Letters | On lifetime learning, gay spaces, France, pubs, failed states, Scotland, clothespegs, Donald Trump

Letters to the editor

Learning and earning

Your special report on lifelong learning mentioned Singapore’s “individual learning accounts” (January 14th). Britain’s attempt to mimic this policy proved disastrous, as fraud was widespread (see Anthony King’s and Ivor Crewe’s “The Blunders of our Governments”). Encouraging “new entrants” to this field sounds innovative, but one should be careful what one wishes for.

You also gave examples of universities innovating in lifelong learning, including Oxford’s decision to start a massive open online course (MOOC). But we provide other flexible learning models, too, with face-to-face education through part-time provision and online courses with small classes to ensure interaction with a tutor, as well as between students. Thus, along with the proposed MOOC, Oxford runs almost a hundred ten-week online courses with participation capped at 32. Despite that small cap, several thousand students from around the world now study at Oxford online.

PROFESSOR JONATHAN MICHIE
President
Kellogg College
University of Oxford

It may seem counterintuitive, but at Amazon we offer training to our workers that could probably help them end up leaving the company. Many will pursue a career with Amazon. But for others, we are just one stop along their professional journey. We think it is right that we can help make an employee’s time with us a positive, upward step by learning new skills.

We created Career Choice for hourly paid staff who otherwise might not have opportunities open to them. We help them get onto the programme by prepaying tuition, bringing classes into the workplace where it is convenient and doing the research to determine which career path will lead to employment in their region. It is a young programme, but nearly 10,000 Amazonians in ten countries have participated in Career Choice and hundreds have gone on to become nurses, IT technicians and transportation logistics experts, among other professions.

BETH GALETTI
Vice-president, human resources
Amazon
Seattle

As important as “equipping people to stay ahead of technological change” is, we also need an attitudinal change in our schools. We tend to think of schools as places where teachers impart knowledge to students, whose capacity for memorisation and repetition is rigorously tested. Now that we can search Google in a moment, these skills are no longer necessary. Children need to retain a basic framework of conceptual knowledge, but the detail can be recalled from computers.

We need to rethink our approach to schooling and understand that we are now educating for humanity. Creativity, empathy and leadership should be nurtured, equipping people with the skills set to start a business, lead a team and approach problems creatively. Exams must adapt to a new reality by allowing the use of the internet in order to test thinking rather than recall.

Before the workers of the future can take advantage of learning resources, schools should focus on what gives us an advantage over robots; our ability to create, think strategically, communicate with others and demand change.

LORD JIM KNIGHT
Chief education adviser
TES Global
London

The importance of feeling safe
* In your article “Lights out” (December 24th) you write that “In 2015 campaigners managed to save the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, a former Victorian music hall in London which hosts drag shows and cabaret nights, from demolition.” We at RVT Future, wish that were the case! Our campaign to ensure a future for the Tavern has indeed won Grade II listing for the building, but Britain’s oldest gay pub is still far from safe—it remains in the hands of property developers Immovate and is currently on the market. Truly ‘saving’ the Royal Vauxhall Tavern means securing ownership for the gay community and we are currently looking for financial backers to help us make this happen.

Beyond the RVT, your article seriously misunderstands the situation facing gay spaces in London, Britain and beyond. Gay people don’t always end up in their local cocktail bar for good reason. Acceptance in straight venues still simply cannot be taken for granted—hate crimes against homosexuals rose 147% YOY in the three months following the EU referendum. Gay spaces were, are, and will continue to be essential.

Also essential is an understanding of the changes happening to these spaces. Since May, the Urban Laboratory at University College London, in conjunction with Queer Spaces London, has been collecting evidence on the capital’s gay spaces. The next stage of the research is funded by Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London. Clearly, ensuring gay spaces survive and thrive is a priority for our new mayor.

RVT Future committee
London

Currency payment

Buttonwood wondered whether Marine Le Pen’s plan to re-denominate French government euro bonds into new francs might constitute a sovereign default (January 14th). There is no ambiguity here: it would. If an issuer does not adhere to the contractual obligations to its creditors, including payment in the currency stipulated, S&P Global Ratings would declare a default. Our current AA rating on France suggests, however, that such a turn of events is highly unlikely.

