We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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Australian students have been force-fed a diet of a certain version of Australian history, the ‘black-armband’ school of Australian history, which paints the entire colonial period of Australian history as a moral disaster. Now in evidence before the Australian Senate, history teachers have admitted that this is provoking resistance from students, who feel pride in their country.
HIGH school students resent being made to feel guilty during their study of Australia’s indigenous past and dislike studying national history in general.
The History Teachers Association called yesterday for a rethink of the type of Australian history being taught in schools and the way in which it is taught.
History Teachers Association of NSW executive officer Louise Zarmati said her experience teaching in western Sydney was that students were resistant to learning about Australian politics and, in particular, indigenous history.
“This is a somewhat delicate subject but they don’t like the indigenous part of Australian history,” she told a hearing of the Senate inquiry into the academic standards of school education in Sydney yesterday.
“The feedback I get is they’re not prepared to wear the guilt. They find it’s something that’s too personal, too much of a personal confrontation for them.
Since the students are not responsible for decisions made in the late 18th and early 19th century they are quite right to reject the ‘guilt’ being pushed on them by teachers. And it is nice to see that attempts by education authorities to politicise the classroom are rebounding on them.
I would like to suggest that Jonathan’s “Missing the point over grammar schools” below, itself misses the point. I am as in favour of grammar schools as anyone. But I do not think Cameron’s decision is any more than another piece of political pragmatism (read my comment on Jonathan’s piece for the rationale.)
I agree the new Tory policy does nothing significant for education. But I suspect Jonathan’s policy prescription – compromise vis-a-vis properly voluntary schooling it may be, is doomed. Introducing vouchers now would be worthless and the Tories are sensible, therefore, not to tie themselves to that. Not least they would risk discrediting vouchers: vouchers could be a move in the right direction, but not yet.
This is why. Here is a sensible lefty, Jenni Russell, reporting in the Guardian’s bloggish Comment is Free:
[A] father with an 18 year-old daughter at one of London’s famous public schools is shocked by her fear of anything beyond her narrow syllabus. She pleads with him not to tell her anything he knows about history or classics or literature, because she understands by now that knowing anything beyond the points on the examiners’ mark schemes will jeopardise her chances of getting top grades. She has learned that education is not about discovery, but the dutiful repetition of precisely what you have been told.
However good the school, however motivated the pupil, there is no choice to be had. There is a chemin-de-fer, directions predetermined, signals to be passed at the prescribed speed. No entry to university at 16, Mr Brown. No ignoring unutterably tedious and repetitious schoolwork and passing the exams at the end on the basis of your own reading. Step off the lockstep elevator once, and you are out for ever. (Mr Fry, the University regrets that we require a clean Criminal Records Bureau certificate.)
All Britain’s education is under the supervision of a suffocating bureaucracy, that serves itself and its conception of proper development. There is small choice in rotten apples; the sadly pocked sharecrop goes to uniform damp barrells.
Who is to blame? The conservative defenders of both grammar schools and ‘family values’, that is who; and the utilitarian industrialists who now complain workers can’t read or count. It was they who sought to save the population from indoctrination by radical Local Education Authorities, so delivered the entire population into the hands of pseudo-progressive educationalists by creating the National Curriculum; they who worried that universities could not be trusted to set sufficiently ‘practical’ exams, and did the same with syllabuses.
My modest proposal for English education:
Scrap the National Curriculum. Do not replace it. Scrap league tables and DoE “Key stage” testing. Do not replace them. Scrap rules on school admissions and allow schools to exclude or expel pupils as they choose. Scrap the QCA. Do not replace it. Scrap the Teacher Registration Regulations. Do not replace them. Scrap the office of the Access Regulator. Do not replace him. Wait five years, continuing to run and fund schools otherwise the same, which means a mix of Local Authority, central government, voluntary aided, and private schools. Only then, when people have got used to making their own decisions again, consider vouchers.
A lot of people are getting hot under the collar, and with some reason, about the decision by David Cameron to pour scorn on grammar schools. Grammars, since the 1944 Education Act, have selected pupils by a rigorous examination at the age of 11 – hence it is known as the Eleven-Plus exam, and an often make-or-break test in a person’s life. In the late 60s, the-then Labour government began a move to scrap grammars and replace them with so-called comprehensive schools, adopting a fiercely egalitarian policy. The collapse of grammars accelerated, ironically, when Margaret Thatcher was an education minister in the government led by Edward Heath. There are now only a few grammars left.
