A couple of things caught my eye on the news this morning. The first was the suggestion that university tuition fees will have to rise and the second was something about Britain's status as one of the world's leading science and research nations is in decline.
They both caught my eye individually, but the curious thing is that they are, in my opinion, related.
First of all, you would think that with more and more youngsters entering university these days that our science and research traditions would be boosted, wouldn't you? But they are not - and the reason is that, although more and more children go on to university, fewer and fewer are studying degrees of serious academic worth.
The second thing that bothers me - and is something which I've been ranting about for a long time - is the fact that I can not stand the way my generation are depriving future generations of the things we had access to and enjoyed - and one of those was the student grant system. The majority of MPs in parliament who went through university probably did so at a time when students got grants to study - instead of student loans which leave them up to their necks in debt before they even start their careers.
I just don't think it's right that the people who took advantage of a benefit should be the ones who deprive the next generation of that benefit to just suit their own political and personal ambitions.
The truth is that we need to get people into university and get them studying worthwhile degrees that will bring long term benefits to this country - medicine, physics, chemistry, engineering and so on. I think the government should identify a few core degrees such as these, plus a few of the "classics" and offer student grants (not loans and free from tuition fees) for anyone studying these degrees at an approved university.
This will do two things. It will encourage more of the most able people to study degrees that will benefit the nation in the longer term, but have fallen out of favour - and this, in turn, will boost our science and research fields.
If other children want to go and study media studies, pop music or social science then they can have the student loans and pay tuition fees.
I also believe that the whole point of university is to educate the brightest and the best - and the sad fact is that, in any society, the brightest and the best is unlikely to be much more than 30% of the population - so that should be the benchmark target for children going on to university.
Of course I want to see the other 70% of children getting further education when they leave school - but I think that is best served through a combination of technical colleges, incentivized employer sponsorships and day release - not state financed mickey mouse degrees.
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Aspiration not envy
Although I enjoyed, for the most part, the TV series "Number One Ladies Detective Agency" based on his books I'm not familiar with Alexander McCall-Smith's political affiliations, but what ever they are he has written an excellent article in the Daily Mail.
Mr. McCall-Smith touches on a variety of points which are all valid, but the central thrust of his article hits out at the way the political process has been infantilised. With Nick Clegg enjoying a massive boost in his popularity thanks to his ability to talk to people like they were ten year olds, this is not an entirely surprising development - because the fact is that we have become more and more child-like.
Mr. McCall-Smith points to the over use of a particular word to highlight this issue - the word "fair" - and he points out the phrase "it's not fair!" is the among the favourite sayings of the average five year old and goes on to wonder whether it is even possible to achieve such a thing as a "fair society".
Fairness is a very subjective measure and McCall-Smith rightly makes the connection between fairness and envy and the fact that what politicians who make a fuss about fairness are doing is actually playing up the emotion of envy.
Envy is a very negative emotion which closely associates with jealousy, anger, fear and hatred. When politicians talk about fairness they are encouraging you to feel these emotions - and that is why we see increasing evidence of community breakdown.
Is this any different from the past?
Yes - because what politicians used to go on about wasn't "fairness" but aspiration. Aspiration is a positive emotion encouraging endeavour, enterprise, responsibility and, above all, hope.
We all know that social mobility has declined since the advent of the progressive movement and I don't believe this is a coincidence. It's declined because the progressives - with their emphasis on creating a "fair" society have declared that people do not need to aspire to make their own lives better - the progressives will do it for them.
Of course, this is impossible - but it hasn't stopped them trying and the result has been to create an even more unfair society. What we need are politicians who are not scared to tell the truth and who are prepared to tell people that if they think something is "unfair" they have the power to change that through hard work and that it is their responsibility.
The job of the government is to make it possible for everyone to be able to do that, but progressive politicians concern themselves with equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity.
No where is this more apparent than in the education system which has been stripped of all that was good about it and turned into a factory system designed to churn identical "products" rather than push children to do the best that they can achieve.
If you want to know what the progressive vision of a "fair society" in Britain would look like just look at our schools.
No - it's not a pretty sight is it.
Mr. McCall-Smith touches on a variety of points which are all valid, but the central thrust of his article hits out at the way the political process has been infantilised. With Nick Clegg enjoying a massive boost in his popularity thanks to his ability to talk to people like they were ten year olds, this is not an entirely surprising development - because the fact is that we have become more and more child-like.
Mr. McCall-Smith points to the over use of a particular word to highlight this issue - the word "fair" - and he points out the phrase "it's not fair!" is the among the favourite sayings of the average five year old and goes on to wonder whether it is even possible to achieve such a thing as a "fair society".
Fairness is a very subjective measure and McCall-Smith rightly makes the connection between fairness and envy and the fact that what politicians who make a fuss about fairness are doing is actually playing up the emotion of envy.
Envy is a very negative emotion which closely associates with jealousy, anger, fear and hatred. When politicians talk about fairness they are encouraging you to feel these emotions - and that is why we see increasing evidence of community breakdown.
Is this any different from the past?
Yes - because what politicians used to go on about wasn't "fairness" but aspiration. Aspiration is a positive emotion encouraging endeavour, enterprise, responsibility and, above all, hope.
We all know that social mobility has declined since the advent of the progressive movement and I don't believe this is a coincidence. It's declined because the progressives - with their emphasis on creating a "fair" society have declared that people do not need to aspire to make their own lives better - the progressives will do it for them.
Of course, this is impossible - but it hasn't stopped them trying and the result has been to create an even more unfair society. What we need are politicians who are not scared to tell the truth and who are prepared to tell people that if they think something is "unfair" they have the power to change that through hard work and that it is their responsibility.
The job of the government is to make it possible for everyone to be able to do that, but progressive politicians concern themselves with equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity.
No where is this more apparent than in the education system which has been stripped of all that was good about it and turned into a factory system designed to churn identical "products" rather than push children to do the best that they can achieve.
If you want to know what the progressive vision of a "fair society" in Britain would look like just look at our schools.
No - it's not a pretty sight is it.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Class wars
One of the few things that any of the three leaders said which contained any substance or policy was Nick Clegg's commitment to slash class sizes to 20 in primary and 16 in secondary school.
Of course it's nothing more than an "aspiration" - there's no indication of how this will be achieved, how it will be funded and where all these extra teachers are going to come from, but it sounds good on the telly.
The trouble is, it's an expensive policy which has little benefit.
When I was in primary school the average class size was close to 40 and there were no teaching assistants either - just the one teacher - yet none of us had any problems learning and nobody felt left or that they weren't getting the attention we needed. If we had a problem we put our hands up and the teacher would come and talk to us while the rest of the class got on with the work or waited their turn to be seen.
When I went on to grammar school the average class size plummeted - to around 35 - and the system was just the same. Throughout the fifties, sixties and seventies children learned in large classes without any problem.
In countries like India and China, children often start their education in classes of 60 - 80 with just a single teacher and they still manage to learn without a problem. The education system of both nations is very effective - they are churning out large numbers of highly skilled graduates with whom we are struggling to compete, but they don't need ever smaller class sizes.
The important factor in the classroom is not the size of the class - it is discipline. Teachers have lost control of the classrooms in Britain and this is why our education system is failing. They've lost control because successive governments have given children increasing "rights" while simultaneously stripping away the options available to teachers to enforce discipline - and these things have happened with the active participation and approval of the teaching profession.
Class sizes make little difference to the quality of learning children receive. It doesn't matter if you have a class size of 20, 10 or 1 - if the teacher has no control and the pupil has even a vague awareness of the "rights" they have (and few don't have this awareness these days) then the teacher will struggle to teach the kids anything.
Everybody over the age of 50 knows that it is perfectly possible to have effective learning in large classes. You don't need more teachers, smaller classes or fancy gadgets - you just need to have proper control and discipline and teach kids properly.
Of course it's nothing more than an "aspiration" - there's no indication of how this will be achieved, how it will be funded and where all these extra teachers are going to come from, but it sounds good on the telly.
The trouble is, it's an expensive policy which has little benefit.
When I was in primary school the average class size was close to 40 and there were no teaching assistants either - just the one teacher - yet none of us had any problems learning and nobody felt left or that they weren't getting the attention we needed. If we had a problem we put our hands up and the teacher would come and talk to us while the rest of the class got on with the work or waited their turn to be seen.
When I went on to grammar school the average class size plummeted - to around 35 - and the system was just the same. Throughout the fifties, sixties and seventies children learned in large classes without any problem.
In countries like India and China, children often start their education in classes of 60 - 80 with just a single teacher and they still manage to learn without a problem. The education system of both nations is very effective - they are churning out large numbers of highly skilled graduates with whom we are struggling to compete, but they don't need ever smaller class sizes.
The important factor in the classroom is not the size of the class - it is discipline. Teachers have lost control of the classrooms in Britain and this is why our education system is failing. They've lost control because successive governments have given children increasing "rights" while simultaneously stripping away the options available to teachers to enforce discipline - and these things have happened with the active participation and approval of the teaching profession.
Class sizes make little difference to the quality of learning children receive. It doesn't matter if you have a class size of 20, 10 or 1 - if the teacher has no control and the pupil has even a vague awareness of the "rights" they have (and few don't have this awareness these days) then the teacher will struggle to teach the kids anything.
Everybody over the age of 50 knows that it is perfectly possible to have effective learning in large classes. You don't need more teachers, smaller classes or fancy gadgets - you just need to have proper control and discipline and teach kids properly.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Exactly
This little tidbit from the Telegraph's "Election live" section caught my eye.
12.57 A cheeky graduate in Brighton asks Gordon Brown what he can do to help people like her find jobs - and whether she can have a job in his office.
He asks what her degree is in. It's African history. He can't help himself - he bursts out laughing. "Good luck with that," says Izzard.
12.57 A cheeky graduate in Brighton asks Gordon Brown what he can do to help people like her find jobs - and whether she can have a job in his office.
He asks what her degree is in. It's African history. He can't help himself - he bursts out laughing. "Good luck with that," says Izzard.
What is the point of getting 50% of young people into university when the degrees they come away with are useless to British industry? It's all very well the PM having a bit of a chuckle about it, but it's his parties stupid policies that have led us to this point.
