[senco-forum] Re: literacy

I know that many people are working hard on behalf of the' potential prison population.'  but it is not a question of how hard we are working, it is question of how effectively we are working and the inescapable reality is that we are working very ineffectively because a significant proportion of the 118,000 people we condemn to illiteracy every year,  in fact end up in the prison system.

I am fearful that the main thesis of the Rose Report will be mutilated beyond recognition by those 'experts' who are ultimately responsible for the sorry state of affairs which currently exists. We should stop fiddling and push the recommendations of the Rose Report wholeheartedly. The status quo is simply not acceptable.

I know that initiatives like that being carried out by the Shannon Trust in our prisons can only ever be a sticking plaster on the gaping wound of illiteracy but, like it or not, it is our failure to have taught them to read in the first instance that has contributed so significantly to their status firstly as potential and then ultimately, as full members of the prison population.  

I would hope that we have not sunk to such depths that we would claim that it is the prisoners fault for not having learned to read by the unproductive teaching methods we chose to inflict on them.  Let us support Rose and opt for proven, productive methods.

Eddie C.