Scrap targets

There is no task more difficult than that of educating British children. To the natural indiscipline of youth has now been added the indiscipline of parents, many of whom interpret any reports of wrongdoing in school on the part of their offspring as a personal affront, or as the manifestation of the malice of teachers. The teachers themselves have changed out of all recognition in the past few decades, thanks to the long march through the institutions by indoctrinating, and indoctrinated, intellectuals bearing pernicious gimcrack radical ideas. While many are respectable and learned men and women, who view it as their vocation to induct their charges into a civilisation, a tradition and a way of behaving, others sometimes give the appearance, especially when congregated at the conference of the National Union of Teachers, of being a rebellious rabble.

Unfortunately, successive governments have given teachers plenty to rebel against, and justifiably so.