The Amusing Truth About Education

It's probably worth enjoying this again today because the loonies are no longer in charge of the asylum, apparently - since the election.



If the Goves of this world really can't create a way of honestly educating this nation's young then we really are finished.

As this bit of classic comedy demonstrates, all Gove needs to do is, to put it simply, do it! What "it" is is entirely up to him.

But whether the prime minister, or anyone else for that matter, likes it or not, education is the real future of this country - and decontaminating it from years of disastrous socialist dogma must be the first port of call.

If you disagree, then you are [probably] a socialist and you either are just being typically typecast: dull, hysterical and/or dishonest. Or you're just trying to mix things up abit. Pray for you that it's not the latter, because I can get very cranky (!)

Another Word About Michael Gove

My admiration for the man has, if anything, risen even further after his dignified apology to the House of Commons in a personal statement he made in the past few minutes.

Of course it's a cause for concern that 25 schools were left with the impression they were going to enjoy the post-Labour luxury of refurbishment, at massive cost to the taxpayer, through the astonishingly inefficient Balls Future Schools policy, but after his sincere apology about the inaccuracy of the lists released on Monday, which is ultimately a Civil Service issue for which the education minister is properly taking ministerial responsibility - Labourists take note - Gove's reputation remains intact, if not enhanced.

Compare and contrast the reputations of the screaming Labour benches with their fake anger, wallowing in the deepest of hypocrisy. Compare their behaviour and reach the only conclusion possible: not only are they not fit for government, after the hideous unpleasantness of Tom Watson MP, for example (shrieking baseless accusations and vicious insults directly at Gove), a fair proportion of them aren't fit to be Members of Parliament. That will be crystal clear to any sane person watching the exchanges.

There is one other point that's emerged from this latest parliamentary spat and it concerns Bercow. He seems to think the being "Speaker" means he has to speak all the time. He appears to imagine that not only must he intervene to keep order, he must pass judgment on every point made, especially on the Tory side. He apparently considers his condescending, smug, self-publicising manner is appropriate for the great office of state he's attempting, and failing, to fill. I've seen this odious man in action long enough now to know that he's little more than a catspaw for Labour, no doubt to please his wife. He's got to go before he does any more damage to the proper business of parliament and the reputation of the House of Commons. He's that bad.

So, this procedural storm in a teacup, predictably stirred-up by the malignant, mendacious opposition and, one has to say after his questionable interventions and rulings today, by their tame placeman in the Speaker's chair, Bercow, will soon blow over. But the debris left in its wake will not represent obstacles to Gove's or the coalition's programme of righting Labour wrongs and getting their disastrous, spiralling deficit under control. Far from it. Gove's statement has re-established the principle of ministerial responsibility (I have no doubt he offered his resignation to David Cameron, judging by the depth and sincerity of his apology on behalf of his department) after all those years of abuse by the previous Labour regime. It has also revealed the pettiness and revisionism of a contemptible Labour contingent unable to take any responsibility whatsoever for their role in causing the worst crisis in British public finances for, to quote one of their number, sixty years.

Perhaps that's what Gove was doing: smoking out the dishonest, discredited cabal of ex-ministers and their sweaty-toothed left wing comrades on the backbenches with sincerity. It's possible - he's that clever. However, I prefer to think that he was just doing what he thinks is right - owning-up, taking responsibility and apologising for the error. Insodoing he has left no one in any doubt as to his good faith and decency, and cast massive ones over a large swathe of Labour party members'.

"Good faith and decency"? Thy name is not the oily, weasily Bercow, and certainly not the scrofulous Tom Watson. Thy name is Michael Gove.

A Word About Michael Gove

Education is an area that interests me intensely so it might not be surprising that I'm spending the early evening watching the education funding statement on the parliament channel at this very moment (exciting, eh?).

