Gove's long march back

Roslyn Pine

Michael Gove is THE outstanding member of the shadow cabinet.
He deserves to be the next PM.

Herbert Thornton

Before long, there will be only one area in which school leavers in Britain will have any competence at all.

A small, but growing percentage of them will be able to recite the Koran by heart.

Tas Walker

Get the government out of education: Separation of school and state. Give parents education vouchers so they can select the school that suits their needs.

Duncan

Hear, hear. The most frustrating parts of grade inflation are:

a) It undermines any sense of achievement for pupils, and thus negates half the pleasure of learning

and

b) It means cleverer students have to concentrate only on wringing every single mark out of a paper if they want to get into a good uni. This would be fine if the examination curriculum were broad enough, but it isn't.

It just means that kids spend hours practicing past papers and are reluctant to take in anything other than what is on the exam. The result is mass corner cutting to get the best possible results.

Duncan,

Lazystudents.blogspot.com

david skinner

Melanie I have heard you before extolling the virtues of Michael Gove but I fear that even you are blinded to his failings. I am afraid I have absolutely no faith in Michael Gove whatsoever.

The point of education, I would have thought was to get children to think, to be able reason and draw conclusions of their own. Clearly in one major respect Michael Gove is just as capable of throwing his brains out of the window and following mantras like “ Four legs are good and two legs are bad. ” He also would promote brain washing, conditioning and ultimately grooming children to conform to the patterns of this age.

He too has fallen for Gramsci.

William S.Lind in an article entitled, What is Cultural Marxism? Explains how Gramsci and Lukacs overcame the failure of the Marxist cultural revolution to take over the West.

“Independently, two Marxist theorists, Antonio Gramsci in Italy and Georg Lukacs in Hungary, came to the same answer : Western culture and the Christian religion had so blinded the working class to its true, Marxist class interest that Communism was impossible in the West until both could be destroyed. In 1919, Lukacs asked, Who will save us from Western civilization? That same year, when he became Deputy Commissar for Culture in the short-lived Bolshevik Bela Kun government in Hungary, one of Lukac’s first acts was to introduce sex education into Hungary public schools. He knew that if he could destroy the West’s traditional sexual morals, he would have taken a giant step toward destroying Western culture itself.

In 1923, inspired in part by Lukacs, a group of German Marxists established a think tank at Frankfurt University in Germany called the Institute for Social Research. This institute, soon known simply as the Frankfurt School, would become the creator of cultural Marxism.

To translate Marxism from economic into cultural terms, the members of the Frankfurt School - - Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Wilhelm Reich, Eric Fromm and Herbert Marcuse, to name the most important - - had to contradict Marx on several points. They argued that culture was not just part of what Marx had called society superstructure, but an independent and very important variable. They also said that the working class would not lead a Marxist revolution, because it was becoming part of the middle class, the hated bourgeoisie.

Who would? In the 1950s, Marcuse answered the question: a coalition of blacks, students, feminist women and homosexuals.

Fatefully for America, when Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the Frankfurt School fled - - and re established itself in New York City. There, it shifted its focus from destroying traditional Western culture in Germany to destroying it in the United States. To do so, it invented Critical Theory. What is the theory? To criticize every traditional institution, starting with the family, brutally and unremittingly, in order to bring them down. It wrote a series of studies in prejudice, which said that anyone who believes in traditional Western culture is prejudiced, racist or sexist of fascist - - and is also mentally ill.

Most importantly, the Frankfurt School crossed Marx with Freud, taking from psychology the technique of psychological conditioning. Today, when the cultural Marxists want to do something like normalize homosexuality, they do not argue the point philosophically. They just beam television show after television show into every American home where the only normal-seeming white male is a homosexual (the Frankfurt School key people spent the war years in Hollywood).

After World War II ended, most members of the Frankfurt School went back to Germany. But Herbert Marcuse stayed in America. He took the highly abstract works of other Frankfurt School members and repackaged them in ways college students could read and understand. In his book Eros and Civilization, he argued that by freeing sex from any restraints, we could elevate the pleasure principle over the reality principle and create a society with no work, only play (Marcuse coined the phrase, Make love, not war). Marcuse also argued for what he called liberating tolerance, which he defined as tolerance for all ideas coming from the Left and intolerance for any ideas coming from the Right. In the 1960s, Marcuse became the chief guru of the New Left, and he injected the cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School into the baby boom generation, to the point where it is now America’s state ideology.

