Brexit: Racism and Education

The #Brexit vote fallout and awful racist behaviour that has been seen has many reasons, which can be put down to one thing.

Education.

Successive governments have reduced the value and range of education. They have removed Grammar Schools, reduced and restricted curriculum offers, driven teachers to tears, decimated Further Education Colleges and forced students to choose between penury or education.

Education has failed too many.

They are all at fault. Conservative, Labour, Liberals and multitudinous smaller parties. None have defended education with sufficient passion or commitment to enable it to educate our young and teach them that equality between people matters.

The data seems to show that the less involved, less educated, less enabled our people are, the more likely they are to blame the blameless. Those who come here and work hard, for themselves and their families. Those who try, those who want something better, those we should welcome.

The young seem to have not voted in sufficient numbers to have an impact. Too many are not sufficiently interested or engaged to make the effort to vote.

The young feel that they have no say.

The poor feel as if they have no say.

The disabled feel as if they have no say.

The Black and Ethnic Minorities feel as if they have no say.

The millions on benefits feel as if they have no say.

Those who depend on 4 different jobs and barely have the energy to feed coins into their electricity meter, feel as if they have no say.

Those who have a job, which depends on them not having a view, feel as if they have no say.

Those who do not think, have too much to say.

Some of those who did not get the vote they wanted have been vicious in their condemnation of others.

You may not like Grammar Schools, wide and differentiated curriculum, FE Colleges or university degrees that require thinking rather than practical work, but the broad education of students, the exposure to other ideas and cultures, tolerance and balance is essential to build a population with appreciation for others.

We have failed them all and now we reap what they have sown.

Education in the broadest sense, not in the narrow Orwellian straights of passes and fails of courses which are pointless in securing employment, is needed now, more than ever. Exposure to the widest range of thoughts and ideas, to aspire, to dream and to be tolerant of each other is needed to be a responsible citizen in this world.

Unlike Cameron, we cannot throw a hissy fit, and stomp off into the shadows of our Trust Fund, sulking that the electorate didn’t understand that we were supposed to do as we were told.

We must now deal with this, and build a future for us all, irrespective of colour, religion, origin, gender or sexual choice. We must now find a way for us to educate each other on our basic principles, points of view and integrate them into one new mandate of equality.

This casual, almost normalised hatred of anyone or anything that is different is deeply embedded in some of our countrymen. It is disgusting and before we can build a future together, we must stop it. We cannot be part of any community until we do.

We must ensure that our young are educated to value democracy and the importance of individual responsibility, of social cohesion and collective responsibility for the greater good. Above all, we must value each other, no matter who we are, what we are or where we come from.

Most of all, we must never, ever allow the lack of education to be such a shaming or defining characteristic of a nation.

Education, like a referendum is for life.