David Davis
I lift the following comment from the Daily Telegraph’s comment-thread on this subject. The purpose of education is to educate people to understand the wonders of the universe, and to see to what extent Man might be small but that yet his Mind is a giant, to comprehend it.
The introduction of “gay” slants and nuances to questions is rather like what Baldur von Schirach did to German schools in the 1930s, with “National Socialist Mathematics”… such as :-
“Gunther can kill three Jews in 32 minutes, but Helmut can kill five in 40 minutes. At what time after the start of the experiment will they be exactly killing one Jew each at the same moment?” (This is a problem about the “Lowest Common Multiple” concept.)
Look, I’m not saying that nobody ought to be gay, or indeed is gay at all, although I privately believe that the whole “gayness” thing is a put-up-job. I have for long now, thought that the supposed widespread (and so we are told, increasing) spread of “gayness” is manufactured by the GramscoStalinsists as a way to undermine traditional human familial relationships to make the glue of them easier for an all-powerful-state to dissolve further. And I also believe that there is a population of humans, mostly men, who go along with the gayness thing for cultural reasons (it makes them more sexually-attractive to certain types of women) and particularly because they are very welcome in “night clubs” because they spend money.
But I could be wrong, of course, on all these counts, since I don’t know anything about modern culture or indeed post-modern culture, whatever that is, or today’s “empowered” women, or night clubs, or about money.
40 minutes ago
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The whole thing is a side issue.
Our national curricula need to be torn up completely , there is no sense to it at all. I am a former teacher, a grammar school pupil in the late sixties, having taught in Inner London Comprehensives, I have been through it all.
The last thing we need is another initiative. The school I attended is now one of the lowest ranking and has been under OFSTED measures. When I attended everyone was taught Latin for the first two years, after which it was up to you. From my class two pupils went up to Oxbridge reading Medicine and one for Music. During my schools transition from Grammar, to Secondary Modern and Comprehensive, alarm clocks were handed out to all because of the tardiness in time keeping. Our head mistress headed the national conference and spoke out against the proposed changes, it was all downhill after that. My chemistry and biology teacher had doctorates, they have trouble filling positions now.
Large proportions of children in the Inner Borough’s of London do not read, write or speak English. Large number are classed as having other special needs.
Curricula needs to emphasise a high level of skill in reading, nothing can be achieved without that. Across the world it is obvious that the most successful methods of education are the traditional ones.
More than our curricula, our whole means of delivering education needs to be looked at. It is not immediately obvious that the state ought to play any part. Conversely, that always opens the system to the pursuit of a political agenda.
The state ought to be excised completely from the educative process. Parents ought to have the basic freedoms to choose what their children are taught. The only way to achieve this is to place funding, and purchasing power directly into the parent’s hand. This places emphasis on the schools to compete for pupils rather than the other way round. Strong schools will prosper and the weak will fail and there is a more efficient allocation of resources, bringing the overall budget down.
This would be across the tiers, nursery to university. Apart from the basics and languages, institutions could be free to do what they want.
It is not suitable that the apogee of attainment for any pupil at school should be a clutch of A levels, which are not really of much worth. Some people want to leave being able to build houses. And there are many other suitable outcomes for pupils not possible the ways things are. This country needs a base of skill sets that are not catered for. This is a huge gap in our system.
It is a parent that knows its child best and is best placed to identify its needs. You can’t fit them all in one size. Britain has capabilities but we are stripping her of her skills.
I suspect under such a system we would have far fewer media degrees. Certainly there would be more doctors, dentists and the like. and as importantly a range of engineers and technicians. Administration would be minimal and we would no longer be having debates like this.