MORITZ KRAEMER
Sovereign chief ratings officer
S&P Global Ratings
Frankfurt

Beige boozing
* In 1946 George Orwell wrote longingly of his ideal pub, the Moon Under Water, which would, among other things, sell liver sausage sandwiches and large biscuits with caraway seeds. Weatherspoon’s took that name for several of their city centre establishments. Beer flows cheaply, but I see little else to cheer in their deliberate blandness (Bagehot, December 24th). Our high streets drown in chain bars and restaurants. Weatherspoon’s isn’t the only villain, but British boozers are so much better than their mediocre ambitions.

Avoid pubs with painted blackboards!

ANTHONY PARSONS
London

Why states fail

By linking state failure to authoritarian institutions the analysis you gave about how best to fix fragile nations was too general (“Conquering chaos”, January 7th). Countries with authoritarian regimes are the norm in history, but not all fail. Many, such as China, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia, do rather well. Most importantly, there is a huge variety among them, both in kind and in degree. Some features of authoritarian government—official national narratives, heavy-handed but controlled policing—are effective at preventing armed conflict, whereas others are not. Measures such as the Failed States Index look at the symptoms, not the causes, and tell us little about the reasons for “failure”.

Moreover, corruption, rent-seeking and money laundering are never merely the fault of local institutions. In order to be worth anything, ill-gotten gains must find a haven beyond borders, in violation of anti-money laundering laws. Failed states and ordinary kleptocracies tend to be regimes whose members have offshore bank accounts and property portfolios in the markets of the West.

So rather than spending $1 trillion fuelling corruption in Afghanistan, perhaps NATO could allocate some of this to beefing up the enforcement of anti-corruption in places like London, New York and Paris.

JOHN HEATHERSHAW
Associate professor of international relations
University of Exeter

Scotland is part of the UK

Scotland’s first minister surely does not have a “right to complain” about not being consulted about Brexit (“Supreme judgment”, January 28th). Foreign policy has never been the responsibility of the devolved Scottish government. The Scots had a vote in the referendum, as did every other citizen of the United Kingdom, and they are represented in the Westminster Parliament. Nicola Sturgeon is playing a transparent political game. Her Scottish National Party now plans to table at least 50 amendments to the “Brexit bill”, purely so it can claim that Westminister has ignored the Scottish people 50 times. The devolved assemblies should be consulted about legitimate constitutional issues, such as the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish republic. But this does not apply to the rabble-rousing of the SNP.

TIMOTHY FOXLEY
Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire

Level pegging
* The very interesting article about clothespegs reminded me how essential they were in my early marriage when my wife and I and a two-year-old daughter lived on the shores of St. Margaret’s Bay, Nova Scotia (“Mankind in miniature”, December 24th). Our little house close to the water’s edge had no washer or dryer and nappies had to be rinsed out and washed in the bathtub (usually by me) using a large plunger as agitator. Wrung out by hand they were pegged with frozen hands securely to a line outside where they were almost instantly turned to frozen cotton boards flapping in the wind. Within minutes the ice was blown out and they emerged white and fragrant. Occasionally the line would break and all went down into the reddish soil. Rinsing and wringing had to be done all over again. But the thing that saved us from complete despair was the clothespegs keeping the nappies secure rather than out in the ocean. Thank God for the clothespegs as we could not afford blown away nappies!

JASPER GREEN PENNINGTON
Ypsilanti, Michigan

Paul Ryan’s game plan?

The early days of the Trump administration (“The 45th president”, January 21st) bring to mind Robert Graves’s “I Claudius”. The ageing Roman emperor longs for the return of the republic. To this end he marries Agrippina, mother of Nero, hoping that Nero will be so cruel and despised that it will lead to a rejection of future emperors. His strategy: “Let all of the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.”

PAUL FRIEDMAN
Vancouver

* Letters appear online only

This article appeared in the Letters section of the print edition under the headline "On lifetime learning, France, failed states, Scotland, Donald Trump"

An insurgent in the White House

From the February 4th 2017 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

Discover more

“The best strategy over the next two decades is to cut methane”

Economist readers respond to our recent pieces on green issues