Stephen Pollard has a piece up at his blog called Should Schools Select?, originally in the September issue of Fabian Review. He says yes, as do I if they want to. I choose the company I keep. Why shouldn't schools?
After trashing the notion that there is any meaningful difference between selecting by aptitude and selecting by ability, he goes on to denounce those who favour non-selection, but who then buy educational advancements for their own children:
The real basis of opposition to selection is, of course, social engineering: the belief that only by forcing all children, irrespective of their individual abilities – aptitudes, if we must – to be educated together can we build a truly equal society. As Crosland put it in 1956: education should be seen "as a serious alternative to nationalisation in promoting a more just and efficient society."It hasn’t worked. And we all know it. The difference is that some are prepared to say so, whilst others come up with specious arguments to deflect criticism of their own personal response to this failure. 'You know how much we believe in comprehensives, but there’s no way we’re sending little Jonny to that dump round the corner'; in other words, 'It’s fine for the rest of the riff-raff, but not for our kids'. Or 'Amanda is such a clever child but she just isn’t stretched at the moment, so we’re paying her to have extra tuition'; in other words, 'We've got money, and we’re going to spend it how we like, thank you very much'.
We have selection now. But it is based on the cheque book: if you can afford to send your child to a private school, to pay for extra lessons, or to move into the catchment area of a decent state school, then you are fine. If however you are one of the majority, you take what you are given.
It's a familiar argument. Hypocrisy. They preach one thing, but they practise another.
As I say, I agree with Pollard about selection being a fine thing, for all of us. But I've never liked this particular way of arguing for it. After all, I oppose the entire principle of nationalised industries, but I do not hesitate to make use of their services, often heavily subsidised, if it suits me. Was I a hypocrite when I bought a ticket on the old nationalised British Rail? From time to time the BBC pays me to appear on one of their talking head shows on the radio. I cash whatever cheque they send me, if they do, every time. Inconsistent? A proof that I really believe in nationalised broadcasting?
No. Just proof that the world is not as I would like it to be. I have my opinions about how the world ought to be, which I will happily tell you about, on whatever platform the world as it is offers me that is congenial.
So, going back to those educational egalitarians who also pay for Amanda's extra tuition, they believe in a certain sort of educationally equal world. But they don't have the world they want, and instead must do their best for their children in the educational world as it is. In their ideal equal-land, there'd be no nonsense about catchment areas and private schools to allow the rich to escape from the regular system, and all school would be equally splendid. In that world, they'll play by the egalitarian book and let Amanda take her chances with all the other, equally lucky children.
My quarrel with all that is not that they do their best for Amanda. It is that their plan for educational equality is a giant articulated lorry-load of evil smelling cow dung. If all their instructions were followed education wouldn't at all be equally good for everyone, it would unequally dreadful, as is the case with all real world attempts to do equality, in any way. There is no utopia of equal excellence. It's impossible. The real world choice is between a free market, which is unequally excellent, and an unfree system which is unequally ghastly, and that's it. That's my disagreement with these people, not the fact that they do their best for their children.
Quite to the contrary. To me there is nothing personally creepy about edu-egalitarians who buy advantages for their own kids. (I just think they're flat wrong about edu-egalitarianism.) But there is something seriously creepy about parents who are not only edu-egalitarian, but who insist on sacrificing their children on the altar of their own opinions, against those children's best interests. If they have the money, and son Tarquin has no aptitude for survival at the local comprehensive and would plainly do better at a posher sort of place which is happy to take him at a specially reduced price because Tarquin is so clever, and where Tarquin would fit in very well and which he is eager to attend … if all that, who but total shit parents would turn their backs on what would clearly be best for their own child, just because of their damn fool political opinions? That really would be creepy.
There are many worse things in the world than hypocrisy, but these edu-egalitarians whom Pollard lays into aren't even hypocrites. They are just refraining from being knowingly ghastly to their own children merely because they are unknowingly recommending ghastliness for the rest of us. Their crime is stupidity and cruelty, to us. Don't ask them to add the crime of abusing their own children to the rap sheet.
If they are knowingly recommending ghastliness to the rest of us, just so that Tarquin can get ahead and lord it over us, then that's different. But to prove that charge you'd need a quite different sort of evidence to merely them looking out for Tarquin.
