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 stubbornly insists that 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 squirrel, a 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 10-year plan, going twice better than the old USSR.

Ms Hyslop’s view is that artists ‘have to have a common understanding of what the country wants’.

These are the words of a control freak.

In any case, 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.

We saw the results of that in the 20th Century, and they were not encouraging.

This is, I am afraid, where we have reached in SNP Scotland.

On the one hand, the Government supports a curriculum that dumbs down education.

It is difficult not to be cynical and believe that a dumbed down populace suits the SNP’s political ambitions, rendering people more susceptible to their falsification of facts.

On the other hand, the Government is intent on controlling cultural output.

The proof of that will lie in whose artistic projects are supported by funding, through

Creative Scotland, and whose are not.

How have we allowed all this to happen? Jill Stephenson. Glenlockhart Valley, Edinburgh.