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
The real bigots in our schools
Thanks to one of the commenters on this site - Larry - I hear that the teaching unions are trying to ban BNP members from being teachers or governors.
I've no doubt that these same people are the sort who were up in arms the other day when the shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling, said that B&B owners should have the right to refuse entry to homosexuals.
Personally, I think he is right. Furthermore, I think the NUT is quite within its rights to refuse membership from anyone who is a BNP member. I also think it's quite right for a club to refuse entry to someone who doesn't meet their dress code or a bank to reject an application for an overdraft from someone who doesn't have any money.
My point is this - everybody, every business and every organisation should have the right to decide who they allow in. There should not be any laws restricting you on who you can turn away - regardless of the reason.
Why is there such a big furore over a tiny B&B refusing to admit a homosexual couple and yet no concern at all by the establishment at the blatant discrimination by liberal progressives towards BNP members? They are not doing anything illegal by being members of the BNP. It isn't against the law (yet) to be a member of the BNP and yet the NUT are not just clamouring for a ban from their organisation for BNP members - they are trying to bully the government into blatant discrimination.
Like I said - if the NUT want to ban BNP members from being part of their bigoted, fascist group then that is up to them. If I were a teacher and a member of the BNP I would not want to belong to such a disgusting extremist organisation as the NUT - but it is none of their business who schools employ or have as governors.
Once again we see the blatant hypocrisy and bigotry of the liberal establishment. They do not stand for "equality". They do not stand for "fairness". They stand for shoving their sick social agenda down the throats of the British people.
They are vicious nasty bigots and they think nobody notices. They are wrong.
I've no doubt that these same people are the sort who were up in arms the other day when the shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling, said that B&B owners should have the right to refuse entry to homosexuals.
Personally, I think he is right. Furthermore, I think the NUT is quite within its rights to refuse membership from anyone who is a BNP member. I also think it's quite right for a club to refuse entry to someone who doesn't meet their dress code or a bank to reject an application for an overdraft from someone who doesn't have any money.
My point is this - everybody, every business and every organisation should have the right to decide who they allow in. There should not be any laws restricting you on who you can turn away - regardless of the reason.
Why is there such a big furore over a tiny B&B refusing to admit a homosexual couple and yet no concern at all by the establishment at the blatant discrimination by liberal progressives towards BNP members? They are not doing anything illegal by being members of the BNP. It isn't against the law (yet) to be a member of the BNP and yet the NUT are not just clamouring for a ban from their organisation for BNP members - they are trying to bully the government into blatant discrimination.
Like I said - if the NUT want to ban BNP members from being part of their bigoted, fascist group then that is up to them. If I were a teacher and a member of the BNP I would not want to belong to such a disgusting extremist organisation as the NUT - but it is none of their business who schools employ or have as governors.
Once again we see the blatant hypocrisy and bigotry of the liberal establishment. They do not stand for "equality". They do not stand for "fairness". They stand for shoving their sick social agenda down the throats of the British people.
They are vicious nasty bigots and they think nobody notices. They are wrong.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Understanding the "anti-bullying" process
The revelation that a six year old girl suffered sexual and physical abuse over a sustained period at the hands of her class mates in a Welsh school should, quite rightly, send shivers of shock and revulsion through every parents spine.
How can such a thing happen in a British school today?
Well, although I am as shocked as anyone, I am not the least bit surprised. I've had some experience of the modern school "anti-bullying" processes and I can tell you that their priorities are not what you might think. The first thing to recognise is that the process is not designed to identify the bullies or, even if it inadvertently does, punish anyone. The whole process is designed to make sure that everyone in authority has their backside covered and can not be blamed.
In terms of "concern" the priorities run something like this ...
Top comes the school, then the head teacher, then the department head, then individual teachers, then the bullies and finally - getting the least consideration in the process - the victim.
It's vital to understand that if you are to understand the modern way of dealing with bullying. The point is not to deal with bullying, but to demonstrate that the school "takes bullying seriously" and has "robust" procedures. Ultimately, the point of a school's anti-bullying process is to demonstrate that the school does not have a bullying problem.
Consequently, low level bullying goes on without censure or punishment and gradually ramps up over time until something like the incident at the top of this post happens - at which point the regional authority process kicks in and we hear that "lessons have been learned".
And most of the time it is the victim who is punished by being forced to find a new school and make new friends while the bullies - and those who allowed it to happen in the first place - continue as if nothing has happened.
How can such a thing happen in a British school today?
Well, although I am as shocked as anyone, I am not the least bit surprised. I've had some experience of the modern school "anti-bullying" processes and I can tell you that their priorities are not what you might think. The first thing to recognise is that the process is not designed to identify the bullies or, even if it inadvertently does, punish anyone. The whole process is designed to make sure that everyone in authority has their backside covered and can not be blamed.
In terms of "concern" the priorities run something like this ...
Top comes the school, then the head teacher, then the department head, then individual teachers, then the bullies and finally - getting the least consideration in the process - the victim.
It's vital to understand that if you are to understand the modern way of dealing with bullying. The point is not to deal with bullying, but to demonstrate that the school "takes bullying seriously" and has "robust" procedures. Ultimately, the point of a school's anti-bullying process is to demonstrate that the school does not have a bullying problem.
Consequently, low level bullying goes on without censure or punishment and gradually ramps up over time until something like the incident at the top of this post happens - at which point the regional authority process kicks in and we hear that "lessons have been learned".
And most of the time it is the victim who is punished by being forced to find a new school and make new friends while the bullies - and those who allowed it to happen in the first place - continue as if nothing has happened.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Under pressure
I hear today that there are suggestions that school children are suffering from more stress than ever before with the pressure of examinations. Although I make no secret of my belief that school exams have become easier and grades inflated (simply as a political tool to demonstrate how "successful" an education programme has been) I can quite easily believe that children are under more pressure with examinations than they have ever been.
When I was coming to the end of my time in junior school (as we used to call it back then) we were vaguely aware of the impending 11+ test - but there was no attempt to teach towards it and there was no major importance placed on the examination. We didn't go through practice tests or mock examinations - one day we were ushered into a classroom, took the test and that was it. A few months later we got a letter asking us to choose the school we wanted to go to and, for those of us who passed, this included grammar schools.
It was different at grammar school with O levels - we were obviously taught specifically for those tests from quite a few years back - however there was not the emphasis on the importance of getting results other than from the point of view of getting into sixth form and on to university. For those of us uninterested in sixth form or university it was no big deal.
One of the reasons why this wasn't so important and why there was less stress placed on children was that there were plenty of job options available. Of course, it helped that I lived next door to the biggest trading estate in Europe, but that wasn't the sole reason. Back then, Britain was still predominantly a manufacturing nation.
There was a big demand for workers at all levels - from manual labourers, through semi-skilled and skilled right up to graduate class. Whatever your level of education there was always a decent well paid job available (by the standards of the time) for anyone prepared to put a bit of effort into finding one.
There were thousands of apprenticeships for school leavers providing young people with an oppotunity to learn a valuable life long trade. However, most apprenticeships were "indentured" requiring a long term commitment from the employee of four to five years.
On top of those formal apprenticeships there were also lots of firms - large, medium and small - offering a kind of informal apprenticeship and sponsoring "day release" enabling school leavers to work four days a week and attend a college course, paid for by your employer, on the other day. Virtually everyone I knew, regardless of which school they went to, went through this system - either finding an apprenticeship or a job with day release if they left school at sixteen.
I'll be honest, I've never been so well off as I was in those first few years as a wage earner - even though I only started off on £16 a week. I should also point out that the dole paid £9 a week at the time I started work and there was no tax or NI on top of that!
By the time I'd had my deductions and handed mum a fiver for "upkeep" I was worse off than most people claiming unemployment benefit - but I still seemed to have enough cash to go out six nights a week and spend most lunchtimes in the boozer nursing a pint of Trophy bitter and a cheese roll.
I even had enough money to run a motorcycle - well, a second hand FS1E*, but it was unrestricted and good for 60 when flat on the tank with a following wind. After a couple of pay rises and a year or so saving I'd managed to upgrade the Fizzy to a Kawasaki KH250** and started paying for driving lessons!
However, by then - unfortunately - our membership of the EEC and the Labour government had done their damage and Britain was in the middle of the winter of discontent and dire economic circumstances (see - nothing really changes). Our manufacturing base was already in decline and with it were the jobs and training which us youngsters had taken for granted when leaving school.
And this is why there is so much pressure on kids today. Even university graduates are finding it hard to find jobs and often end up working at KFC or Poundland. All those technical colleges converted to universities and firms no longer bother to offer day release schemes.
The over emphasis on university and "degrees" means that too many kids are vying for too few spots in those universities and competing for ever declining slices of the government cash that pays for those universities (not including the massive debt they incur through student loans).
This is the reality that faces school leavers today and this is why there is so much pressure and, consequently, so much stress for school children. It's not that the exams are so tough - they aren't compared to O levels and A levels of the sixties and seventies (and everyone really knows they aren't).
This is also why it is so daft to talk about a "high tech" economy. Even assuming we could do "high tech" better than the emerging nations (which is doubtful) it is ridiculous to assume that everybody is capable of working in "high tech". A target of 50% in university would be fine if 50% of jobs were high really skilled graduate jobs - but they aren't - and 50% of school leavers are not really university potential either.
Indeed, I suspect that 90% of "graduate" positions today would have been filled more than adequately by 16 year old school leavers on day release back in 1973 - and I suspect that considerably more than 50% of jobs available today do not require particularly high levels of education.
What we need is a properly balanced mixed economy with an emphasis on manufacturing - not service - providing a range of job options for school leavers. On top of that we need a proper education system that does select the best to go on university, but that also provides the majority with a decent level of education as well.
And we need proper apprenticeships and business sponsored day release at technical colleges for school leavers who don't want to go into sixth form or university, but just want to work and earn enough money to buy a few beers a week and a motorcycle.
* The Yamaha FS1E was a 50cc sports moped and learner legal for sixteen year olds. Affectionately known as the Fizzy (or Fizzie) it was every 16 year old school boys ambition to get his leg over one - far more than it was to get his leg over in the other way, if you know what I mean! How times change.