Now listen to Michael Gove’ article in the Times that it is shot through with unsubstantiated presupposition that need challenging.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/michael_gove/article1147059.ece

Bhaskar

Oh dear! State school teachers cannot win can they? If exam results go down they are to be blamed but if results improve, standards are failing! The problem with sections of the hard right (and I exclude Gove from this categorization)is that many of them have always regarded state school teachers as class enemies. This may be partly because many of them send their children to private schools and need some form of validation that they havn't wasted their money (this can occur in the form of an irrational belief that state school teachers are by and large progressive loonies brainwashing their charges with 'fashionable' dogmas). Gove need to reflect on this- In the 1979 election the majority of teachers voted for Margaret Thatcher. Current estimate indicates less than 10% would contemplate voting Tory in he next election. Like it or not, public service workers provide a large 'vote bank' and they would not vote for you if you constantly subject them to public vitriol.For reasons unclear, the Police and the Armed Forces seem to be spared such criticism from the hard right.
Let's now examine the evidence that exam standards are falling. The first thing is to recognise that research carried out by a handful of hard right academics at universities are ideologically driven. They constantly use nominalisations such as 'progressive'. What does the word mean and why is it so dreadful if one is a progressive? During the apartheid era it was progressive to oppose aparthied. It was progressive to introduce anti-discrimination legislation in this country in the late sixties. The civil rights march in America during the sixties was progressive and the logical consequence of this was what occured on the 5th of Nov 08. Yes, the world is a better place as a result of it! Comparing exam papers decades apart to ascertain if standards have fallen is ludicorus. Those sitting maths exams 50 years ago would not have had access to calculators and computers. Nowadays mathematics and computing are interlinked and this is reflected in current Maths exam papers. Same with the sciences, arts and humanities. The world has changed and this should be reflected in the curriculum and exams. ICT is an integral part of all curriculum areas and this is shown in many of the exam papers. Comparing exam papers decades apart is not comparing like with like. Using the scientific metaphor- this is not a fair test.
One area which attracts particular vitriol from the hard right is 'child centred learning'. Have they studied the research evidence? I think they should. The evidence is overwhelming, mainly that children learn faster and better when they take ownership of the learning process (instead of sitting in the class listening constantly to teacher talk).

Geoff M

Unfortunately, like the Tories hard line on financial responsibility, standing up for maintaining standards in education will not "chime" with the public.

They want easy qualifications just like they want easy credit.

Labour offers this - just look at the bounce that Labour has had in the polls since it borrowed hundreds of billions in our name, forces the banks to continue lending when we have a credit crunch caused by already excessive lending and offers to borrow billions more, again in our names, so as to give us a "tax cut" - to be spent on foreign imports and paid back with interest - to some Arab state no doubt.

Labour, or should it now be EasyPolitics, has infantilised the majority of the British public.

Teach them nothing and they know nothing.

Give them what they want now because they cannot understand the consequences.

When people are so stupid as to fall for being bribed with their own money do they even deserve to be saved?

seb

Melanie -

Few members of the public remotely understand what the educational establishment has been up to for decades - the infantilisation of lessons in the name of egalitarianism.

It's about, as you say, the disconnection of achievement and knowledge and education. Trainee teachers are taught that you can have education without knowledge and achievement without effort. They may be taught this by pernicious example rather than by precept, but this is the message. My kids have done loads of 'exams' with just the sort of fluffywuffy questions you've highlighted from the GCSE science exam. They knew what insulting tripe was when they saw it.

Gove, alas, will find that every single thing he says and does to reform education in the UK will be resisted to the hilt and that he will be ignored and vilified as some sort of antediluvian fascist by the educational clergy.

Susan Hill

What makes me despair is not the e-mails I get from dozens of students a week studying my books for GCSE and A level, wanting me to do their work for them and displaying an ignorance of any sort of ability to look beyond Google, let alone write an essay or read more than bites of the text... it is not even that they address me as 'Hi Suze' .. I forgive them because I then get e-mails from teachers displaying an ignorance and laziness which is almost as great. Yesterday one wrote 'I`m stuck with teaching your book (sic)and I need some pointers as I haven't done this sort of stuff before.. help me out here.'
What hope for the pupils ?

Conservative Cabbie

I'm afraid that one of those become a teacher ads on TV sums up the lowering of standards. It's the one where the pupil comes in pointing out to the teacher that his team won 3-1. The teacher replies "Awight, awight, si' daan".

I'm all for teachers coming from all walks of life and have no problems with accents but the ability to speak the English language with some degree of accuracy seems a fairly important qualification for the job.

seb

Sorry for having the temerity to contribute once more so soon after my recent post. I have been reading Bhaskar's long, predictable and deeply depressing apologia for progressive educational practices. The last paragraph is a perfect indication of what reformists are up against. First, notice that Bhaskar has described opponents of child-centred education as 'hard right' and their message as 'vitriol'. How typical of supposedly serious debate in our society is this? In such a politicised wrangle, of course, to oppose something merely because it is a disastrous mistake will always attract this sort of offensively irrelevant label from moral preeners who think that their fine intentions justify whatever they get up to.
More vile by a long stretch is the claim that child-centred - it looks like 'Fun with Scissors and Glue' to those of you who've seen what happens in primary schools - education has been shown by research to vastly improve school lessons. This is simply a lie. Research in fact shows that such styles of education lead to the waste of between two third and three quarters of children's time. Naturally, it hardly needs pointing out that such a conclusion could be reached merely by spending a few days observing lessons in our schools. If it looks like pandemonium, smells like pandemonium and sounds like pandemonium, you hardly need a researcher to tell you that child-centred lessons are pandemonium.

