Children growing up at the raw end of life in, say, inner city Birmingham, will probably not be over-appreciative of the latest Government wheeze to introduce them to five hours of "high quality" culture each week.
Offer free tickets for Villa or the Blues, or a complimentary session on the local graffiti wall, and you'd be on to a winner. But culture for the masses? Come off it.
Ed Balls, the Children's Secretary, and Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, are undoubtedly nice, well-meaning, middle class politicians who have a sincere wish to make a difference to the millions of young people who grow up never experiencing or appreciating the arts, theatre and other cultural activities.
It would be an excellent idea, they believe, if schools regularly took children to art exhibitions, concerts, theatre productions and drama workshops. So it would. Just the sort of thing, in fact, that schools used to do - and some still do - before paying for such trips and finding the time and enough volunteers to organise visits became an impossibility.
The idea ranks highly on New Labour's motherhood-and-apple-pie scale of Government initiatives. You couldn't argue against it, but are there really likely to be any tangible benefits from five hours of culture lessons a week? There is not of course much political mileage in promoting the 3Rs. How much sexier it sounds to be enthusing about culture for the masses.