**The Kawasaki KH250 was a learner legal (17 years +), three cylinder, two stroke, rev happy, 250cc motorcycle with fiendish acceleration and a propensity to buck around like an angry bull under braking. It handled like a brick and the factory fitted tyres were lethal in the wet - but I loved it to bits and went everywhere on that bike.
When I was coming to the end of my time in junior school (as we used to call it back then) we were vaguely aware of the impending 11+ test - but there was no attempt to teach towards it and there was no major importance placed on the examination. We didn't go through practice tests or mock examinations - one day we were ushered into a classroom, took the test and that was it. A few months later we got a letter asking us to choose the school we wanted to go to and, for those of us who passed, this included grammar schools.
It was different at grammar school with O levels - we were obviously taught specifically for those tests from quite a few years back - however there was not the emphasis on the importance of getting results other than from the point of view of getting into sixth form and on to university. For those of us uninterested in sixth form or university it was no big deal.
One of the reasons why this wasn't so important and why there was less stress placed on children was that there were plenty of job options available. Of course, it helped that I lived next door to the biggest trading estate in Europe, but that wasn't the sole reason. Back then, Britain was still predominantly a manufacturing nation.
There was a big demand for workers at all levels - from manual labourers, through semi-skilled and skilled right up to graduate class. Whatever your level of education there was always a decent well paid job available (by the standards of the time) for anyone prepared to put a bit of effort into finding one.
There were thousands of apprenticeships for school leavers providing young people with an oppotunity to learn a valuable life long trade. However, most apprenticeships were "indentured" requiring a long term commitment from the employee of four to five years.
On top of those formal apprenticeships there were also lots of firms - large, medium and small - offering a kind of informal apprenticeship and sponsoring "day release" enabling school leavers to work four days a week and attend a college course, paid for by your employer, on the other day. Virtually everyone I knew, regardless of which school they went to, went through this system - either finding an apprenticeship or a job with day release if they left school at sixteen.
I'll be honest, I've never been so well off as I was in those first few years as a wage earner - even though I only started off on £16 a week. I should also point out that the dole paid £9 a week at the time I started work and there was no tax or NI on top of that!
By the time I'd had my deductions and handed mum a fiver for "upkeep" I was worse off than most people claiming unemployment benefit - but I still seemed to have enough cash to go out six nights a week and spend most lunchtimes in the boozer nursing a pint of Trophy bitter and a cheese roll.
I even had enough money to run a motorcycle - well, a second hand FS1E*, but it was unrestricted and good for 60 when flat on the tank with a following wind. After a couple of pay rises and a year or so saving I'd managed to upgrade the Fizzy to a Kawasaki KH250** and started paying for driving lessons!
However, by then - unfortunately - our membership of the EEC and the Labour government had done their damage and Britain was in the middle of the winter of discontent and dire economic circumstances (see - nothing really changes). Our manufacturing base was already in decline and with it were the jobs and training which us youngsters had taken for granted when leaving school.
And this is why there is so much pressure on kids today. Even university graduates are finding it hard to find jobs and often end up working at KFC or Poundland. All those technical colleges converted to universities and firms no longer bother to offer day release schemes.
The over emphasis on university and "degrees" means that too many kids are vying for too few spots in those universities and competing for ever declining slices of the government cash that pays for those universities (not including the massive debt they incur through student loans).
This is the reality that faces school leavers today and this is why there is so much pressure and, consequently, so much stress for school children. It's not that the exams are so tough - they aren't compared to O levels and A levels of the sixties and seventies (and everyone really knows they aren't).
This is also why it is so daft to talk about a "high tech" economy. Even assuming we could do "high tech" better than the emerging nations (which is doubtful) it is ridiculous to assume that everybody is capable of working in "high tech". A target of 50% in university would be fine if 50% of jobs were high really skilled graduate jobs - but they aren't - and 50% of school leavers are not really university potential either.
Indeed, I suspect that 90% of "graduate" positions today would have been filled more than adequately by 16 year old school leavers on day release back in 1973 - and I suspect that considerably more than 50% of jobs available today do not require particularly high levels of education.
What we need is a properly balanced mixed economy with an emphasis on manufacturing - not service - providing a range of job options for school leavers. On top of that we need a proper education system that does select the best to go on university, but that also provides the majority with a decent level of education as well.
And we need proper apprenticeships and business sponsored day release at technical colleges for school leavers who don't want to go into sixth form or university, but just want to work and earn enough money to buy a few beers a week and a motorcycle.
* The Yamaha FS1E was a 50cc sports moped and learner legal for sixteen year olds. Affectionately known as the Fizzy (or Fizzie) it was every 16 year old school boys ambition to get his leg over one - far more than it was to get his leg over in the other way, if you know what I mean! How times change.
**The Kawasaki KH250 was a learner legal (17 years +), three cylinder, two stroke, rev happy, 250cc motorcycle with fiendish acceleration and a propensity to buck around like an angry bull under braking. It handled like a brick and the factory fitted tyres were lethal in the wet - but I loved it to bits and went everywhere on that bike.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Where's the liberal outrage?
When it comes to compulsory sex education in school I am firmly opposed to it for a number of reasons.
First of all, I am against it because I do not see that it is any business of the state. I am, I think, a responsible parent. I know my kids better than any government official and I know when they will need to know about sex and how much to tell them at any given time. As far as I'm concerned, sex education is the job of the parent or guardian and nobody else.
That said, I have no problem with the teaching of the human reproductive system as part of biology as long as it is done in a cold, scientific manner - but this sort of thing isn't usually taught until well into secondary school.
I'm also opposed to it because I do not believe that it achieves its stated objectives - i.e. to reduce the number of young, unmarried girls getting pregnant. Before we had sex education, such things were very rare occurrences, but now they are commonplace. Of course, the liberals like to justify it by reminding us that there was a significant of rise in teenage pregnancies during the sixties - but this is a false argument. Firstly because the vast majority of teenage women getting pregnant during the sixties were older teenagers and married. Secondly, it was the sixties that first saw the introduction of sex education in school and thirdly, there was the "sexual revolution".
I'm also opposed to it because I don't agree with the idea that sex education should be non-judgemental. If you are going to have sex education it should be just the opposite with particular emphasis placed on sex being part of a loving relationship - preferably between a husband and his wife - and that its main purpose is not recreational but to produce children. We all know that most children respond well to clear boundaries - and that includes telling them what is right and wrong. If you do not make this clear when you discuss sex with them then of course they will push those boundaries - its what kids do (as any parent knows). You have to be judgemental with children and in clear terms.
Another reason for my opposition to compulsory sex education is that it will sexualise extremely young children. Childhood is a very precious time for anybody - it is also extremely short in the context of our lives. Discussing sex with young children forces them to think about adult things that they should have no interest in. Childhood should be about playing games, playing with toys, playing with friends - not playing with each others genitals.
Finally, we quite rightly get upset about the abuse of children by Catholic priests - but abuse of our children by teachers is far more prevalent. It doesn't matter if the vast majority of teacher-pupil relationships are consensual or even if the pupil was over the age of consent at the time - it still represents an appalling abuse of power by teachers and a serious cause for concern for any right minded parent.
The idea of letting some unrelated adult discuss intimate sexual detail with a child who is likely to see that adult as an authority figure and, consequently, someone they have to acquiesce to is disturbingly creepy to say the very least. The fact that many teachers go on to use that position of authority as a basis for a sexual relationship with a child in their care would cause outrage amongst the liberal progressives if it was anything other than a state approved official - but they don't mind as long as its one of their own.
First of all, I am against it because I do not see that it is any business of the state. I am, I think, a responsible parent. I know my kids better than any government official and I know when they will need to know about sex and how much to tell them at any given time. As far as I'm concerned, sex education is the job of the parent or guardian and nobody else.
That said, I have no problem with the teaching of the human reproductive system as part of biology as long as it is done in a cold, scientific manner - but this sort of thing isn't usually taught until well into secondary school.
I'm also opposed to it because I do not believe that it achieves its stated objectives - i.e. to reduce the number of young, unmarried girls getting pregnant. Before we had sex education, such things were very rare occurrences, but now they are commonplace. Of course, the liberals like to justify it by reminding us that there was a significant of rise in teenage pregnancies during the sixties - but this is a false argument. Firstly because the vast majority of teenage women getting pregnant during the sixties were older teenagers and married. Secondly, it was the sixties that first saw the introduction of sex education in school and thirdly, there was the "sexual revolution".
I'm also opposed to it because I don't agree with the idea that sex education should be non-judgemental. If you are going to have sex education it should be just the opposite with particular emphasis placed on sex being part of a loving relationship - preferably between a husband and his wife - and that its main purpose is not recreational but to produce children. We all know that most children respond well to clear boundaries - and that includes telling them what is right and wrong. If you do not make this clear when you discuss sex with them then of course they will push those boundaries - its what kids do (as any parent knows). You have to be judgemental with children and in clear terms.
Another reason for my opposition to compulsory sex education is that it will sexualise extremely young children. Childhood is a very precious time for anybody - it is also extremely short in the context of our lives. Discussing sex with young children forces them to think about adult things that they should have no interest in. Childhood should be about playing games, playing with toys, playing with friends - not playing with each others genitals.
Finally, we quite rightly get upset about the abuse of children by Catholic priests - but abuse of our children by teachers is far more prevalent. It doesn't matter if the vast majority of teacher-pupil relationships are consensual or even if the pupil was over the age of consent at the time - it still represents an appalling abuse of power by teachers and a serious cause for concern for any right minded parent.
The idea of letting some unrelated adult discuss intimate sexual detail with a child who is likely to see that adult as an authority figure and, consequently, someone they have to acquiesce to is disturbingly creepy to say the very least. The fact that many teachers go on to use that position of authority as a basis for a sexual relationship with a child in their care would cause outrage amongst the liberal progressives if it was anything other than a state approved official - but they don't mind as long as its one of their own.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Nothing to worry about
As universities face tough budget cuts, the Higher Education Funding Council (who?) says that, although more children from "disadvantaged" backgrounds are entering university, the gap between those and the number from "advantaged" backgrounds has grown in the last 15 years.
