Sometimes I wonder if the Council puts any thought into what they’re cutting. Do they take us seriously? Really? I mean if they considered it fairly, would they have cut the hugely popular and successful music tuition programme down to the bare minimum? Even in the face of a huge public backlash and a musical protest, a number of councillors took advantage of the free concert before returning to their desks and doing precisely nothing about it. Did they listen? No.
Did they take the hint that young people’s educations shouldn’t be taken so lightly? No. Fife Council have announced that they propose to close the Ardroy Outdoor Education Centre too, an absolute gem of an establishment which does great work in giving young people experience of the great outdoors and of the importance of conservation. It means so much to the people who visit it – for some deprived youngsters, it’s their first proper experience of the real outdoors.
Teachers, pupils and parents have been contacting the Council, not only asking them to reconsider their decision but also offering two generations of testimonies to the Ardroy experience. Some questioned how the council could afford £6.8million on a new museum for Dunfermline, when Ardroy costs the council just £250,000 per year. The Council replied that the outdoor curriculum was voluntary for schools and “a good number of Fife Schools already go elsewhere” – yes because, according to the Save Ardroy campaign website, the centre is booked “virtually every academic week through to June 2013” They then suggest that the Council would be free to invest in outdoor education at Lochore Meadows, on the edge of Lochgelly. Hold on a second - the great outdoors doesn’t have a toilet and a visitor centre to have your packed lunch in - where’s the real outdoor experience when you go home at the end of the day?
Nothing was said about where the £6.8million that is being contributed by the council to Dunfermline’s new museum is coming from. Nothing.
It gets worse too, this email was generic. The councillor who wrote this did not address all the points raised by the objectors and instead showed what he thought of the objectors by simply copying and pasting the same text time and time again. Do they take us seriously? Really?
Young people’s services are just too valuable to be cut like this. Outdoor education gives young people a chance to learn about ecology and conservation. Youth clubs give something to do for young people in some of our most deprived areas. The Scottish Youth Parliament gives Fife’s young people representation in politics and a real chance to make their views heard. With musical education is already on its way out, just how much is going to go and what are we going to be left with?
It seems to me that the Council just doesn’t understand, their generic reply email referred to the objectors’ “emotional attachment” – perhaps, but what this is really all about is making sure young people learn about living away from home, the environment, conservation, team-building, caring for each other. This is not just some emotional attachment; this is about twenty people’s livelihoods and the experiences of thousands of school children who all learnt valuable life lessons that couldn’t be replicated at school, or even at Lochore. Living and learning together is an invaluable experience that no child should go without.
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