Suffice to say, and in the spirit of his refreshing brevity and precision, Michael Gove is giving one of the more polished parliamentary performances I've seen in defending his policy of suspending Ed Balls' pie-in-the-sky, dishonest pre-election plans for building and refurbishing 700 schools. A number of facts are emerging thanks to Gove's extraordinary mastery of the detail, not least among them the bureaucratic waste, vast inefficiency and dreadful mismanagement of PFI contracts by Ed Balls and the department he apparently headed (even though he seemed far more busy most of the time trying in his role as Gordon Brown's barely house trained thug, propping up the auld fraud and protecting him almost 24/7 from his own cabinet, a full time job in itself).

Gove's handling of the various whining Labour opposition MPs, moaning about things that their own pathetic leadership brought down on them, is just breathtakingly good. The more insulting and detached from reality they become, the more witty and precise his answers become and, in a spiral that can only ever tarnish the grim image of the socialists further, causes the Labour MPs to become even more insulting and detached from reality.

The reason for this is simple: the principles underpinning Gove's policy initiatives, even ones that amount to large but necessary cuts in the education budget at a time, thanks to the disastrous failures of the previous government, of great insecurity in the public finances, are bullet proof. Better value for money, less bureaucracy and higher standards through greater choice are on offer. And you would bet your house that Gove is the sort of man who will deliver.

All poor old Balls, the biggest villain of this piece, can do meanwhile is moan about the list of affected schools not being available in the Commons library for a handful of minutes. That really is the best he can do - and it's not very good, is it? I think I can predict Gove's response: "Ball, E: must do better, but on the strength of past performances probably won't. D-".

Gove is a truly impressive figure - everyone knows that. But when he's up against the likes of feeble Balls and his ilk on the opposition benches, he looks like a world beater. Cameron beware!

Oh dear. And Balls is still moaning away - this time about his money fiddling of that dodgy Islamic faith school some aeons ago. Labourists - you've gotta love 'em (sort of). They are totally clueless. It's a wonder to me they remember to breathe.

For them to be whinging about pre-announced policies is just priceless!

Getting Education Right

Gove will have to take-on the teaching unions -
and he will win

I was pleased to read last night on the Spectator website that 1100 schools have already taken up Michael Gove's invitation to opt for 'Academy' status (basically to opt out of LEA control in the old parlance). I remember last week some heavily unionised lefty university 'expert' on state education, or whatever she was, on Radio 4 (where else?) trying to poo poo the whole thing with the usual nonsense about it creating a two tier system. Well, it didn't before - at least not in the sense she meant - and it won't this time. Opting out leaves more central funding available for schools that need the boost, so that they too can eventually become more independent, manage their own affairs and rid themselves of stultifying state prescribed educational ideology, so long the blight of the education system of Britain - at least since the evil that was the late 60s/early 70s was perpetrated.

In any case, what's so bad about a few high standards for once? What socialists, especially ones who think they're educators of some sort, don't get is that academic aspiration is as natural as any other form of ambition. It cannot simply be magicked away with a wave of some socialist wand, or, more likely, suppressed through some sort of highly divisive forms of social engineering. There is demand for genuine quality - elitism, even - and it will never go away, whether people like Ed Balls think they can make it go away with their interfering, top down interventionist, ideologically motivated lawmaking or not. The point is they haven't - and never would have. Socialists have always thought they could mould human nature by manipulating society by using taxation and interventionist laws as some sort of blunt, clunking sculpting tools. Signs are, after another 13-year dose of them has caused another national cataclysm, that they will never change. They will never understand that,as history shows, the many glorious aspects of human nature evolve gradually over time, and the best politics is the politics that evolves with it, reflecting it while simultaneously creating a society in which the aspirational, ambitious, optimistic, adventurous parts of human nature have the opportunity to flourish.

Still, even though the socialists have once again failed to break the population's general spirit, though they tried as hard as ever, especially through our schools, not least by diluting the exams system to the point where GCSEs, for instance, are almost completely worthless now as tests of a child's intellectual and academic development in any given discipline (especially for prospective employers), you have that nagging sensation in the pit of you stomach that Michael Gove has arrived just in the nick of time.