Hey guys, don't worry.
At the rate our living standards are going to fall over the next ten years, by 2019 99% of children attending university will be from "disadvantaged" backgrounds.
Hey guys, don't worry.
At the rate our living standards are going to fall over the next ten years, by 2019 99% of children attending university will be from "disadvantaged" backgrounds.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Promises, elitism and moral standards
I have to admit that I did laugh out loud when I heard that David Cameron was promising to make the teaching profession "blatantly elitist". As promises go, it is one of the easier ones to keep as the teaching profession has been blatantly elitist for decades - so he can tick off that promise as kept the minute he walks through the door of Number 10. It's a bit like promising to make the NHS blatantly bureaucratic.
The reality is that anyone entering the teaching profession will find their options extremely limited if they don't hold the correct "right on" world view on various subjects. The teaching wing has been the elite wing of cultural marxism since the 1960's and is quite probably the most elitist profession in existence today - even the SAS is less discriminating about who it accepts into its ranks.
On the subject of David Cameron, I noticed a couple of TV news reports over the weekend described his marriage tax proposals (which aren't proposals - just vague generalisations) reminded us of John Major's "disastrous" Back to Basics campaign. I think it was rather odd to focus on that for two reasons. First of all, Major's Back to Basics campaign as I understood it at the time was primarily about his government concentrating on the basics of government. It was turned into a moral campaign by the media more than the government.
More importantly, as a moral campaign it may have proved popular with voters if it had been tried - but what made it "disastrous" wasn't the electorate not liking the idea of good moral standards, but the fact that so many Tory MPs were indulging in immoral behaviour such as cavorting with call-girls in Chelsea shirts and taking back handers from dodgy foreign businessmen.
One of the main reasons New Labour won the election in 1997 was Tony Blair's (broken) promise that his government would end all the sleaze and be "whiter than white". As this seemed to strike a chord with voters - and following the recent furore over MPs expenses - it is apparent to me that the electorate would welcome a return to good old fashioned morality standards.
It is unfortunate that successive Tory and Labour administrations have proven to be so amoral and so self-serving that the electorate is now as cynical as the media - but for different reasons. The media were cynical because the industry is a breeding ground for amoral behaviour which it promotes incessantly, whereas the public are cynical because they no longer believe there is such a thing as high standards in public office.
The reality is that anyone entering the teaching profession will find their options extremely limited if they don't hold the correct "right on" world view on various subjects. The teaching wing has been the elite wing of cultural marxism since the 1960's and is quite probably the most elitist profession in existence today - even the SAS is less discriminating about who it accepts into its ranks.
On the subject of David Cameron, I noticed a couple of TV news reports over the weekend described his marriage tax proposals (which aren't proposals - just vague generalisations) reminded us of John Major's "disastrous" Back to Basics campaign. I think it was rather odd to focus on that for two reasons. First of all, Major's Back to Basics campaign as I understood it at the time was primarily about his government concentrating on the basics of government. It was turned into a moral campaign by the media more than the government.
More importantly, as a moral campaign it may have proved popular with voters if it had been tried - but what made it "disastrous" wasn't the electorate not liking the idea of good moral standards, but the fact that so many Tory MPs were indulging in immoral behaviour such as cavorting with call-girls in Chelsea shirts and taking back handers from dodgy foreign businessmen.
One of the main reasons New Labour won the election in 1997 was Tony Blair's (broken) promise that his government would end all the sleaze and be "whiter than white". As this seemed to strike a chord with voters - and following the recent furore over MPs expenses - it is apparent to me that the electorate would welcome a return to good old fashioned morality standards.
It is unfortunate that successive Tory and Labour administrations have proven to be so amoral and so self-serving that the electorate is now as cynical as the media - but for different reasons. The media were cynical because the industry is a breeding ground for amoral behaviour which it promotes incessantly, whereas the public are cynical because they no longer believe there is such a thing as high standards in public office.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
You know that schools are in a a bad way ...
.... when the products of the system are not deemed qualified enough to stack shelves or to waft a box of detergent in front of a bar code reader at Tesco. Sir Terry Leahy says the standards are "woefully low" and he should know - being the boss of Britain's biggest private employer.
I suppose some will argue that those in the education system - such as the inspectors, teachers and exam markers - have a much better insight into the real state of education, but those people are terribly biased towards a system which generally they support thanks to the default political stance of your average "educationalist" (i.e. raving Marxist).
The boss of Tesco knows the reality, though and the reality is that schools are churning out dross these days. Quite often it is dross with 4 or 5 GCSEs, but frankly those are virtually worthless qualifications. The vast majority of school leavers who go on to university spend the first year of their life in tertiary education doing remedial work to bring them up to the standard required to study for a degree - something which the sixth form of a secondary school is supposed to prepare them for!
I know it's set in the USA, but do you remember the film "The Graduate"? Yes, I know it had little to do with education - well, formal academic education, anyway - but Dustin Hoffman played a character called Benjamin who had just attained a bachelors degree (I can't remember what in). He was just coming up to his 21st birthday.
The character was pretty unremarkable - he was certainly no prodigy - just your average everyday graduate of those times and the average graduate in England back then was also around the 21 mark. These days - what with gap years before they start, remedial years when they do start and more gap years during their time at university - the average age of a graduate is likely to be two or three years older - and yet they appear less able than their sixties and seventies equivalents.
Our entire education system is in a dire state - from primary through to university it is failing to deliver the standards required and is falling well below the standards of 30 years ago. The reason is obvious. Education stopped being a process for preparing children for the world of work and became a tool for indoctrinating children into the left wing political dominance.
Even in that sense, though, there are signs that education is failing. Not only are more and more school leavers lacking in the basic skills which were once taken for granted it is also becoming apparent, to me anyway, that many of those school leavers (including many that left school some time ago) are increasingly disillusioned with the left wing world view that has been foisted upon them and are turning to conservatism.
Generally they tend to be from white "working class" backgrounds - the very people the left was supposed to support, but who were long ago abandoned in favour of more appreciative "victim groups" such as immigrants, gays and feminists. The working class of Britain has always been socially conservative and, I suspect, will always remain so. The fact that they have been failed so abysmally by all our mainstream parties is the reason why so-called "far-right" parties such as the BNP are starting to prosper. The truth is that the BNP offer left wing politics with social conservatism - something which the white working class is bound to find attractive after so many decades of being sacrificed for the causes of minorities.
I suppose some will argue that those in the education system - such as the inspectors, teachers and exam markers - have a much better insight into the real state of education, but those people are terribly biased towards a system which generally they support thanks to the default political stance of your average "educationalist" (i.e. raving Marxist).
The boss of Tesco knows the reality, though and the reality is that schools are churning out dross these days. Quite often it is dross with 4 or 5 GCSEs, but frankly those are virtually worthless qualifications. The vast majority of school leavers who go on to university spend the first year of their life in tertiary education doing remedial work to bring them up to the standard required to study for a degree - something which the sixth form of a secondary school is supposed to prepare them for!
I know it's set in the USA, but do you remember the film "The Graduate"? Yes, I know it had little to do with education - well, formal academic education, anyway - but Dustin Hoffman played a character called Benjamin who had just attained a bachelors degree (I can't remember what in). He was just coming up to his 21st birthday.
The character was pretty unremarkable - he was certainly no prodigy - just your average everyday graduate of those times and the average graduate in England back then was also around the 21 mark. These days - what with gap years before they start, remedial years when they do start and more gap years during their time at university - the average age of a graduate is likely to be two or three years older - and yet they appear less able than their sixties and seventies equivalents.
Our entire education system is in a dire state - from primary through to university it is failing to deliver the standards required and is falling well below the standards of 30 years ago. The reason is obvious. Education stopped being a process for preparing children for the world of work and became a tool for indoctrinating children into the left wing political dominance.
Even in that sense, though, there are signs that education is failing. Not only are more and more school leavers lacking in the basic skills which were once taken for granted it is also becoming apparent, to me anyway, that many of those school leavers (including many that left school some time ago) are increasingly disillusioned with the left wing world view that has been foisted upon them and are turning to conservatism.
Generally they tend to be from white "working class" backgrounds - the very people the left was supposed to support, but who were long ago abandoned in favour of more appreciative "victim groups" such as immigrants, gays and feminists. The working class of Britain has always been socially conservative and, I suspect, will always remain so. The fact that they have been failed so abysmally by all our mainstream parties is the reason why so-called "far-right" parties such as the BNP are starting to prosper. The truth is that the BNP offer left wing politics with social conservatism - something which the white working class is bound to find attractive after so many decades of being sacrificed for the causes of minorities.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Different standards apply
Driving home very late last night I finally gave up on the CD and switched on the radio and tuned in to Radio Five Live - which turned out to be a big mistake.
The radio show playing at the time was a "debate" about whether is is right to ban BNP members from being teachers. I put debate in quotes because it was nothing of the sort - anyone who dared to oppose the idea of banning BNP members from teaching was shouted down by various participants while anyone supporting the ban was given ample opportunity to rant and rave no matter how ridiculous their proposition.
For example, one idiot kept ranting about whether we'd allow paedophiles to teach. Well, judging by the frequent and numerous incidents of teachers having sexual relations with their underage pupils I'd say it is pretty apparent that we already do - but what the hell is this equating being a member of a legitimate political party with kiddy fiddling?
The moderator - or whatever he was - allowed this on the basis that the BNP is "openly racist". Racism, apparently, is actually a crime according to the people on the show. I actually thought the crime was racial discrimination, racial harassment or incitement to racial hatred rather than just expressing or thinking racist views or thoughts - but what do I know. After all Ron Atkinson was sacked for casting aspersions on a black footballers commitment, but he wasn't actually convicted of any crime - I guess things have moved on from those days.
Anyway, the assertion was that anyone who is a member of the BNP must be racist - a sweeping generalisation which wouldn't be allowed in any other situation. For that reason, the panel decided that it was right to ban BNP members from being teachers as they would treat non-white children as inferior.