@ Susan Hill
My own experience is that older children have read little apart from The Great Gatsby and, perhaps, Animal Farm or 1984 and the usual string of poems by Seamus Heaney and others. The alternative to children creating essays entirely out of plagiarised material from the internet is called 'no essays'. I'm always amazed when I encounter anyone here who is capable of writing competent English prose. Evidence from newspapers would indicate that it's very hard to find people who have the faintest idea about spelling or grammar. [NB - it's morphed into 'grammer' in most posted comments I come across.]

david skinner

I would like to see Michael Gove make use of his education in this debate:
http://www.christian.org.uk/news/20081118/harman-opposed-over-plan-to-boost-gay-mps/

sean birnie

Well well, what a coincidence. Yesterday I started writing an essay intended to examine what strategies the few remaining rational people could adopt if our worst fears concerning an Obama regime are fulfilled.

My solution; to employ the same tactics developed by the likes of Gramischi and Ailinsky that the neo-marxists have used to such devestating effect.

The title of my essay was to have been "The Long March Back".

Not to worry, I'll just change the title to an alternative choice:

"The Retreat from Moscow"

stanley Jerusalem

Never ever has it been truer " A little learning is a dangerous thing"
The feeling of discomfort when trying to understand a genuinely well-educated person
must have some effect, surely? Other than a wish to eliminate them and one's own sense of inadequacy at the same time.
Shouting down works, so do socially-engineered audiences on TV and radio - especially Question Time.
Only thus will the 'progressives' among us level the playing field of intellectual honesty and clarity of thought.
Oh dear! No fun at all being a Jeremiah.

david skinner

I was a teacher for over thirty years in comprehensive education and threw the towel in for a number of reasons, one of which was that there was no longer any space or time to get kids to question or critically think. The whole materialist system now is based upon measurable outcomes that has reduced the child to perform in a pre-determined way. Children are no longer children but receivers of the curriculum and teachers are merely the deliverers - like postmen- oops; I meant postperson.

michael

1)Wiki

....Gove takes a pro-Israel line, and has criticised anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and several United Nations peace processes. A self-identified neo-conservative, he called for early intervention against Saddam Hussein and was a strong proponent of the view that the invasion of Iraq would bring peace and democracy both to Iraq and the wider Middle East [7]. Surprisingly, he stated in October 2004 of Tony Blair: "I can't hold it back any more; I love Tony!..."

2) Mel's blog

....the row that has broken out over William Dalrymple’s review of Michael Gove’s fine book Celsius 7/7, which argues that the west has made a disastrous mistake in appeasing Islamist terror, (an argument very similar in this respect to my own in Londonistan)....

3)
...."Shadow Minister has attacked the government's interventions over faith-schools admissions policies, saying that he is "incensed by the way the government's actions have put Jewish schools in the dock"....

As the Tories take a dive, small wonder Mel is sniping from the sidelines and angling for Gove to be promoted up the Greasy Pole.

Anita S

Even my eight year old daughter thinks that children should be sitting in rows at desks. Is my eight year old smarter than the average educationalist?

Emmet Sweeney

David Skinner, Fascinating comment. There is no question that the Marxist-Freudian "progressive" mindset is now the dominant one throughout the West (apart from, ironically, among the remnants of the working classes). However, I don't think it's entirely due to a conscious conspiracy among communists like Marcuse and Gramsci - though they no doubt did their best. Instead, the gradual movement towards the left is the inevitable result, I feel, of living in an industrial society with universal education and representative democracy. It probably can't be stopped; though we should at least try. What's the solution? Who knows? But the madness is set to get worse, as the left-wing Kafka-esque mindset becomes more and more entrenched. We can however expect militant Islam to become ever more dominant and agressive. Ironically, their violence could be what finally shakes the West out of its suicidal self-delusion.

Susan Hill

'SEB.' I wish they aspired as high as Seamus Heaney and Orwell, let alone Gatsby. They read KES and Carol Ann Duffy. And me. And if they can get away with reading bits of the books instead of the whole they will. No wonder even those who arrive at University to read English need remedial teaching. I have a friend who is a Senior Lecturer at a very high-profile University who thought rather than just giving his new first years a book list, he would take it one by one, so asked them to come back the following week having read Daniel Deronda. (He assumed, foolishly, that they would already know Middlemarch.) There was a silence. Nobody had heard of George Eliot, as he realised when they all spoke of her as 'he.' He took a copy of Deronda down from his shelves and showed them. There was an appalled silence. Then one said 'What, you mean the WHOLE of it ?' No wonder I spend hours a week giving remedial classes by e-mail to students of my books.
Have you seen the AQA English syllabus lately ?

