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School daze

Monday, 14th January 2008

Not content with accelerating the total meltdown of British education standards, not content with forcing pupils to stay at schools which teach them less and less for two more years until they are 18 in order to massage the unemployment figures downwards, and not content with ever more prescriptively dictating what is on the curriculum and replacing knowledge by indoctrination, the government is now even interposing its coercive self between teacher and pupil, thus destroying the very basis of that relationship. The Sunday Telegraph reported:

The Government is to outlaw ‘sexist’ career advice which directs girls into jobs such as hairdressing and boys into careers such as engineering. Schools will have to show that pupils are getting ‘impartial’ support and are not being encouraged to take up stereotypical jobs. Young people will be also be offered ‘taster’ sessions in careers they may not otherwise have considered.

And today’s Times splashed with this:

Teachers are to be banned from encouraging their pupils to study A-levels rather than the Government’s controversial new vocational diploma qualifications under legislation that is going through Parliament. A clause in the Education and Skills Bill, to be debated in Parliament today, says that schools will be forbidden from ‘unduly promoting any particular options’ to teenagers seeking advice on courses.

The move has been criticised by academics, who say that the Government is desperate for the diplomas to succeed at all costs. Others fear that the new and ‘impartial’ mortgage-style advice will not be in the best interests of pupils as teachers unconvinced of the worth of the diplomas will be unable to pass on their concerns to either them or their parents.

So teachers are to be forbidden by law from giving their pupils advice about their educational or career options that serves their pupils’ best interests. All to further the government’s purposes of reshaping society according to ideological dogma and giving the impression that education standards are going up by using a rubbishy diploma to squeeze the life out academic A-level, thus forcing those standards down.

This is simply state coercion. There is much wrong with our education establishment and teaching profession. But if teachers are to be proscribed by law from guiding their pupils in their best interests, teaching stops being a profession and becomes instead an agency to further state control of individual lives. This is not how a democracy behaves.

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John East

January 14th, 2008 7:11pm

Don't worry Melanie. The indoctrination you talk about has been in place for the last couple of decades in the teacher training colleges. I doubt many of today's teachers will see any problems or conflict of interests by towing the government line. In fact, pupils and teachers alike would probably find your stance anachronistic and old fashioned. However, the pendulum must surely have reached an extreme whereby future school leavers and graduates will simply not cut it much longer in the real world. Only then will traditional education have any chance of making a comeback.

DB

January 14th, 2008 8:08pm

Under its broadcast licence Channel 4 is required to produce 330 hours of school programming each year. This was today's offering to help teachers tick off Key Stage 4 in Citizenship and Personal, Social and Health Education: 11.00am Fame Asylum. Conceptual artist Richard Dedomenici holds auditions to recruit four asylum seekers, whom he hopes to put together as a boy band and launch to pop stardom. With the help of composer Sammy Jay and choreographer TJ Arlette, the group have only a short time to prepare for a public performance. The project is part of an attempt to change people's negative views on immigrants in the UK. As Melanie says, "teaching stops being a profession and becomes instead an agency to further state control of individual lives. This is not how a democracy behaves."

Stephen

January 14th, 2008 10:09pm

Perhaps the British people crave tyranny, as has been evidenced throughout history, until they then convulse and throw it off...what will the next ineviable convulsion produce..? A Magna Carta? A Declaration of Independence?

John

January 14th, 2008 11:13pm

Given we have been living in a country where "thought control" (aka political correctness) has been in place for in excess of the last 10 years and where the truth of a statement is no longer a valid defence does this latest totalitarian dictate come as any surprise? Why do we put up with it! Almost makes you believe in conspiracy theories (but I suspect the current lot are too incompetant for that).

Austin Barry

January 15th, 2008 8:21am

This social engineering is just barmy. The most awful people are in charge while the best are doing proper jobs.

elixelx

January 15th, 2008 10:02am

I have said it here before, and now I repeat; The Greenwich Teacher's Training Department holds that the purpose of Education is "To chnage behaviour". Just that, bald and stark, to change behaviour! Now this Labour Government is adding the "from what to what" bit!