When I was in primary school our tiny village school in the heart of the Sperrin Mountains (N. Ireland) was visited by two trainee teachers. They were full of new ideas including dividing up the class into groups and targeting us with topical questions. This was heady new material in the days of the 1970s. Especially, given our normal teacher, an aged limping man, who insisted on teaching us in the old currency (which included crowns and farthings! ).
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| tea clipper |
He was the son of a pilot of a tea clipper (a very fast sailing ship of the middle third of the 19th century) and started every day by reading biblical passages threatening brimstone and hell. Not used to the excitement of actually being asked to contribute, I'm afraid it all went to my head. The question was asked if girls should be educated separately from the boys, I stood up and announced that it would be akin to separating the cream from the milk. Not sure what I meant, one of the student teachers asked for clarification. I didn't hesitate to point out that separating the girls would mean taking away the best brains in the room. This brought an enraged response from our old teacher who spluttered his rage and ended our first topical debate.
In my teens, I attended a course of St John's ambulance service. They instructed us in how to prevent someone choking with the Heimlich manoeuvre. They showed how somebody could be resuscitated. If they had a heart attack they demonstrated how the heart could occasionally be restarted and how breathing for them could be maintained to avoid brain damage. This actually seemed useful stuff! It was one of those Road to Damascus experiences. I remember thinking that all the education I'd had up to that point was a total waste of time. Years and years of fractions and factorial functions, history of Columbus and Hitler. Geography of the valleys, mountains and oxbow lakes all of it seemed completely pointless. Was education really all this crap? Was everything we learned entirely for the purpose of passing an end of year exam? How did fairly intelligent people stand in front of the classroom and convey such a rubbish year after year without questioning the whole rotten system? What on earth was the purpose of it all?
Years later when I worked at University I was reminded of the pitfalls of our education system. Here, in this university was supposed to be ‘the best of the best’. The cream of society, its thickest and richest. I found them devoid of real interest or real intelligence. Whatever our present educational system does, it certainly results in inoculating almost the entire population against any future education.
Don’t think you can avoid it all by home teaching or buying ridiculously expensive private schooling. In my experience such children are usually academically brilliant but socially deformed. They can have the most idillic childhoods but then are released into the real world. The shock is traumatic and sometimes never recovered from. The difference between what we would choose for our children and the playground dynamics that they often have to face are light years apart. We would not wish it on our worst enemies but our children must weather such storms on a daily basis. After all, workplaces are just playgrounds for adults and equally taxing. If you missed the school bully don’t worry you will encounter them in your employment sooner or later.
I wish it were not so. I wish education was about finding the gems that lie hidden within us all. Mining for those treasures that each individual uniquely possesses. Crafting such gems into sparkling jewels that illuminate humanity. Such delicate faceting of planes within crystals to catch the light and reflect more light is an art that is far cry from today’s sausage filling education system. My grandfather used to call sausages, 'mystery packages' for all the wrong reasons. He was a pig farmer after all and knew what he was talking about. I feel the same about today's educational systems - they are not fit for purpose.
