The Incite - Counting the educational cost of a delusional Government

Political Interference Damaging Childrens Education.

Originally I had intended to write this article as a muse piece but there's a problem with that. The problem is simply that, after looking at the facts of the issue, I am both mortified and wholly enraged at the absolute delusional arrogance as expressed by the idiots in Government when it comes to education. In every sense I observe the information I've researched with abject horror, horror that the imbeciles that claim to represent the best interests of the nation cannot see the incredible damage that they are causing by doing what they are whilst maintaining their undeserved stance of "we are right all the rest of you don't know anything"

In the article produced by the Independent clear indication is given of the current Governments abject failure to introduce effective management solutions to education. In fact it would be fair to say that Labour have decided that the bunch of economists, political researchers, close friends of Tony Blair, businessmen, and an ex probation officer are somehow better equipped to deal with the realities of education than perhaps the teachers themselves. After all what the hell to teachers know about teaching.

By the way I wasn't kidding about the team of fools currently buggering up the country by producing low quality education tailored to meet statisticians targets. Looking at the quality of people I would say that none of them have any significant background experience within which to support the education system and the issues facing it today.

From the Independent:

The biggest inquiry into primary education for 40 years concluded yesterday that Labour's tight, centralised control of England's primary schools has had a devastating impact on children's education. Micromanagement, meddling and a succession of ministerial edicts have killed the spontaneity in the nation's classrooms. Teachers have been stripped of their powers of discretion. And the net result of a decade of new Labour "reform" has almost certainly been a decline in the quality of education that the young receive.

That about sums up how proficient the team of fools are really. It has been the style of the current Government and, in my estimation, any potential future administration, to assume that they know how to 'manage' and how to define and deploy 'best practice' processes without actually correctly engaging anyone of significant use to the issues at hand. The final damning line in the above paragraph clearly indicating that there is a decline in the quality of education. Of that there can be no doubt. However, it's not enough to speculate alone, anyone can arbitrarily say that everything's going to the dogs, however, I base my position on empirical observation as a result of travelling the world and actually seeing what is happening in other countries. I'm sorry to report, this country is truly screwed, however, UK population just doesn't see it yet.

Let me explain what I mean. I'll tell you a little story about Russia, I've had the opportunity to teach in Moscow three times now to teach the mobile operator engineering staff out there. What is significant is that at the time I went there the mobile company rented a section of the University of telecommunications. I managed to chat about the facility to many of my students and got a real insight into what was happening there. To begin with I was struck with the dark, cold austereness of the place, solid steel doors and small windows leading to dark classrooms. Quite a marked contrast to the mobile operators rented space which was fairly modern, light and warm. However, within the confines of the university lay a couple of key issues that need to be aired for anyone reading this to be clear on what's going to happen to this country as a result of Labour's disastrous attitude. .

First, I can assure you that Russian education systems do not appear to follow this batshit idea that everyone is capable of achieving exactly the same grade in everything if they are all given equal opportunity. No that's not a philosophy I saw, I observed a competitive and dynamic environment, a state that completely opposes New Labour's failed concept. Ask yourself this, place one student brought up in a competitive environment against one that has been taught that nobodies more special than anyone else and determine for yourself who would succeed and who would go looking for a consolation hug because they didn't have a fucking clue what had just happened to them. Secondly there was no significant penetration of computers that were apparent outside of specific computer based technology training. The teachers taught with chalk, the students wrote with pens, on paper, with no spell check, no access to the internet where all the answers are and all the networks of plagiaristic content live and absolutely no fucking multiple choice. Again put the two students side by side ask them a maths question that tests their ability to derive a solution from first principles and watch one do that and the other fail because there was no choices for the answer to choose from. Finally (there would be more but I'll draw the line at this for Russia) the lecturers get paid about £20 a month, the only way they can possibly earn enough to live in Moscow is through private tuition. In order that they get sufficient students to supplement their income they set the exams at the highest possible level of intelligence permissible. That is to say that the questions are so hard that a large section of the class will be required to pay for personal tuition to eventually pass the exam. Compare and contrast with our current system of just learning what specific questions are going to appear on the multiple choice test. Again tell me, two students, one who has absolutely had to work every painful personal step to be able to pass complex mathematics exams through the application of first principles against another who has been taught that the question most likely to be asked would require this specific answer. I think I know who's going to need a few more consolation hugs as they watch the other run fucking rings around them. By the way, I also know who I would employ over a British student in areas requiring maths, computer sciences, or telecommunications engineering

Looking at the Russian situation it's clear that what we are doing and proposing to do as a nation cannot hope to compete with the rock solid development of critical thinking from first principles that they are still using. I think one of the most telling episodes of my time over there emerged from a conversation with an interpreter, starry eyed and full of magical illusions of the grandeur of the British university education system he asked if I knew about the University of Central Lancashire as he was considering a business degree from there. I had a look and whilst I was perusing the website I discovered that they offer a Bachelor of Sciences degree in homeopathy. I went back to the chap that had, with starry eyes, enquired as to the virtue of this university and told him in no uncertain terms that as far as I was concerned, any educational establishment offering a BSc in dishing out distilled water deserves only one type of application, that of petrol and a match. I had to explain to him what homeopathy was because of his incredulous reaction, he was stunned when I explained to him that a British University was offering degrees in giving out 'cures' that were more likely to contain a molecule of his piss than anything resembling an active ingredient.