But hang on a second - if that is the assumption then we should also ban members of the Labour Party from being teachers as you could equally claim that they are just as likely to treat children of bankers, accountants, company directors etc as inferior. And you should ban Conservatives from teaching as they would be inclined to treat children of miners (if we had any), factory workers (ditto) and union activists as inferior.
Likewise you should ban Green Party members from teaching as they would treat meat eating children, those that arrive at school in 4x4s and just about any kid who isn't a tree hugging nut nibbler as inferior. Actually, we ought to just ban Green Party members. And what about Moslems - particularly those who go for the full Moslem garb? There you have a radical Moslem teacher who may be treating non-Moslem children as inferior - and may even be putting pressure on moderate Moslem children and their families to adopt the full regalia! Why don't we ban Moslems from teaching, then?
And as someone pointed out - to universal silence - we should ban feminists and gays from teaching as they may be inclined to treat boys or straight children (huh?) as inferior. If you take the proposition to its natural conclusion - nobody should be allowed to teach.
But of course that is ridiculous. The fact is that teachers have to obey stringent rules in the way they treat children - both national laws and local school rules - no matter what their political affiliation or particular world view is. If any teacher breaks those rules they can be disciplined and even sacked - whether they are BNP members or members of the NUT (and the vast majority who have been disciplined or sacked have been members of the latter rather than the former).
What is being suggested here is that different rules should be made for BNP members purely on the basis that those who make the rules don't like them. That is bigotry, discrimination and intolerance on a grand scale.
The radio show playing at the time was a "debate" about whether is is right to ban BNP members from being teachers. I put debate in quotes because it was nothing of the sort - anyone who dared to oppose the idea of banning BNP members from teaching was shouted down by various participants while anyone supporting the ban was given ample opportunity to rant and rave no matter how ridiculous their proposition.
For example, one idiot kept ranting about whether we'd allow paedophiles to teach. Well, judging by the frequent and numerous incidents of teachers having sexual relations with their underage pupils I'd say it is pretty apparent that we already do - but what the hell is this equating being a member of a legitimate political party with kiddy fiddling?
The moderator - or whatever he was - allowed this on the basis that the BNP is "openly racist". Racism, apparently, is actually a crime according to the people on the show. I actually thought the crime was racial discrimination, racial harassment or incitement to racial hatred rather than just expressing or thinking racist views or thoughts - but what do I know. After all Ron Atkinson was sacked for casting aspersions on a black footballers commitment, but he wasn't actually convicted of any crime - I guess things have moved on from those days.
Anyway, the assertion was that anyone who is a member of the BNP must be racist - a sweeping generalisation which wouldn't be allowed in any other situation. For that reason, the panel decided that it was right to ban BNP members from being teachers as they would treat non-white children as inferior.
But hang on a second - if that is the assumption then we should also ban members of the Labour Party from being teachers as you could equally claim that they are just as likely to treat children of bankers, accountants, company directors etc as inferior. And you should ban Conservatives from teaching as they would be inclined to treat children of miners (if we had any), factory workers (ditto) and union activists as inferior.
Likewise you should ban Green Party members from teaching as they would treat meat eating children, those that arrive at school in 4x4s and just about any kid who isn't a tree hugging nut nibbler as inferior. Actually, we ought to just ban Green Party members. And what about Moslems - particularly those who go for the full Moslem garb? There you have a radical Moslem teacher who may be treating non-Moslem children as inferior - and may even be putting pressure on moderate Moslem children and their families to adopt the full regalia! Why don't we ban Moslems from teaching, then?
And as someone pointed out - to universal silence - we should ban feminists and gays from teaching as they may be inclined to treat boys or straight children (huh?) as inferior. If you take the proposition to its natural conclusion - nobody should be allowed to teach.
But of course that is ridiculous. The fact is that teachers have to obey stringent rules in the way they treat children - both national laws and local school rules - no matter what their political affiliation or particular world view is. If any teacher breaks those rules they can be disciplined and even sacked - whether they are BNP members or members of the NUT (and the vast majority who have been disciplined or sacked have been members of the latter rather than the former).
What is being suggested here is that different rules should be made for BNP members purely on the basis that those who make the rules don't like them. That is bigotry, discrimination and intolerance on a grand scale.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Whose side are they on?
Sometimes I wonder about teachers. You'd be forgiven for thinking, like I used to, that the reason most people get into teaching is that they are driven to help kids - but more and more I think this is unlikely.
Sure, there are still a few out there - probably the older ones - who still think that the point of education is to impart knowledge onto children, but the vast majority are driven by other impulses. Take, for instance, the case of the dinner lady sacked for revealing to the parents of a child that their daughter had been tied up then whipped while at school in an incident the school described as "an accident".
First of all, how can a group of kids accidentally tie another child up then whip her with a skipping rope? Secondly, given the implausibility of the first point, why would the school seek to deny that the incident was one of bullying - and an extreme case at that? And thirdly, why would the school then sack someone for telling the truth to the parents of the victim?
On the first point, it clearly was not an accident, but a deliberate and cruel act.
The reason the school wants to hush it up is because the head of the school does not want to deal with the problems of bullying that so plainly exist in their school - so they do whatever they can to deny that the problem even exists.
And on the third point, the truth teller is sacked rather than the liars and deceivers because the education system itself is controlled by liars and deceivers. They are well versed in lying and deceiving as they spend considerable amounts of time, effort and money working up various ways to convince the various bodies that their school is good - and one of those metrics is bullying so they can't have anything that looks like bullying.
So the schools dream up all sorts of processes which are not designed to solve the problem of bullying but actually designed to ensure that whenever am incident of bullying is discovered it is scrupulously investigated (according to procedures) and then found not to be bullying at all.
The question is why would they do this? Surely it is in the interests of both the parents and the school for these things to be dealt with properly. Well - yes, it would be if the purpose of the school was to provide education and nothing else - but that isn't what they are about these days.
Because the purpose of schools these days is to prove that education in a progressive state is successful and universal. Above all it is vital to prove that it is better than education in a conservative state - even when it quite plainly is not. The whole point of the targets and the processes and procedures is to provide demonstrable evidence that progressive state education is great for all - nobody fails, nobody misses out and nobody gets bullied.
Of course, they still have a long long way to go to achieve that deceit, but they are working on it year on year. Whose side are they on? The parents? The children?
Nope - neither. They are on the side of progressive ideology. THAT is the only thing that matters to schools these days - not you or your kids, but their precious ideology. Nothing - not the parents, not the kids and certainly not education - must be allowed to get in the way of that.
Incidentally, as yet another teacher is convicted of sexually abusing a child in their care one can't help wondering what sort of uproar there would be if teaching were a religion?
Sure, there are still a few out there - probably the older ones - who still think that the point of education is to impart knowledge onto children, but the vast majority are driven by other impulses. Take, for instance, the case of the dinner lady sacked for revealing to the parents of a child that their daughter had been tied up then whipped while at school in an incident the school described as "an accident".
First of all, how can a group of kids accidentally tie another child up then whip her with a skipping rope? Secondly, given the implausibility of the first point, why would the school seek to deny that the incident was one of bullying - and an extreme case at that? And thirdly, why would the school then sack someone for telling the truth to the parents of the victim?
On the first point, it clearly was not an accident, but a deliberate and cruel act.
The reason the school wants to hush it up is because the head of the school does not want to deal with the problems of bullying that so plainly exist in their school - so they do whatever they can to deny that the problem even exists.
And on the third point, the truth teller is sacked rather than the liars and deceivers because the education system itself is controlled by liars and deceivers. They are well versed in lying and deceiving as they spend considerable amounts of time, effort and money working up various ways to convince the various bodies that their school is good - and one of those metrics is bullying so they can't have anything that looks like bullying.
So the schools dream up all sorts of processes which are not designed to solve the problem of bullying but actually designed to ensure that whenever am incident of bullying is discovered it is scrupulously investigated (according to procedures) and then found not to be bullying at all.
The question is why would they do this? Surely it is in the interests of both the parents and the school for these things to be dealt with properly. Well - yes, it would be if the purpose of the school was to provide education and nothing else - but that isn't what they are about these days.
Because the purpose of schools these days is to prove that education in a progressive state is successful and universal. Above all it is vital to prove that it is better than education in a conservative state - even when it quite plainly is not. The whole point of the targets and the processes and procedures is to provide demonstrable evidence that progressive state education is great for all - nobody fails, nobody misses out and nobody gets bullied.
Of course, they still have a long long way to go to achieve that deceit, but they are working on it year on year. Whose side are they on? The parents? The children?
Nope - neither. They are on the side of progressive ideology. THAT is the only thing that matters to schools these days - not you or your kids, but their precious ideology. Nothing - not the parents, not the kids and certainly not education - must be allowed to get in the way of that.
Incidentally, as yet another teacher is convicted of sexually abusing a child in their care one can't help wondering what sort of uproar there would be if teaching were a religion?
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Just walk away
There seems to be a lot of sympathy going around for Peter Harvey - the teacher who hospitalised a pupil with a weight. I'm afraid none of it is coming from me.
Teachers - not all of them, but certainly a sufficiently large number of them - have colluded with the authorities for decades to hide the reality of schools in an effort to pretend that the comprehensive experiment (which most teachers support) has been a success. As the article linked to above points out, the Ofsted report claimed the school was "satisfactory" and that "behaviour and relationships in the school are good and so students show respect for their teachers and each other during lessons and around the school". Clearly that was rubbish - but teachers make an effort to give that impression when the inspectors call.
Hensher goes on to point out that ....
In short, the inspectors at that time found that [the school] were taking above-average students and making them into below-average ones.
It has to be said, unfortunately, that that happens to be par for the course in secondary education these days - but the ones most likely to deny this are the teachers themselves. Hensher uses a quote from a Facebook page to demonstrate the poor level of literacy displayed by fellow pupils of the lad who was hospitalised. It might be a stark reminder to you and I, but I'm quite sure that the teachers who teach in that school are well aware of how poorly the pupils in their care spell - they must read the stuff their pupils write, surely? - and I'm also well aware that kids habitually misspell words when writing text messages or online anyway. In the world the educationalists created, spelling is not considered important anymore.