Verity

Bhaskar is bonkers. How is it always the loonies who send in long, long posts, argued in tiny detail and obsessively supported with links they are convinced are going to persuade readers to throw their own beliefs out the window and cry, "You're right! I was a fool!"

Bhaskar, for your future reference, here is one of the physics truisms of our age: For every link, there is an equal and opposite link.

You appear to have been brain-washed by morons who think "hard right" is an insult. People on the right believe in perserverance, challenge and achievement.

I'll bet you are one of those poorly educates souls who think Hitler and Fascism were of the right. Admit it!

Ronnie

! Susan Hill, are you THE Susan Hill who wrote 'I'm the King of the Castle'?

Charles

Rudyard Kipling, quite probably the greatest writer of children's stories and verse in the English language. And his place in the GCSE syllabus?

A Design & Technology case study on Mr Kipling pies.

Says it all, as they say.

john doe

David Skinner: Excellent post on the background to cultural Marxism. It's a fascinating and complex subject...the social history of the West since the 50s. I highly recommend the film critic Robin Wood's book 'Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan'...a penetrating study of themes and sub texts in American cinema throughout the 60s and 70s. he is a Marxist/Freudian/feminist/gay writer and whether you agree with his views or not, his analysis of the social upheaval initiated in the 60s as portrayed in the cinema is quite compelling.
Michael Gove, Melanie Phillips, Geert Wilders, John Bolton, Robert Spencer,Diana West, Theodore Dalrymple...these are the few people holding the fort for civilised values. Oh....and Verity, who has the right name.

s

@ Susan Hill

Remedial English lessons for university entrants have been around for years, here and in North America. What else does one have to point to in order to condemn the educational establishment? The AQA curriculum is, being charitable, lightweight, chock full of Hughesian poems about how awful war and animal cruelty are. 'George Eliot? Never heard of him?' I suppose that would be the stock response of most average under-graduates whose taste in novels starts, but sadly also ends, with Nick Hornby.

The lack of anything resembling rigorous education in the UK is the mammoth in the room, I believe. But all will be well. Kim Il Brown has plans to rebuild all of the social clubs, er, schools in the nation. This will of course make all the difference to the children's levels of literacy and numeracy.

John Thomas

This is very interesting about the left-wingers' "Long march" through the institutions (and we were thinking that all those radical '60s students had become comfortable, share-owning middle-aged '80s people? - well, didn't "the History Man" go on to vote for Margaret Thatcher?). But as well as keeping their heads down, as they burrowed up into the establishment, they also founded the Social Democratic Party. Remember that? Middle class "liberals" who shunned cloth-cap Old Labour, but were too hypocritical to credit the source of their comfortable incomes/property - Thatcherism. The success of New Labour was to scoop up abandoned SDP people, and create the first truly Middle Class "liberal" government - which is what swept Blair to power, and today fuels the destruction of traditional values, the traditional family/morality, etc. Middle Class "liberalism", of course, is 100% hypocrisy, since its advocates enjoy all the benefits of private property, wealth, and "cultured" lifestyle - ie. civilivation, which the country is quickly being denuded of by the post-'97 governments.

expatriate

A crass materialist (not in the Marxian sense) comment on the above: those who haven't learned anything will be hard put to earn anything. Destroying the educational system is destroying the economy of the country.
Also, an ignorant public is easily softened up for the preferred politically correct ideologies of the time:multiculturalism, racism everywhere, man-made global warming, etc., etc., etc.

Susan Hill

Ronnie.. I am indeed. It`s one of the books that causes me all this grief !

Euclid

As a private maths tutor who has seen degradation in the standard of maths taught at schools over the years, I would agree with the content of the above article. It is regrettable to see such a large decline in Mathematics taught at schools. I feel students have been grossly let down and I feel sorry for them. It would be absurd to try and argue that there hasn't been a decline, especially at A Level as the above article makes clear.

The questions at A Level used to give an opportunity to students to reason through and solve a mathematical problem. They had to work out the strategy for themselves in tackling such a problem. This taught them the skills in reasoning, an essential ingredient if taking it to degree level.

The questions at A Level are now set in such a way that it tells the student how to solve it. It is usually broken down into parts where each part is needed before answering the next. This guides the student in what path to take to successfully solve the mathematical problem.

I suppose the Marxists that run the education system don’t want too many students to learn the skills of applying reasoned and logical arguments. To them it is far better to ‘spoon feed them’ as this inhibits them from thinking for themselves. It makes it easier to indoctrinate them with vile left wing views.

There is no doubt that the education system in this country needs a major overhaul. The elite who are running the education system to confer with their warped Marxists views of the world need to be sacked. They call it progress when in reality it is destroying what education supposed to be.

