Save your children – take them out of school

A good decade or so ago I wrote a fairly vituperative article in response to a piece by the writer James Bartholomew in this magazine, who had announced that he intended to home-school his daughter Alex, aged nine. James had explained in great detail how he would inculcate his charge in the liberal arts: ‘I don’t want to give the impression that I will be a Gradgrind. We will have some fun, too. Alex loves to paint. We will go to the major Cézanne exhibition in Aix and see his paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire. Then we will see the mountain itself from the same viewpoint that he used. I hope we will settle down to paint it ourselves — perhaps copying Cézanne’s technique.’

Ever the class warrior, I was annoyed by this paragraph in particular. I could visualise the two of them at that exhibition and I had an immediate acid reflux. I think the gist of my rebuttal was that no matter how bloody clever and well-read middle-class people might think they are, the job of educating children should be left to the teachers, the professionals.

So this piece is a fervent apology to Mr Bartholomew and indeed the now adult Alex. He was absolutely right, I was absolutely wrong. If you possibly can, get your kid out of its state school right now. You don’t have to go to Aix. You could just leave them alone, playing on their phones all day. It couldn’t be worse than the crap being shoved down their throats on a daily basis.

Here’s what happened in one week at a well-regarded state school in my area for the second-year pupils (as I still call them — year eight if you’re up to date).