Education in the doldrums.....

One of the newspaper reports I read was to do with the opinion of the CEO of John Lewis, (the multi-store company). She said in no uncertain terms that the standard of young people looking for work was abysmal. Some had great difficulty working with prices, percentages and more, others could hardly spell their own name. Now, all this has been well known for some time now but it has to be remembered that education per-se is the football of politicians. They take great pride in taking the laurels and continually tinker with the curriculum. For many years it has become apparent that standards have been watered down. Everyone goes to university. But how did this come about? It is all to do with what woke people think children should be learning. The teachers coming out of the education system all have brilliant degrees. Home Economics, Performing Arts, Dancing, Behavioural Attitudes, to name just a few. But sheer science is not on the menu any more. We rather ask children ‘Draw a picture, use colours to show how you feel today’. 'How about showing your appreciation to the NHS and draw a rainbow'. Hopefully the children know the sequence of the rainbow colours then. My grand-daughter learned her tables from one to twelve, even could say the table of twelve backwards and fast. Learned this in school? No, at home with the family. She can name all the capitals of the European nations and even now has rudimentary capability in the Welsh language. She is only nine. She knows that to go to the moon you need to work out the trajectory to take. It’s no good just to point the rocket at the moon. How did we do this? On the carpet at home with an apple and an orange plus a pencil as the rocket. Rudimentary, sure it is but it gave her the idea. I am just saying that the schools are failing our children. Certainly, education can be boring, can be repetitious but if we want to be fit for the coming problems which need solving fast, we just cannot keep on drawing rainbows.

Edit: I certainly do not want to diminish the work of the NHS, I am just trying to indicate that however good and fun art is, we have forgotten that science is the basis of human civilisation. Failing science is setting in the rot as has been seen to happen so many times in the past. Yes, it is boring to recite tables but it underpins the mental capability to compute quantities fast.