First, we have the Academies, liberating good schools from central control. Then, we have the other two thrusts of Gove's brilliant, triple-pronged revolution, of which the most important by far is the dismantling of Labour's insane education quangocracy, itself a heavily politicised, labyrinthine, undemocratic, bureaucratic nightmare designed for one purpose: social capture. Gove's already started by abolishing the General Teaching Council (thank God) and two others. The former organisation was designed quite simply to create and monitor a generation of under-experienced, under-educated, over-trained, over-paid, indoctrinated teaching robots - and exclude all others. It worked! Well, its website (all these damn quangos have elaborate websites that seem to mimic government departments' - anyone ever noticed that?) published this note from the gallows yesterday:

The Secretary of State for Education announced on Tuesday 2 June his intention to introduce primary legislation in the late autumn which will abolish the General Teaching Council for England.

In response, the GTC said: 'The GTC was created by Parliament to work in the public interest to improve standards of professional conduct among teachers, to contribute to raising standards of teaching and learning and to raise the standing of the teaching profession.

'We are seeking legal advice on our position and will be seeking urgent clarification from Ministers and Department for Education officials on the implications of today’s announcement for the GTC’s work over the next period and for its staff and Members.'

Looks like they ain't going to go gentle into that good night. So much the better. A public spat will finally bring a bit of scrutiny to bear on these shadow/duplicate government organisations, so expensive and so suspiciously beloved by Labour, that have sprouted up like so much fungi on a fallen oak.

Oh yes, the second part of Gove's three prong revolution is the so-called free schools. Brilliant, and like all organic children of private enterprise, some will fail but most will succeed spectacularly, which will no doubt irritate that lefty, GTC-type woman on Radio 4, who tried to poo poo these too as being 'unprofessional'. Unprofessional? Ha! If the chaos and despair we currently have in Britain is what 'professionalism' (socialist style) delivers, then bring on the amateurs! In fact, and joking apart, I think that Gove has already worked this out. He's trying to break a monopoly of education supply that's grown up over the past thirty or so years, and that has betrayed our children so comprehensively and failed this country so utterly. He knows that the only people who really, genuinely care - or should care - about children's education are parents, not teachers (and especially not unthinking, doubleplusgoodthinking, inadequate young robot teachers). That parents are somehow 'amateurs' should not preclude them from having a huge say in their children's school career.

I know, I know, there's more to it even than all this. All I'm really saying is that Gove looks to me like the real deal - and he must be supported fully and without hesitation. However, having said that, judging by that GTC comment, which is public remember, he is going to be pissing off an awful lot of establishment interest groups (and remember, the left is the establishment in education). Perhaps that's his intention. Well, if it is, he needs to remember that annoying quangos before you dispatch them is one thing, annoying the NUT, with its 300,000 members is quite another. Though having said that, his abolition of the GTC has, strangely enough, gone down reasonably well with the NUT. Its General Secretary, Christine Blower, said yesterday:

"From its inception, the GTC has struggled to overcome the fact that teachers felt it had been imposed on them. Equally, the annual fee of £36.50 has remained a sore point. The NUT has consistently argued that teachers should not have to pay the GTC fee.

"Under the GTC, teachers now feel over-scrutinised. Last year's 'code of conduct' was a worrying development, encompassing activities and behaviour outside of work. It sought to turn aspirations for best practice into rules. Any replacement for the GTC needs to distance itself from the belief that a watchdog can also reserve the right to make intrusive judgments on teachers' personal lives.

I wouldn't count on this superficially supportive sentiment lasting too long if I were Michael Gove, however. She goes on:

"Rather than have outright abolition, all teachers ought to be consulted on whether they believe a professional council for teachers should be maintained. What we cannot have, however, is a council which is at the whims of any Secretary of State. If we are to achieve the holy grail of evidence based policy making, free from political interference, there would be merit in looking at the recent proposal for a Chief Education Officer along the lines of the Chief Science and Medical Officer."

