The Global Education Mess

WE THINK THAT we have an education mess here in the United States with our education “blob” spending five percent of GDP every year in return for what? Rising mediocrity. In Britain, things are even worse because their public school system is a completely centralized, national government system, whereas in the United States the government education system is rather more decentralized with most of the money raised and spent at the state and local level.

Britain’s Prime Minister Blair is launching an education white paper to announce the government’s policy to abandon the gold standard of left-wing education policy, the “comprehensive” secondary schools set up in the 1960s to eliminate selection and streaming in secondary schools. The idea was to liquidate the dual system of college-prep “grammar” schools and vocational “secondary modern” schools. His government will introduce legislation to build a system of “self-governing independent state schools.”

It’s about time. As Alice Thomson observes, a funny thing has happened to Britain’s elite since the introduction of “comprehensive” schools a generation ago. It used to be that the political, cultural, and business elite had a lot of “grammar” school graduates. The grammar school was understood to be the way for a bright youngster to climb out of poverty. Margaret Thatcher, herself a grammar school graduate, “presided over a cabinet of grammar school boys.”

But now the British elites are dominated by graduates of private education. The Blair “Cabinet is full of them, though ministers don’t brag about it. Most forget to mention their schools in Who’s Who.” Somehow, the comprehensive school does not deliver children of modest means into the elite as the grammar schools used to do. Perhaps that is why Blair’s political aide Alistair Campbell called them “bog-standard.” (A “bog” is British schoolboy slang for the school toilets.)

Of course, facts means nothing. The British left believes in uniform one-size-fits-all education like a sacrament. Nobody should be allowed to escape the government education system. So if Tony Blair is really serious he could be in for a big battle—with his own party.

Now, what about doing something here in the United States about our disfunctional education system?

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems… No more rules, no more models… Genius conjures up rather than learns… ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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