The General Election has featured little on the state of education other than some mildly grandiose plans on tax, on culture and on funding. Education is a political issue whether people like it or not and it has become more political throughout the years. Education is catch-all term for the attitudes we have to the raising of the next generation and in some ways this is the canary in the coal mine of what parties actually want.
The state of education is at a crossroads right now, politically. Putting the sheer demands on it aside for a moment, there is a real ideological problem with the educational institutions from nursery to university. Students are being short-changed in the most basic fundamentals of education up and down the country. This revolves around what education is; understanding.
Education is meant to be a place where knowledge is given on many different topics in varying degrees of sophistication depending on your age. Though the information gets tougher and more in depth as you get older the main mission remains the same; getting young people to learn how to learn. In order to learn from a young age you are taught to increase your memory. Then you are taught the basics of understanding like mathematics or speech. Then you are taught to understand facts, figures and the basic relationship between them all. Then you are taught interpretations of those facts and figures and understand the baby steps of application of interpretations on a wider scale. Then you are taught to think for yourself, by giving you options, choices of what to look into more and how to look into it more. You go down routes that interest you and you are challenged along the way, helping you understand that learning happens all of the time and the moment we stop learning is the moment we are confident we have seen and analysed every single angle we can find. We are taught the final lesson; coming to conclusions. This comes at the end and is often symbolised by a dissertation. Even at the end we acknowledge the different ideas that often conflict with each other and appreciate the ideas we eventually disagreed with and acknowledge how every single bit of what we have learned, even the bits we didn’t like, led us to this moment, this conclusion. We are then ready to take on the world.
This entire process takes on average 21 years. For the whizz-kids it might take a year or two less. For those who learn slowly it could take far, far longer. But that is education in a nutshell from a young age to adult-hood. We haven’t even discussed learning how to interact with people and the nuances of intelligence and emotional intelligence but we just don’t have the time to go through that.
What has happened since the 1990s however, is a bastardisation of the entire process of education. From an ideological perspective the education system has lost sight of its original purpose and become a place of activism. Though this can be traced to the 1960s when students made up a massive percentage of voices of protest during the Vietnam War for example. This kind of militancy is not unusual. Students made up a large percentage of those who joined the Bolshevik revolution. Students made up the zealous ranks of the Nazi movement in the early 1930s. Students were also those who were brave enough to stand up to the Nazis in the later years. There has always been a challenging nature to students that has never gone away. Students, however, are being in some ways short-changed because this kind of militancy is no longer coming from the natural questioning of authority but from the very educational institutions themselves.
Here is one statistic that emphasises this cultural shift in the education institutions. In the 1970s for every 1 right-wing academic teacher there were 3 left-wing academic teachers. Now that has shifted to 1 in 9. This illustrated the direction the education system is going in. This is not simply a domination of left-wing views on things like the economy or compassion. There is a radical-left ultra-progressive programme that is in action in our institutions today. This programme is very much anti-western, anti-intellectual and anti-British in so many ways. Here is a list of the sorts of things on that programme:
The British are uniquely evil regarding their legacy on empire.
The British are uniquely evil regarding their legacy on slavery
Western institutions are institutionally racist and are de-legitimate
Western family values including the nuclear family are tools of white-oppression
The world is a system of oppressors and oppressed
White (and Jewish) people are the oppressors. All minorities are the oppressed
Gender and sex are different and gender is a ‘spectrum’
Confusion about your own body is normal and could very well be a sign of body-dysmorphia
Islam is an oppressed minority and so many of Radical Islam’s actions are justified
Capitalism is the root of evil
People should be categorised into different and separate racial, sexual and cultural groups
Climate change is a uniquely human cause and the apocalypse could be coming at any moment.
The nation-state should be done away with
‘Transexuals’ and ‘Transvestites’ should have access to young children as young as 5 to extol the virtues of their lives
Critical Race Theory (the re-radicalisation of society) should be encouraged with regards to oppressors and oppressed
There are many other aspects to this new programme but the points above are perhaps the big highlights. The point here is not necessarily whether the above points are good or bad, or should be outlawed in schools. That is for politicians to argue about. The point is that the above points are not challenged and are placed onto students who have not yet reached the stage where they are meant to challenge or even be exposed to these ideas. Whether you agree with one, some or all of the points above the point of education is to reveal, challenge and come to an understanding about the arguments and the conclusions found. The problem with education is that the above are seen as beyond discussion, beyond challenge, and it creates an ‘us versus them’ mentality that means that learning has finished and indoctrination has started. By the age of 16 students are of a mentality where they are genuinely afraid of people with other points of view and are incapable of listening let along talking with someone of a different opinion. Those who have been indoctrinated with these points without any kind of critical thinking are most likely to unfriend, most likely to ostracise people in their family and even call for cancelling of those in positions of authority. Whether you agree with the above points or not is irrelevant, it’s the ability to convene in society with those you disagree that is the problem.
Whether you agree or disagree with a few or a lot of the above programme the bigger problem is the very real reaction to it and the crossroads we are at. One way is that we reform the education system and the Tories to their credit started a tentative move towards it with the Free Speech Act for example. The other route is far worse but a lack fo action over this issue will make this route more likely and that is a parallel education structure. We are in a very real and dangerous position where we could have right-wing and left-wing institutions set up, thereby creating a parallel society. No one knows how bad this is more than in Northern Ireland where there are separate educational institutions based on religious lines. That community is divided fundamentally through its education system. If we choose that same route on an ideological level we are creating a bigger problem that will only get far worse. The crossroads is where we are, and we could be forced to go down one of them. Surely an education system where all can thrive is preferable to a parallel structure that is gaining more and more support, certainly in America where they are far further down the track than us.
