Uses of literacy

The guidance, which will be sent to nurseries from January, will include advice to set up role-play activities tailored to boys' interests, such as builders taking phone messages and writing up orders, post office employees writing on forms, and waiters taking orders from customers.

When you're a boy in Brown's Britain, it is possible to fail at three, your future having been decided for you by a woman, a woman who changed her opinions from deepest red to dusty pink and powder blue in the space of a few short years, a woman who is unafraid of educationalists. For you, dear boy, there is a future, one of taking orders. For that is what education is all about: getting you to read, write and rith to a standard sufficient to play a menial but useful role in New New Britain. You will receive your orders from people of Primarolo's calibre, people who hold whatever opinions are optimum for the present contingency, people who ensure that they are the leaders and you are the managed. You will not need to concern yourself with reading or writing for other than work-related purposes. You will not need the university education that Ms Primarolo and others of her generation enjoyed free of charge; you couldn't afford it, anyway. You will not be getting much education at all, little man, since your Government has committed your funds to Trident. Perhaps you should think about running away to sea.

Those of us who had the good fortune to be educated rather than trained can enjoy Mr Challinor's thoughts on this matter.