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Issue number 30 of the second series, issued in Summer 1999 was the last printed issue of LIB ED. All new LIB ED articles will now be published on this website. To be notified of when new articles appear, click here.

THIS EDITION of the magazine offers our usual variety of articles, ideas, reviews and analysis, plus letters, comment and humour. The first three articles all present different - and critical - views of the Literacy Hour, as adopted under a certain amount of pressure from Central Government by primary schools across the UK.

The first - Set up to fail on page 3 - looks at how the Literacy Hour fails to take account of our individual differences as learners and generally shows a lack of respect or consideration for students or teachers. While acknowledging the importance of literacy for all, it suggests that a more realistic and appropriate Literacy Strategy would take more account of the development of personality and relationships than mechanical government decrees.

The wrong 3-Rs on page 4 describes how the Literacy Hour has found its way into special schools where it is wholly inappropriate. It is not literacy as a goal for all that is the problem, but the application of a heavy-handed government strategy for children with severe, profound and multiple learning difficulties. Instead, a new 3-Rs (Routine, Repetition and Real life) is suggested as having far more relevance for these children.

On page 5, Beatrix Oliver, a primary school student, describes the Literacy Hour as An hour of boredom. She details some of its least appealing features and asks the eternal educational question “what about self-determination?”

We visit the Barefoot College in the desert state of Rajasthan in India on page 6. A flourishing non-formal education project has developed in one of the country’s poorest areas.

In an attempt to divert our readers away from the real issues, LIB ED has instigated a new Modern Manners column (page7) which combines right-wing bigotry and political incorrectness with a heartfelt yearning for the good old days when children were to be seen and not heard...

In Shifting Sands on pages 8-9, Immalee Gould, a student at the progressive Sands School in Devon, looks at a variety of opinions ‘from the inside’ as to what makes a progressive school work. She concludes that it is a flexibility of attitude, the accommodation of differing priorities and the apparent disorganisation that is the strength of such a school, and this in turn prepares its students for the real world outside.

On page 10, Curriculum Cop’s Biggles over Serbia provides us with his usual hard-hitting and uncompromising stance on education policy, sex, genetic modification, sex, war in Serbia, and more sex...

Anarchy in Gotham City (page13) is a review of a new super-hero comic title called Anarky, in which the chief protagonist is an anarchist whose priorities are to challenge the “old power structures and their fascist ways.” Also reviewed is Relax by Catherine O’Neill which is a book for children which explores and explains some of the stresses and strains of everyday life, and suggests ways to understand and deal with these.

Life of Brian (page 14) is a review of Brian Simon’s autobiographical A Life in Education which focuses on the development of British state education since World War II under Tory and Labour, initially looking at it from a fairly radical Marxist viewpoint. However, Brian Simon fails to see through New Labour’s propaganda smokescreen, believing that the present government offers a genuinely radical alternative to the Tories.

Letters are on page 15. Details of back issues can be found on pages 11 and 12.