It is no secret that I am opposed to conscription of any sort, be it military, judicial or educational. I am all for having armies, juries and schools, but not ones which depend on forcing the unwilling to become chattels of the state. Not only do I think it is morally indefensible, it produces strange results when people are compelled to do things they never agreed to do.
Most people can be convinced that getting an education is a good thing, but to force who cannot see that to attend a school just means that they will disrupt the education of those who are willing to be there. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. Moreover, state schools seem to bring out the most control obsessed aspects of people who run such places.
Pupils at a new £46 million flagship school will not be allowed break times and will have no playground to run around on, leading to fears for their behaviour and health. […] But parents, educational experts and health campaigners believe banning teenagers from letting off steam during the school day will increase their risk of becoming obese, and could damage their attention spans during lessons. […] Dr Alan McMurdo, the principal of the academy, said: “Research has shown that if children concentrate on lessons throughout the day, then their work improves. “We are not intending to have any play time. Pupils won’t need to let off steam because they will not be bored.”
So children are going to be dragooned into coming to this place under threat of law but “Pupils won’t need to let off steam because they will not be bored”. Might I suggest arrogance and stupidity in equal measure. Might I suggest that they will indeed be bored and the way they will let of steam will be to trash this nice new school and run wild in classes… I sure as hell would.
The need to “let off steam” will just increase…
Perry,
This is insane. I would have thought ita wind-up till I saw the Telegraph piece.
The Academy will have a new all weather pitch for hockey and football and the existing tennis and netball courts will be resurfaced. There will also be 4 grass rugby and 4 grass cricket pitches.”
So there will be plenty of room for running around.
And how come, in all of the blogs concerning this subject that I’ve read the following piece of the same article is never quoted?
The Academy will have a new all weather pitch for hockey and football and the existing tennis and netball courts will be resurfaced. There will also be 4 grass rugby and 4 grass cricket pitches.”
So there will be plenty of room for running around.
And how come, in all of the blogs concerning this subject that I’ve read the following piece of the same article is never quoted?
We are going to encourage children to do more sport
In this case “encouraged” will mean that they will be forced to participate in sport whether they like it or not, which is just as bad as being forced to attend the school in the first place.
We are going to encourage children to do more sport
In this case “encouraged” will mean that they will be forced to participate in sport whether they like it or not, which is just as bad as being forced to attend the school in the first place.
What would the solution be? Children need to be educated. The parents can’t do it, they have to work every day to put food on the table. Should children be relied upon to educate themselves? Is there a case for going back to the old style of apprenticeships, where a child is shipped off at a very young age to learn a trade? I don’t think that would be practicle in this day and age. Making education voluntary would only lead to disaster as many children would opt out completely and be not only economically useless but add to the welfare burden.
The industries of the age require skilled labour, often highly specialised skills, and we cannot produce the necessary skills in the workforce without producing a labour force with a decent education.
Yes, forcing anyone to do anything is wrong, coercion is wrong, but making education voluntary simply wouldn’t work.
These will be the playing fields that “won’t be fully complete until the old school is knocked down. It could be a year until the cricket green is seeded properly.”
The head is clearly a moron:
“Pupils won’t need to let off steam because they will not be bored.”
Who suggested that being bored is the only reason anyone needs to let off steam?
My take here.
Although I am generally an optimist about the future of the Anglosphere, the disastrous state of our disfunctional educational structure is a constant source of worry, and, I believe, one of the weakest links in our cultural chain.
A 19th century model which celebrates the use of compulsion so prominent in progressive ideas from that era, and which has long abandoned any serious effort at actually educating children in a rigorous manner in favor of social conditioning and PC/multi-culti “values” gibberish, has resulted in a continuing decline in both student achievement and relevance.
As Barone points out, youth in our culture now exist in a cacoon of extended childhood, floating in a soft water sea of “self-esteem” enhancement and dumbed down academics, praised for every vapid regurgitation of the current edu-dogma, and only criticized if they dare to violate the PC speech/thought codes by having a non-approved idea, and then being foolish enough to actually express it.
The drop out rates are rising steadily, even after billions are spent for special ed and troubled youth programs. Teachers and students in many schools are terrified, not of some disconsolate loner bringing a gun to class, but of the everyday bullying and violent defiance of various gangsters and toughs who would rather be out on the street selling dope or shooting rival gangsters, but are ordered instead to haunt the corridors of our alleged institutions of learning, terrorizing anyone who crosses their path.
It is now common for colleges to spend the first year teaching remedial courses in english and math, trying to make up for years of “social promotions”, in which students are passed on to the next grade level regardless of whether or not they can read, write, or adequately perform the appropriate math and science that they supposedly just learned.
Students interested in getting an actual education must navigate the obstacle course of dumbed down, make work classes, incompetent teachers, administrations completely out of touch with reality, and fellow students who often criticize and assault them for their academic efforts while lionizing illiterates who can perform miracles in some athletic endeavor, but need help spelling their own names.
Meanwhile, the popular culture surrounding them, reacting to the fact that most of its members are nearly bereft of any coherent knowledge of literature, science, history, or logical thought processes, obsesses over a never-ending stream of celebrity trivia and scandal.
