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We don't need no ed-u-cay-shun

Thursday, 14th January 2010

I have been reading The Old Boys Network. A Headmaster’s Diary by John Rae, the record of his years as Headmaster of Westminster during the 70s and 80s. It has been fascinating and eye opening enough but read in the light of the latest pronouncement by the man who could not have got into Westminster if he’d tried, Ed Balls, it is especially ironic. This week we read that courtesy of Balls, there is to be a new law which will grant school pupils the right - key word- to tell teachers what they want to learn. And for ‘tell’ read ‘demand.’

Can`t you hear it? ‘Its me ‘uman right to do texting studies instead of maths.’

Now John Rae was quite a maverick among Headmasters, especially for his day which was still pretty conventional and oppressive so far as public school pupils were concerned. Westminster, hothouse for the very brightest – and some would say the most bumptious – never really conformed to the old fashioned public school pattern anyway and when Rae arrived, it did so even less. But he was no pushover and though he believed in treating his pupils as grown-ups in some respects, mature enough to make certain decisions about themselves and their lives, both present and future, he was not a man for ‘pupil power’ in general. He knew that it is in the nature of the teenager to vacillate, to rebel, to have fleeting obsessions and passions, to be fickle and headstrong and his aim was to try and channel the best of their energies and enthusiasm in the right direction and hold back some of their sillier urges. (The book is very funny on how he deals with boys who play dangerous but extremely original pranks which involved climbing on roofs, stealing trophies and writing slogans, but he is terrifyingly tough on drugs, drink and fags and even tougher on bullying.)

He knows that some bright teenagers understand where their strengths lie and which direction they should head in, others have no clue. But he would have no truck whatsoever with their setting their own curriculum, deciding what and what they do not like to study and what they feel it is their ‘right’ to be taught.

And for the most obvious reason that should stare people like Balls in the face – they do not KNOW. Of course they know that they may want to play an obscure sport , set up a society for star gazing or perform a musical based on Lady Chatterley’s Lover and they should be given every opportunity and help to get things going. They’d do it at Westminster. But so far as what they should learn in lessons, any lessons, they should have no choice. They do not have the experience, knowledge, wisdom, breadth of acquaintance with every subject or awareness of what and what not will be of value to them in the future. How could they ? We are talking about children and teenagers, who should be guided and tutored by adults. It is a scandal that anyone should dump onto young people a legal right to choose what they want to be taught. It means they are being let down once again, patronised, made to run before they can walk. It means adults are absolving themselves of the responsibility for exercising their discretion, knowledge, wisdom and sense to bring them up properly. Those parents who allow their five year olds to choose what food they eat – not occasionally, not as a treat, but all the time, are opting out of their responsibilities. It is morally wrong to let a child eat nothing but chocolate bars, because they are not old enough to understand that this will do them physical damage, make them ill, rot their teeth and deprive them of the nourishment needed for their proper growth. They can learn all those things, but meanwhile, it is the adult who has to decide, the adult who has the right and the responsibility. Because giving children rights when they are too young to shoulder the responsibility for those rights is betraying them for life.

Rae was not everyone’s cup of tea as a Head, though he seems to me spot on, just as Westminster is not a school for everyone and has as many enemies and detractors as Eton, for different reasons. But his book is a must-read, not only because it is highly enjoyable, often amusing, very insightful, but because it is a wonderful counter-balance to some of the nonsense that comes out of the Department for Schools and Learning and general Balls these days.

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Tendryakov

January 14th, 2010 9:37am Report this comment

"It is morally wrong to let a child eat nothing but chocolate bars, because they are not old enough to understand that this will do them physical damage, . . ."

Perhaps the handiest tack to take would be say "And when they grow up, they will probably take you to court for not feeding them properly."

Occasional Ostrich

January 14th, 2010 10:20am Report this comment

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad. Then they appoint them to a Liebour government.

Bunnykins

January 14th, 2010 1:13pm Report this comment

Susan, I'm wondering who are the more ridiculous, those who come up with such tosh or those who allow it to happen. The British response as ever, is to whine and whinge sit back and do nothing. A nation of jellyfish.

Augustus

January 14th, 2010 2:26pm Report this comment

I do believe that the Tories will make a better job of it than Labour ever will.

"If we are fortunate enough to be entrusted with public office after the next election we will take a series of steps in our first few weeks to drive rapid improvement in educational standards."
-Michael Gove MP, 30 June 2009

It is now obvious that under Gordon Brown and Ed Balls education has lost its primary purpose and value, and schools are seen as mere instruments to advance whatever social agenda and childrens services central government decides appropriate. No wonder that standards in the independent sector are so far ahead of the state schools.

Fergus Pickering

January 14th, 2010 5:46pm Report this comment

Sorry, Susan, I haven't been keeping up. Does Balls' Law mean I can demand to be taught Mandarin Chinese even if thereis no teacher and no-one else wants to learn it? Or doies it mean I can ask and the school can tell me to bugger off? If the latter then the law is meaningless. If the former then it is obviously unenforceable. Or have I missed something?

Beer Moth

January 14th, 2010 5:59pm Report this comment

Come on Susan, play fair.

The society Labour want, requires that nothing is learnt beyond the most cursory level.