Cameron dislikes grammars, he claims, because they do nothing to advance the interests of bright, working class kids. He may have half a point in that for many people, the 11-plus can be an arbitrary point to decide a pupil’s future. Unfortunately for Cameron, however, his stated hostility to grammars only reinforces the image of him being an upper class toff who is determined to kick the ladder of upward mobility away from the unwashed proles underneath (his recent daft idea of hammering cheap flights with tax conveyed much the same patronising, bugger-the-plebs message).
But the Tories, in wrestling with education policy, are missing the point, as they often do. The fundamental problem is that education between the age of 5 to 18 is compulsory, a fact that ignores the fact that many youngsters are bored by school much earlier and should be allowed to work and if need be, pick up their education at a later date (it amazes me that some people find this idea so incredible). The Tories are also ignoring the need to focus on choice. Rather than schools selecting pupils, by exam or some other criteria, we need a genuine and broad market for education, in which parents and their children choose the school instead. I have my reservations about vouchers – they can give the state a potential lever over private schools – but a radical boost to parental/pupil choice of school is a reform that urgently needs to be put in place.
David Cameron: what is the point of this man?
There is demand. There is supply. There is planned ‘diversity’. If anyone told the teachers that multi-culturalism was dead, they forgot to listen. For they have come up with latest revision in government plans to revive language teaching: teach them gypsy. Since English Romanies talk in English or an Anglicised version of Romany (Romanglish?), will they teach the pure version which has very few speakers in this country.
In a move designed to promote tolerance towards gipsy communities, schools will be encouraged to teach the language, culture and traditions practised by about 45,000 people in Britain.
The Government-backed initiative comes just days after ministers told schools they had a legal duty to promote greater race relations by celebrating cultural diversity across the curriculum.
Since race and culture are not synonymous, and multiculturalism has promoted actions described as racist to increase, we can look on at another “legal duty” achieving the opposite outcome to that intended.
Ginny Harrison White, the president of the National Association of Teachers of Travellers, said the project would “go some way to increasing knowledge of gipsy communities and help break down barriers of prejudice”.
Gypsies will have the teaching of their language taken over by the state. Parents, interested in their children’s education, will choose more economically useful options. So Somali, the language of a failed state, will not be taken up with fervour either. And those who do partially learn, the blighted, will understand that they can insult gypsies better.
If you wanted to escape the crap system by educating your children yourself, the baleful eye of the state has turned your way.
The guidance says that education must be suitable for a child’s age, ability and any special needs. Resources and materials should be provided. In a further development, adults must play an active role in children’s education, rather than leaving them to complete work-sheets all day.
The guidance says that councils should intervene if they have concerns over standards of education. They can then ask parents to submit projects, assessment, books and field trip diaries to satisfy local authority inspectors.
Parents failing to meet official requirements may be taken to court and issued with a school attendance order – forcing children to attend a state school.
The draft proposals, which are out to consultation until the end of July, have been broadly welcomed by home education groups, who hailed the decision not to make registration compulsory.
With the thin end, home education will become a postcode lottery, and the level of intrusion will be dependent upon the attitude of the local authority inspectors. One can imagine that Departments of Education, which are ignorant or unsympathetic of home-schooling, will use their powers to ‘discover’ failures, force parents to send their children back to state sinkholes and stamp out a practice that they deem an ideological competitor. This is the road that could lead to registration and prohibition.
It is no secret that I am opposed to conscription of any sort, be it military, judicial or educational. I am all for having armies, juries and schools, but not ones which depend on forcing the unwilling to become chattels of the state. Not only do I think it is morally indefensible, it produces strange results when people are compelled to do things they never agreed to do.
Most people can be convinced that getting an education is a good thing, but to force who cannot see that to attend a school just means that they will disrupt the education of those who are willing to be there. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. Moreover, state schools seem to bring out the most control obsessed aspects of people who run such places.
Pupils at a new £46 million flagship school will not be allowed break times and will have no playground to run around on, leading to fears for their behaviour and health. […] But parents, educational experts and health campaigners believe banning teenagers from letting off steam during the school day will increase their risk of becoming obese, and could damage their attention spans during lessons. […] Dr Alan McMurdo, the principal of the academy, said: “Research has shown that if children concentrate on lessons throughout the day, then their work improves. “We are not intending to have any play time. Pupils won’t need to let off steam because they will not be bored.”
