Properly looked at, the real brainwashing ought to happen at home. I mean, a redgunamo will grow up a redgunamo, regardless of what any schoolteachers say. It's just as valuable for my boys to spend the day with me out coursing or playing video games or in the pub. I'm responsible for them, not whichever jumped up borstal they waste their days away at.
But now nobody has the time or the inclination to actually raise their children, so schools get to be more influential. Increasingly, parents use their kids' education to virtue-signal and to avoid admitting that they've f-ed up.
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
I went to a public school founded by a post-reformation Archbishop of Canterbury whose religious observances - such as they were - were high-church Anglican, but it wasn't a C of E school as such.
And I loved assemblies. All the masters in gowns and, lots of hymn singing and the music master thumping away sweatily at his mighty organ - marvellous!
I still find myself singing C of E hymns. So much better than all those dreary Catholic ones.