And I also missed (see below) this piece from last Monday:
A chain of independent schools is to be set up to bridge the gap between the state sector and top independent schools by charging "affordable'' fees.The plans by Global Education Management Systems (Gems), a company based in Dubai, is likely to encourage more parents to avoid the state sector and put pressure on other independent schools to cut fees. The Office of Fair Trading is investigating allegations of fee-fixing by independent schools including Eton and Winchester.
The company has taken over two private schools in Britain and is looking for more. It also plans to build schools on greenfield sites within easy reach of city centres.
Most educational initiatives are just another ton of forms for teachers to fill in, but that one sounds like it just might work.
Is the price of private education getting too high? The government investigates. The free market gets to work.
I've only just read this piece about bullying from the Telegraph of last Monday by Katie Jarvis. The twist is, it was her son doing it.
Katie Jarvis and her son are almost as much the victims of compulsory education as were and are the children her son was bullying.
In the adult world, bullying as nasty as routinely happens in schools is quite rare. This is because adults who hate their place of work for any reason are entitled, even expected, to think about moving elsewhere. This may not be easy, but the option is there, and is a respected and regular part of the culture. Party conversation: Like your job? No it's crap actually? Are you thinking of moving? Trying to, any suggestions? It's not that adults are any nicer than children, far from it. It is simply that the rules governing childrens' lives are now so nasty. Most of them are in prison. Prisons automatically contain bullying. It cannot be otherwise.
The idea of children deciding for themselves that they can't stand the school they are at and simply deciding that they are going to go elsewhere, or nowhere, ought to be as much a routine of childhood life as similar arrangements are for adults. Not that common, but plainly thinkable if a school becomes ghastly, for whatever reason. If that were the case, children like Katie Jarvis' son would simply not be able to become bullies, because they would run out of victims. A couple of the victims would threaten to take their business (vouchers, money, government spending triggers, whatever) elsewhere, and if the school was lucky they'd say why, and Jarvis fils would either stop or be chucked out himself, and he'd almost certainly stop. All that non-judgemental persuasion that Mother Jarvis subjected him to (what happened to the victims during all that palaver I don't know) would be beside the point.
Ultimately, I don't believe that compulsory schooling will be ended by mere laws. I think it will be ripped to bits by young teenagers (and in many cases in alliance with their parents) who ain't fuckin' (my French is necessary to make my point and I do not ask your pardon for it) gonna take it any more. Pre-school-leaving teenagers already have the power to make life a misery for each other and for their minders, and they constantly do. All that is required is for them to become more politically conscious, and they can simply unscrew the lid of the tin and climb out, whenever they like. Here's what we want: we want out. That's reasonable. If you don't let us out here's what we'll do. That kind of thing.
If the motives of some escapees for wanting to escape are criminal, then that's a police matter and a criminal law matter, not an "education" matter, and let the law take its course. If a thirteen year old leaves school to commit crimes and she does, send her to what we all agree is a prison. If their motives and subsequent behaviour are not criminal, then just what is the problem?
If this blog were somehow to become a small part of that process, I would be very happy.
And to say it again: I'm in favour of good (and varied) schools run in accordance with good (and varied) rules. Tight ships. Pink fluffy bunny ships. Whatever people want to sail in and don't have to be press-ganged into. I don't see any conflict there.
I don't see any problem with discussing what good teaching is all about, and how maths is best taught and how reading and writing are best taught, just so long as the victims of it are allowed to leave if they can't stand it or switch to something they consider better.
Class dismissed. That's if you are still here. You can leave this blog any time you like, without explanation. I didn't make that rule, and I don't always like it, but that is the rule. Actually, I do like it. I don't want unhappy readers of this badmouthing it everywhere else they go. I practise what I'm preaching here.
The blogger formerly known as the Home Educating House Dad is, after a pause that got all sorts of people emailing one another asking if he'd perhaps been run over by a bus, back in business at a stylish new site called Unexpected Liberation, and has a whole new week's worth of good stuff up there.
Here's a good recent post:
Home Education HighlightsWhen the next door neighbour's kids tell their mum thay want to be home educated too.
Watching the parents squirm ... Priceless!
