On solving the Education Crisis

Years ago when submitting a thesis, my mother proposed the idea that the best teachers should be placed with the youngest children. And what a damn good idea that is. Instill the blighters with some enthusiasm for - well - ANYTHING, and then post them off to secondary schools with a desire to learn, rather than a desire to terrorise the hell out of anyone who wears glasses, or whose skirt is too long, hair too short.
The problem in England is that the majority of new teachers are basically really rather useless. They are the ones who didn't quite make the grade in university, can't work out what to do with themselves, and are drawn in by the offer of £6000 just to complete a teacher's course. We thus end up with people entering the classroom who never enjoyed work themselves, never tried particularly hard, and even if they did, didn't really get very far at all. What use is that to a budding Einstein?? Teachers are basically so darn thick these days that the government has had to come up with grand new methods of teaching - so that the TEACHER can understand what is going on, never mind the kid. Additionally, there is no space for any flair or originality that a teacher might possibly have had a hope in hell of bringing to a classroom, as every hour of every day is carefully planned by some idiot in Whitehall who clearly hasn't a clue. I bet Waterstones and Co. love it: they can just order the syllabus and then stock their shelves with the relevant guides as parents, in last minute essay-panics (yes - parents, kids rarely do their own work these days), charge around for some additional info.
And now everybody is up in arms about 'selection' by some schools. Here is what should happen: every child should take an exam at eleven years old, and the best ones get grouped together in one school, and the worst ones in another. This is not to say that the 'thick kids' are lumped up - it just means some of them take longer to learn than the brighter ones who did better in the exams. It is totally unfair to force the bright sparks to work at the pace of the slow ones, as all that can possibly be created is a bunch of mediocre students. Any enthusiasm the intelligent children had at the beginning of their academic career is knocked out of them by endless repetition and extreme boredom being forced upon them. This is the fault of the teachers, the schools, and that damn curriculum.
What should happen is: teaching should be made a prestigious profession. It should be an honour, not a last resort, to become a 'facilitator of learning' (as the government now likes to call them). The students who graduate with the best marks from university should have the option of signing up to be a teacher for a maximum of, let's say, four years. With decent pay, and none of this training rubbish. This way, there is a constant influx of fresh ideas being brought into schools by the most intelligent people - dear lord, if that doesn't inspire children then nothing will. Throw out the curriculum but set loose goals. Children should be able to read and write and perform such and such mathematical manouveres by a certain age, and beyond that, a little bit of freedom for the teacher. Why force all history teachers to plod through the same period time and time again - as long as the child knows something about history and is interested, well, isn't that preferable? And while we're at it, throw out this obsession with 'make learning fun'. I am by no means advocating that angle. It is patronising and pointless. My niece recently experienced 'Africa Week' that included her having to purchase one of those Make Poverty History wrist-bands, and tour the supermarket looking for Fair Trade Food. Additionally, they sat in a straw hut for a day at school. If you can't see how wrong that is, there is no way I can explain it to you...

Well, there we go. I think I solved the crisis. The children who have parents who are rich enough to afford to send them to private school? So what, send them. I have the government cutting out all that pointless spending on endless text books that are never read, chairs and tables that are damaged, fancy 'interactive white-boards' or whatever they have these days. Pen, paper, and inspiration. The savings can go on sports facilities and better libraries, which means the private schools wont have that many advantages anyway.

Dear me, perhaps I should send my blog address to Mr Blair himself.