I watched that programme about adults that can’t read or write, people from 20 to 58, the teacher thinks the material he’s got to teach them is crap (government set, if I remember rightly) and the ones being taught are close to having break downs.
For some reason, it just got me back to my primary school, from the age of seven till ten. It was a Speical Needs school, which at the time, which had the mentally handicapped and the ones not quite ready for mainstream education (that’ll be me), and in that group, there were those that could easly read a book with a few sentances that were on the page, others struggled a little. Some could add and take away, some couldn’t.
I remember very well that we usually watched videos on a Friday afternoon, went on trips every other week, sang songs every other Wedneday, had three Christmas parties (fuck knows who funded them)…you get the picture.
I finally joined mainstream education in the autumn of 1985…where I struggled with the times table, spelling, telling the time, Maths…
Comp…useless teachers, some didn’t bother teaching (I remember the 3rd year when doing History, just copy what was on the blackboard, or she couldn’t be bothered, do a word search…Art, a subject which I enjoyed in the previous years but the old garbage guts of a teacher I had made it known that he doesn’t teach remedial classes, so he just gave us pencils and paper and left us…but he forgot the crayons)…what else…oh, the teacher I had for Maths, History, RE (which she shoved down my throat) and Italian - any fuck up in the class would play up and she’d raise hell for the rest of the lesson arguing with them, chasing them around the school…now wonder I didn’t sit any of the exams she was meant to teach me (whilst I’m at it, read the other post about my religous beliefs and tat’ll give you another idea of the place that made me have a breakdown several years later).
Oh, I forgot, I was diganosed dyslexic ten years after I left school.
And I’ll be watching that programme again next Monday, cause my heart is with those people.