Interesting, isn't it? The NUT was quite prepared to put up with Balls' eternal meddling and politicised interventions. It was even happy, in the end, to put up with the sinister GTC's politicised prescriptions and intrusions. Why? Because Balls is a comrade and the GTC is basically populated by comrades. As soon as Gove comes along, however, with his exciting (or terrifying, if you're a comrade) brand of pragmatic radicalism and a fresh educational philosophy, the time has come for another quango, quick! Or, at the very least, an expensive, 'independent' tsar civil servant who used to be a professor of something or other mildly educational at the University of Brixton, but who, above all, is a comrade.

Gove is definitely doing something right!

Only The Tories Are Listening to Parents

Something struck me yesterday about that whole SATS hoo haa, with education unions about to boycott them, and it was this. In all the news coverage that I saw, not one reporter had thought to ask any of the people who really do count when it comes to education, namely, the 'customers': parents and children. The teachers' and Heads' views are all very well and the benefits or deficiencies of SATS testing is still very much moot.

What's unacceptable is the idea that teachers and Heads, as much as the (Labour) politicians themselves, believe that they can just do what they like without even considering the possibility that the one group they should be consulting, parents (and children, to a certain extent, although I have a fairly old-fashioned view about pupil power), should be sounded-out.

The letter to the Guardian today signed by 650 parents groups, criticising the excruciating Balls and his Labour chums for rubbishing Tory plans for the deregulation of the entire school system, will prove this reality to every sane person. Every sane person, that is, apart from the people who really do need to be re-educated: teachers, Heads and socialists (are those terms tautological?). The Spectator has written something good about this.

But there are two other things that this letter proves that are just as significant:

1) Parents will not be ignored any more and will have their say on these matters, and demand that their right to choose the educational future of their children is respected, and whether agenda-driven, 'we know best' educators (believe me, they don't), officials and politicos like it or not.

2) The Tories have been listening for a long time, and Michael Gove has created a plan that in my view takes a manifesto to that happy place that is so often so hard to reach: a policy that is affordable, popular and right.

The Tories have won the argument on education. Let's hope they win the argument on running the rest of the country too.

I still believe they will, not least because they deserve to, but also because I believe that with policies like this one, they will convince enough people of this reality so they agree with me.

We'll see.

Morning Rant: Libdums, Hague on Schools and The BBC (Again)

Dad examines little Nick's report card

It was less than I'd hoped for but no more than I expected. The sight of wall to wall BBC coverage of the father-son Libdum, Clegg-Cable double act droning on and on about bad policies that will never be enacted (thankfully) or attacking other politicians from a position of, well, what? Total, unconvincing inexperience I would say. The sight of those two, with Clegg looking over at his dad every time he needed approval for something he said about banks or tax or bonuses or shares or whatever, was pathetic. The main point, though, is about the BBC (naturally). Why, exactly, has the BBC decided that every Libdum press conference and Q/A session has to be covered without interruption? They are the third party. What is more, this is the second day in a row our senses have been assaulted by the luminous, fried-egg colour wall and this pair of twits. For a third party, they get a heck of a lot of coverage from the Beeb. And none of the scrutiny (Paxman going easy on Clegg, for instance).

A little later, by contrast, I then had the sound of John Humphreys laying into William Hague about the Tories' excellent and intelligent, proven schools policy. Preferring the sound of his own voice to that of his guest's, especially if he's a Conservative, Humphreys repeated a phrase that I am sure I have heard Ed Ballsup, among other Labourists, use before, namely "a counsel of despair". How making it far easier for parents collectively to intervene in the education of their own children, and perhaps set up a legendary new institution for posterity as well, is quite beyond me, I'm afraid. Seems like the state grant they would receive to do it, in addition to the charitable donations and private funding, amounts to an absolute bargain. Everyone's a potential winner, most of all the children.

Yet Humphrey's pushed it for all he was worth, right up until Hague came up with his hilarious put-down that if state control of anything and everything, which is the position Humphreys appeared to have chosen to adopt - the Labour position - was such a perfect thing, then the Soviet Union would have been a spectacular success instead of the mother(land) of all trainwrecks, which clearly rattled the Humph judging by his response, which was blustery and weak.

