Sometimes I revise and revise and revise my posts in the fear that perhaps I am being too unkind to those who make truly dumb statements. It's not a question of avoiding charges of libel; it's that I was reared not to use ugly names, and always to be polite to others, even when I disagree with them. Still, sometimes I feel I am too harsh when writing about those who assume that all tests are biased, that poor children deserve lower standards, or that schools should be designed around faddish educational ideologies instead of actual education.
But then I read Melanie Phillips' Diary and I don't feel I'm being too harsh at all.
For those of you unfamiliar with her, start here. She's a well-known and controversial British journalist and author. She also runs, on her Diary, a series called "Dunce's Corner." Consider her comments on this entry, in which she objects to the lack of foreign language education in British schools:
Our education system is simply disintegrating. The government's plan to drop foreign languages from the compulsory school curriculum at age 14 has already resulted in some 60% of comprehensive schools dropping compulsory language learning. Many bright children are dropping languages, but as ever the main casualties are the poor...
...government ministers are complicit in this betrayal, saying that the change 'simply acknowledges that some teenagers would prefer to focus on vocational subjects and helps avoid turning them off schooling. Oh, please. This is tantamount to saying that poor children are too stupid to learn a foreign language...
What a betrayal of children. What a condescending, philistine, vandalising government.
No matter how hard I've come down on people, I don't think I've ever used three derogatory adjectives at once. And check out this post on the "depressing vindication" of those, like Phillips, who complain about the dumbed-down nature of British education:
Depressing vindication for people like myself who have argued -- in the teeth of ridicule and outright denial from virtually the entire education establishment -- that education standards have dropped through the floor, that public examinations have been dumbed down and that the universities are having to spend much of their degree courses on remedial work. Lo and behold, now the Chief Inspector of Schools has confirmed that this is indeed all too true.
So now, multiple-choice exam questions are to be replaced by essays, to try to repair the catastophic situation where university students cannot any more sustain an argument...If one is trying to explain why our society now apears so gullible in the face of systematic lies and propaganda, it is because being taught to think has long been out of fashion in what we laughably call our education system.
And a professor of education really comes in for a beating when he seems to be "blaming the victim":
Typical nonsense from Ted Wragg, the education professor, who has been sufficiently moved by the Diane Abbott furore to inflict upon us yet more of his crackpot theories about education. As usual, he says the reason so many inner city schools are so dire is because their children are poor. 'If the fundamental problems of poverty are not addressed, educational initiatives alone will not achieve much', he says.
Pinning the blame for educational underachievement on poverty is tantamount to blaming the poor for their own failure...
Don't miss the comments on this last one. Phillip's Diary is relatively new, but I'll be checking in regularly for her Dunce's Corner segments.
Posted by kswygert at November 18, 2003 06:47 PM