We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Here is a list of the 20 most ugly university campuses in the USA. I do not disagree with the choices. I have to say that back home, one of the worst was the University of Brighton, where I studied; the only mitigating factor was the lovely Sussex countryside. Other graduates of Brit universities may disagree. Go on, put up your votes for the worst, or for that matter, the nicest (it has to be pretty much any of the old Cambridge colleges).
(Hat tip: Stephen Hicks).
Random question: is there a correlation, or even a cause-effect relationship, between the aesthetic crapness of a place of learning and the amount of learning that actually goes on?
Here is an interesting profile of Deborah Ross, the American entrepreneur who also manages to home-school her children. Naturally, the thought does occur to me, in the light of the recent controversy kicked up by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s thick-headed remarks about sharia law, whether parents with strong religious views who want to indoctrinate their kids, against their children’s will, might bring the idea of home-schooling into disrepute. Personally, I think the benefits of letting parents play a much more hands-on role in schooling outweigh some of the disadvantages, particularly if children have the ability at a certain age to choose how they want to be schooled (the issue of giving children more freedom is still a very controversial one, even among liberals). The key change that must come, in my view, is an end to compulsory schooling or at the very least, a sharp reduction in the existing school age, rather than raising it ever further. I am also in favour of hacking away regulations to make it easier for companies to take on youngsters as apprentices. Many young folk are bored senseless at school and would be far less disruptive if they could learn a trade and generate the pride that comes with a paying job, while keeping up with academic subjects at a later date if they want (this might also reduce youth crime a bit).
Children are naturally inquisitive and rebellious against authority – thank goodness – so my reservations about some of the people who want to school their kids at home are not very large, although I do not dismiss them lightly. I sometimes hear in discussions about home-schooling the old canard about how children educated this way are less well ‘socialised’ than their supposedly more fortunate, state or private-school peers. I doubt this: having myself suffered the joys of state schooling, with all the charms of bullying and indifferent teaching that went with it, the idea of encouraging a possibly more individualistic culture as a result of home schooling is to be welcomed (my education experience was not all bad: I got a good degree in the end, so must have done something right). Many people who have been subjected to more than 11 years of compulsory education in a boarding school or some state school never recover their self-confidence as adults. In any event, the whole point here is that education should not have to follow one ‘ideal’ system at all. As a libertarian, I say let education evolve where it will. Does that mean that Walmart or Barclays Bank should be able to run schools? Yes, why the heck not? I look forward to reading headlines like this: “Education Ltd, Britain’s largest listed schooling company, launched a daring bid for Lycee France, the Paris-listed school chain which has boasted the highest examination result tests for the last five years. The deal, if it goes through, would produce a group to rival that of School Corp, America’s largest education chain by market cap.”
Anyway, I strongly recommend people read the whole article. This Wikipedia entry is also a pretty interesting overview with loads of links for different approaches around the world to homeschooling.
A headline in the Australian newspaper struck my eye just now: ‘Teachers warm to merit pay‘. A deeper reading of the story reveals a few caveats, but the fact that Australian education unions are willing to concede anything at all to the principle still struck me as the most surprising thing to me. I thought we’d see peace in the Middle East, cold fusion and spending cuts long before seeing education unions in Australia concede the principle of merit pay.
One of the briefing notes that I get from a stockbroking company has this to say:
I see from the headlines that this Government seems to be reverting to type over the treatment of fee paying schools. When times get tough, “lets put a bit of trendy legislation through attacking those nasty ‘rich’ people” in a desperate attempt to divert attention away from the state of the economy. The definition of ‘charity’ used to be ‘for the public good’; it would be difficult to find a better description of that than educating a seriously large section of the ‘public’ (even if you are Middle Class you are still part of the Public), to a much higher level then the average at absolutely no cost to the Exchequer, and with money that has already been taxed at 40%.
The definition of ‘charity’ (where Public Schools are concerned), now appears to exclusively mean ‘benefiting those in poverty’ which, were it applied universally, would put virtually every charity in existence in a bit of a quandary. The problem with this type of legislation, is that it is almost impossible to defend against because it will always be the majority ganging up on the few (remember fox hunting?), especially when the few are perceived as the privileged minority. The UK establishment seems to be doing its normal reaction to success, which is not to lambaste the failures but to drag down the achievers.