What are the parties saying about this? After 14 years the Tories have let this problem continue either wilfully or with some kind of wilful blindness. There has been a Free Speech Act that prevents academics for being cancelled in university but it doesn’t really do very much else. The proposed ban on Trans ideology in schools is another initiative though that has yet to see any daylight. Labour want to remove the Trans ban and in all likelihood would prefer to see the education system go full steam ahead with its trajectory. Reform would like to see a ‘patriotic curriculum’ which emphasises critical thinking and a positive attitude about Britain and its history, though how that would work in practise is not quite known.
Secondly there is the problem of overstretching. The education system is filled to capacity. There aren’t enough school places, especially in the public sector. Teachers are leaving the profession. Classed of between 20-45 make learning difficult if not impossible. Attainment is low and university places are a premium at the great institutions as universities prioritise higher-fee-paying international student over domestic or British students. In terms of attainment white working class students are amongst the worst in terms of attainment according to the Sowell Report. The lack of school places is in a major part down to mass immigration and mass immigration of students into the British educational system. With a population rise of 10 million in 50 years the education system has struggled to keep up. Teachers are leaving as working conditions are difficult, though the love for teachers is not great with militant teaching unions and the envy over the wonderful holidays, though teachers would naturally refute that! There just aren’t enough schools, school places and teachers and support staff to accommodate the demand. Home schooling is now a genuine alternative for parents where children don’t learn the vital importance of social interaction at a level that is so important for them. At university students are having to take degrees with little to now application in the real world just to go to a prestigious university, saddled with debt so large it would take the average post-graduate until the age of 45 to pay off fully.
The parties are once again not very forthcoming about this. The Tories and Labour would implement some kind of recruitment drive but that’s about it. Labour would slap VAT on private schools, forcing children from poorer families to have to go out of the private sector and add to the increasingly struggling state sector in comprehensive schools, which seems counter-productive from an educational point of view as well as financial. Reform would freeze immigration to limit the numbers to allow schools and other institutions to absorb the influx, but it might be too little too late. They would also encourage private schools for families through tax breaks and incentives.
Thirdly, and this is slightly relevant in this topic, there is an argument to give some students (16-17 year olds) the vote. Were you ready to vote on the big issues of the day at 16? Did you care? 16-17 year olds pay tax, but they have not paid into a system perhaps long enough to be invested in where it goes. 16-17 year olds can sign up for the army, but they are not allowed into frontline combat roles until they are older. This policy advocated by LAbour and the Lib Dems has frankly come out of nowhere. There is no clamour for this. It’s odd. It looks like an effort to skew the electorate as 16-17 year olds are more likely to vote for left wing parties (what have 16-17 year olds to conserve?). It’s a cynical policy with a cynical argument and deserves little analysis.
Lastly, the ethos around schools are all over the place. There is a far greater emphasis on how students are enjoying their learning over the rigours of education. Discipline, the hallmark of good educational establishments in countries like Finland and Singapore, is second place to making sure students are having a good time. Teachers fear using discipline in case they get into trouble for upsetting students. Students are becoming too relaxed in their studies as parents seem to loosen their own discipline over their kids learning journey. The understanding of education has gone from learning to telling students what they want to hear. Students are far more likely to grab a loud-haler and a flag of whatever cause is popular on social media and protest rather than learning the different arguments, coming to a measured conclusion and then rising through the ranks of a party, institution or readership office to make things better. Teachers and lecturers are being hounded out fo their jobs for falling foul of the new radical left like Kathleen Stock and the Batley teacher still in hiding after showing a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed. Students are leaving education having been, frankly, failed by education. Rather than growing up, students are having their tantrums placated or even exacerbated. We now have a large swathe of adults with the educational capacity of children in so many parts of life as social cohesion further breaks down into a dog-eat-dog society where individualism and intersectional identity trumps many norms that we used to take for granted. Whether you agree or not, surely we must try to encourage social cohesion of antagonism.
If you leave education believing there is a right and a wrong way to be, think and feel where the world is full of good and evil, then education has FAILED you. If you leave education incapable of coexisting in a social structure which has stretched out over hundreds of years with others who both agree and disagree with you then education has FAILED you. If you leave education fearing that there is a fascist behind every corner or that every conspiracy theory from 9/11 to the moon landings is true then education has FAILED you. If you leave education having come to a balanced conclusion based off good-faith and evidence, with an understanding of how those you disagree with came to their conclusion and respect them for it then you have SUCCEEDED with education.
In this election you will get to decide on who you think will safeguard education to make it an actual educational experience for students. You will get to decide who will bring education from the back burner into the spotlight. Education is both the symptom and the cause of what we want the 21st century Britain to be. Education should breed potential but it is up to us as voters to help shape it if it needs shaping and at the moment it is being shaped into a method of indoctrination over learning, thinking and discovery. Vote for what you believe to be the best thing for your children or potential children to experience as children and as adults themselves. Think not only of the past and present but also of the future.
We hope you too have learned something today.
This article first appeared on the TDL Times. For more information, articles and more please visit www.thetdltimes.com.
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