Education has made us into lemmings
THERE is much being said on both sides of the Atlantic mainly about the nature of people’s actions or inaction with the more serious aspects of their lives. More people manipulated by all sorts of conspiracy theories and unreasonable beliefs, fuelled by charlatans. Despite clear indications of abuse of power on both sides of the pond, there seems a level of apathy in the general public and in some cases a resigned acceptance of the abuse of power.
In Victorian times the powers that be recognised the masses required to service the industrial revolution needed to be acquiescent. One way was to seem to be providing for their needs, and one of these was to open up schooling; rows and rows of seemingly happy workers’ children. However, lessons reflected the needs of the providers, not the provided. Nowhere was this more obvious than, for example, in Wales, where “the Welsh not” was introduced to curb the use of the Welsh language.
Post-war societies, however, made the masses reconsider their position in society and the powers that be recognised there had to be more compromise. In education, this led to the 1944 Education Act, which for many years opened up opportunities for people from all different backgrounds to succeed. The 1960s70s could be described as boom years for such diversity and equality in most aspects of life.
However, the freedom and open thought of the era was not to everyone’s liking. The William Tyndale School gave the likes of Sir Keith Joseph the reason to regenerate the subservience in schools by introducing the national curriculum.
The beginning of the erosion of school’s autonomy had begun.
Over the years the system of education has been tightened into the straitjacket we have today. Individual endeavour, creative freedom, and individual thought were chipped away.
When I began in teaching, I recall a statement I heard: “Each school is particular and peculiar to itself.” That I fear cannot be said of schools today.
The system built around a narrow band of SATs in England and an equally restrictive levelling in Wales creates an effort to clone children into conformity for the sake of acquiescence. In recent years, the powers that be have added the Pisa results as a way of justifying their actions in curbing our children’s individuality. We find them compared to many others from countries where the children work ruthless hours to succeed in Pisa. It is not a level playing field.
These are sold to parents as examples of the need to raise standards, but these are narrow standards that are rarely described and which children in private and public schools do not have to follow so rigorously. While the arts, music and drama, creative subjects and sports are continually undermined in the state system, private and public schools continue to provide a broad and balanced education, hence the preponderance, of public-school actors, artists, Olympic sportspeople and musicians.
School autonomy has been so eroded that the majority of headteachers and teachers who wish
to provide that broad and balanced education are finding it an almost impossible task. They are not helped by too many of their colleagues who undermine that desire by chasing after awards and trophies that put them on the front pages of newspapers and honours as so-called exemplars of good practice when actually one can contend they are merely pandering to government’s desire for control.
Many of these projects, supported by industry, it can be suggested have little sustainable advantage to the children, and merely use them as processors for a limited goal. Likewise, the government has introduced tiers of supervision and monitoring that help to preserve the status quo.
The national curriculum has been around long enough now in my humble opinion to create this subservient population we now live in.
The media would have you believe people can voice their opinions on social media or radio phone-ins, but you notice more and more when interviewed in the street most people merely regurgitate the messages of national newspapers or radio or television opinionists.
Nowhere is all this more noticeable than in the recent warped opinion polls that appear to accept the recent arguable corruption of government over lobbying payments and pandemic cronyism.
We have been educated into resigned compliance by an elite that pays us little respect. We for our part have neglected the important and embraced the trivial. My argument is, if you allow education for lemmings, you’ll become lemmings.
Glyn Scott Barry