I only heard about HEHD's new home because he put a couple of comments here. He says oooh very posh about the new look here, and in connection with the great James Lileks bad dad or what? debate, has this to say at his own site. Snippet:
The amazing thing is that this guy obviously thinks that this behaviour is so normal that he can happily write about it and not expect anyone to take umbrage."Lileks – NO!"
This latter, for the benefit of anyone who doesn't know but does care, is – unless it's coincidence – a reference to a character invented and performed by British comedian Harry Enfield. However, the Enfield character prefaces his denunciations of prominent persons by saying if they did a whole lot of bad things which they actually haven't done, or said a whole lot of bad things which they actually haven't said, then he, the Enfield character would say: "Blair – NO!", "Beckham – NO!" "Travolta – NO!", etc. Always the surname. But HEHD denounces Lileks on the basis of what Lileks himself actually put. Which is different. So there you go.
Anyway, I'm delighted to be back in touch with HEHD, whom I missed, and whom I had actually been a bit worried about. More to the point he was a great blogger, and the blogosphere would have been permanently damaged by his permanent absence. I'll bet I'm not the only one saying: Welcome back mate.
If Samizdata.net hasn't already heard this good news, I'll shortly be putting it there too.
You can't just stroll into Prospect magazine. You have to register. In fact if I understand the situation correction, you have to pay. But if someone else (like Arts & Letters Daily today – an invaluable source – thank you Lileks today, "I jest because I care", for the reminder) gives you the link, you're in, right?
Anyway, this piece by James McLeod on violence in the classroom is an excellent read.
Pamela Coward, head of Middleton technology school in Manchester, (who became a Dame of the British Empire in the June honours list for services to education) expresses the problem tersely: "The challenge really is to eradicate street values from the school." Bob Carstairs, of the Secondary Heads Association, stresses home environment as the biggest problem: "There is a significant increase in the number of children not supervised by family adults." This, he said, means that many children do not know how to behave. Public money to tackle poor behaviour was welcome, but the basic problem, he said, is "cultural."This attitude is understandable but depressing. It makes the situation appear impossible to tackle. Fortunately there are several examples of teachers who took on a school filled with children from the worst social and emotional backgrounds and succeeded. Ex-headmistress Marie Stubbs, for example, was encouraged out of retirement to tackle the problems of St George's school in west London. Since an earlier head, Philip Lawrence, had been fatally stabbed outside its gates in 1995, the school had deteriorated. In early 2000, just before Stubbs joined, the local authority closed it for a week. They felt unable to ensure the safety of either staff or pupils.
Stubbs has written a book, Ahead of the Class, about her 15 months as head of the school, after which time the school received a glowing Ofsted report. She describes her central principle thus: "A child may come to a school of mine with baggage, but at 9am they should be able to lay that baggage aside and be their best selves for the rest of the day. None of us can control what happens to them outside school, but inside it they should have the best experience they can."
Many will dislike the self-righteous missionary attitude of all this. But if you really are stuck in the heart of darkness …
I know what you're thinking. You had no warning of this. But yes, this is same old Brian's Education Blog, but revamped, twenty-first century-ised, blah blah blah. I hope you like it.
I didn't design it myself. That was done by this guy, heckled by me. There will probably be further changes here in the next few days, and the stuff to the right still needs to be looked at, updated, and rearranged. But the basic structure is now fixed. Vent at will in the comments, but it is unlikely to change much.
The reason I gave you no warning of this transformation is that if I had flagged it up beforehand, and if it had then been delayed, but if I had then kept on saying it's coming it's coming, that would have been undignified. There would have been jeers from the back of the class. Better, I thought, to let the change come in its own sweet time, and then say yes, it has changed hasn't it?, well spotted.
If you want my further thoughts on blog design, stay tuned to my Culture Blog, where I'll no doubt have things to say about this, and which is likewise going to get a makeover Real Soon Now.
As for the importance of design to the educational process, I think that if you have to choose between good teachers in a badly designed school and bad teachers and a well designed school, go with the good teachers. The blog equivalent is that there is no substitute for good stuff. Although, it is an interesting question how much effect good design in a school might have on getting good teachers for it, and in allowing them to teach better than they otherwise might. Discuss, if you feel inclined.
That's it for now. I just wanted you all to know that the universe is still in the same place as it was, despite any appearances here to the contrary.