The circular refers to this story. Now, ideological purists for classical liberalism might well argue that charitable tax breaks are a problem, since they immediately beg the question of who gets to decide who is entitled to the tax break and why. Far better, of course, to get rid of the taxes in the first place and let people spend as they wish; part of the case for low, flat taxes of course is that it will remove the need for a vast stage-army of accountants, lawyers, “tax planners” and the like who earn a high living on what is essentially paper-shuffling rather than genuine wealth creation. But, but… we live in the world we have, not Galt’s Gulch. Hence the current attack on tax breaks and government interference in private schools should be seen for what it is; an attempt to further undermine any semblance of independent education in the UK.
Of course, Samizdata regulars will know that for real radicalism about education, we need to embrace the notion of removing compulsory schooling across the board, but I’ll discuss that again in the future, no doubt.
In some of the recent understandable moans about the sheer awfulness of Britain’s state-controlled rail network – please don’t try and tell me it has much to do with laissez faire capitalism – several commentators have complained about the dearth of people entering the fields of engineering. Jeff Randall in today’s Daily Telegraph does so. Various reasons are given for this lack of talent: the education system, an anti-science, anti-technology culture, etc. While some of these factors have a part to play in this, I do not think these explanations get to the core of the issue. If railway engineers do not earn large salaries and the job is not seen to be worth the hassle compared with say, becoming a hedge fund manager in London’s West End, it is not a surprise to see what will happen. If or when the remuneration for being a new Brunel rivals or even exceeds that of being a Goldman Sachs derivatives dealer, we will get more engineers, and of higher quality. It is that simple.
Or maybe one problem is that railways, perhaps because of the problems now facing the UK industry, are seen as just plain dull. As Randall says, confessing to being a railway engineer may not always be a great move at a dinner party, or for that matter, on a hot date. I am not sure how one changes that.
From our special correspondent:
“Party boss Ed “bulging eyes” Balls told a respectful yet cheerful gathering of tractor workers in Omsk that the 10-year plan to increase tractor production by 1000% between now and 2018 was achievable. “Men,” he said, his voice quavering slightly as the chill Siberian wind blasted through, “we can and will produce more tractors, of higher quality, over the next 10 years. Britain needs tractors. Tractors need Britain. It is true that despite our heroic efforts, and the massive, Soviet resources spent by Comrade Gordon, that tractor production continues to lag. But let us not be downhearted. We know that tractor production in the past has been held up by the capitalist sympathisers, wreckers and revisionists working for the late traitor, A. Blair. We can and will do better over the next 10 years.”
At least, that is what I thought he said. Maybe it was education instead…….
For some sanity on how to get the state out of education, check out this website.
Update: related thoughts on home schooling and education by David Friedman (son of the great Milton).
Another update: Fabian Tassano has been a tireless campaigner against the odious idea of keeping people in school until the age of 18. His new book is also very good.
Recently I have been teaching a small boy the ancient art of handwriting. Make the small Ts bigger! Careful with those zeros, they’re looking like sixes! Well done, it looks very neat! Yes I know it’s hard, but keep going! And so on. Thank goodness for pencils. But there is a problem here. Is handwriting really that important any more? It was in a comment on that posting from fellow Samizdatista Michael Jennings that the handwriting question recently presented itself to me.
Oh, I am sure that educational experts can correlate handwriting with achievement later on, just as in former times Latin went with being clever. But the fact remains that even highly-educated adults, and perhaps especially highly-educated adults, now hardly make any use of handwriting. We sign our signatures. If we are very pre-computer (as I still am in lots of ways) we write hand-written shopping and to-do lists, but more and more, people surely use electronic organisers for such things, if they use anything at all. And I find that the only stuff I remember now is stuff that I have blogged, because blog postings remain legible and are properly and accessibly stored, unlike my hand-written lists. If we are adolescents or young adults, we still use handwriting to take exams, in great intellectually sterilised halls, into which no information may be taken other than in one’s head. But is knowledge retention now the skill that really matters? Surely knowing how to use computers to acquire knowledge is at least as important.
Recently a friend told me of her worry about her young sons neglecting their homework, but instead becoming utterly engrossed in some immensely complicated and long-drawn-out computer game. My hunch is that they are learning at least as much while obsessing for hour after hour about this game as they would if snatched away from their computer and forced to trudge through yet more school work for a few more tedious minutes each day. But is that right?
I do not need persuading that reading remains an absolutely essential skill, with typing, in one form or another, having become almost as valuable. But: what use now is handwriting? I do not ask this in a sneering, it’s-useless way, as a merely rhetorical question. Maybe handwriting really does still have crucially important uses. If the teaching of handwriting is every bit as valuable as it ever was, I would love to be told this, and told why, so that I can proceed with my own current teaching duties with renewed enthusiasm? But, is it?
