Dear Sir/Madam,

 

"All primary schools to open for 10-hour day"

 

The idea of schools (and not just primary schools) remaining open all day, seems to me, a very good one - and why not in the evenings, at weekends and during the school holidays as well?

 

Local schools might help take the place of our failing (largely non-existent) local communities, providing round-the-clock opportunities for company, activities, adult supervision and support that are so sorely lacking in urban Britain.

 

Not that local schools could substitute for local communities completely, school children not being the only ones in need of them. Perhaps they could be expanded into community centres, offering facilities for company, activities and support for everyone in the local community, particularly the aged.

 

The administration of such community centres would would require a constitution and they would need to be run democratically. Also, their relationships with the wider community, and with local and national government, would have to be organised and regulated.

 

I'm talking "revolution" now, of course, but nothing less will get us out of the mess we are in. A mess which is much bigger and more threatening than anyone realises or will face up to. Everyone is complaining about wet floors and dripping ceilings, and demanding that something be done about them, but the fact is that the ship we are on (British society, Western civilisation) is actually sinking. It is a huge ship and will take sometime before we actually sink beneath the waves, but as things are at the moment, we are definitely going down.

 

Can anything be done about it? It can. But we have to face up to the situation first. Wet floors and dripping ceilings are just symptoms, which the government is wasting time trying to fix. The underlying problem is the non-sustainability of our growth dependent economy and grossly materialistic lifestyles. The changes necessary are monumental (and even that is an understatement). It is all too easy to understand why we are not yet facing up to it. It requires a complete change of priorities, and of many of the values, attitudes and aspirations on which our economy and lifestyles are based.

 

The motto for achieving sustainability is "Think globally, act locally"

 

Local action cannot be effective and long-term unless it is rooted in real, vibrant and democratic local communities (not the nominal, largely non-existent ones we have today).

 

Transforming schools into local community centres, I suggest, is a way forward.