It is a sad
reflection upon the political society that we now live in that we hear all too regularly
of another reform in Education.
Reform, reform,
reform. What this really means is meddle,
meddle, meddle.
So what exactly have
these reforms brought us over the years.
We now have a
series of Certificates that change on an almost annual basis, finding that
employers no longer have a clue to what academic standard applicants have
managed to aspire.
A disheartened
and demoralised student population who regularly find that the subjects and
standards that they hoped to have reached have been snatched away from them.
People entering
into the workforce who do not have the basic grounding of life, such as basic
mathematics or reading and writing skills.
I remember my own
daughter being taught experimental reading and writing skills using word and picture
association rather than learning how for form words from sounds and
letters. It took me over 2 years and
thousands of pounds hiring private tutors to bring her up to a level where she
could compete with her peers.
Children who are
taught to believe blindly in the almighty calculator. No longer are they taught long multiplication
or division, no longer do they sit and do mental arithmetic, no longer can they
work out for themselves whether the answer on the calculator is close to be
being right or wrong.
I have seen 18
year old students employed on a warehouse stock take, who were counting tins on
trays individually because they could not work out that 4 rows of 6 tins = 24.
Is this the
quality of our politically correct educational system that we want to compete
with the world.
No longer are
they taught History in a proper fashion.
Much is excluded for fear of upsetting one minority group or
another. The one thing that history
teaches everyone is that the past is the past, it cannot be undone, it cannot
be changed, it can only be studied to ensure that mistakes made in the past do
not happen again.
We all have bits
of history that upset us, mine is the political interference that forced Edward
VIII to abdicate, but knowing about it lets me understand it, accept it and
move on. Removing it from the course
work will do nothing to broaden my mind, especially if it occurred again.
No longer are children
taught Geography. Well, not the
geography that most of us remember, where we learned about the world, the
continents, the countries within those continents, their relationships with
each other, their capitals, the languages that they speak and their
populations.
How peoples have
moved across the ages, or the wars that have been fought to form the countries
that we see today. No longer are they taught
that we once had an empire, the reasoning and extent of that empire. It wont go away just because we remove it
from the lessons, it’s a part of our history whether we like it or not, and
part of geography should about be the divesting of empire and how the
commonwealth states were born, and why their political and social structures
are the way they are today, and how those countries are changing after empire.
Today they are
taught about cultures, religious festivals, rainfall and food production
instead.
Coupled with
history, geography and basic maths are probably the most important grounding
any child can get, but as every year goes on, there is more and more
interference by the politico, to say what and how our children should be taught
in our schools.
The latest
offering is Britishness. To me this
smacks of the National Socialism taught to the children of a
British
politicians must learn that they must create the environment within the nation
to make people PROUD to be British, it is not something that can be taught, or
demanded or legislated. It is certainly
NOT something for our schools.
The only way that
our educational standards will rise, and provide the incentive for students to
study is if they know that their ambitions and aspirations are being served
properly.
To do this we need
to keep the politicians out of schools entirely, instead leaving the education
of our children to the senior academics of this world.
Let the academics
set the curriculum, let the academics set the standards and let the academics
prepare our children for life in the bigger world, free from politics and
political meddling.
After all, our
children are our future, and they are far too important to be left to the meddling
and political corruption of politicians.