Ronnie

Well, Susan Hill, its very nice to meet you. I don't want to be a creep but I read that particular book of yours at school many, many years ago and have never forgotten it. I remember it had mixed reviews but I always thought that was a good thing. I enjoyed it very much and it made an impact.

I'll creep some more and say that I agree with what you say here, how could I not? Our assessment-obsessed sytem has squeezed all joy and meaning from the academic appreciation of literature (I won't say study because I think that's too narrow). Novels, as few as possible, are used as reference works through which to gain easy marks in exams.

The malaise appears to affect writing as well as reading. It seems that more books are published now but with far less depth and some are unfinished and unedited. Perhaps they are intended as scripts waiting to be snapped up for use by an easier medium.

Hysteria

what a truly excellent series of posts - a welcome absence of green ink and tinfoil helmets

stanley Jerusalem

Some while ago I read [with fury] a letter to The Times saying that teachers reading to classes of youngsters were boring,non-productive and time wasting whereas the interaction between pairs of kids reading to one another was preferable by far.
At my grammar school in the 50's our greatest joy was a double english period at the end of the afternoon in which our english master
[ Cor! can't get more non-PC than that, can you?]
read to us for 80 minutes with lots of different voices, asides and explanations.
If you think that counter-productive to a decent literary education ask Harold Pinter and Steven Berkoff. He taught them too.What is one 12 year-old going to learn from another? Sweet FA.
It became apparent that the direction in which primary and secondary education was travelling was borne along by the motto " It's more important to be happy than successful" and that was already creeping in in the 50's.The discipline of times tables, homework,acceptance if not respect for authority leaked away at the same time and we now have examinations set, like the driving test, to receive a certificate rather than to further knowledge and the acquisition of it. While working, I despaired of the levels of literacy and numeracy of job applicants.There have ceased to be any recognisable academic standards by which our kids are judged and graded and taken together with the complete loss of the apprenticeship schemes for tradesmen we have nutured a complete generation of pig-ignorant arrogant tykes who demand respect and jobs with their 'Degrees'
UGH!
Social Services, Health & Safety officials,BBC phone -in comedians,Polly Toynbee and BA crucifix -wearing counter staff.
YUCK! Glad to be out of it and sad to have to witness it.

Verity

Stanley Jerusalem - Yes, it's nice to be read to and one does absorb it in a different way. For those of us who wanted to stay back after class at the end of the day, our English master read Beowulf to us in the original Old English. It was absolutely wonderful - and Old English was his special subject so when we asked questions along the way, he could give us answers.

cuffleyburgers

@ Verity

Bhaskar is bonkers. How is it always the loonies who send in long, long posts, argued in tiny detail and obsessively supported with links they are convinced are going to persuade readers to throw their own beliefs out the window and cry, "You're right! I was a fool!"

It's usually Ms Philips' posts on Israel or Obama that read like long, obsessively detailed rants, and I can never be arsed to finish them.

Here though she is spot on.

I rate Gove highly as intelligent, reasonable, decent and cultured - he has no chance of making it as PM. Sorry.

He will be an excellent education minister provided he is given the space.

David Lindsay

If the Tories were a serious party, then they would pledge to bring back O-levels. But they're not. So they won't.

Ron Todd

Another reason to vote Tory. Brown talks about how much he is spending on school buildings Nice new buildings are goon but it would be better if the education was better. Even I who was never the brightest in the class am supprised by how little some of the younger people I work with know.

Ronnie

Stanley Jerusalem and Verity, I wonder how Shakespeare is taught these days? I dread to think.

Groovy Times

I work as a teacher in Newham, East London, a flagship borough for New Labour's target-driven vision for education. Using edu-speak akin to 1984, honest debate on the state of our schools has been closed down and those who critise current policy are branded as 'laggards' standing in the way of progress. The propoganda is blatant and offensive, but it reflects a totalitarian mindset that is zealously implemented by the aparachniks that call themselves headteachers and deputy-heads. I am not exaggerating. This new vision - which is based on never-ending change to produce the illusion of continuous progress because it can't be measured by a basic standard- is a system founded not on knowledge, but on 'skills'. This 'new vision'is to be student focused where the teacher is to take the role of a 'facilitator' ie - made reduntant and replaced by someone who does not need any specific subject knowledge when delivering lessons. It's the emperor's new clothes syndrome. I hope this naked corruption will one day be exposed. I'll even vote Tory if Gove will be the one to do it and pledges to save what's left of our comprehensive education system.

George Steiner

The point of no return has been reached already some time ago. But business and industry has organized itself to bypass the problem of the low quality of the available labour. It has done this by placing heavy emphasis on the use of computers and automation.