I think this policy will resonate very widely and even excite a lot of people in this country, especially if people as good as Hague are making the philosophical case for it, but mainly because it's a damn good idea that, as Hague pointed out at the end, has a proven track record of success in the USA.

The Tories are winning the argument on education. The Libdums don't have an education policy. The BBC has just lost it.

Hero Heckler?

The Spectator is claiming that this, first heckle of the general election campaign made Gordon Brown look absolutely terrible in completely blanking it. It could "reverberate across the campaign" their man says. Of course, I agree. But having looked at the video, I can't help wondering whether it was a setup. It conveniently refers to state school choices, a key Tory policy pledge (and an excellent one).

What do you think?

If genuine, and I hope it is, then it is very damaging for Brown after what has been, so I glean from the blogs, and from what I saw of his last, awful, pmqs, a pretty appalling day for him already. On the other hand, if the heroic heckler is shown to have any links with the Conservative party whatsoever, rather than being purely a parent severely hacked-off with Brown and his disastrous government, then it will backfire badly.

On balance, it probably is an honest and spontaneous outburst (we shall see), in which case the Speccy is right and it provides yet another reason to vote Conservative - to right yet another Labour wrong.

So Cameron has a perfect record today, and is campaigning with furious energy. Well done him. Only 29 more perfect days to go and he's there. Hard work!

Update:
Well, on Ben Butterworth's, (henceforth known as 'The Heckler'), nice blog, he is at pains to point this out: "I'm a floating voter, always have been" and that there's no "political angle".

Good on him, and I apologise for my suspicious mind ;) (His site traffic must have gone through the roof!)

This has been a terrible day for Gordon Brown and Labour. Which means it's been a great day for everyone else! Excellent.

Brown To Wales: You've Never Had It So Good

Fraser Nelson, who finally appears to have twigged that another five years of Labour would probably be a Bad Thing, has posted on Brown's latest nonsense address to the Welsh Labourists. In it, Brown seems to be suggesting that Wales has never had it so good than under Labour, citing the creation of 100,000 phantom jobs and talking, laughably, about his own family's 'poverty', though he has to go back eighty-odd years to his grandparent's generation to find at least the suggestion of it. Nelson gives the lie very effectively to this complacent, vacuous claptrap, and to Brown's murky Welsh job creation figures.

Gordon Brown does not have much of a personal “backstory” but he does talk about his family. When he’s feeling guilty about something, he mentions his father. But today, speaking to the Welsh Labour Party, he again talks about a figure we heard about a few days ago: his grandfather.

“Like so many here I come from a family whose grandfather went without work during much of the 1930s. A grandfather whose small savings gave his son, my father, the chance of an education, the first in our family to go to university. And the lesson of those days is that even in the worst of times families helped each other, supported each other, came to the aid of each other through thousands of acts of friendship caring and support. And that reveals the most important lesson of all; that it’s not markets that create morals: morals spring from the compassion of our hearts”

Given how utterly unremarkable it is to have grandparents who had a tough time in the 1930s, one can only presume that Brown’s aim is to contrast this with Cameron’s grandparents. But playing the “poor family background” card really is pushing it. As a Church of Scotland minister, Brown’s father was in a position to give his family a very comfortable life. Brown simply does not have a poverty song to sing.

Most strikingly, Brown tries to tell Wales how good they’ve had it under Labour with 100,000 more jobs. But, as nationally, how many of these were imported? Surely matters is to what extent economic growth helped those on benefits in Wales. In its case, not very much – as the below graph shows (data from DWP)

On the one hand - the 1930s - I can confirm that Nelson is absolutely right. My great grandfather on my dad's side was a timber salesman in Cumbria. During the Depression, he could only afford to send one of his two sons to university. My grandfather, being the youngest, drew the short straw. Fortunately for him, however, he excelled in school and managed to win a place with the Civil Service, where he enjoyed a long and pretty illustrious career. The only hand-up he'd ever had was a decent education in a selective school. I wonder how he would have fared in Brown's Britain. Mickey Mouse GCSEs followed by Mickey Mouse A-levels followed by - well - followed by nothing. Britain has the highest levels of youth unemployment in Europe (see chart left).