The way some teachers go on about their profession you'd think they were working in a coal mine (with references to the "chalkface") or fighting a war (with references to "the front line"). If this is true, then they should consider that the environment they work in is one that they helped to create - but more than that, they know damn well that nobody is forcing them to do that job.
Unlike the kids who want to learn, but end up shunted into one of these "bog-standard" comprehensives where they have to pretend to be dumb and go along with the bad behaviour and disorder to avoid being singled out by their peers all teachers have a choice.
Peter Harvey could have simply walked away - from the pupil, the class and the school.
Teachers - not all of them, but certainly a sufficiently large number of them - have colluded with the authorities for decades to hide the reality of schools in an effort to pretend that the comprehensive experiment (which most teachers support) has been a success. As the article linked to above points out, the Ofsted report claimed the school was "satisfactory" and that "behaviour and relationships in the school are good and so students show respect for their teachers and each other during lessons and around the school". Clearly that was rubbish - but teachers make an effort to give that impression when the inspectors call.
Hensher goes on to point out that ....
In short, the inspectors at that time found that [the school] were taking above-average students and making them into below-average ones.
It has to be said, unfortunately, that that happens to be par for the course in secondary education these days - but the ones most likely to deny this are the teachers themselves. Hensher uses a quote from a Facebook page to demonstrate the poor level of literacy displayed by fellow pupils of the lad who was hospitalised. It might be a stark reminder to you and I, but I'm quite sure that the teachers who teach in that school are well aware of how poorly the pupils in their care spell - they must read the stuff their pupils write, surely? - and I'm also well aware that kids habitually misspell words when writing text messages or online anyway. In the world the educationalists created, spelling is not considered important anymore.
The way some teachers go on about their profession you'd think they were working in a coal mine (with references to the "chalkface") or fighting a war (with references to "the front line"). If this is true, then they should consider that the environment they work in is one that they helped to create - but more than that, they know damn well that nobody is forcing them to do that job.
Unlike the kids who want to learn, but end up shunted into one of these "bog-standard" comprehensives where they have to pretend to be dumb and go along with the bad behaviour and disorder to avoid being singled out by their peers all teachers have a choice.
Peter Harvey could have simply walked away - from the pupil, the class and the school.
Monday, July 06, 2009
How the left admit they've failed on education
The left never actually admit they are wrong on anything. It's one of the features of left wing thinking that any real world evidence which falsifies a wide held left wing belief is either wrong or can be reinterpreted to demonstrate that their belief is correct. Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) - very much a left wing belief system - being a prime example of that technique.
However, they frequently admit their failings by accident. Or, to be more precise, by their incoherent thought processes. For example, it is a long held belief of the left that poverty causes crime. Is this true?
Well, if it is true then it is obvious that fifty years of progressive liberalism have failed - because crime is considerably worse than it was fifty years ago when there was far more poverty than there is now. But the left counter that by adjusting the way we measure poverty so it appears that there are more poor people today than there really is - in which case, fifty years of progressive liberalism and the welfare state has failed again.
To prove their theory - that poverty causes crime - they have to demonstrate that there are plenty of poor people which is why crime is so much higher today than it was fifty years ago, but by doing that they admit the failure of another left wing plank. It's an implicit admission of the failure of the left - but one they will never own up to.
It's a similar thing with education. According to the left, comprehensive education has been a great success. It is fairer and delivering higher standards than ever before - so they say.
But then comes the admission of failure again. You see, another one of their theories on crime is that it is caused by poor education. Time and again I hear someone from the left saying that "prison doesn't work" - what is needed, they insist, is education to stop people falling into crime.
This stark admission ignores the fact that everyone has access to a state education from the age of 5 until they are 16. If it is true that poor education is more likely to result in a rise in crime then it is demonstrable evidence that comprehensive education has been an abject failure because - as we know - crime was considerably lower before comprehensive education.
So, either the theory is bunkum or the policy is failing? Which is it lefties?
Of course, both theories - that poor education and poverty cause crime - are rubbish. A century ago we had considerably more poverty and poorer education, but far less crime - but a century before that we had even poorer education and even more poverty - and crime was rife.
What causes crime? The absence of morality is what.
However, they frequently admit their failings by accident. Or, to be more precise, by their incoherent thought processes. For example, it is a long held belief of the left that poverty causes crime. Is this true?
Well, if it is true then it is obvious that fifty years of progressive liberalism have failed - because crime is considerably worse than it was fifty years ago when there was far more poverty than there is now. But the left counter that by adjusting the way we measure poverty so it appears that there are more poor people today than there really is - in which case, fifty years of progressive liberalism and the welfare state has failed again.
To prove their theory - that poverty causes crime - they have to demonstrate that there are plenty of poor people which is why crime is so much higher today than it was fifty years ago, but by doing that they admit the failure of another left wing plank. It's an implicit admission of the failure of the left - but one they will never own up to.
It's a similar thing with education. According to the left, comprehensive education has been a great success. It is fairer and delivering higher standards than ever before - so they say.
But then comes the admission of failure again. You see, another one of their theories on crime is that it is caused by poor education. Time and again I hear someone from the left saying that "prison doesn't work" - what is needed, they insist, is education to stop people falling into crime.
This stark admission ignores the fact that everyone has access to a state education from the age of 5 until they are 16. If it is true that poor education is more likely to result in a rise in crime then it is demonstrable evidence that comprehensive education has been an abject failure because - as we know - crime was considerably lower before comprehensive education.
So, either the theory is bunkum or the policy is failing? Which is it lefties?
Of course, both theories - that poor education and poverty cause crime - are rubbish. A century ago we had considerably more poverty and poorer education, but far less crime - but a century before that we had even poorer education and even more poverty - and crime was rife.
What causes crime? The absence of morality is what.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Mistakes in grammar
David Davis is calling for the return of the grammar school as the "greatest instrument for social mobility ever invented" in a direct challenge - again - to David Cameron's leadership.
The former shadow home secretary, who went to grammar school, insisted only a return to selective education could 'rescue the next generation of the underprivileged'.
'The charge against the grammar school is that they helped the brightest at the expense of the weaker child. The truth about the comprehensive system is that it failed the best without helping the weak.'
The reality is that when they vandalised - sorry, reformed the education system into comprehensive they took the bit that worked well - grammar schools - and threw it away and used the bit that was failing - secondary moderns - as the model for their reform. The result is that we have a system which fails everyone.
I know - some people will say "there are some very good comprehensives". Yes there are - but there were also some very good secondary moderns as well. One good apple doesn't rescue the whole rotten barrel.
The most important point, though, is the one that Davis makes regarding social mobility. Grammar schools were the key instrument during the forties, fifties and sixties for motivating social mobility - nothing else has ever come close. The removal of that instrument has failed two generations of school children and will go on failing them until we retrieve it.
Davis is right to call for their return, but his call will fall on deaf ears. The progressives - and that includes his party and their leader - do not want to listen to anything that challenges their perception of the world.
The former shadow home secretary, who went to grammar school, insisted only a return to selective education could 'rescue the next generation of the underprivileged'.
'The charge against the grammar school is that they helped the brightest at the expense of the weaker child. The truth about the comprehensive system is that it failed the best without helping the weak.'
The reality is that when they vandalised - sorry, reformed the education system into comprehensive they took the bit that worked well - grammar schools - and threw it away and used the bit that was failing - secondary moderns - as the model for their reform. The result is that we have a system which fails everyone.
I know - some people will say "there are some very good comprehensives". Yes there are - but there were also some very good secondary moderns as well. One good apple doesn't rescue the whole rotten barrel.
The most important point, though, is the one that Davis makes regarding social mobility. Grammar schools were the key instrument during the forties, fifties and sixties for motivating social mobility - nothing else has ever come close. The removal of that instrument has failed two generations of school children and will go on failing them until we retrieve it.
Davis is right to call for their return, but his call will fall on deaf ears. The progressives - and that includes his party and their leader - do not want to listen to anything that challenges their perception of the world.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Why relying on "comparative advantage" is chasing rainbows
Research carried out by the Institute of Education, part of the University of London, has reached the conclusion that "work-based training" is a waste of time and money and that "many courses would do little to help Britain emerge from the economic downturn".
Professor Lorna Unwin, who carried out the study alongside academics from Cardiff and Southampton universities, said: "All too often learning is regarded as something separate from work itself and is seen solely in terms of formal episodes of 'training' that can be counted and costed – the bean-counting approach.
We'll come on to the "bean-counting" in a moment, but first ponder this.
At the moment, official estimates state there are around five million adults in Britain lacking basic literacy, while 17 million struggle with simple arithmetic.
That 17 million adults equates to more than one half of the available British workforce. That on it's own is a statistic that damns any pretence that the comprehensive school programme has been a success - if we had known, when they embarked on the wrecking of our education system, that after 40 years half our adults would be barely numerate with a further 5 million barely able to read would we have gone ahead with it?
Why do we persist with the lie that comprehensive education is "working" when it clearly isn't? The answer, of course, is that comprehensive education is part of the progressive doctrine - and as all our parties are progressive parties, none of them will actually admit the damning truth.
However, this condemns them.
Ministers have encouraged adults to enrol on courses to boost the level of basic skills.
If comprehensive education was working, why would ministers have to encourage adults to enrol on courses to boost the level of basic skills. That is what we have eleven years of state education for! If they've not reached the required level of basic skill in eleven years then there is clearly something wrong with the system.
So, state education is not providing our population with even the basic skills - but that's not the end of the problem.
In the latest study, researchers investigated the different courses being offered across Britain but insisted many were "unrelated" to businesses' needs.
It blamed Government targets which they said were fixated by the number of people with qualifications - rather than the type of course.
Which brings us back to the bean-counters. The Labour government's fixation with targets is what drives the bean-counting - the aim of which is not specifically to improve standards, but to provide the government with the figures so that they can feel good about themselves - and to use as propaganda.
Take the goal of having 50% of school leavers attending university - a spurious figure plucked out of the air. Why 50% - why not 70% or 100%? The important thing about university is not how many are going, but that we have the required number for our needs doing the courses that our industries and businesses require. Thirty years ago or so, that was roughly around 30% - and that was at a time when we a considerably larger industrial base than we do now.