I give you two simple examples of this that you are all familiar with. The cashier and the customer service. The cashier is essentially a pick and place robot although still a humanoid. The customer service for the most part are faceless humanoids whose main skill is to be able to read the specification from a computer screen and answer the telephone.

Because the commercial world will always work around a problem you are cooked. Other nations have similar problems but yours is worse. The US is better off because they have the Indian and Chinese immigrants. You have the Muslims.

But I understand what a good feeling it is to discuss such a theoretically important subject as education, ad infinitum. Go ahead, but nothing will change.

oldandrew

Did Gove happen to mention any policies that would do anything about the problem?

Teaching blog at: http://oldandrew.edublogs.org/

stanley Jerusalem

"Ronnie
November 19th, 2008 7:21pm

Stanley Jerusalem and Verity, I wonder how Shakespeare is taught these days? I dread to think."

Shakespeare? You're pullin my pudden mate. They don't teach the Bard no more, sunshine. It's not even in English. Nah wot ah mean?
Victorian poetry? Too floral and anal. Reformation poetry?
Too obscure and metaphysical.
Great War poets?
Too sad and confrontational.
Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes? Ah, nah yer talkin boy!
Sylvia Plath - Yippee!!!!

Adam B.

David Skinner, I was interested to read about your reasons for throwing in the towel - "...for a number of reasons, one of which was that there was no longer any space or time to get kids to question or critically think..."

I don't think the government wants us to think for ourselves. We should all engage in groupthink. And furthermore, I despise the government's reasons for promoting higher education - "you'll earn more money" they say. Forget about the love of learning, broadening your horizons, learning about the human condition - no, you'll get more dosh! (And what's more, it's not even true).

Verity

stanley Jerusalem - Well at least I now know that the lower case s is intentional. I wasn't sure how to reply to you on a different thread.

Yeah, mate. "'Arry, England and wha'evah."

Dixon

I must say, this issue throws up some baffling facts.

Its nearly fifty years since engineers at Pratt & whitney designed the J2 rocket engine, which powered the second and third stages of the Saturn Five super-booster in the Apollo programme.

Then there was the space shuttle. Then grandiose proposals for rocket-planes to replace it. Then one by one the admission that these projects were too difficult to realise. Now its back to a disposable parachute returned capsule called Orion that bears an uncanny resemblance to Apollo on steroids.

Then the amazing announcement that...the new super-booster to propel it into space, the Aries, is to be powered by...you guessed it, the J2 engine, which by themn will be 60 years old!

But it gets worse! In order to re-produce the J2, in its new "J2x" guise, it has been found necessary to locate and re-hire engineers who retired as much as thirty years ago.

Quite apart from contradictting those silly conspiracy theories about "Area 51" and the US use of "alien technology" ( other than it being largely German, originally ) does this possibly tell us something about the state of education in the US, as elsewhere?

I dont know. But its a question that fascinates me.

Nor is it lone case. I'll add one little additional example. The X-15 rocket-plane started flying a full fifty years ago. Within a few years it was flying routinely into space at speeds in excess of 5 times the speed of sound. Now, US, Japanese, British and Australian engineers are seeking, as they have been for over a decade, to reproduce this capability, in a three foor long MODEL of a space-plane! They havent succeeeded yet!

What is happening at the "cutting edge" of technology and does it tell us anything about our daily experience of services and machines, facilities and provisions that all too often simply seem not to work?

An American

My dear British friends,
Are you ready to be depressed?
If you think education is deteriorating in English schools...you should take a look at US schools.
The state I live in is 50% Anglo, 50% Hispanic. We also have 2 of the US's 3 National Labs with the largest percentages of people with Phds. in the US.
Our students rank 49th from the top state in reading and math skills. High school dropout is in the high 30%. There is a high birthrate among junior and high school girls...Many of the parents seem unconcerned with their minor daughters producing multiple children out of wedlock. A friend who is a school councilor says it's actually a badge of honor now days...not shameful. Some of our schools provide nurseries for the mothers and their babies.
Some of these young people have a hard time enunciating a single, understandable sentence.
What kind of future do you think some of these young people will have waiting for them?
This is not about funding...the US and this state throw money at this problem without any improvement in grades year after year.
Our liberal politicians can't seem to figure out the problem and solution. But they do agree with and count on our state's teacher's union's votes and monetary support come election time.
The US is now importing many of its young scientists for our National Labs from China, India and elsewhere.
Young people from these countries have parents who have high expectations, read to them at home, teach them simple mathmatics early on and encourage morality and a good work ethic.
Many of our children have no idea who Shakespeare is...much less have the opportunity to read him...if they could read. Our society has been completely dumbed-down...you need dumb people to vote away their freedoms and accept socialism and Obama...oh, and don't forget about that big check in the mail.

david skinner

Adam B, John Doe, and Emmeet Sweeny , it seems that we, as opposed to the gainsayers who would accuse us of being Jeremiahs, all have twenty twenty vision with regard to seeing that there is a problem, not just with education but with the whole of society. Politicians, especially from the DSAFC, Downing Street Animal Farm Company Ltd. will talk about “significant progress,” “significant strides” and “British society would not be as diverse and successful as it is today without these landmark pieces of legislation.”

