One of the problems with those pressing a single issue is that they become obsessed by it and assume that everyone else must be involved even in small ways. Often following personal loss, people throw themselves into a cause. I’m not sure that this is healthy, but each to his own. However, I do object when they start to call upon the state to force their agenda on the rest of us as Keith Sudbury is doing.
A father who lost his son to leukaemia is calling for secondary schools and colleges to include one lesson on how to donate stem cells, blood and organs.
Keith Sudbury wants to raise awareness by making donation part of the curriculum for students aged 16 and over.
This is the Jamie Oliver and Steven Gerrard syndrome all over again. If everyone with a drum to beat was to have a slice of the national curriculum, there would be no space left for things like mathematics, English and such. Enough already. There are plenty of opportunities to raise awareness of donation, and how to do it is not exactly difficult to understand, now, is it? What Sudbury is aiming for is not so much educating people in the “how”, rather he is trying to get people to donate retrospectively in larger numbers and he wants to use the weight of legislation to force his idea on the rest of us.
While an awareness campaign is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, hijacking the school curriculum is and getting the binge legislators in Westminster to use the violence of legislation to force it on us most certainly is. School is for gaining an education, it is not a place for single issue groups to press their propaganda, no matter how worthy the cause. If anyone was looking for an example of why schooling should be taken out of the hands of the state Mr Sudbury provides an excellent one, frankly.
“raising awareness”, my #1 loathed phrase
I tend to feel the same. However, they can raise as much awareness as they please as far as I am concerned – providing they don’t start using the force of the legislature to do it.