Which brings us to Brown's second laughable claim, this time about Welsh jobs and how 'good' life is in Wales thanks to his largesse with taxpayers' money. The graph to which Nelson refers tells us all we need to know (see above). In terms of benefit dependency, things have only got worse in Wales. Nelson is also right about Brown's pie in the sky jobs figures. If they have been created, then they've been imported. While their numbers have certainly thinned over the past 12 months, and while I am very pleased to count some of them as friends, including my next door neighbours, the fact is that the torrent of Polish immigration to my own town sucked up any spare, low-paid jobs. Mind you, the real reason for this is, if the Poles I know are anything to go on, that they have a powerful work ethic entirely absent from the psychology of your average, undereducated young Welsh man or woman, and this syndrome is repeated throughout Britain.

Poles depend on work in the same way that a large portion of Welsh men and women depend on benefits. Brown and his ilk depend on the latter's votes - and straightforward lies - to maintain power, so the likelihood is that he will want to keep it that way, however morally bankrupt the arrangement clearly is.

So it's certainly time for change in Wales and while I am an ardent Conservative, I am also a realist. The Tories aren't part of the political landscape in this part of the world. They aren't even on the radar. So I will be voting Plaid Cymru in the general election. A tactical vote, I freely admit, but not a wasted one if it helps to kick out Labour from government, and Brown out of Number 10. I am also a bit of a fan of Elfyn Llwyd, who is one of the most impressive figures in Welsh (and Westminster) politics. And I'm a fan of Plaid generally, even if I can never agree with one or two of their policies concerning the future of the Principality.

The point is, all the people I've spoken to over the past year in this part of Carmarthenshire appear to have reached a similar conclusion. They're all ready to send Brown a powerful message about just how 'good' they think it's been under his trainwreck regime, and, in many cases, how totally betrayed they feel.

About time.

Section A, Q1: Spot The Difference

From a 1968, O-level Maths paper. One of two that gave you two hours to answer umpteen questions you wouldn't find on most A-level courses these days.

Cf: GCSE "Higher" Tier, June 2008.
Um.

And:Still haven't worked it out? I'll give you a clue: one is a Maths exam for 16 year-olds being trained for adulthood and a working life, the other is an infantile joke that 600,000 British "kids" preparing for a life of texting each uvva and the dole have just "passed".

We're finished. And socialism finished us.

Comment On "French Education Works"

Bricks in Labour's Wall
"We do need some education. We don't need no thought control."
I am pretty privileged on this blog because I seem to attract comments here that are remarkably enlightened and enlightening and I am grateful for them. A stand-out example is this one from a contributor who goes by the intriguing handle, Black Hole Sunset on a recent rant by yours truly about eductation. Here it is...

No mention by Burnett-Hall of the sense of fulfilment and satisfaction that comes from successful study - from simply knowning more than one did previously. No mention of the happiness and natural balance that comes from leading a productive life, from being able to provide for one's family and friends - and, as an aside, providing for others via the tax system.

"The élite here is still following an academic path created by Napoleon to produce engineers for his armies." - this is supposed to count against the French system? The truth is that most people are not the son or daughter of a career artist (perhaps Burnett-Hall appreciates this but her remarks were taken out of context - or perhaps the Telegraph just wanted at least one contrary opinion but could only, by definition, find a prejudiced idiot to supply it).

For the majority, a high quality education that instills discipline and provides a credible career path would be a dream come true - we can't all be, or would even want to be, artists. Very telling that everyone else they spoke to did almost nothing but heap praise on the French system.