For anyone to dare to mention that all is not well will incur being branded as a traitor.

But as good old Jeremiah would have said if he were alive today nothing is new. He hit the nail on the head two thousand six hundred years ago when he said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Je.17:9

My problem, is that I suffer from self-induced delusion, self -deception and denial that finally leads to destruction. It’s just that I prefer to walk in the shadow land; I am by nature more comfortable with the dark.

I don’t believe Michael Gove would do any better as the Education Minister simply because he does not understand human nature. What good is education to any one if they do not also possess wisdom. But wisdom was banished long ago.

What earthly good would all the progressive education do for this little girl?

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=163504

Stephen Fowler

Melani Phillips - What a large number of fascinating blogs you have prompted following your interesting piece.

I work as a private tutor teaching mainly primary school children. I am part of a vast private industry in my area which is an embarrassment to the government because it should not be required, but without it the standards of education would be so much lower than they are.

I would be out of a job if the local primary schools were doing their job properly. It is possible to get some children moved up a set in maths after only two hours of tuition as they know so little. Most year 4 children that I see think half of one is zero. If you know a year 4 child ask them the following: Half of 4? Ans 2 Half of 2? Ans 1 Half of 1? Ans zero!

One year 3 boy said ‘I hate Fridays, it is so boring; we never do any work. We just have golden time all day.’

Two days ago a year 6 boy (final year of primary school) came in with paint on his clothes. I asked him what they had done at school and he told me that they had painted all day, using potatoes cut in two stamped in paint.

And it gets much worse in the run up to Christmas.

----quote--
Bhaskar says above:
One area which attracts particular vitriol from the hard right is 'child centred learning'. Have they studied the research evidence? I think they should. The evidence is overwhelming, mainly that children learn faster and better when they take ownership of the learning process (instead of sitting in the class listening constantly to teacher talk).
---end quote----

Does the approach described above apply to holding the pen properly? 9 out of 10 children in all primary years that I see cannot hold their pen properly, which makes their writing slow and messy, and makes their fingers tired after a short piece of writing.

Vast improvements in literacy could be achieved if teachers abandoned the policy of ‘letting children take ownership of the learning process’ in relation to holding the pen, and instead said ‘Sit up and hold your pen properly’ (This approach was condemned as ‘didactic’ in my teacher training course).

When parents bring their children if the child is in years 4-6 I ask them to divide 7 into 4845, which most cannot do, then I ask them to multiply 123 by 48 and once again, most parents are amazed that they cannot do that either. One year 6 girl came in for help with the 11 Plus exam and the mother said 'You will not have to spend much time on the maths as she is on the top desk at school and her teacher says she is very intelligent and good at maths'. She could not carry out the division or multiplication above and she scored 27% on a practice 11 Plus maths paper.

I explain to the parents that most primary schools use the 'chunking' method and other cumbersome and bizarre systems for multiplying and dividing. Then I explain that we only teach the standard methods (the 'old fashioned' methods) and this results in the child improving at school in all cases.

I taught another boy who was in the second set in maths in year 5. He could not master the chunking method. I taught him the standard methods and after a few weeks I kept asking 'Are you in the top set yet?' and I was surprised when he kept saying 'No'. Then one day he told me that he had 'accidentally' taken the work meant for the top set and got it all correct in a short time, and had subsequently been moved up to the top set. He remained top of the top set.

Another boy in the second set in year 9 (third year of secondary school) was given a longer multiplication such as 12345 x 489 and he filled a sheet of A4 using the chunking method before giving up. After a few weeks of tuition he was top of the top set.

So I would suggest that the attainment levels could be improved dramatically if teachers were trained to teach the standard methods of multiplication and division, and the ridiculous trendy procedures were abandoned.

I hope Michael Gove survives as David Cameron will be under a lot of pressure to get rid of quality people like him.

Ron Todd

My only educational experience is my own time at school. My observations were that anybody that did not have the basics of the 3R s by the end of the second year at primary school never caught up. That those people became the disruptive children in secondary school and in mixed ability classes easily created enough disruption to make it very difficult for anybody else to learn. In well disiplined streamed leasons relativly large classes could be well taught.

