School Stops Teaching

The Telegraph reports that St John's school in Marlborough has scrapped homework for 12 year olds, having already scrapped subject teaching, as part of a scheme devised by the Royal Society for the Arts.

But its main idea: that a school education should be about acquiring "competences for learning" and not subject knowledge, is misconceived.

The main purpose of school, as presumably is the main purpose of acquiring learning skills, is to help pupils learn and use a body of knowledge. It may be arguable how best people acquire learning skills, whether by doing or more abstractly, but either way they serve little purpose in themselves.

Being able actually to learn is a matter of practice and experience in learning, and building on what you already know. It is impossible to make connections, and to see patterns and inconsistencies in a subject, if you have no knowledge to work on.

Higher levels of learning are not something acquired overnight once one learns abstract skills. Rather they are based on detailed knowledge and understanding of the subject matter, perhaps painfully and laboriously acquired, which then forms the basis for evaluating further additions to, and extrapolations from, that body of knowledge.

There is also the matter of effective teaching. It is not at all clear that structured subject based learning is inferior to project based learning. I suspect in general it is easier to ensure pupils obtain knowledge and understanding when a subject is taught in a structured way, and classes are taught as a whole.

I wonder if this shying away from imparting hard knowledge to concentrating on soft "skills" is a sign that English education has little meaning for the huge numbers of children who have difficulty reading and writing? It is easier instead fill the time with intangibles: "competences for learning, citizenship, relating to people, managing situations and managing information" and gloss over the failure of schools to teach.

Political Education For All

Schools have become a means of social engineering and control, and the ideas and values they inculcate are determined by the government, and controlled through the National Curriculum and Ofsted's school inspections.

In particular, the government is using the citizenship part of the national curriculum to propagate its own views and values, and expects schools to 'teach' these even in the face of their own belief and ethos, or judgment of the subject's value.

So it is that David Bell, chief inspector of schools, worried that some (particularly Muslim) schools may undermine the coherence of British society, explains that to be registered as a school, all schools, including private ones, have to ensure their pupils learn about and respect other faiths and cultures, "and the wider tenets of British society." It seems the pre-requisite of being a school is not teaching the three Rs, but 'teaching' the government's idea of 'citizenship'.

Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, endorses this view, calls education "probably the most important site of social and cultural integration we have," and goes on to say that education's "public value ... is about providing a benefit to Britain that is social, cultural and economic."

If you doubt that the government has an agenda, consider that the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, announced today that he intends introducing citizenship ceremonies for 18 year olds to help promote "inclusive citizenship" as part of a wider plan to increase race equality and community cohesion.

Citizenship is not a curriculum subject like maths or English: it is tendentious, and serves a political purpose. Its reach extends to all schools, state and private, and all schools, staff, and pupils have to conform to its doctrine. There is no escape - on pain of school closure - whatever the school and parents may think a good education is about.

Britain's Political Crimes

Prosecutions for racially and religiously aggravated crime are growing. In the year to April 2004 the Crown Prosecution Service prosecuted 3,616 defendants.

But why add racial or religious aggravation as an element of a crime? Does it make it any worse for someone mugged on the street that their assailant was at all motivated by race or religion? Does it make it any better for the mugged old lady that she was a victim only because she was old (and feeble, and hence an easy target)?

I cannot see it makes any difference. We all need protection under the law. Why we are attacked, robbed, or intimidated is of no relevance to the wrong that is done. If you are injured or made to fear for your safety it is that fact that defines the harm done to you as victim. Given a criminal intention, I do not see why the harm should be regarded more seriously because the perpetrator had one motivation rather than another, or was partial to one type of victim rather than another.

It is in deference to different ethnic and religious communities - to cultivate their vote - that the concept of racial and religious aggravation of crime has come about: first racial aggravation was introduced by the Labour government in 1998 (soon after gaining power), with religious aggravation following in 2001.

There is no moral reason to punish the mugger of Asian women more severely than the thug who mugs old women indiscriminately. The reason one is treated more severely is political, and the racially motivated crime is a political thought crime as much as it is anything else.

Big Spending Tories

A year ago, the Tory leader, Michael Howard set out his ideas for less government in his speech, The British Dream. He said:

And I will tell you today, in all honesty and as starkly as I am able to, that the size and scope of government in this country – and the means of its financing by the people through taxation – is quite simply too big.

So the Tories are the party of small government? Are they hell! The individual knows better how to spend his money than government? Er, not really ...

Claiming to identify £35 billion of waste expenditure, the Tories want the government to spend most of it on their pet programmes like health and education. Only £4 billion - £6 billion would be repatriated to taxpayers as tax cuts. Pathetic.

Sounds to me more like a way of promising extra spending without admitting the need for additional taxation. If they didn't make the 'savings', what then? Would they hold back on the spending? Fat chance!

Do the Tories think the huge extra monies spent on health and education by Labour has been money well spent, or even that it can be well spent? Not according to that speech of Howard's last year:

Opponents of change [to the NHS] assiduously propagated two myths. First, that no country had better health care. And secondly that there was nothing wrong with the system that just a little bit more money would not solve.

But now we have seen those myths blown out of the water. The current Government has spent a huge amount more of people's taxes on the NHS: they have set hundreds of targets and bench marks. But we still lag behind many of our neighbours.

[... T]his approach has been tried, it has been given time to work and it has failed. Public sector productivity has not increased. The public's expectations, raised by the rhetoric of politicians, have not been realised. There is now a fundamental imbalance between what voters want and what government is able to deliver.

So why spend even more?

The Tories should be proposing to cut out whole functions of government. That is the only way to small government.