Whilst hubbie has been away in Japan, I've been watching tons of crap TV to fill in the lonely hours, but one gem I happened to stumble across was Channel 4's 'Can't Read, Can't Write'. This is a three part documentary, where Phil Beadle is trying to teach a class of adults how to read and write. The class age ranges from 28 to 56 and is devastating watching. Here are a group of adults that have gone through life without two standard forms of communication and have been failed by our education system. Their tales of school life differ from being labelled the class dunce, to being termed lazy and being handed word searches to complete instead of having vital time spent with them to overcome their difficulties. It made me feel sad. Sad to think that the two things that I feel most passionate about in life are something that so many people will go through life and not experience.
If I couldn't read and write, then I wouldn't have this blog, I wouldn't be able to write my novel, I wouldn't have made all my lovely blog friends and I wouldn't have been able to trudge my way through the BBC's Top 100 reads, but more importantly I wouldn't be me.
I think these people are fab to finally have the confidence to learn, it couldn't have been easy to make that initial step and agree to do this. So I feel really humble when I think I gave myself a pat on the back for ticking another task off my list, but I guess everyone has their own challenges to achieve in life - it just so happens I have 40 of them!
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