Pity the poor children

The news that the Government are going to try to give every child in the land 5 hours a week of cultural activities, should be a good thing. Unfortunately it isn't, they just don't get it - do they? To give up smoking you have to want to give up. It's no good being told that it's bad for you, and it's really expensive because you know all that already. You have to want to. Similarly, with cultural activities, you must have to want to go and see a play, see an art exhibition or go to a museum.

The point of teaching is to provide the foundations of learning for the rest of your life. To encourage pupils to see a play, they need to do be encouraged to read eye-opening literature and be encouraged to do drama classes. To get an interest in art, they need to be doing some drawing, painting or sculpture themselves. For a museum, the kids need to be taught the basics of history and encouraged to find out more.

All these things should be taught in school anyway. If they are not, why aren't they? They were when I was a kid. They've probably been pushed out by more trendy things like Parenting and Citizenship classes. At school we only had one nonsense lesson a week, Personal Skills Development - it was such a joke. None of the kids took it seriously. Similarly, forcing kids into 5 hours of cultural activities a week will be seen as a joke, time to mess about.

Give the £200 million to schools directly (it's £15 per pupil - maybe one decent play a year) to be used by teachers to supplement an English Literature, Drama, Art or History course when a topic is of interest to the kids. If the Government gets involve it'll be a disaster, think Millenium Dome as opposed to Tate Modern.

Squiffy.