Educational benefit

Having just found out that with three layers of government, all with departments responsible for the education of our kids, no one person in all that layers thought that this month’s astronomical event was worth the effort.

The event I am speaking about is a solar eclipse on Friday 20 March.

I found out on Tuesday that here in Shetland the eclipse will be 98 percent; a truly spectacular sight. However there are no solar glasses for school children to safely observe this event.

Surely with the amount of money involved, the council or the charitable trust could correct this oversight by Holyrood and Westminster; they are after all closer.

A solar eclipse presented properly to the kids will install a lifelong interest in science and nature.

It is a once in a lifetime event if you are lucky to have this level of totality in your own backyard and the educational benefits are incalculable.

So to this end my wife and I have donated the stock of solar glasses we have for sale in the shop to the Hamnavoe primary school to allow the Burra kids to gain from it.

I would urge all parents to get a set of solar eclipse viewing glasses for their kids and arrange with their school to give them the first hour on Friday morning off so they too can enjoy it and learn from it.

Or better still get the school to include it in the morning class.

Why is it we can afford artists in residence, poets on the public payroll and much more nonsense but we have neither the resources or will to encourage the sciences.

Ali & Jane Inkster
Burra