Education as it is and as it might be

The papers have been full of stories of the senile dementia of the British school system. The Labour government's latest triumph is a £46million school which doesn't even come equipped with a playground - a decision which is hard to reconcile with any favourable impressions of the DfES. Can they have forgotten the playground? One should always favour the cock-up theories over conspiracy theories. But no, it turns out to have been a potentially decisive blow in the fight against school bullies. Funny, punishing the innocent never struck me as a way of discouraging the guilty, but perhaps I lack any of the post-modern nuance of the NuLab crony.

Meanwhile the BBC reports that school headteachers are warning over exam meltdown:

Exam reforms being introduced next year will cause chaos and lead to a fall in standards, head teachers have warned.

and over at the Telegraph, James Le Fanu reports on Professor Alan Smithers' views on schools which are that they

have been turned into exam factories at the expense of cultivating the inquisitive mind.

It's all so very depressing.  As far as anyone can tell, state education wil continue to decline and the political parties will continue to do nothing about it. When it comes to education politicians are a bunch of know nothing, learn nothing, do nothing wasters. None of the parties have a clue what to do - they are like rabbits in the headlights, transfixed by the fear of being different.

Which is a pity when there are plenty of answers out there. Take a look at this video of the thoroughly admirable and extremely subversive ideas of John Taylor Gatto (H/T Sometimes It's Peaceful). Then ask yourself if you'd rather your children attended one of his classes or was subjected to the delights of one of Tony Blair's City Technology Colleges.

Comments

[dearieme]

No playground and 2200 pupils. Jesu!

[chris strange]

Where parents free to choose the school that best suited their children this would be completely irrelvant. If this worked then it would be copied, if it didn't (and I expect it won't) then the school would have to change or disappear. Unfortunately as the flagship of a political programme funded by the state rather than its customers it will not be allowed to quietly and quickly fold but will be proped up in order that some distant politician does not have to loose face.