Those truly skilled in English would be able to spot the idiotic level at which our management morons and our media operate.
Too much maths and they would know to steer clear of the scandalous interest charged by banks.
A detailed knowledge of Geography is very dangerous as they might form ideas inimical to one-world diktat.
Any grasp at all of History and Politics would lead to all manner of awkward questions vis-a-vis 'our diverse heritage'.

There is always woodwork I suppose...or rather, there isn't. Or metalwork. Which is just as well because if they acquire a skilled trade, they would start getting big ideas about not having to go to university, thereby avoiding being saddled with massive debt as they enter adulthood.

Tories ditto.

Austin Barry

January 15th, 2010 8:13am Report this comment

" ..pretty conventional and oppressive so far as public school pupils were concerned. Westminster, hothouse for the very brightest – and some would say the most bumptious.. "

Bumptious? Surely not. This was the school attend by the living (just)legend Shane MacGowan, the least bumptious product of Westminster and, indeed, Tunbridge Wells.

michael

January 15th, 2010 11:00am Report this comment

The practical application of this latest balls up means that kids can be co-erced by politicised teaching staff to learn trash, as and if they feel like it. When all us bad parents ask teachers 'wot abart mafs'? our wisened kids can be sent home to say 'ow ya gunna make mi do vat'.

Holly ......

January 15th, 2010 8:49pm Report this comment

Not bad.Not bad at all.
Now all you need to do is ask the teachers who conform to this new 'radical' policy from Balls is WHY?
Why would you allow this to ever see the light of day?
They will gather at their conference along with the unions wringing their hands about what is wrong,yet after conference,will trot off back to school and carry on as before.
Why?
Because they don't see anything wrong with children having rights.
All the real teachers have gone,or nearing retirement.
Schools are left with the dumbed down classroom assistants,who believe with all their soul that children are their equal.
If only they knew how true that is.

hadrian

January 15th, 2010 11:30pm Report this comment

Thank God I am no longer a teacher! When corporal punishment went it was obvious that this country was heading for utter indiscipline and mediocraty- especially in those schools that, given decent standards, could actually offer their disadvantaged kids a very real way out of their inauspicious circumstances. Sadly, those days are long gone. As usual 'liberalism' hurts the poor most.

seb

January 16th, 2010 9:42am Report this comment

Progressive Education? I quote: The doctrine that lessons should focus on children's own aptitudes and interests and encourage the children to follow their own investigations and lines of enquiry.

Never will you embark on a more heartbreaking venture in this life than when you endeavour to find a teacher, any teacher, especially in a British primary school, intelligent enough to see this philosophy for the vacuous anti-intellectual twaddle that it is. Our schools are 'child-centred'. Few are little better than playgroups. Monkey World for hairless chimpanzees. This is what teachers and professors in institutes of pedagogy believe is right and, of course, 'progressive'. At least until the day that our school system has utterly collapsed and been exposed for the Swiftian farce that it has been for several generations, the idea that children should tell adults what they want to learn will remain the prescribed, orthodox form of mindless groupthink. That a smug, progressive know-nothing like Ed Balls wants to codify this lunatic inversion of the natural order in a law is, one can only hope, a sign that the final chapters of this profound tragedy are being played out.

Tom Burkard

January 16th, 2010 2:44pm Report this comment

To give you some idea as to how far the rot has set in, my researcher (who also has done a fair bit of research for the Spectator) is a Politics student at the University of East Anglia. Last term, one of his assignments was to make a poster--I kid you not. But that's not all: he had to do it in 'collaboration' (another buzz-word from edland) with other students, and it counted for 20% of his grade for the course.

Ironically, the research he is doing for us has already formed a major part of a Centre for Policy Studies report on School Quangos. The QCDA, which is largely responsible for such drivel as 'collaborative learning', is one which we decided could certainly be abolished altogether. See this week's article by Dennis Sewell on "Gove v. the Blob".

John Edwards

January 16th, 2010 7:32pm Report this comment

I have not been able to find Ed Balls's comments. Would you mind including a link if you are going to quote a politician in future?

SUSAN HILL

January 16th, 2010 7:59pm Report this comment

John Edwards.. apologies. It was not a quote from Balls but a dikat from his department.. I read it online, probably in the Telegraph but should have made the link then.

Any Colour but Brown

January 18th, 2010 2:27pm Report this comment

John Rae reminds me of one of my son's teachers. All the parents of the class were called to a meeting, because of disciplinary problems. 3 or 4 pupils were making life for everybody hell. Most of the teachers belong to the Birkenstock/dog fur pullover school of thought - that you can't single one person out, because that causes them problems in later life, etc, etc..

We sat there for 2 and a half hours, listening to parents and teachers come up with wonderful ideas on how to deal with the problem. I couldn't help but laugh - they were the basic tenets of teaching, when I was at school.
It became clear, during the course of this debacle, that one teacher had no problems. The maths teacher, when he took over the class, had laid down the law - boundaries were set and punishments were severe. Once the class understood what was allowed and what wasn't, he started to relax - in fact, he was the most laid back of all the teachers, he had the best relationship with his pupils, who were getting good grades and he had no disciplinary problems.

If only there were more such teachers.....
Sadly, the New Agers thought of him as some sort of Philistine

Charles

January 18th, 2010 4:50pm Report this comment

Isn't there a public school that used to do this (Summerhill or something?) I remember watching a documentary on it about 10 years ago...it worked really well for something like 20% of pupils and was a disaster for the rest

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