Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of feathers.

It is, of course, further indication that a fundamentalist right has really taken over much of the Republican Party, People might cite George Bush as proof that you can be totally impervious to the effects of Harvard and Yale education.

Whatever education I got was from experience and reading. But I also realize I wouldn't pass my friend's sixth-grade class.

Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.

Realizing that the majority of kids that get molested feel that it is their fault, along with shame, those kids have no idea what to say or do to try to report anything, and add that with the lack of education, it is a complete recipe for disaster that leads to non-reporting of molestation.

I feel sorry sometimes for these sportsmen and women who put in just as much effort as the footballers. For example, athletes train at least as hard as footballers but have to be happy if they can earn enough to finance a decent education.

The real solution is to improve the incomes of the poor and provide their children with decent education.

The question is, will we continue to fight what may be a rearguard action to defend universal literacy as a central goal of our education system, or are we bold enough to see what's actually happening to our culture?

My mother was born on a tiny farm in County Mayo. She was meant to stay at home and look after the farm while her brother and sister got an education. However, she came to England on a visit and never went back.

There were all us baby boomers who had a grammar school education, started to learn, then went on the pill, the whole thing, and so there are today a lot more women writers, editors, producers, and so a lot more women's stories. God, the BBC's practically run by women.