A Curriculum of Hope — Book Review

by Debra Kidd

Writing a Curriculum, like a Drugs Management policy, is a thankless school management task. In Primary the teachers used to do as they like and the table-style driven paperwork doesn’t help. So one of the admirable features of this work is the diagrams and in particular in the plait diagram where a visual can be used to describe how threads interact. If only we had such for:

Drugs Management Crisis — Scotland

From yesterday’s ToL: “The spokesman could not point to a positive policy that the minister had brought forward to tackle the (Drugs Management) crisis.”

The same might be said in respect of the sequence of junior ministers previously appointed. To be fair, it’s a tough job: a declining budget, agreement on strategy, lack of empathy for sufferers and absence of a general understanding. Can I suggest that a journalist be dispatched to (exit) interview Joe Fitzpatrick — I imagine he would be willing to explain crucial issues, including the failed programs that have been devised to address them.

On the TV news midweek we had images of the benefits of drugs with people being vaccinated, by injection; the next story was then illustrated with stills of dirty needles. In the first there was talk of “light at the end of the tunnel” and optimism. If I was FM I would propose (in the absence of exams) an educational challenge to our Academies to come up with a better education approach for Drugs, which might compare and contrast the two. They could start by reviewing the traditional technique of bringing Policemen into schools to lecture (no longer Covid-friendly), sleep inducing videos, the badging of organisations by charities, etc. At the end of a few weeks the students would understand what a hard job being a good politician (and teacher) is.