Further to my recent post about new measures from our Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. Foreign readers may be surprised that we have a department for children schools and families (sic). I, on the other hand, am alarmed: even the name indicates the totalitarian intent of the New British state.
Prompted by a clip on TV news, I have now found the full text of Ed Balls’s speech given to the Fabian Society yesterday. Didn’t the resolution to announce new policy to parliament, not outside bodies – in this case a para-Party body – last a long time? It bears close reading:
Excerpt I:
Our ambition must be that all of our young people will continue in education or training.
That is what our Bill sets out to achieve – new rights for young people to take up opportunities for education and training, and the support they need to take up these opportunities; alongside new responsibilities for all young people – and a new partnership between young people and parents, schools and colleges, local government and employers. ….
But it is important to make clear that this is not a Bill to force young people to stay on at school or college full-time. They will be able to participate in a wide range of different ways through:
* full-time education, for example, at school or college
* work-based learning, such as an apprenticeship
* or one day a week part-time education or training, if they are employed, self-employed or volunteering more than 20 hours a week.
But the Education and Skills Bill is a bill of responsibilities as well as a bill of rights.
Because if young people fail to take up these opportunities, there will be a system of enforcement – very much a last resort – but necessary to strike the right balance between new rights and new responsibilities.
Phew – not necessarily locked up in schools then, but on probation otherwise (as will of course any employers be – they’ll have to have enhanced CRB checks, of course). This is enlightening as to what Mr Brown means when he talks about a Bill of Rights and Duties, “building upon existing rights and freedoms but not diluting them – but also make more explicit the responsibilities that implicitly accompany rights…”. It confirms what many listeners will have guessed: you have the right and freedom to do exactly what the big G tells you to. This is the traditional line of Calvinism and Islam, is it not?
Don’t you love that “our young people”? Völkisch, nicht wahr?
Excerpt II:
The second building block [after mucking around with exams and the curriculum some more – GH] is advice and guidance – so that young people know and understand what is out there, and can be confident that they can make choices that will work for them.
First, this means local authorities taking clear responsibility for advice and guidance as part of the integrated support they offer to young people – making sure that youth services, Connexions and others who provide personal support to young people come together in a coherent way.
Second, clear new national standards for advice and guidance.
Last week my colleague Beverley Hughes set out clearly what we expect of local authorities as they take responsibility for the services provided by Connexions.
Third, a new local area prospectus available online, already available from this September in every area – setting out the full range of opportunities available, so that young people can see the choices available to them clearly in one place.
So not only will whether you do something state-approved be checked, but what you do will be subject to state advice and monitoring and made from a menu provided by the state. For the uninitiated Connexions is a formerly semi-independent, and notionally voluntary, database surveillance scheme for teenagers set up under the Learning and Skills Act 2000.
Exciting news for British schoolchildren. Early leavers ‘will not be jailed’ (PA). Except of course they will be under control orders, in effect; incarcerated and enslaved part-time. “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance,” ran the old slogan. This policy is pretty clear evidence that what’s offerred to many in the state school system is not education. If you have to force people to take something, then it is not plausiible that it is of use to them. There is no problem selling education and training to those who want it. Even very poor parents in London often find money for extra lessons or private day-schooling on top of the taxes they pay to imprison other people’s children. The prison function of the system reduces its value to others.
Put aside for the moment whether it should be paid for from taxes or not. How much more cost-effective would state education be if it were voluntary, and the classes were full of eager participants and even the grumpiest teenagers present were those whose parents or peers had persuaded them it was worthwhile? How much better would the curriculum be if it had to attract an audience by being interesting or useful, rather than prescribed by bureaucrats? How much better would teachers feel about their work if it didn’t include the roles of commissar, bureaucrat and gaoler?
Teenagers who refuse to stay in education until they are 18 will not face jail, Schools Secretary Ed Balls insisted ahead of new legislation to raise the leaving age.
The reform – hailed as one of the biggest in education for half a century – will be included in the first Queen’s Speech of Gordon Brown’s premiership on Tuesday.
Mr Balls said the legislation, which will raise the age to 17 by 2013 and 18 by 2015, will be backed by a “robust regime” of support and sanctions including spot fines and court action.
Since if you are at school you are barred from employment without the permission of the authorities, I imagine they will pay the fines with the proceeds of robbery and prostitution. Well done, Balls!
