Poverty

A poverty of material from myself today, I’m afraid - a day when what could go wrong, did go wrong. Well, pretty much so. Anyhow, enough of my problems, but all I can offer today is this BBC report that Lesley Ward, President of teachers union, ATL, claims that poverty today is as bad as it was in Dicken’s time.

Interesting - while all us sociology teachers have been carefully explaining the relative nature of poverty, here’s someone popping up and saying it does not in fact seem to have kept up with the times. It was hard enough trying to convince my students in sunny Cambridge that not everyone was as well off as they were; goodness knows what they’d have made of this. It just shows - one really good way to learn about your own society is to get on the bus, train or whatever, and travel around it. Failing that, talk to people who have done that.

Lesley Ward certainly knows about living conditions in Doncaster. Mrs Ward’s testimony is not just interesting on account of what it tells us about poverty- it’s also relevant to education - note her comments about parental interest in children’s education.

Now, I must get on and keep working on that quiz. Back next week.