I’ve just done a rather long posting on my Education Blog about a teacher called Francis Gilbert, who has written a book highly critical of government education policies. Put it this way, I classified the post under one of my most frequently used headings: “Sovietisation.” The guts of Sovietisation is when the measuring system imposed from the centre completely overwhelms the activity it is supposedly measuring. In the old USSR, people spent all their time fulfilling quotas, by hook or by crook, as opposed to doing useful work. Now, more and more teachers are pushing, and faking, children through exams. And as also happened in the old USSR, everyone knows that this is happening, but nobody except a few very unusual dissidents can afford to go out on a limb and admit it.
While I was linking to articles by and about Gilbert, and to his recent book, Kit Taylor was simultaneously emailing me, twice, about a radio performance that Gilbert did today.
Email one:
Teacher Francis Gilbert was on Radio2’s Drive Time programme this evening (wednesday 10th March), promoting his book “I’m a Teacher Get Me Out of Here!”
Though he described himself as being of the left and wanting equality, he delivered a tirade against a crushing bureaucracy he likened to something out of 1984, and said that he was disillusioned by “what the left had done.” Notably, as questioned why schools weren’t free to devise their own curriculums, something utterly uncontroversial as far as I’m concerned but seemingly unthinkable in today’s political climate.
Host Johnnie Walker even chipped in agreeably, pontificating that anything the government tried to run it messed up!
All this on primetime national radio. Cause for optimism?
And then, just as I was going to press (having included email one at the last minute), in comes email two:
Actually, now I think on Francis Gilbert something even more interesting in the interview.
It was along the lines of –
“I can go to the corner shop, and I can buy a good quality jam or a cheaper one. I have that option. But if I want my daughter [aged three] to learn french or classics, the choices aren’t available.”
If advanced by the Tories, I’d be unsurprised if such a notion were attacked as Thatcherite extremism. What’s interesting is that Gilbert’s comments were not apparently derived from ideological dogma, but the product of a “man in the street” intuitively questioning why a system that was working well in one aspect of his life wasn’t being applied in another that wasn’t.
As I think I may already have been quoted here as saying, we do have one rather big advantage over our opponents, which is that reality is on our side.
Brian, you Brits have got to overcome your unreasonable fear of the letter “z” (yeah, zed if not zee).
“Sovietization” looks much better, I think, as does “civilization” and “civilized”.
In the old USSR, people spent all their time fulfilling quotas, by hook or by crook, as opposed to doing useful work.
A slightly different angle from here in the US is that teachers can’t hope to make some students learn so they just pass them through the system, the bad pennies move up and out. They may have the best of intentions (most bureaucrats do) but there is only so much real impact that they can have. I suppose it is just another example that the government never really makes much of a net difference, and whatever gains there are in educating some of those who are reluctant is offset by the mind boggling costs. But the teachers keep plugging right along, collecting paychecks and using the bright-side statistics to justify it all. The thing that really grinds my gears is that, when it’s all said and done, with slight improvements in education relative to the costs, the teachers, by and large leftist, pool their ill gotten resources into various unions all of which have huge political pull. The largest single political action committee in the State where I live (WI) is the teachers’ union, allowing for further expansion of their agenda (case in point, my State, like many others, faces a huge deficit, and sweeping cost reduction measures were put into effect, except for teachers of course, they got a raise).
Toolkien,
Whilst a lot of state employed teachers may be leftist, those working in the private sector definitely are not! Anyone who around 1980 was threatened with losing their job by a Labour party trying to get the vote of people who couldn’t ever hope to afford private education will never, ever vote labour! My family being a case in point!
But I’m sure there are deluded exceptions…
mike
(hailing from the KNCR (Royal Dutch Communist Republic!!!!)
What about the reverse of uncaring? This obsession with grades and results only is the most damning part of the Singapore educational system.
At almost every step of the journey, the kids have to jump through disgustingly high hoops or else be left behind in the great paper chase. The workload(for student and teacher both) is getting heavier by the year. Indeed, the hiring of private tutors here has only added to the pressure of being a student.
Did poorly for your PSLE(Primary School Leaving Examination)? That’s it, you’ll likely never get to the university. Do poorly for your ‘O’s? Forget about the ‘A’ levels. Go to a polytechnic for your diploma.
In all this obsession about grades, we’ve lost sight of the most crucial part of education:
Learning how to learn, and learning how to enjoy learning.
The Wobbly Guy
Whilst a lot of state employed teachers may be leftist, those working in the private sector definitely are not!
Agreed. I meant those teachers employed by the State of WI in my earlier comment. And of course there are some even of that group who are rational minded, but by and large, and with the coercive tactics of union dues, the money goes in a leftward direction whatever the makeup of the constituency. My overall issue is that dollars are confiscated for a questionable purpose in the first place, shifts resources to those who would not likely have had it in the second place, who then turn around and use a portion of it to further, through union dues, an entity whose purpose is to perpetuate more the same. It is one of an infinite number of examples of how Statism feeds itself and consolidates its position. All the while education, and its enhancement, dies on the vine. That seems to be the sovietization of the whole thing. A private arrangement is more likely to have a market function behind its raison d’etre and is much less likely to have that soviet feel.
At almost every step of the journey, the kids have to jump through disgustingly high hoops or else be left behind in the great paper chase. The workload(for student and teacher both) is getting heavier by the year. Indeed, the hiring of private tutors here has only added to the pressure of being a student.
Did poorly for your PSLE(Primary School Leaving Examination)? That’s it, you’ll likely never get to the university. Do poorly for your ‘O’s? Forget about the ‘A’ levels. Go to a polytechnic for your diploma.
I see where you are coming from. There is now an educational meritocracy of hoops that have to be jumped through to prove merit. Though, on the other hand, it’s merely another form of competition, more and more people are in the process and differentiation needs to happen. It’s all about establishing ‘bonafidees’ in Old West parlance. And one has to go the group of pontificating hacks many times to get it. Worse yet, and the situation I find myself in, I am likely going to have to go back at age 35 to recertify myself and jump through hoops I already have to be able to market myself (apparently a CPA license and 13 years experience doesn’t cut it in this market, I’ll need an MBA as well evidently).
It’s all about playing the odds. Employers want quick and dirty proof of competence. Hence diplomas, a slip of paper which says you’ve shown some apptitude in an academic vacuum certified by those who ‘couldn’t do….’. The employers want to hedge their bets and want some such ‘proof’ so the rank and file oblige. Then market forces come to bear, and one guy will go to the nth degree and so will everyone else eventually. It’s a vicious circle and I’m afraid that real world performance is ultimately taking a back seat to ‘education lords’ who will pronounce competence, and hold the keys to advancement, versus having a proven track record of real experience.
I still think funding education privately is the best way, but allowing the state to LOAN the education cash to parents (until 16/18? then loan the cash direct to qualifying university students) allows for a nice compromise that gets around some of the problems of a strict libertarian approach.
Also exam grades should be scrapped! Replace them with a graph showing where your mark places you compared with everyone who did the exam. e.g. you did better than 87.4% of candidates. Another graph showing how you performed against your school peers could be used to support “affirmative” action type policies whereby outperforming your school peers could give you a break at the university(if the uni agrees). This may solve the problem of UK universities (Oxford Brookes – “Tim Nice But Dim” College, Oxford) being filled with frankly thick but well educated privately schooled “chaps” IMHO!
Thank you for considering my comments on the radio. Perhaps together we can build a political consensus against this frightening drive for centralisation. Please read my comments in the Guardian Education pages next week, on Tuesday 1st September 2004.
Francis Gilbert