Why are we so crap? Our national football team is a waste of space, cricket wise we are being shafted by the Aussies and now we find that our kids are worse than useless when it comes to very hard long division. A new OECD ( Yes, I thought it meant not being able to stop cleaning the karsi as well but apparently it's something to do with economic development.) report just released shows UK kids come well down the international league table for exam results. Shanghai is world leader but the Far East in general shows a steely determination for their kids to obtain top marks. South Korean children are slaving away from early morning until late at night and the exam results are impressive as is the teenage suicide rate - highest in the world I believe. It can only be a matter hours before The Alien Gove and his grim crew start calling for British education to be modelled more along Korean lines. Fewer teenage pregnancies and more teenage suicides is clearly the way to go if we wish to keep a seat at the top table.To refer to the likes of Gove as a wanker really is to do an injustice to that most benign of pastimes.
For an interesting but very different look at education I recommend Adam Ramsay's article in the current issue of Strike on the reality (and benefit) of public school. Ramsay points out that, " There is a bizarre belief held by many that success in Britain correlates to intelligence and hard work. This is a very middle class concept. What the upper class understand is that success stems from two things: community and the appearance of confidence." The trick of course is to make all of that available to everyone and not just a privileged elite.
2 comments:
I am not interested in Gove or his Labour predecessor's views on education. Between them they have done great damage. League tables need to be treated with caution, but exposing the amount of indoctrination and bullshit fed to our kids, should be our task. Years ago I passed the 11 plus and qualified for grammar school. I proved my 'superior' knowledge by answering a question on biology. Name the offspring of the following species: eg. cat-kitten, lion -cub, swan- signet, negro -...My teacher was worried that I had not spelt 'Piccaninny' correctly. Ideological trash. Always there. In Nazi Germany they wanted to euthanase the mentally ill, and children taking maths exams were set questions like - how many housing units for young working class families can be built for the cost of keeping one mentally ill person in a hospital? That was pure socialist cost benefit stuff. A few years back - under Labour - the climate change scam was being indoctrinated into youngsters. Not via science but in the GSCE syllabus for Spanish, French and German, where kids were asked to write a letter to their local authority in the appropriate language on local initiatives to combat global warming. Those youngsters are out there now - lefties and anarchists - dancing to the green agenda.Today our kids are having diversity, equality, identity, white guilt, and more junk fed into their courses. Get rid of this and they might learn how to think and emerge as intelligent human beings.
Well said Doctor.Schooling is not education it is getting children to behave in a manner that suits the hegemony of the period. I still remember an "economic history" lesson that showed our future as sitting in robot cars and flying about with jetpacks & here I am mid 60s slapping out this post on a piece of technical wizadry when a pen and paper would do.But then that is now a skill that is redundant my 7 yr old grandson was told. I was schooled to accept and allow this technology. I'd rather have a jet pack though.
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