[BITList] Poets' Corner - John Masefield - Selected Works

HUGH chakdara at btinternet.com
Wed Feb 24 17:15:14 GMT 2010


John,

Without looking at the link, I recall : Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, butting through the Channel on the mad March days, with a cargo of xxxxxx, road rails, pig lead, firewood, ironware and cheap tin trays.  Nine out of ten on that verse anyway. I missed Tyne coal, I see.

This brings to mind literacy, as in a great percentage of pupils in Scotland are leaving school deficient in it, so says today's Herald.  And yesterday I read that a similarly great percentage of teachers are effectively innumerate.  I doubt if it's much different south of the border, and yet on TV last night I heard that it is proposed to make sex education compulsory in English schools.  That'll improve both literacy and numeracy at a stroke.  Not to be left out, a school somewhere in the UK proposes to ban the wearing of skirts by girls, on the grounds that it hurts the feelings of pupils with transgender tendencies, whatever the hell these are.  The UK Minister for Equality (she actually exists) made noises designed to obfuscate the issue.

Hugh.
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