And, re: my previous, this. The purpose of higher, further, *any* education, shouldn't be to learn a skill to be put to direct use; if anything, it should be the opposite of that – to luxuriate in a subject, just as the girl studying Norse Literature was, because we don't just learn facts. We learn ways of thinking, we learn more holistically, and a richer education benefits everyone: students, children, employers, peers. (As usual: I will defend my humanities degree to the hilt).

"So the Year of Code isn’t about doing fun stuff with JavaScript, Python and Ruby. It’s about building another element of a society where those that don’t work don’t eat, and where the rewards of work are skewed ever further towards a tiny minority at the top of the pile… It’s about creating childhoods overshadowed by adult anxieties about work and economic survival. It’s about replacing the broad expanse of education – with all the exploration, creativity and genuine freedom that implies – with the narrow tunnel of schooling. It’s training children to have “relevant” employer-friendly skills and the right attitudes and politics to go with them." Yeah, that. I have no problem with the idea of teaching code, but I don't care for the idea that you're teaching code so that people can do code for a living. Education is about more than a direct translation of rote learning to skills for business; it should be about skills for the soul. for the well-rounded adult yet-to-be. I hadn't twigged that the thing that always rankled with me was the 'neoliberal' part.