Alec Clegg was Chief Education Officer for the West Riding of Yorkshire from 1945 to 1974. He believed in a liberal arts based education for all and held that such an approach stimulated better outcomes generally. Anyone going to a West Riding school would be encouraged to paint, draw, dance, sing, or learn a foreign language simply because it was the right thing to do. 

No-one today has ever heard of him. 

No child today escapes the grim “if-you-fail-maths-you-will-die” austerity of national curricula, academy chains and ofsted inspectors with bad hair and no dress sense.

This tune, whose first line is taken from an Ian McMillan article about Clegg, is a nostalgic howl for something better for our children.

Alec Clegg Can Still Dream

Jimmy Andrex & the Bible of Dreams