The basic three Rs are to important to surrender to the latest trends. Even if letting the child discover for themselves was the best way to learn (it might be at college level) if they cannot read they will discover precious little.

stanley Jerusalem

Ron Todd
You have pinpointed the problem arising out of the disbanding of the three tier secondary education movement with the introduction of the unisex, one-size-fits-all comprehensive movement - another social experiment that has taken our kids to hell in a handcart.
The grammar, central and secondary modern system allowed differing levels of scholastic ability to survive and be taught accordingly with movement between the three consistent with ability and desire.
"Mrs Thatcher's Incomprehensibles" as Bluebottle referred to them on a 1950's Goon show, were obliged to sit together with high and low achievers - satisfying neither and frustrating both to the detriment of both. In the early 1950's at least 85% of 11 year olds were able to read write and count. Thanks to the Institute of Education that figure stands at closer to 15% today.
To quote a well-known phrase "we must be doing something wrong".

Verity

Roslyn Pine - Interesting post. Could you expand?

I think Derek Davis, but would love to hear that there's more than one candidate.

david skinner

I failed my 11+ back in 1955.Not having even passed the first part, I never had the opportunity of sitting for the second. Accordingly I was consigned to the local secondary modern where I laboured under an already inherited inferiority complex. From time to time, all the schools of Bournemouth would be brought together, for instance, for the annual music festival; but it was made obvious to us that no matter how we much we might shine at these rare events, we were after all only the scum that occasionally rises to the surface. Even our academic successes were regarded as curiosities, much in the same way that performing chimpanzees or parrots are, or gifted musicians were in German concentration camps.

I have no argument with competition and streaming within a school , where there is the possibility of moving either up or down the ladder. But when a child entered a secondary modern, the gulf was irrevocably fixed, that is unless the child’s parents had influence in the local educational establishment.

It was not until I found myself, in 1970, teaching in a relatively isolated, country town in the bush in New South Wales, Australia, where children were bussed in each day from as far away as thirty miles, that I experienced a truly comprehensive education system. There was no other school in the district, apart from the Catholic School, and consequently future sheep sheerers debated, took part in dramatic productions, competed in sport and maths challenges with future academics. Not only that but teachers fresh out of university were sent out to these “bush schools” for the first two years of their careers. There was no choice, no interview. They were just sent. The system was run a bit like the army, in that regiments were not pitted against one another, but were equally funded and staffed from the central New South Wales
Department of Education. Discipline was enforced very effectively by the use of a little instrument called the cane. The children were under no illusion that they lived on planet earth where gravity operated and cause and effect were in operation. That was a lesson worth learning in itself.

However, I returned as an exchange teacher to the same school after an interval of nearly a quarter of century and was depressed and saddened at the change.. The system had not changed, but the world had. The philosophical presuppositions that had formerly informed and guided the teaching and learning had been replaced others that viewed the nature of existence and man, of morality and the methodology by which we come to know what we know in a very different light.

The only reason I survived in a secondary modern school of the late fifties had nothing to do with the system but the fact that my dedicated teachers marched to a different world view than that of today. Our teachers taught themselves. They were the lesson; they had enormous impact on our impressionable minds. Today they have become merely corporate and depersonalised facilitators.

Why do faith schools, do better than others? Its not because of their systems, funding, facilities or any other mechanisms but their world view, their view of truth, which is hated by the present Marxist Department of Schools, Children and Families.

Denise

I agree with the comments above about holding the pen properly. If you see someone writing in a pre-sixties film, notice how they always hold their pen correctly. Then observe in a modern film the same thing.

david skinner

Denise it’s not just how to hold the pen but how to write? The most beautiful and elegant handwriting that I have seen done by pupils, not as something formal, but for workaday use, is the italic style. It is elegant, clear and natural to the movement of the hand. The letters and the way they are joined, their entrances and exits (or in the case of some that are not joined at all) is not mechanically uniform but dependent upon the shape of the letter. The biro has also done much to destroy handwriting for it is difficult to control. As a discipline, the art of italic handwriting can give children much pleasure and pride and in addition respects the reader for it is meant to be read as opposed to be deciphered.

Humphrey Littleton was in fact the President of The Society of Italic handwriting.

http://quilljar.users.btopenworld.com/sih.html

Alan

I'm a little surprised by the claim that the O-level syllabus used to include calculus. I got my Maths O in 1973 without touching it. Had the rot already set in?

Stephen

Alan
I took my 'O' levels in 1975 and we definitely covered calculus. Maybe your teacher omitted to teach it and you had to skip calculus questions in the exam.

Here is a question from a 1933 11 Plus entrance exam:

A man sets out at 9:15 am to walk from A to B, a distance of 15 miles. He walks at the rate of 3 and 3/4 miles per hour. His friend agrees to cycle from A to B and travels at 11 and 1/4 miles per hour. At what time should the friend start out so that they may arrive at B together?

Denise

David Skinner, yes you are right about italic writing, and it is a pity that during three years of teacher training this cannot be included somewhere.

Your previous point - yes it is difficult to move school, partly because children get settled. However the top 10 of the comprehensive could be moved up each year, and swapped with the bottom 10 of the grammar school. That would be fairer, especially for children who only just missed passing the 11 Plus.