It is important at this stage to understand where we are as a nation in terms of our abilities in academia. It's perhaps of value to look at the results for the past few years of the International Mathematics Olympics. The following outlines the primary positions and UK position in the overall results:

2007 Russia, China, Vietnam, UK at 28th in the ranking
2006 China, Russia, Korea. UK at 19th
2004 China in the lead followed by USA, Russia, and Vietnam. UK appears 20th in the list just under Mongolia
2003 Bulgaria, China, USA. UK is joint 10th with Hungary
2002 China, Russia, USA with UK at 27th.

What is obvious is that China and Russia are significant factors ahead of us and indeed this is not surprising when considering a recent article presented by the BBC where they outlined two maths questionsone as an entrance exam question for the potential Chinese maths degree student and another for a UK first year maths student. I do know, without doubt, that the question for the UK student I was expected to be able to answer in my fourth year of secondary education. It does not take a PHD to figure out who is losing overall.

However, the question is does it matter? We have computers to do the jobs of deriving from first principles, we have calculators that have more processing power driving the display than was in the original space shuttle. We have sophisticated software for modelling almost everything, why is it not a natural evolution to just learn the tools rather than the underlying principles that drive them? Well, there are answers, some clear, some obscure. To begin with, the stepping away from the principles means that there is no real understanding of the subject and so any answers derived from just a tool is only as accurate and as powerful as the tool itself, which is a disconnection from the freedom of thought required to be a truly revolutionary thinker. Furthermore of course it's a fundamental degradation in the ability to think critically. However, this is where the obscure warning occurs, in order to better appreciate the ramifications of this 'dulling down' it's of use to watch the following video. It must be made clear that the facts and figures stated in the video are not qualified but my general impression is that there is fair representation of the zeitgeist and a pretty accurate representation of the technology predictions:

From the video you can get a fair picture of how things are moving, as the title states, shift happens. Therein lies the issue, with the stepping away from critical analysis and the blind acceptance of tools to do functions the Government truly are robbing the children of the ability to be able to cope with the forthcoming flux that will happen. Because what can be said, without fear of contradiction, is that no matter what changes the principles remain the same. Principles that are being taught less in favour of telling children exactly what they should learn to answer the exam whilst simultaneously offering science degrees in unproven pseudo scientific bullshit resulting in giving people who need proper medical attention dying.So the point isn't lost, that means that our population can get a science degree for something that is not scientifically qualifiable or subject to critical analysis.

So how much damage is being done? Well, if the video statements are only half correct then we are dealing with an issue that is going to be a major disaster in a shockingly short time indeed. It is fair to say that any reduction in the capacity and capability of a society to process functions through critical analysis and first principles will inevitably lead to degradation in output originality and viability. In other words we begin to loose the foundations of a society that is capable of producing cutting edge technologies, inspirational engineering, and the free thinking required to be flexible in the coming times. This loss can be viewed as a deficit in context to global progression, and greatly diminishes from the ability to produce the radical solutions that are going to be required for social survival. When that deficit is held against the proposals outlined in the previous video then one can derive that the deficit will become exponential and potentially irrecoverable. If indeed, as is postulated by current academic reasoning and industry, the situation is currently far from good then, again in context with the video, it is fair to say that the near future result of a degraded generation is nothing less than the beginning of the end of this nation as anything of worth.

So is it all bad? Well no not really, children today have far greater access to vocational based education than ever before, and to my mind that is a significant improvement from my day where the options for the less academically qualified were limited. It is fair to say that this Government have been a key player in making this happen, where, for example, in my days of education either you got a good job based on your academic abilities or you became a manual labourer or a hairdresser etc, the number of potential opportunities has increased significantly. Children have more access to more subjects than ever before and this is a good thing, but the issue is that the Government seems to think that this mode of education is the only form that is relevant to the future and it really isn't. It only has operational viability within a certain scope of the child demographic, attempting to apply this ubiquitously is as detrimental as I have postulated. I would be confident that many teachers would agree that in order that the whole system viability is maintained then the application of which child accesses which educational style MUST be maintained at the correct level, the schools themselves, NOT the Government. This allows for flexible growth which ultimately would return a flexible, dynamic workforce capable of determining, designing, developing, and delivering solutions to the incredible challenges which this nation will face in the not too distant future.

In summary, we can demand that the Government maintains it's development of educational concepts but steps right out of the management of the application of those concepts, instead deferring to the people who are in the best position to determine if there is likely to be success to a strategy, the teachers themselves. The alternative is a generation looking for a consolation hug because they didn't have a fucking clue what had just happened to them.