Gove: should he be forgiven?

[Brian Jordan]

I think most of us loathed Michael Gove in his day, for giving away our schools to any bunch of loonies or would-be investors who wanted to capture the minds of our children.
Maybe we were a bit out?
The latest staggering OECD international comparisons claim that English schoolchildren - more or less pre-Gove - were largely hopeless. The Independent cites the report as summarising the position as 1/5 of university students being unable to read the instructions on an aspirin bottle.
Should one conclude that Gove was right after all: he might as well put the next person in the chip shop in charge of education as leave it in the control of the then establishment?
I've felt ill since reading this article:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/english-teenagers-are-the-most-illiterate-in-the-developed-world-report-reveals-a6841166.html
and this from the opposite side of the political spectrum:http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/britain-named-worst-in-developed-world-for-literacy-so-yes-school-reform-is-needed/
How can the teachers who taught me and my generation have been so terribly betrayed? Why worry about a few creationist nutters if the children can't read well enough to see them refuted anyway? They'll have far more to worry about than the age of the earth - or would, if they were properly literate.
Maybe that's the plan... Soma all round.