So children are going to be dragooned into coming to this place under threat of law but “Pupils won’t need to let off steam because they will not be bored”. Might I suggest arrogance and stupidity in equal measure. Might I suggest that they will indeed be bored and the way they will let of steam will be to trash this nice new school and run wild in classes… I sure as hell would.
Nikki Giovanni found one of her Creative Writing students a trial.
“And every class I’m saying, ‘Mr. Cho, take off your (sun)-glasses please, take your hat off please. Mr. Cho, that’s not a poem. Can you work on it please,'” Giovanni recalled. “And then I finally realized that something is not wrong with me, something is wrong with him, and I said to him, ‘I’m not a good teacher for you.'”
One day, she arrived and found her class of about 70 students had dwindled to fewer than 10. When she asked a student after class about it, he confessed that “everybody’s scared of (Cho).” Giovanni later had him removed from her class after she threatened to resign.
Why did it have to come to that? Imagine if every class Cho Seung-hui had attended had taken place at the invitation of the teacher- an invitation that could be rescinded at any time.
In reality his memories of school were of humiliation, but imagine if, from the age of twelve onwards, or from even earlier if your imagination can stretch that far, school had been an option he could choose if he wanted it.
What if Cho’s concepts of “school” and “college” had been formed by classes like the Karate class described by Brian Micklethwait?
What struck me, so to speak, about these “martial arts” classes was that although the children present may have supposed that all there were learning was how to be more violent, what they were really learning was no less than civilisation itself.
The children were all told to get changed into their Karate kit in an orderly fashion, and to put their regular clothes in sensible little heaps. They all lined up the way he said. They all turned up on time. They left the place impeccably clean when they’d finished, all helping to make sure that all was ship-shape and properly closed-up when they left.
Were these children being “coerced”? Certainly not. They didn’t have to be there, any more than The Man had to teach them Karate if he didn’t want to. If they wanted out, then out they could go, with no blots on their copybooks or markings-down on their CVs.
Having reached the age of twenty-three, Cho was no longer forced to be taught – but his teachers were still forced to teach him and his fellow students to associate with him. True, there were a few last ways out from his menacing presence; the students could jeopardise their education by skipping class and the teacher could jeopardise her career by threatening to resign. Unfortunately by the time these sanctions were employed Cho had already got away with too much.
I sometimes think that practically every problem, inefficiency and cruelty of our education system has at its root compulsion. People who are forced into each other’s society tend not to behave well to each other. Wherever the doors are locked, be the locks visible or invisible, those inside seem to revert to the hierarchy of the baboon troop. There is still room for free will: most do no worse than learn a few habits of obsequiousness or sullenness that can be shaken off. Cho was not forced to become a mass-murderer. (In fact I see his own claim to the contrary in his video as a sort of twisted acknowledgement of this fact; the thought that “I don’t have to do this” had to be actively denied.) No, he was not forced to pull the trigger – but force did play too large a part in his life. Imagine if the doors had been open for the bullied Cho Seung-hui to walk away, or if the adult Cho Seung-hui had been shown the door at the first sign of discourtesy. Imagine this was the case not just for Cho Seung-hui on certain pivotal occasions but for everyone on all occasions. Then, I think, he would have learned differently.
The other day I pulled a couple of quotations from this book, which I mostly liked although it has some annoying parts too. What got me wondering is why so-called US “liberal” academics are capable of writing penetrating and thoughtful pieces on certain areas of life but also clearly dumb as stumps on economics. Take this passage from Professor Hanley on page 72 and 73 of the book, where he defends racial quotas in universities:
“Suppose that a white male applicant loses out on a college place to a black male applicant, even though his SAT score was higher… I think the sense of unfairness here springs instead from the intuition that since the white student didn’t do anything wrong, and since his score was higher, he deserves the place ahead of the black student.”
“To which I say, bullcrap.”
This professor has a nice line in reasoned argument. Let’s go on.
“This is once again simply ignoring structural discrimination, if it’s not just plainly racist.”
Define “structural discrimination”, Professor. What is it? How can a person be discriminated against where no actual conscious human being has decided that Fred is going to get a fairer deal in a college admission than John? Structurual discrimination is a sort of catch-all expression that in fact simply says that over a long period of time, certain racial groups have underperformed in certain ways and that there might be factors that should be corrected. But for how long does the impact of this “structural discrimination” last? 10 years? 20? 100? What sort of empirical evidence does Prof. Hanley think will be needed to show that this is over and we can revert to the idea of treating people equally before the law, like those fuddy-duddies such as James Madison said should be the case? The Professor does not say, although he swears a lot and thinks that people who disagree with him are idiots. I guess he is so struck by his own moral grandeur that he cannot imagine anyone decent disagreeing. What a jerk.