Where is the Israel boycott? The University and College Union (UCU) does not know how to deal with the calls for a boycott and have received legal advice that the action would be illegal. The legal advice noted that the boycott would contravene discrimination legislation and that it did not meet the aims and objects of the union. There is a fitting irony that the boycott demanded is defined as discriminatory under the politically correct legislation advanced by the New Left. Moreover, it does not appear to meet the union’s legal reason for existence which is, of course, pursuing the interests of its members.
Sally Hunt, general secretary of the UCU, insisted the majority of the union’s 120,000 members would neither support a boycott call nor regard it as a priority. She said last night: “I hope this decision will allow all to move forwards and focus on what is our primary objective, the representation of our members.”
However, Sue Blackwell, a member of the union’s executive and of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine, said of the decision: “It is quite ridiculous. It is cowardice. It is outrageous and an attack on academic freedom.”
This is the stupidity of the Left. Bound by laws that they passed, they now howl in frustration since they find their own freedoms circumscribed. These laws were designed to silence their enemies, not themselves. Even more galling is the long march of infiltration designed to provide an organised platform for their sectarian ways falling before the legal demands of British law. They fall back upon their own odious shibboleth of an academic freedom that they do not espouse for others. The shrill hysteria of the disappointed pervades Amjad Barham’s article, who is rather vocal for a man who has been silenced:
By resorting to bullying, censorship and intimidation, however, the Israel lobby in the US and UK, supported by the Israeli government and academic establishment, is declaring its definitive loss of confidence in its own ability to rationally refute the case for an academic boycott against Israel.
By muzzling debate and free discussion on the boycott, the lobby and its supporters within the UCU are suppressing academic freedom in the most crude manner. They are proving once again that they were never concerned about the alleged “infringement” of the boycott on academic freedom; rather, their only concern has always been how to shield Israel’s unique form of apartheid from scrutiny and censure. Their aim has been to protect the Israeli academy from damning accusations of complicity in maintaining Israel’s oppression of all Palestinians, academics and students included…
Needless to say, the boycott campaign will not only continue, but is likely to gain public support among western academics in particular; the true face of the anti-boycott camp has been exposed as a McCarthyist front that unabashedly violates the most revered values of academic freedom and open debate.
They have every right to debate, boycott and protest in print, academia and in politics. They just will not be able to use the vehicle of UCU for their demands since this is probably illegal. We really need to educate the Palestinian sympathisers about the rule of law. It might make their campaigns more intelligent.
James Porter, the headmaster of a private school, has been convicted over the death of a three year old child who fell from some playground steps and died. The implications of this monstrous and truly idiotic ruling are that soon visits to the playground will become a thing of the past unless the students are wearing safety helmets and body armour and are supervised by a team of lawyers at all times.
It is a tragedy that a young child died after jumping down a few stairs but that is just the way life is… sometimes it ends in premature death for no good reason other that children are wont to act like children. That is sad but it is also not just no one’s fault, it is entirely acceptable as life has its casualties and to blame this teacher is truly, truly monstrous.
Of course it cannot have helped that James Porter made the supremely sensible but very politically politically incorrect statement that “[Children] need to learn how to move in any given situation in a way that will protect them from injury. If they don’t have that facility, if we simply wrap them in cotton wool, they will never learn that lesson.”
But never mind that everyone seems to agree that there was nothing unusually unsafe or in any way exceptional about this particular flight of steps, this man has been found guilty under some preposterous health and safety regulations regardless. We seem to be heading down the enervating and idiotic path blazed by the United States in which every mishaps has to be someone else’s fault regardless of common sense or natural justice. Appalling.
Now I am always quick to say nasty things about the British state and the state’s educational system in particular, but this article is really strange (as in ‘has little relation to reality’ type strange).
So waiting for the Dolphin swim at Discovery Cove in Orlando, my daughter Nikki and I were seated with a Brit family – mom, daughter and son. After small talk about the great value of the pound vs the dollar etc, I mentioned that Churchill was one of my heroes. The son, no more than 16 countered that he really liked Hitler, and his sister Gandhi. I was stunned and sickened. […] In speaking privately with his mother after my discussion, she stated that this is the new curriculum in the British schools to combat “prejudice” against Germans. They teach the children not to “judge” Hitler.
Sorry but much as I might slag off the state and all it’s works, this is preposterous. In fact of all the screwed up things I have heard about the goings on in British schools, I have never heard of anything even close to this. I suppose it shows the dangers of deriving your views of the situation in some other country on a casual conversation with a single group of strangers.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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