I don't know how close we are to that 50%, but what is apparent is that many graduates are struggling to find employment related to their degree. What is the point of spending countless thousands of pounds educating someone to degree standard just so that they can work in McDonalds or end up using those skills in some other country?
The article goes on to bash the quango system.
Authors of the study - Improving Working as Learning - also criticised the complex system of bodies set up to lead training and skills initiatives.
"What was once a collection of disparate bodies jostling for the right to serve and influence employers has itself become a many-headed bureaucratic hydra, which, in turn, devours part of the funding intended for the 'real' economy," researchers said.
Not just "part" of the funding - a considerable chunk of it. The Learning and Skills Council alone has a budget of some £10.4 billion! - and that is just one of the bewildering myriad of bodies set up in the education sector.
All of this brings me to my point. I keep hearing people - in newspapers, websites, blogs and so on - talking about our "comparative advantage" in the globalised economy. This "comparative advantage" is based on the belief that we, as a supposedly developed high technology nation, have skills which the rest of the world needs. Although we don't make anything anymore, they argue, that doesn't matter because we have the skills to develop the technology and design the things that the rest of the world wants.
BULLSHIT!
Our education system is so completely wrecked that half our workforce is barely literate or numerate - and it isn't getting any better. Meanwhile, those developing nations are churning out hundreds of thousands of highly qualified, highly skilled and exceptionally competent graduates year after year. Why on earth would they come to us for something they can get better and cheaper in their own nation?
There are only two areas where we maintain any sort of comparative advantage with the rest of the world - arms and pharmaceuticals. Our arms industry is shrinking rapidly with the bulk of it now residing with one company - Bae - while pharmaceuticals gets a universally bad press thanks to the demonic outpourings of the left who moan about these companies "profiteering" from the sick and needy in the third world (does anyone realise how much it costs to develop a drug, how long it takes to get it approved and how little time is left on the patent by the time it gets to market? - and that's with the 1 in 20 drugs that ever get that far! What are they supposed to do - give it away?).
Neither of those two industries are sufficient to maintain that comparative advantage - and pretty soon we won't be world leaders in those areas either.
Without a decent education system to produce the workforce we need we can not maintain a comparative advantage. Without a decent industrial and production base we can not maintain an economy that matches our living standards - something has to give. Any changes we make in our education system will take a generation or more to bear fruit - even if we started today we would not feel the benefit for 25 years or more and there is no indication whatsoever from any of our political parties that they have either the will or the know how to do that anyway.
Without that decent education system we have no comparative advantage. There are seventeen million adults in Britain who can not add up properly - there are probably three times that many Chinese adults with high quality degrees in highly sought after subjects. How are we supposed to compete with that?
Comparative advantage does not exist for Britain. Either we adopt protectionism or we accept that we're going to have to get used to considerably lower living standards.
Professor Lorna Unwin, who carried out the study alongside academics from Cardiff and Southampton universities, said: "All too often learning is regarded as something separate from work itself and is seen solely in terms of formal episodes of 'training' that can be counted and costed – the bean-counting approach.
We'll come on to the "bean-counting" in a moment, but first ponder this.
At the moment, official estimates state there are around five million adults in Britain lacking basic literacy, while 17 million struggle with simple arithmetic.
That 17 million adults equates to more than one half of the available British workforce. That on it's own is a statistic that damns any pretence that the comprehensive school programme has been a success - if we had known, when they embarked on the wrecking of our education system, that after 40 years half our adults would be barely numerate with a further 5 million barely able to read would we have gone ahead with it?
Why do we persist with the lie that comprehensive education is "working" when it clearly isn't? The answer, of course, is that comprehensive education is part of the progressive doctrine - and as all our parties are progressive parties, none of them will actually admit the damning truth.
However, this condemns them.
Ministers have encouraged adults to enrol on courses to boost the level of basic skills.
If comprehensive education was working, why would ministers have to encourage adults to enrol on courses to boost the level of basic skills. That is what we have eleven years of state education for! If they've not reached the required level of basic skill in eleven years then there is clearly something wrong with the system.
So, state education is not providing our population with even the basic skills - but that's not the end of the problem.
In the latest study, researchers investigated the different courses being offered across Britain but insisted many were "unrelated" to businesses' needs.
It blamed Government targets which they said were fixated by the number of people with qualifications - rather than the type of course.
Which brings us back to the bean-counters. The Labour government's fixation with targets is what drives the bean-counting - the aim of which is not specifically to improve standards, but to provide the government with the figures so that they can feel good about themselves - and to use as propaganda.
Take the goal of having 50% of school leavers attending university - a spurious figure plucked out of the air. Why 50% - why not 70% or 100%? The important thing about university is not how many are going, but that we have the required number for our needs doing the courses that our industries and businesses require. Thirty years ago or so, that was roughly around 30% - and that was at a time when we a considerably larger industrial base than we do now.
I don't know how close we are to that 50%, but what is apparent is that many graduates are struggling to find employment related to their degree. What is the point of spending countless thousands of pounds educating someone to degree standard just so that they can work in McDonalds or end up using those skills in some other country?
The article goes on to bash the quango system.
Authors of the study - Improving Working as Learning - also criticised the complex system of bodies set up to lead training and skills initiatives.
"What was once a collection of disparate bodies jostling for the right to serve and influence employers has itself become a many-headed bureaucratic hydra, which, in turn, devours part of the funding intended for the 'real' economy," researchers said.
Not just "part" of the funding - a considerable chunk of it. The Learning and Skills Council alone has a budget of some £10.4 billion! - and that is just one of the bewildering myriad of bodies set up in the education sector.
All of this brings me to my point. I keep hearing people - in newspapers, websites, blogs and so on - talking about our "comparative advantage" in the globalised economy. This "comparative advantage" is based on the belief that we, as a supposedly developed high technology nation, have skills which the rest of the world needs. Although we don't make anything anymore, they argue, that doesn't matter because we have the skills to develop the technology and design the things that the rest of the world wants.
BULLSHIT!
Our education system is so completely wrecked that half our workforce is barely literate or numerate - and it isn't getting any better. Meanwhile, those developing nations are churning out hundreds of thousands of highly qualified, highly skilled and exceptionally competent graduates year after year. Why on earth would they come to us for something they can get better and cheaper in their own nation?
There are only two areas where we maintain any sort of comparative advantage with the rest of the world - arms and pharmaceuticals. Our arms industry is shrinking rapidly with the bulk of it now residing with one company - Bae - while pharmaceuticals gets a universally bad press thanks to the demonic outpourings of the left who moan about these companies "profiteering" from the sick and needy in the third world (does anyone realise how much it costs to develop a drug, how long it takes to get it approved and how little time is left on the patent by the time it gets to market? - and that's with the 1 in 20 drugs that ever get that far! What are they supposed to do - give it away?).
Neither of those two industries are sufficient to maintain that comparative advantage - and pretty soon we won't be world leaders in those areas either.
Without a decent education system to produce the workforce we need we can not maintain a comparative advantage. Without a decent industrial and production base we can not maintain an economy that matches our living standards - something has to give. Any changes we make in our education system will take a generation or more to bear fruit - even if we started today we would not feel the benefit for 25 years or more and there is no indication whatsoever from any of our political parties that they have either the will or the know how to do that anyway.
Without that decent education system we have no comparative advantage. There are seventeen million adults in Britain who can not add up properly - there are probably three times that many Chinese adults with high quality degrees in highly sought after subjects. How are we supposed to compete with that?
Comparative advantage does not exist for Britain. Either we adopt protectionism or we accept that we're going to have to get used to considerably lower living standards.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
How you know the liberals know they got it wrong
Not that they'd ever admit that they screwed up when they started the liberal progressive experiment in Britain some fifty years ago. Far from it - they apply all sorts of spin and deceit to various statistics which would otherwise demonstrate the total failure of their policies.
Where Britain used to be near the top of the world league tables - in education, industry, health - we're now way down in the relegation zone. Where we used to be bottom - in sexually transmitted disease, recorded crime, murders, divorce, teenage pregnancies, family breakup - we now vying for the top spot.
By virtually every significant measure, Britain has slipped further and further back over the last 50 years - but still the progressives cling on to power even when they know they are a busted flush. How do I know they know this?
Through their education policy - particularly the introduction of compulsory PSHE (personal, social, health and economic) education.
The truth is that these things were learned as part and parcel of growing up in pre-progressive times, but decades of liberal progressivism has wrought family and societal breakdown on our kids to such an extent that they now need to be taught by someone how to behave. Why else would it be necessary to teach kids to "resist gang culture" if the failure of liberal progressivism had not allowed gang culture to flourish? Why would children need to be taught about the dangers of illegal drugs if illegal drugs were not so readily available and their use implicitly approved? Why would they need to be taught about relationships if the message on relationships was not so confused and incoherent?
Nothing reveals the failure of the liberal progressive experiment more than what they believe they need to teach our children. The rise of PSHE education in schools today is their admission that they have completely and utterly wrecked society.
Where Britain used to be near the top of the world league tables - in education, industry, health - we're now way down in the relegation zone. Where we used to be bottom - in sexually transmitted disease, recorded crime, murders, divorce, teenage pregnancies, family breakup - we now vying for the top spot.
By virtually every significant measure, Britain has slipped further and further back over the last 50 years - but still the progressives cling on to power even when they know they are a busted flush. How do I know they know this?
Through their education policy - particularly the introduction of compulsory PSHE (personal, social, health and economic) education.
The truth is that these things were learned as part and parcel of growing up in pre-progressive times, but decades of liberal progressivism has wrought family and societal breakdown on our kids to such an extent that they now need to be taught by someone how to behave. Why else would it be necessary to teach kids to "resist gang culture" if the failure of liberal progressivism had not allowed gang culture to flourish? Why would children need to be taught about the dangers of illegal drugs if illegal drugs were not so readily available and their use implicitly approved? Why would they need to be taught about relationships if the message on relationships was not so confused and incoherent?
Nothing reveals the failure of the liberal progressive experiment more than what they believe they need to teach our children. The rise of PSHE education in schools today is their admission that they have completely and utterly wrecked society.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Getting the balance right
Anyone who reads this blog will realise by now that my politics is .... complicated, to say the least. The truth is, I don't think politics is simply a black and white case of, left and right, libertarian or authoritarian, socialism or conservatism and I don't believe there are that many people in Britain who are that politically simple.
