Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Uses of literacy

The guidance, which will be sent to nurseries from January, will include advice to set up role-play activities tailored to boys' interests, such as builders taking phone messages and writing up orders, post office employees writing on forms, and waiters taking orders from customers.
When you're a boy in Brown's Britain, it is possible to fail at three, your future having been decided for you by a woman, a woman who changed her opinions from deepest red to dusty pink and powder blue in the space of a few short years, a woman who is unafraid of educationalists. For you, dear boy, there is a future, one of taking orders. For that is what education is all about: getting you to read, write and rith to a standard sufficient to play a menial but useful role in New New Britain. You will receive your orders from people of Primarolo's calibre, people who hold whatever opinions are optimum for the present contingency, people who ensure that they are the leaders and you are the managed. You will not need to concern yourself with reading or writing for other than work-related purposes. You will not need the university education that Ms Primarolo and others of her generation enjoyed free of charge; you couldn't afford it, anyway. You will not be getting much education at all, little man, since your Government has committed your funds to Trident. Perhaps you should think about running away to sea.

Those of us who had the good fortune to be educated rather than trained can enjoy Mr Challinor's thoughts on this matter.

3 comments:

sas said...

Given New Labour's rant about 'Education (x3)', it is an appalling state of affairs.
I was lucky enough to work with Ken Boston a few years ago and he remains the voice of reason on secondary education.

Philip said...

Thanks for the link. It didn't even occur to me to look up the Primarolo apparatchick's career on Wikipedia; if it had, whatever thoughts might have wandered into the post would probably have drowned in the bile.

Word Verification: esses, letters used to abbreviate Social Services, Social Science, Steam Ship and the British Home Office.

Tim said...

But are they going to standardize this education for the modern world? I was watching a doco on 7 last night about the glamour profession of air hostessing - back to the future all this sounds like to me. And it is all sounding remarkably familiar.