Joanna Lumley thinks our kids have no morals

I don’t normally rant about celebrities. To be honest, I don’t normally take that much notice of celebrities, except a select few authors and BtVS and Angel alumni. But I just saw this article on the BBC* about some comments Joanna Lumley has made about children today.

I was assuming she didn’t have any children herself, but she does have a son, who is 44, so I imagine she must be very up-to-date on today’s schooling and parenting issues.

There was one ‘crime’ during the whole time I was at school, when a fountain pen went missing. Stealing just didn’t happen.

And where did she go to school? The local comprehensive? No, she went to a Catholic boarding school. Oh, so there wasn’t much theft? Funny that. I guess that all Catholic boarding schools are dens of inequity in the 21st century, then.

I was taught not to shoplift, not to steal, not to behave badly. We weren’t even allowed to drop litter.

Oh, that’s where we’re going wrong today. In Rosemary’s school they have after-school clubs in joyriding and have reward charts for who can drop the most litter.

I think laptops should be banned from schools. Until you can prove you can add up on your fingers or think independently in your head, you have learnt nothing,

I’d better send a letter of complaint to the headmaster, then. Clearly ours is the only school where they don’t hand out laptops to reception children. They seem to be teaching them something called phonics and how to add up and subtract, when they should just be sitting them in front of the internet. Oh no, wait.

We smile when they download information from the internet and lazily present it as their own work. We allow them to bunk off school and bring in sick notes,

Because no-one ever plagiarised or got their parents to help with their homework in the past. And, of course, we never bunked up school or got off PE for dodgy knees and the ‘time of the month’ (which amazingly came more than once a month if you didn’t like swimming).

We’re not teaching them how to apply themselves and be present, how to accomplish a job and finish it, how to learn other languages and actually achieve a trade.

Actually, we are teaching them all those things, from what I’ve seen, though how long that will last with the coalition wanting to do bizarre things like introduce nonsense words into primary reading tests to check that children have fully learnt phonics – rather than actual reading.**

I would like to see children involved in hearty-sounding pursuits, such as building a camp. Or getting an entire school to go and work in a farm, for a term, all together.

Oh, that will make all the difference. Perhaps we should set up some kind of clubs so children can undertake hearty-sounding pursuits. We could call them Scouts and Guides, or Rainbows, or… Oh no, wait.

You know, it’s annoying enough when anyone from an older generation disses our children and our parenting skills. It’s annoying enough when the media go on and on about dumbing down of exams instead of praising the younger generation for actually doing well and succeeding. It’s annoying enough when relatives or family friends tell us how they used to do things, on the assumption that this must have been the right way because look we’re still alive. But it’s really annoying when celebrities take it upon themselves to get all superior and holier-than-thou, especially when they’re talking out of their asses.

Just stick to the day job, Joanna, and leave the social commentary to the bloggers. We’re much, much better at it.

* And, by the way, what is up with the BBC and the plethora of articles about it’s own shows? At least there doesn’t seem to be a mention of Doctor Who in this article, or perhaps I’m just not looking hard enough.

** Sorry, if I’m going to rant at a celebrity, I have to get a rant at the coalition in there somewhere, too. It’s only fair.

Picture credit: Office of Nick Clegg