Thank you for your thoughtful editorial “Questions remain over the UK’s response to terror” (Comment), especially your criticism of the hysterical attitude to Jeremy Corbyn’s desire to encourage debate about Britain’s contribution to the poison we call Isis. And thanks, too, for the caveat that Corbyn risks being too Eurocentric.
There is a need to look beyond and before the Iraq war. Ironically, it was the failure to intervene at Srebrenica, when 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks were murdered, which enabled the radicalisers to argue that the west was anti-Islam, rather than simply racist.
You were also justified in mentioning cuts to prison officer numbers and how this creates space for radicalisers to do their work. In my research into processes of radicalisation, prison had a key role in jihadi conversion. Your article also rightly refers to reductions in community policing and how this limits confidence-building as well as intelligence gathering. But there is far more to consider: Prevent does have real problems.
I recently ran a workshop for professionals in the Manchester area, who told me about the lack of space and time to consider the complexity of issues (a Prevent workshop talks of using 14 case studies of extremism, to be dealt with in just over an hour. No wonder Prevent can seem superficial).
Manchester University’s department of adult education once had community outreach expertise and, with other bodies, could have created a neutral space in which different communities could learn and think together. The department, like other forms of adult education, is long gone. It could take the barbarity in Manchester to help us think more creatively and eclectically about what is needed if we are to do justice to the murdered children.
Professor Linden West
Canterbury Christ Church University
Park life is not fun for all
I was appalled to read the “posh park drinking” article (Observer Magazine, last week). Our lives are made a misery at summer weekends as these young people descend on our beloved London Fields, leaving truckloads of mess for the council to clear at vast expense.
While many are perfectly nice young people, many others become drunk, noisy and, as your writer suggests, use the park or nearby gardens as a lavatory because, as one person peeing against the wall said: “The queues for the loos are too long.”
I think it was irresponsible to quote someone who suggested using a nearby tree as a lavatory and that rules do not apply. I am afraid the rules of decency apply in every public space.
Posh park drinking is fine for drinkers – not so much for residents.
Liz Veitch
London E8
Put quality of life before cash
It’s high time that the idea of “quality of life” replaced that of “living standards”, the issue Laura Gardiner suggests should be “election-defining” (“This election ignores the most pressing issue…”, Comment).
It is shameful that ever-increasing numbers of people in our society, the sixth richest in the world, lack a decent home and a secure food supply. However, this situation demands a fair redistribution of wealth, not a constant rise in income and living standards. Given the potentially lethal toll that our culture of consumption and pursuit of profit is wreaking on the environment, it can no longer be considered rational to aspire to perpetual economic growth.
Having and spending more money than we need does not make us happy. Making a high quality of life the political aim would mean meeting real individual needs and proper support for the facilities and conditions we all share and benefit from: the NHS, education, arts and culture, public transport, green space, security and so on.
Teresa Belton
Norwich
Child’s play is complicated
With consummate skill, Tom Bennett reduces learning to the age-old dichotomy of “play” and “work” (“Play is essential, but it takes work for children to succeed in the real world”, Comment). But in the real world, learning is hellishly more complex, hence the importance of appointing a professor of play whose research could contribute to our understanding of some aspects of how children learn. It could also replace Bennett’s “redbrick” rhetoric with more closely argued, research-informed policy and practice.
Professor Colin Richards
Spark Bridge
Cumbria
Cleaning is a vital life skill
What is wrong with children doing the cleaning? (“School children asked to clean their classroom as cutbacks bite”, News). It is common practice in Japan where, at the end of every day, teachers and students work together to clean and tidy their school.
At the Small School in Devon, not only do students help with the cleaning, they take it in turns to cook and serve lunch and wash up afterwards, as well as baking bread and growing vegetables. Learning these essential life skills is an invaluable part of their education and all the students are eminently employable when they leave.
Learning only takes place when children are sitting at a desk with a teacher at the front? Perhaps it is time to think about doing education differently.
Fiona Carnie
Alternatives in Education
Bath
