I was going to write about David Cameron's piffle: the promised "brazen elitism" that will see only teachers with good degrees being allowed through the school gates to teach children.
Happily, bella gerens has done it for me - do go and read why this is a very bad idea:
People of Britain, do you want fewer teachers? Do you wish to have teacher:pupil ratios of 1:45 across the land? Do you wish for huge schools operated by huge education authorities and staffed by teachers in huge teachers’ unions who can command ever higher and higher salaries and perks for their members as there is more and more work to go round and not enough teachers to do it?
If you answered yes to all of those questions, then good for you: because that’s exactly what you’ll get...
...So: in a country where people don’t want to be teachers, quality of education is not a priority, and historically the government’s stance on the profession is to bribe people to enter it, the solution is to make it even harder to become a teacher?
Good luck with that, Dave.
It won't come as any surprise for anyone who know that learning, and not exams, is the most single important outcome of education. Those of us who understand that our children can learn better from unqualified worldly experience than from first class honours world ignorance will be shaking our heads with dismay. It should, however, come as a warning.
If the Conservatives reintroduce the traditional, top-down, standards-driven, teacher-led model of education, then that review of what constitutes a "suitable" education will be hugely valuable to them - and they, just like their predecessors, will expect all to be bound by it, leaving the ability, aptitude and any additional needs of individual children wide open to misunderstanding, misinterpretation or misdiagnosis by a third party (your friendly local authority officer or Ofsted inspector, for example).
Good education is the right of the many not the privileged few.
is what Cameron had to say today, so you can expect that he will make damn sure your children will get what they are "entitled" to: a "good" education according to a political party's accepted definition.
And that is why the fundamental importance of formal education is the biggest lie you will ever be told; why education should not be a "right" the state is required to enforce; and why state democracy is nothing more than the rule of mob.
But what do I know? I'm just the parent, right? Unless I am talking about The Waste Land or La Chanson de Roland, perhaps I should sit down, shut up and let the experts decide for me...
However. There was a glimmer of hope on this post today on Liberal Democrat Voice. Amongst the illiberality so beloved of certain Lib Dems, a commenter, wavering on the edge of reason, tentatively articulated something that is BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS to those who see it before their eyes every day as their children grow up and learn in the real world, surrounded by real people living real lives, having real relationships and doing real jobs:
The differences between the requirements for home and institutional schooling are fascinating.
As I understand it, home educators do not have to be qualified in any way. They don’t have to follow any particular curriculum or devote a set number of hours to any subject. The children do not have to sit any tests or exams. The local education authority has no right to visit the children in their homes or see examples of their work.
Contrast this with the regulation that surrounds institutional, and particularly state, schooling.
Yet both practices are accepted as fulfilling the parent’s legal duty to educate their children.
Are these differences fully explained, and necessitated, by the contrast between a domestic and an institutional setting? I can’t help wondering if home education is incredibly lax, or if institutional education is incredibly prescriptive. (I suspect the latter.)
Paul Griffiths, bingo! You are 100% correct! You have started to unpick the biggest lie you were ever told. Now, why don't you keep unravelling and see where it leads...
