songbob, What a sinister story, how chilling! It does sometimes seem that 'They' want to turn out very poorly educated youngsters. But it's not just academic standards which (IMO) have fallen markedly in schools, it's standards of behaviour and self-control. I can't think of any advantage in that for the country as a whole, hordes of ill-disciplined teenagers rampaging about, drunk, drugged and violent. Why would any Government have that as their aim? Schools could address these issues if given the go-ahead, but it's a major crime to discipline or punish bad behaviour in any but the mildest of ways. If one looks at film footage of the fifties, schoolchildren were noticably calmer and better-behaved, it strikes one quite forcibly.