The same youth who have the energy and interest to spend hours each day practicing athletics, and the capability to memorize hundreds of popular song lyrics or video game moves, can’t locate their own state on a US map, or identify any of the continents on a globe, much less begin to decipher the complex relationships of a global economy and fledgling world culture.
Instead of improving this sorry situation by making an honest evaluation of the system’s failures, and beginnng the comprehensive reformation of the flaccid philosophy which underlies most of the problems, most of the efforts of the current educational establishment are geared towards obtaining more money and benefits for its administrators and place holders, and resisting vehemently any attempts to develop meaningful achievement standards, or testing truly new ideas and educational models.
The future belongs to those who are intellectually and morally equipped to deal with the complex problems which will certainly arise to challenge free societies and the liberties of their citizens.
Our current educational structures leave our children disarmed in both areas.
But that already happens inspite of educational conscription! Many children already opt out, they just turn up because they are forced to and then opt out from actually getting educated. I think apprentice schemes have much to commend them actually as they are simply better suited to some people than lengthy formal education.
Further to Perry’s comment, in my world the Welfare State would get a thorough reform so kids will know that come 16 they are pretty much on their own and cannot expect a “kansillass” even if they are female and pop a sprog. Realisation of the necessity of funding ones own existence is a good incentive to get eductated.
As far as the school is concerned, if the (fat) Head thinks he is so right, why doesn’t he run a private school and have the kids come a-flocking?
It is not that he will do what he proposess, but that the hapless residents in the catchment area will have little or no alternative to it.
“But that already happens inspite of educational conscription! Many children already opt out, they just turn up because they are forced to and then opt out from actually getting educated.”
Right. I was going to point out that most of those who don’t “opt out” end up as walking, talking rutabagas — who get to vote, I hasten to note — by the time the schools are done with them. It’s not as if compulsory state schooling is producing what it takes to avert the “disaster” even with kids who don’t just split.
It’s probably going over the top, but it’s high time for a corrective to child-centred education. Kids can work a lot harder than the currently do, unless they have evolved into a different species since the time of their grandfathers.
What this means, in practice, is that this mega-school in Peterborough will simply more-closely resemble most of the rest of Peterborough – soulless, tasteless, rigidly conformist and devoid of even the slightest spark of individuality, freedom of thought or independence of action.
If ever they catch up with me for some of the s**t that I’ve done, you won’t have to waste a prison bed to punish me – just sentence me to a spell in one of the Ortons. Without parole. It’s my Room 101. And make no mistake – Peterborough is the NuLabour ideal for life in the UK.
llater,
llamas
I saw this last week, I think on An Englishman’s Castle or some such. I remember reading it to Mrs. Sunfish, who thought it somewhere between hilarious and tragic. (She teaches early grade school, FWIW)
Children need unstructured periods during the day. If they’re in class all day, they get bored and restless and will either blow off their schoolwork or cause trouble. And structured athletics won’t do any good either: sure, the kids could stand to get some exercise, but there’s that word “unstructured” again. P.E. class isn’t it. PE is just another class, and in my high school a waste of an hour a day for four years that I could have spent either in shop classes, the library, or across the street smoking.
But then, gym classes are a place where students can be in uniforms, standing in line, and be yelled at to do exactly the same thing as everybody else at exactly the same instant, which is perfectly in accordance with Horace Mann’s reason for universal public education in the first place.
I don’t mean, in my last paragraph, to suggest that a government school might have the task of crushing the last little bits of individuality out of its charges, in order to render them mild and submissive and ready to do mindless repetitive crap for nine hours a day for the benefit of someone else. I would never suggest such a thing.
At £46m for 2,200 pupils, that is over £600,000 per classroom group of 30 pupils. It must be almost a palace. Unfortunately, its prospects for success are not good because:
1. A “mixed-ability” intake and state control are seldom pointers to high standards.
2. The number of pupils is too great to expect staff to know the names of all of them, and discipline is consequently likely to suffer.
My suggestion would be a voucher system that offered each citizen 12 years of vouchers. These vouchers could be used at any school, government or free. Parents (or students) could supplement the vouchers with their own money if they so chose. The kicker is that there would be no age requirement: if you chose to drop out of school in the 4th year, you would still have 8 years of education coming, which you could use after you had matured enough to realize that it is useful. Of course individual schools would have their own requirements, but the laws of economics say that if they money is there and the willingness is there, some schools will accept older students, either exclusively or otherwise.
This is not a perfect solution, it still involves taxation to pay for it, but at least it is a step in the right direction.
I really do not see why the state has to be involved at all.
Baby steps.
You can’t just throw a system out the window that has been in place for multiple generations. The new system may be better, but you can’t just hop from point A to point B overnight. It would cause too much “system shock” for a populace that doesn’t know any other way.
Civilized people crave stability. Stability being the keystone that holds what we call “civilization” together. Even the most free-market loving people shy away from too much change at once for fear that it may destroy everything in the chaos. That is why most people I’ve talked to about Libertarians equate them (rightly or wrongly) to Anarchists. They may have different goals, but they both want to reach them through roughly the same means. The means being the introduction of massive and sudden change to the established order.
