I’ve had a New Year resolution that I’ve been too busy to keep. That’s to use this blog for something. Or at the least, to try to blog properly if only for a couple of minutes a day. This is for the other side of my brain and I should remember that…

Tonight, I found one of those little pieces of writing that just give me some faith about the world. I’m not one of those pedants about grammar but I do like writing to have clarity. The whole debate about commas seems to me to be fundamentally ridiculous but I was cheering when I read this by James Wolcott.

I suppose I found myself thinking about this even more as I’ve been reading about this idea of extending the school age to 18. I shuddered at the thought. Everything that should be a joy to discover will continue to be forced into our youth. If only people would leave them alone and let them discover learning for themselves. So much organised education teaches you only what to hate. I don’t like to agree with anything that Jamie Oliver says but I have to agree with something Jamie Oliver has said when he argues for more apprentices and less graduates.

When will somebody propose the sensible idea of making compulsory education end at 13? Those that suggest the alternative are doing so based on something other than a consideration for the children or an understanding about the proper goals of education. Perhaps it sounds wonderful for anybody but the poor teacher who has to get a year of struggling 14 year old students from a council estate in Manchester to understand King Lear.

Teachers will tell you that too much of their time is spent dealing with bad behaviour. Yet why is there bad behaviour? Because teenagers hit puberty at the same time as they’re being force fed Shakespeare or some left wing poet writing about gender issues in South Africa. My sympathies (and those of many teachers) are with the rebellious types who recognise their own interests, limitations, and goals in life, yet are forced to attempt something which they as rational thinking individuals do not want to do.

Undergraduates enter university without the proper skills. It is a fact. Many can barely write competent English, are incapable of using punctuation, and have little or no idea why they want to study. They have some vague notion about jobs but no interest in the subject’s for which their parents are often paying thousands in order to make them ‘experts’.

I can’t help but feel that the harder we strive to forcibly educate, the more that education will ultimately fail.