That documentary about North Sea oil (including the first part, which is also knocking around on iPlayer) was absolutely brilliant, and very moving! (I missed it in the listings so thanks for pointing it out) As you say, we couldn't build the Millau Viaduct (just imagine the PFI disaster that would result if we tried) and probably couldn't duplicate the feats of the North Sea oil pioneers either - very sobering to learn just how crucial American money, expertise and bravery were to the whole endeavour, and how poorly thought of were the local workforce.

Education underpins the whole of society, the only thing I can think of that would halt our disastrous slide into mediocrity would be one or other of the various voucher schemes that have been proposed - where parents can decide where they want to apply and schools can compete for the business - no students, no revenue. I would also be inclined to allow schools to select on whatever basis they want (provided their criteria fall within the same bounds that private sector employers are allowed to apply).

I think that part of our problem is that we have a government, and particularly a civil service, which has no real competence in many of the areas in which it must operate (IT, construction, health care, education, utilities etc). They seem to think they can remedy the situation by 'outsourcing' competence, but this is just an invitation to get ripped off by spivs (they also can't tell who is, and who is not, a spiv). I think this is the reason why we've done so badly out of Browns PFI fetish - there is no one in government qualified to negotiate PFI contracts because they have no in-house competence or expertise.

They are literally incompetent, as far as I can tell - which would would explain a lot!

Suffice to say I find it very difficult to disagree with any of this. Education does, indeed, underpin the whole of society. Not the NHS or the welfare state, education. That's the sole, key premise from which all our politicians should operate. Until there can be political honesty about the disastrous education policies successive governments, but especially Labour governments - brim-full as they have always been of totally arrogant, privately educated, pseudo-intellectual socialist nobility (Shirley Williams, anyone?) - have imposed on this country, there can be no hope of solving the problem that is Britain's accelerating slide beyond universal mediocrity.

There is one policy that any Conservative government must immediately pursue in order to begin to attempt to reverse the process. It must purge the education system from top to bottom of Marxist/socialist ideologies, which have a proven track record - of failure. First, that means comprehending those ideologies and just how deeply they have penetrated education and society generally. That means taking-on the places where they have been propagated for so long: universities and their teacher training schools (as well I know from unhappy personal experience).

Next, the tearing-up of failed educational theories, created by left-wing doctrinaires contemptuous of anything they view as old-fashioned or traditional ("bourgeois" and "hackneyed" in their bankrupt language) or, heaven forbid, "elitist" (competitive). These parasitical theorists usually had or have little or no practical experience of their own to inform their judgment, just an agenda, with the predictable consequence that their harebrained notions in action have served to generate a national emergency.

Children, for example, are naturally competitive and it is intellectually dishonest to suggest otherwise. Let them compete. Harness this urge, don't slap it down. Denying a child the right to compete - the chance to excel - is a betrayal and no adult, be he or she a "trained" (nowadays that simply means "indoctrinated") teacher or university educational (so-called) expert or not, has the right to cause such irreparable damage. Yet, that is precisely what they have been doing for a generation with the result that we now have hundreds of thousands of undereducated young adults wondering around the country, with no clue about their own capabilities and no idea how to survive a recession. (The bright ones who survive the system simply leave. Again, personal experience sadly informs here. If the proportion of my brighter friends - and I am just an average Joe - who have abandoned Britain to its fate is multiplied across the country, then the unreported brain drain under this Labour government has been and is currently at epidemic levels).

Labour in particular, and Marxism-socialism generally, has betrayed these people in the worst possible way: by constantly meddling with and corrupting children's natural rites of passage by contaminating their minds with things they do not need to worry about until they are adults, while deliberately neglecting the academic content children so desperately need and yearn for, and from which so many socialists - the Fiona Millars of this world - are loathe to admit, themselves benefited. Because this calamity has become so entrenched, I hope it's appreciated it's too complicated to set-out in one short blog post. Suffice to say, what children now need is a long break from the hypocrisy of not-so well-meaning Marxist-socialist adults - like Millar.

