BEFORE Tony Blair led New Labour to power, he gave as his priority "education, education, education''. Very fine. But what kind of education?

The Prime Minister's ideas have become clearer with the plans to ditch what is now denigrated as the "bog standard'' or "one size fits all'' comprehensive school. In their place Mr Blair wants specialist schools. And, in particular, he wants schools specialising in "business and enterprise''. So heavily was this emphasised when the Government's plans were announced that one suspects a desire to establish schools in business and enterprise is the reason for the entire new system.

But these business crammers will be the antithesis of true education. For the one thing that a business and enterprise school will not do is equip its students to question an education system, and a society, that puts business and enterprise at its heart.

True education is that which not only trains critical faculties but awakens students to the possibilities within the world and themselves. Designed to catch "the exploratory eagerness of youth'', its litmus test is the flowering of the individual - the expansion of his or her personality. Educate in this way, stimulating a curiosity in life and ideas, and students will shoot off in all directions.

Some, no doubt, will find themselves in business and enterprise, to which they will bring perceptions and values discovered in other fields. This should make them less likely than students educated solely in business and enterprise to regard these activities as gods whose demands must sweep aside all other considerations.

But, sadly, there's little to suggest that Tony Blair sees schools for business and enterprise as more than new cogs to keep the economy turning. Which is only to be expected since no government wants a genuinely educated electorate, which would too easily see through its many deceptions. As a character of Oscar Wilde's noted: "In England education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove disastrous to the upper classes.''

THE finger is pointing to air traffic control over the mid-air crash that claimed 51 Russian schoolchildren among its 71 victims. But does the real blame lie elsewhere?

The industrial region from which the children came is so polluted, with the outpourings of refineries and smelters, that parties of schoolchildren are routinely flown out for their summer holidays at public expense.

You could therefore argue that the deaths are a terrible price of pollution. I do argue that. And if I were of religious bent, which I am not, I might also present the deaths as God's wrath at the fouling of his beautiful planet.

THROUGHOUT most of 2001 this column banged on about foot-and-mouth. But though I repeatedly marshalled the evidence for vaccination, my correspondence suggested that most readers of The Northern Echo remained convinced that the mass cull was an unfortunate necessity. Well it wasn't, as the imminent announcement of a switch to vaccination will prove. Of course, there will be a fig leaf about new vaccines. Rubbish. There never was a need for the mass slaughter, a barbarity that shames us all.