I am - in various parts - conservative, libertarian, nationalist and capitalist. I know some people consider some of my views as bordering on socialism - if not outright socialism - but I disagree. Generally, those parts of my politics which appear to verge on socialism are simply traditional British nationalist, social conservatism. People seem to forget that the Labour movement, although socialist, was also very very socially conservative -so what often seems like Old Labour views are nothing more than the views which Old Labour once shared with the old Conservatives.
What I can't understand, though, is those people who think that we should take one particular political philosophy and keep it as pure as possible. There is no indication that this would be successful - and in all likelihood it would be catastrophic. Take the views of many libertarians and conservatives that we must retain a globalised "free market" economy, for example.
It is a basic feature of market economics that the market must find a level. We all know this - it is the most fundamental law of capitalist economics - supply and demand. Given that, it is inconceivable to assume that we can have a globalised free market economy in which one nation can pay its workers £30,000 a year for doing a job while a different nation pays its workers £3000 for doing the same job. Forget comparative advantage - that assumes you have an advantage and I have yet to see anyone demonstrate where that advantage is - the law of supply and demand says that if the going rate for doing a job is £3000 per year then £3000 per year is what you will be paid.
There's no point in denying it - we all know that's the case, but why do so many people ignore it?
The trick with politics is to get a balance. It's never going to be possible to achieve a perfect political system so the best you can hope for is to create the least imperfect system. Ironically, this is what we had basically achieved by the time the second world war began. It hadn't happened by accident and it wasn't a quick process, but decades of slow political progress had led us to a nation which was reasonably wealthy, industrious, motivated, had decent and improving social conditions, quality health care and decent living standards.
This had come about through a combination of conservatism, liberalism (traditional - not progressive) and nationalism all bound together by a heavy leaning towards social conservatism. The very attributes which I believe define my politics and, quite possibly, the politics of a considerable number of British people of my sort of age and older.
Why are we that way? Well, our politics was defined by our earliest influences and shaped by our later development as we grew older and assumed more responsibility of our lives. Just about everyone who was born before 1960 went through the same system - some of us grew up in working class Labour voting households while others grew up in middle class Conservative voting households. What is more, parliament was basically made up of people with a similar disposition.
However, since the sixties there have been two major changes which have altered that. First of all, the education system has become politicised and is now institutionally leftist. Some might argue that it was institutionally conservative before that - but it was social conservatism, not political. As a result of this politicisation of our education system - from infants to university - most people under the age of 40 had their original political views shaped not by their parents and their social circle, but by the schools. As a result they tend to be socially liberal and left of centre by the time they reach adulthood.
All the same, once they are exposed to the harsh realities of life, more than a few redefine themselves as politically conservative - although they remain socially liberal. So, although they move slightly to the right politically - they remain considerably further to the left than their contemporaries from 40 years ago.
The other thing that changed was the introduction of career politics. Most of our politicians today follow a path that ensures they never receive other influences in their political ideology other than the education system (socially liberal) and their choice of political party. As a result, parliament increasingly comprises people who, unlike in the past where there political outlook had been shaped by outside influences and personal experience, have very little exposure to alternative viewpoints.
Now, because our politicians come from such a narrow perspective, the balance of politics has tipped far too far to the left. Everyone knows that the so-called centre ground of today is far to the left of the centre ground of fifty years ago. We need to restore that balance to restore our nation. That won't be easy.
It won't be easy because it has to begin with the education system which needs to be politically "cleansed" - from top to bottom. However, right now the education system is dominated by leftists - both at classroom level and at policy level. Changing this around will be a mammoth task, but is by no means unachievable.
However, it can only be achieved by a government which is determined to achieve it and there is no indication that the Conservatives are the ones to do that. What is needed is a clear determination by a party to end the indoctrination of children - exposure to issues ranging from multiculturalism to global warming - and restore schools and universities to imparting pure knowledge to our children rather than political dogma.
It requires a determination by a government to take on the union stranglehold that currently ensures that the political dogma which is pushed to children is predominantly leftist. This doesn't just mean tackling the unions, but changing the whole way our teachers become teachers and who can teach. It also means giving more control to parents and local communities to decide what sort of schools they need and where rather than having them imposed on them by central government.
This would be a start - but that is all it would be. More - much much more is needed from infants to university to remove the stain of leftist ideology which currently colours our political map and creates the political imbalance which is so destructive to our national well being.
We need to get that balance back and get it right. Social conservatism mixed with traditional liberalism, political conservatism and British nationalism stood us in good stead for decades. It can do again, but only if we let it -and only if we understand that following a pure ideology rarely brings the desired result.
I am - in various parts - conservative, libertarian, nationalist and capitalist. I know some people consider some of my views as bordering on socialism - if not outright socialism - but I disagree. Generally, those parts of my politics which appear to verge on socialism are simply traditional British nationalist, social conservatism. People seem to forget that the Labour movement, although socialist, was also very very socially conservative -so what often seems like Old Labour views are nothing more than the views which Old Labour once shared with the old Conservatives.
What I can't understand, though, is those people who think that we should take one particular political philosophy and keep it as pure as possible. There is no indication that this would be successful - and in all likelihood it would be catastrophic. Take the views of many libertarians and conservatives that we must retain a globalised "free market" economy, for example.
It is a basic feature of market economics that the market must find a level. We all know this - it is the most fundamental law of capitalist economics - supply and demand. Given that, it is inconceivable to assume that we can have a globalised free market economy in which one nation can pay its workers £30,000 a year for doing a job while a different nation pays its workers £3000 for doing the same job. Forget comparative advantage - that assumes you have an advantage and I have yet to see anyone demonstrate where that advantage is - the law of supply and demand says that if the going rate for doing a job is £3000 per year then £3000 per year is what you will be paid.
There's no point in denying it - we all know that's the case, but why do so many people ignore it?
The trick with politics is to get a balance. It's never going to be possible to achieve a perfect political system so the best you can hope for is to create the least imperfect system. Ironically, this is what we had basically achieved by the time the second world war began. It hadn't happened by accident and it wasn't a quick process, but decades of slow political progress had led us to a nation which was reasonably wealthy, industrious, motivated, had decent and improving social conditions, quality health care and decent living standards.
This had come about through a combination of conservatism, liberalism (traditional - not progressive) and nationalism all bound together by a heavy leaning towards social conservatism. The very attributes which I believe define my politics and, quite possibly, the politics of a considerable number of British people of my sort of age and older.
Why are we that way? Well, our politics was defined by our earliest influences and shaped by our later development as we grew older and assumed more responsibility of our lives. Just about everyone who was born before 1960 went through the same system - some of us grew up in working class Labour voting households while others grew up in middle class Conservative voting households. What is more, parliament was basically made up of people with a similar disposition.
However, since the sixties there have been two major changes which have altered that. First of all, the education system has become politicised and is now institutionally leftist. Some might argue that it was institutionally conservative before that - but it was social conservatism, not political. As a result of this politicisation of our education system - from infants to university - most people under the age of 40 had their original political views shaped not by their parents and their social circle, but by the schools. As a result they tend to be socially liberal and left of centre by the time they reach adulthood.
All the same, once they are exposed to the harsh realities of life, more than a few redefine themselves as politically conservative - although they remain socially liberal. So, although they move slightly to the right politically - they remain considerably further to the left than their contemporaries from 40 years ago.
The other thing that changed was the introduction of career politics. Most of our politicians today follow a path that ensures they never receive other influences in their political ideology other than the education system (socially liberal) and their choice of political party. As a result, parliament increasingly comprises people who, unlike in the past where there political outlook had been shaped by outside influences and personal experience, have very little exposure to alternative viewpoints.
Now, because our politicians come from such a narrow perspective, the balance of politics has tipped far too far to the left. Everyone knows that the so-called centre ground of today is far to the left of the centre ground of fifty years ago. We need to restore that balance to restore our nation. That won't be easy.
It won't be easy because it has to begin with the education system which needs to be politically "cleansed" - from top to bottom. However, right now the education system is dominated by leftists - both at classroom level and at policy level. Changing this around will be a mammoth task, but is by no means unachievable.
However, it can only be achieved by a government which is determined to achieve it and there is no indication that the Conservatives are the ones to do that. What is needed is a clear determination by a party to end the indoctrination of children - exposure to issues ranging from multiculturalism to global warming - and restore schools and universities to imparting pure knowledge to our children rather than political dogma.
It requires a determination by a government to take on the union stranglehold that currently ensures that the political dogma which is pushed to children is predominantly leftist. This doesn't just mean tackling the unions, but changing the whole way our teachers become teachers and who can teach. It also means giving more control to parents and local communities to decide what sort of schools they need and where rather than having them imposed on them by central government.
This would be a start - but that is all it would be. More - much much more is needed from infants to university to remove the stain of leftist ideology which currently colours our political map and creates the political imbalance which is so destructive to our national well being.
We need to get that balance back and get it right. Social conservatism mixed with traditional liberalism, political conservatism and British nationalism stood us in good stead for decades. It can do again, but only if we let it -and only if we understand that following a pure ideology rarely brings the desired result.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
The wolves are gathering
Teachers from the NUT have voted for a 10% pay increase.
Activists insisted they would take "no lessons in morality" from ministers who fit their homes with "sinks from Habitat" - an attack on Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary.
No? But the rest of us are supposed to? How about they take a "lesson in morality" from us - the taxpayers. No - teachers are not taxpayers - their pay comes out of private sector taxes. They are tax recyclers and consume more than they recover.
So, the private sector is shedding jobs and taking wage cuts to cope with this recession - how about the teachers do the same?
Activists insisted they would take "no lessons in morality" from ministers who fit their homes with "sinks from Habitat" - an attack on Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary.
No? But the rest of us are supposed to? How about they take a "lesson in morality" from us - the taxpayers. No - teachers are not taxpayers - their pay comes out of private sector taxes. They are tax recyclers and consume more than they recover.
So, the private sector is shedding jobs and taking wage cuts to cope with this recession - how about the teachers do the same?
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