Purging the nation of these evils will be difficult - they have taken root. But it is essential if the nation is to survive in anything but name. Tories: you have been warned. Let's hope Black Hole Sunset isn't right about at least one thing he/she suggests, that the competence needed even to comprehend the need for, let alone launch, this titanic change of direction no longer exists in Britain today. If it doesn't, the game's over.

French Education Works

We couldn't build a Millau Viaduct

The weekend section of the Torygraph contained one the most prejudiced, petty and perverse comments I have read in quite a long time. Why the writer, Anthony Gardner, felt the need to include it in his otherwise reasonably decent article about French education is quite beyond me. The quote, from some ditsy PGCE-fodder named Louis Burnett-Hall, does serve a purpose, however. It perfectly encapsulates the reality of education in Britain today: because inadequate idiots like this one have a say in how our children are taught, this country is producing a generation of under-educated, maladjusted depressives.

But make your own mind up, do:

Louisa Burnett-Hall, who trained as a teacher in London before moving to Paris, believes that high French exam results come at a personal cost. “If the ideal in British education is to produce a happy, well-balanced child who reaches his or her full potential, the French ideal is simply to instil knowledge. The idea of having fun doesn’t exist."

A "personal cost" for God's sake. That's the whole point. If you instil that discipline into children they will achieve all that they can to the best of their abilities. Teaching a child that nothing comes easy and nothing is free is the only way to "produce a happy, well-rounded individual". Learning how to make a serious academic effort is not "fun" (at least at first. With an inspirational teacher in charge, it often becomes fun, though. That's the joy.). You have, as a teacher, done your duty if you have unlocked a child's latent talents. But that comes only with an enormous effort of will on the part of teacher and child. That will can never be generated by a teacher who is more worried about spurious child psychology theories than the information they are ostensibly paid to transmit. The will is unlocked by the process of learning, but only through bloody hard work.

Fail to show children the level of commitment necessary to make the most of their strengths and you have betrayed them. You do not deserve to be a teacher. French teachers know that. Unlike their politically indoctrinated, fun-loving, woolly-headed counterparts in Britain, they know that there are certain places sociological experimentation cannot go. One of those places is the classroom. No doubt to say this is a thoughtcrime nowadays, but true education is all about "elitism", because that always has to be the aim: to be elite. And believe me, children understand that completely. If you teach a child that it's OK to fail then you might as well take that child out of school and put him directly onto welfare (which is something many young girls do themselves anyway in Britain now).

I'm not going to bang on about this much more. It's too depressing. Besides, it just confirms what I've always suspected: of course with many exceptions, British teachers are fundamentally lazy - intellectually, morally and practically. That laziness is basically the only thing they transmit to our nation's most precious resource, our children. And then they justify their failure by saying success is just too hard to reach and shouldn't be forced on the young. So while the Grandes Ecoles churn out happy, well-balanced experts in their fields who build French nuclear power stations and the large hadron collider, or who choose to commit themselves to passing on the benefit of their studies to a new generation of French young, we have to bring in Americans to build the useless Dome and Australians to build the underwhelming Wembley. We build wobbly foot bridges. France builds Viaduc de Millau Bridge. I watched this excellent documentary last night about the North Sea oil boom. I am certain Britain simply doesn't have the expertise any more to pull something like that off again. And that is the result of a corrupted education system that has failed and polluted our children. (There is one, simple word that explains everything you need to know about how and why this has happened: Labour!)

Suffice to say, if you think, as this Burnett-Hall fool does, that the only way to produce "happy" and "well-balanced" children who reach their full potential is by wrapping them in left wing cotton wool, then there is no hope for you. You must have been educated in Britain. If, however, you recognise that the only way to turn children, who crave structure, leadership, discipline, knowledge and, above all, a real challenge, into "happy", "well-balanced" adults (who really do reach their full potential) is by supplying them with exactly what they crave, then congratulations. France might let you be a teacher in one of her schools.

PS: If you have ever seen the wonderful, moving Être et avoir, you will know precisely what I mean.