He goes on:
“If we’re granting that the white student is a beneficiary of structural discrimination, then we can’t say that he is more deserving (of a college place). Desert is a matter of what you’ve done with what you’ve got. We have no prior reason to think that the white applicant has done more – so we have no reason to think that he has been unfairly done by.”
So presumably the honest thing for such a professor would be to give up the pretence of holding SAT or other education tests at all. Why not say this: “White folk are beneficiaries of former discrimination in their favour, even if the folk today are not to be blamed for what their ancestors did. As a result, no matter whether the white college applicant is a clever, conscientious person, he or she should be wiling to let people from racial groups we think are the victims of ancestral discrimination take first place in the queue. And if you disagree with that judgement, then you are an evil person and quite possibly a Republican.”
I take back what I said about this book and its author a day or so ago. He is not as smart or as funny as he first appeared (well, we all make mistakes). He is, in fact, a thug with a fancy academic title. Sadly, there are a lot of them.
A gentleman by the name of Fabian Tassano is justifiably angry about the raising of the compulsory school-leaving age to 18 years. Quite so. Arguably – and I do argue – the school-leaving age should be cut. Many teenagers, including the brightest, are bored stiff at school and their boredom leads to many of the disciplinary problems we see around us. Better, perhaps, to let teenagers work, discover the value of money, and then pick up their education when some of that youthful energy has already been channelled into a payslip. This has been the argument from a number of liberal educationalists, such as Prof. James Tooley, for years. Such a view horrifies the power-freaks in the political establishment who would probably like us all to stay in education until the age of 30, but the trend towards an ever-higher school/college-leaving age cannot go on.
Reading some history, it does seem as though we live in an age when in some ways, youngsters seem to stay young for much longer than used to be the case. By the time my old man was 18, he had already become an officer cadet in the RAF and by the age of 21, was navigating fast jet aircraft. One of my great uncles joined the naval academy at Dartmouth by the age of 15. The average age of many pilots in WW2 was 21. Now, if you believe the educationalists of today, a person aged 18 is not fit to put in charge of an electric toothbrush, and yet at the same time, things like the age of sexual consent have been reduced. So in some ways people are thought to be more mature, in other ways, less so.
I am a bit miffed that Tassano moans that Samizdata has had nothing to say on this issue. Had he been reading this blog in January, he would have seen that we were on the case, thanks to Alice Bachini. Pay attention, Fabian.
If you think that lower class yobbery is a problem in this country, as most seem to think it is, then is electing an upper class yob to be the Prime Minister the best next step in the right direction?
Perhaps it is. Perhaps a man who can look louts in the eye and say: “I know exactly what you are because I used to be exactly like you, the only difference being that I at least paid some of the bills for the havoc and misery I caused, and, being rich and lucky, I had the chance to learn a few manners, turn over a new leaf, get a job and make something of myself. You are not so lucky. Shape up now or face a future of utter misery, which I and my rich and well-connected friends will now do our considerable best to make worse for you.” It takes one to catch one, in other words. And perhaps something similar applies to dealing with foreign despots and thugs.
As with everything involving what sort of Prime Minister Mr Cameron may choose to be, we shall just have to wait and see. Meanwhile, the fact that he is now thought by millions to be the best we can now do as our nation’s senior politician is hideous proof of the failure of mass state education. Could not the great middle/working class come up with anybody? Well, John Major I suppose, and now Gordon Brown. As a long lost friend from my better-spent youth used to say: Dear oh lor!
My thanks to Clive Davis, who writes about Cameron’s Bullingdon Club past, and who links to this description of Bullingdon Club yobbery by Libby Purves, and to this diary item (scroll down a bit) by Christina Odone, who says:
They were excessive (dinners routinely ended with the trashing of the restaurant in which they were held) and exclusive – no grammar school or state school boys, no Jews were allowed (though a rather dashing Iranian did squeak through the election process in my time).
My first impression of this preposterous club was when, as an Oxford undergraduate, I was accosted in the middle of Tom Quad, in Christ Church, by a third year in his cups. He tried to grope me and then, when I shoved him away, he doubled up and was sick in the ancient fountain.
This poor impression was little improved when I grew more familiar with the all-male club: initiation rites climaxed with drunken carousing that spilt over in the street and college quad; humiliation of “outsiders” was encouraged; acts of vandalism routine.