That is the primary reason no one will ever elect a Libertarian (or even a hard-core Communist for that matter) to office, they all want to hop from point A to B with no stops in between. The Authoritarian’s have mastered the trick of gradually introducing their laws and regulations onto the populace instead of cracking down all at once. Free-market folks need to learn that lesson.
Libertarians should start by getting elected to local office with “moderate” reforms before trying to run for President on a platform of total reform.
Yeah, this was all a little bit off-topic, but Perry, that comment reminded me why Libertarian’s never get anywhere politically.
I read somewhere that at the turn of the last century literacy was above 90% despite there being no state schooling. Most of the schools that were available were provided privately or through free grammar schools and were mostly for boys only. (in the UK)
School should not be compulsory and should not be provided by the state. We only value those things that require an effort to achieve. Take automatic free schools away. Replace them with schools that are only free with bursaries and scholarships (paid for by voluntary donations and bequests) for those who prove that they are prepared to make the effort. (This does not apply to only the brightest academically. Almost any skill or talent could be sponsored)
Everyone else should pay in a free market for education. Private schools will then fill the market with a range of educations addressing all demands from highly academic to vocational and for every price bracket.
And the earlier commenter is quite correct. If you ask a lot from a child – in the right way – you get a lot. At my prep school, in the 60’s, fairly ordinary 12 and 13 year olds were inspired to achieve ‘O’ level standard in Latin, Greek and Maths. They did it for pleasure and because nobody told them it was too hard for them.
It was an all boy school with mostly male teachers, which, IMHO, makes a great deal of difference to adolescent boys who respond to a far more structured and disciplined environment than my children had to put up with in their co-ed comprehensive.
What is more most of the boys I went to school with were able to talk intelligently on a wide range of subjects because they were taught to think and encouraged to question everything without disrespecting everything at the same time.
Then I think you misunderstand the ‘mission statement’ in the sidebar…
My objective is not to ‘get anywhere politically’, it is to change the frames of reference in which the debate takes place. I am happy to leave getting somewhere politically to other folks but as long as the frames of reference are owned by the other side, there is little point playing at elected politics. Being endlessly ‘pragmatic’ has resulted in a Big Government tax-and-spend Republican President in the USA and a ‘conservative’ party in the UK largely indistinguishable from the Labour party.
It is the job of sites like this one to say what we really think and what we really want, because someone has to, not just say what we think is politically acceptable right now… which is why discussing school vouchers interests me not one iota.
Whenever I hear an educationalist (or criminologist)say “Research has shown …” in support of their latest harebrained scheme I’d like them to comment on the relationship between the number of educationalists in the school system – and the quality of the output of that system. Given that it seems to be inversely proportional – my solution is simple – get rid of the educationalists!
If vouchers are to be a baby step to removing the state from operating and funding an educational monopoly, we also need to reform welfare. Do one without the other and you will never be free to reduce the value of vouchers towards zero as that would reinforce the underclass.
A baby step that needs to be done is the disbanding of the LEAs, which will free up vast amounts of money for schools and allow more freedom for parents and schools alike. If you do not deal with LEAs the schools will still be part of the monolith.
Whenever I hear an educationalist (or criminologist)say “Research has shown …” in support of their latest harebrained scheme I’d like them to comment on the relationship between the number of educationalists in the school system – and the quality of the output of that system. Given that it seems to be inversely proportional – my solution is simple – get rid of the educationalists!
Precisely. Often it also means that a single, small scale study conducted by someone who knew the outcome before they did it (eg “research” which always props up ideological positions against setting and so on). Given that education is supposed to be about thinking and broadening the mind how they get away with shutting down debate by referring to educational research -which isn’t the same as scientific research most if not all the time – as if it were a single, unified entity which “proved” things baffles me.
Llamas,
I would agree with your opinion of Peterborough, though it used to be rather nice. The rot set in in the 70s.
By the way, the chap this school is named for was responsible for fiybdubg one of those private schools that did such a good job before the state took over, originally to provide education for “20 poor boys” of the city. The site of the previous school in Peterborough so named is now under a vile 80s shopping centre.
To mandrill
I compiled, for the BB Liberty Forum, a selection of pieces I wrote on schooling:
A Critique of Compulsory Schooling
Schools of Thought (State funding)
Providing the Poor with an Education
Maybe Peterborough’s rot set in in the 70’s when the first generation born under the Welfare State attained adulthood and started their own families…
…Not only do I think it is morally indefensible, it produces strange results when people are compelled to do things they never agreed to do…
Completely agree. Conscripts are a no win in every way.
Here’s something to consider- In Australia, we have something called The School of The Air. Children in remote stations don’t go to school- they have a radio station for them, and their books and manuals get posted to them by air mail. They turn to whatever page is mentioned on the show, and do the lessons (with their mother usually nearby to assure compliance). Home schooling with an electronic touch. I think that eventually everyone will learn this way, over the internet. The broadcast program would need to be supplemented by the written material, so the profits could come from that side.
At least it would keep them off the streets. And they could socialise by rotating houses with their friends for lessons. The school of the air is already here, so why couldn’t it be widened?