You may forget all the splendid words about education from the Government. Britain's children have been betrayed.I remember with affection some of the teachers I had as a youngster. Like the teacher in my last year of junior school. Not only was she the school's headmistress; she also taught singlehandedly all the subjects to all the pupils in their last two years of junior school all jammed into one class. She had a cane but never used it. Discipline was never a problem. The children in her care were taught, and she had the best exam results in town.
It was in the 1960s that teachers began to introduce ideas and methods of teaching that everyone seemed to know were crazy except the teachers. As a result, examinations had to be downgraded and three-year university courses extended to four.
We have now got to the point where 63 per cent of white boys from low-income families and 54 per cent of black working-class boys can't read or write properly at age 14. English grammar is not considered important. Children are not taught to spell. Schools are now getting young teachers who can't teach children to spell because they can't spell either.
We have now got to the point where 63 per cent of white boys from low-income families and 54 per cent of black working-class boys can't read or write properly at age 14. English grammar is not considered important. Children are not taught to spell. Schools are now getting young teachers who can't teach children to spell because they can't spell either.
A leading exam board found last year's GCSE candidates didn't know how to write a letter. Undergraduates are arriving at university unable to write an essay. A study of students at Imperial College, London, found the English of British students was worse than the English of overseas students. British students made three times as many grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors as students from Singapore, China and Indonesia.
According to Harriet Sergeant in the Daily Mail, a third of all 14-year-olds have a reading age of 11 or below. One in five has a reading age of nine. Cuba, Estonia, Poland and Barbados have higher literacy rates than Britain.
Education in the UK is based on ideology, not evidence of what works. School inspectors no longer concentrate on the basics, but have to check that schools are complying with educational ideology and the latest Government initiative.
Because there is little incentive to learn, almost 60,000 children in England skip lessons every day. Boys aged between 10 and 16 commit 40 per cent of all street crime, 25 per cent of thefts from properties, 20 per cent of criminal damage and one third of car thefts, and all of them during school hours.
The concept of sitting pupils in rows of desks facing the teacher is widely considered too didactic, Ms Sergeant writes. Now, most primary schoolchildren sit at tables scattered about the classroom, as I saw for myself when I sat in on one class for a week in the East End of London.
On my table, the three children giggled, kicked each other and chatted. Their attention lay on what was in front of them: themselves. Somewhere on the periphery of our vision, the teacher walked about, struggling to keep order. Somewhere else, behind our heads, hung a whiteboard with work upon it, gleefully ignored by my table.
When I blamed the children's poor discipline and concentration on the layout, the teacher looked at me with horror.
'The pupils are working together, directing their own learning,' she said emphatically. . .
Children are now expected, for example, to be 'independent learners' in charge of their own education. ('Why do teachers keep asking me what I want to learn? How am I supposed to know?' one boy asked me in exasperation.)
Something needs to be done before the next generation comes along. Among other things, beginning to teach five-year-olds and six-year-olds to read would be a good thing.
