When Bill Clinton dashed George Bush senior’s hopes of a second presidential term in 1992, he did so by focusing, not on foreign policy (the recently fought war to retrieve Kuwait from Saddam Hussein), but on the economy: ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’ was the phrase that caught it in a nutshell.
In 2010, we’re still wrestling with the massive and serious problem of illiteracy and while the economy changes, the solution to teaching children to read and spell doesn’t.
A slogan for the decade: ‘Train the teachers, stupid!’