Title page to Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Yesterday, I published a thoughtful article from John Gelmini entitled Gay Marriage, Faith and the Thin End of the Wedge. I received some further input from John which I am publishing below as Part 2.
Whilst, I do not necessarily agree with some of John’s views, I understand the broad trust of his argument which I feel should be debated openly as it is in the public interest.
What do you think?
Gay Marriage, Faith and the Thin End of the Wedge – Part 2 – John Gelmini
The levels of delinquency, under achievement, drug taking and unemployment amongst C1′s, C2′s, D’s and E’s plus the growing army of feral children suggest otherwise.
Much of this has been attributed to the lack of male role models in schools by no lesser a person than Sir Michael Wilshire the Head of Ofsted.
The Americans recognize it as well which is why they developed their troops to teachers program where the former soldiers get better results than actual teachers from those they are teaching.
We currently have 1 million school leavers in make-work training programs which is a way of keeping them out of the unemployment figures and we have 1.25 million NEETS (Not in Education, Employment or Training). Most of these children have an absent father assuming out of many possible fathers the real one can be identified so the evidence for a correlation between a complete loving family and scholastic performance is pretty self evident.
Our education system at state level, ages 5 to 18 is 44th in the world way behind Finland, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Germany, the undisputed master of Europe.
To quote John Cridland, Director General of the CBI “The state education system is producing children who cannot read, cannot write and cannot communicate”.
The question is why?
Dumbing down exams so that they lack intellectual rigor is one reason, differentiated teaching rather than whole class teaching is another, but the biggest failing of all is lack of discipline and the idea that “learning must be fun”, must have “wow factor” and that there must be no losers only participants.
This feminine approach is producing soft, mollycoddled, non-work ready students who in many cases have to take Ritalin and other drugs to make their behavior acceptable to the point where they can be taught.
Fathers and male teachers acting as role models who can inculcate disciplined study and work habits are essential to reversing this decline in standards of education amongst boys because with annualized growth rates of 1.4% a year since 1946 and no growth to speak of now there cannot be full employment because for that 3% growth is needed.
In fact, on current form, even with the school leaving age rising to 18, 50% of our young people will not find jobs.
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