Readers’ Letters: What next for our education system, who is running schools the Teachers or the pupils?

It’s their parents/carers responsibility to ensure the wee souls get out of their beds and into school on time and does school not punish them for being consistently late anymore .This believe it or not is part of life’s education, if they can’t be bothered to turn up for school on time how on earth are they going to learn and understand that it is a basic requirement to turn up for work on time.

As for them struggling to cope with the transition between classes does that mean when they get employment… presuming they can get oot their scratcher on time, when an employer asks them to move between departments as part of their working day will they crumple in a heap and claim industrial harassment for being asked to put one foot in front of the other.

Honestly, who is running schools, the teachers or the pupils. What next for our education system, teachers doing the kids exams for them because they can’t be bothered lifting pencils etc.

J Moore, Glasgow

Fundamental reset

Mark Openshaw (Letters 7 November) paints a rather disparaging picture of those pursuing Scotland’s democratic right to self-determination and the fundamental legal authority for our elected Scottish Parliament to conduct constitutional referendums.

Perhaps a more apt analogy would be turning a once proud people more than capable of fending for themselves into beggars in spite of having won the lottery (to quote Mark) in terms of energy resources while those same resources have been exploited by others for huge personal financial gain elsewhere, specifically in “London and the south-east of England”. This is not akin to “leaving the rest of the family to fend for themselves” but is about restoring pride in a nation of people who are fully practised, as has been demonstrated throughout the world, in managing their own resources and their own finances.

Instead of standing idly by while inequality across the UK continues to obscenely rise (there are now more than a hundred billionaires in the UK) to a level that even a few years ago would not have been imagined in dystopian nightmares, we can end the scourge of decades of poverty and deprivation that has resulted in a proliferation of food banks and local charities. Perhaps Mark is content with such a despicably distorted economy and failing society but an independent Scotland can do much better for the majority of its people.

A fundamental reset for all the nations of our broken Union may also encourage England to better serve its population beyond a London effectively driven by profiteering soul-bereft financial moguls acting on behalf of a decadent self-serving British establishment (and perhaps a future UK Prime Minister in Nigel Farage).

Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian

Fading memory

With the approach of Armistice Day, I have noticed that the memories of the two biggest wars we endured are fading. Within three or four generations, the horror, fear, and fragile hope that defined those conflicts risk being reduced to ceremony without substance, and altogether forgotten.

The generation after mine seems to see those wars as irrelevant, or as history lessons rather than lived inheritance. The sale of poppies is falling, whether from lack of lived memory or from the misuse of the symbol by extreme groups. Either way, many see no significance in it.

I do not claim to have a solution, except to make remembrance more relevant to younger generations on their own terms. If we wait until they are older, it will be too late. The time is now — not to preach, but to remind: of the courage and hope that carried men and women through war, and gave us the freedom we have today, whether we appreciate it or not.

Gratitude must come from understanding, not compulsion. Remembrance is not nostalgia; it is inheritance and part of who we are. If we let memory fade, we surrender the lessons they fought to pass on. If we renew it, we honour their sacrifice and guard the peace we all long for.

Judith Campbell, Portree, Skye

Risk assessment

In her column today (8 Nov), Susan Dalgety repeats (yet again!) her views about trans people. She is entitled to her opinion, but not to misrepresent the facts.

All trans people sent to prison in Scotland are immediately subject to a detailed risk assessment (while housed in isolation), which considers both the risk they may pose to other prisoners, and the risk others may pose to them. That assessment informs which prison estate (men's or women's) they are moved to.

The majority of trans women prisoners are held in the men’s estate; some are held in the women’s estate. Why? Because a trans woman who is in prison for a non-violent crime, for example, fraud, and who has no history of abuse or assault towards other people, is very unlikely to be a risk to other women prisoners. But she is likely to be at significant risk herself, for example of sexual assault, if held in a men’s prison.

To have a blanket policy of placing all trans women prisoners in men’s prisons, as Susan Dalgety suggests on the basis of her negative views about trans people, would increase overall risk, not decrease it.

Tim Hopkins, Edinburgh

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