It was more Bacchanalian feast than Brideshead Revisited, and I wondered what kind of a future lay in store for 20-year-olds who thought nothing of wrecking a Michelin-starred restaurant after having spent £1,000 a head there.
Well, a pretty good one, of course. (And I wonder just who that “dashing” Iranian was?) “We’ve all done things we regret,” Mr Cameron now says. But actually, not all of us, in fact hardly any of us, were this appalling. The fear now is that if and when Mr Cameron enters Number Ten, this open thuggery will be replaced not by anything resembling true decency or genuine political wisdom, but by thuggery on a far grander scale, legally sanctioned, and covered in and disguised by an expert layer of smarm.
Meet the new Soviet, same as the old Soviet:
Teenagers will learn about the threat to the environment from climate change and what they can do about it, under reforms to geography teaching.
They will be encouraged to recycle consumer goods and to question whether they really need another imported pair of trainers. Other topics to be studied include the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.
Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, said: “With rising sea temperatures, melting ice-caps and frequent reminders about our carbon footprints, we should all be thinking about what we can do to preserve the planet. Children are the key to changing society’s attitudes to the environment. Not only are they passionate about saving the planet but children also have a big influence over their own families’ lifestyles.”
In due course, and perhaps even early course, children will be encouraged to rat their parents out to the authorities for ‘unGreen’ behaviour. Such is the pattern for the legitimisation of ruling class ideologies;indoctrinate the young and persuade them of the need to meekly accept poverty, austerity and political control for the sake of ‘saving the planet’.
‘Global warming’ does indeed present a grave threat; as a tool of political power it is a threat to freedom, prosperity, trade, progress and all the health, wealth and happiness that those things make possible and if anyone has been inclined to regard the whole ‘climate change’ nostrum as a joke, then I humbly suggest that this is a mistake. Our masters are clearly taking it very seriously indeed and we have a momentous battle on our hands if we intend to stop them from going down the path that they already begun to forge.
This is a battle we must win – for the sake of the children.
Update: the Libertarian Alliance is also calling foul on this exercise in political propaganda for children.
We are coming into the final stretch of the college basketball season and it seems a good time to make the following observation.
The only category of education that presently has its accomplishments tested on a competitive basis (that being sports) is also the only category of education that is motivating and developing disadvantaged students to achieve their highest personal potential at what they are being taught.
Does it surprise anyone that the only part of education where student achievement can not be rigged (better/best football team, etc.) is also the only part of education that is producing marketable graduates from the disadvantaged communities? Or that it accomplishes this with less need for quotas and reduced expectations than any other category of education? In many cases these kids are able to move straight into national and international professional careers straight from high school. And when they do attend college, the academic education they receive is a by-product of their athletic educations.
And is it any surprise that a very disproportionate share of disadvantaged students gravitate to the only service of the education industry that is intractably merit judged and race indifferent at every single level of education from Pee Wee league to NCAA?
What better model could we ask for when we look to improve the motivation and education of disadvantaged students in other categories of learning?
Greetings Samizdatistas, greetings Commentariat. Long time no see. I expect Brian would have blogged about this were his education blog still going (I for one would love to see it back) but instead the task has roused me from the sweet repose of my “resting contributor” coffin. Here goes.
On the face of it, the idea of raising the school leaving age to eighteen might seem reasonable, especially given that the British government still plans to permit either schooling or “vocational training” when it bans young people from full-time work. After all, the idea apparently works fine in Canada. They simply enforce the law by taking away young people’s driving licenses if they attempt to work for a living. Clearly it is the working teenagers we need to worry about when it comes to youth crime, truancy and so on. Work is bad for you, and encourages bad behaviour! Young people should be writing essays, not mending cars!
But underneath the face of it, I have a few questions:
- Does “approved training scheme” mean “what the government likes” or does it mean something more sensible and informed?
- How much will it cost to approve all post-16 on-the-job training schemes?
- Since when did working for a living exclude learning useful things? Why is it assumed that jobs and learning are mutually exclusive? Is this because all entry-level work is exploitative labour nowadays?
- If this is the case, why does it not apply to graduates with arts degrees working in burger bars and so on? Is it acceptable to be exploited as long as you have wasted five years of your life acquiring thousands of pounds worth of debt, for some reason? Why?
- What will 16 year olds without private financial support be expected to live on if they are banned from honest work? Will they be expected to acquire early student loans? Join a homeless shelter? Or merely become heroin salespeople?
Just wondering.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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