Like anyone else who values the life of the mind, I detest the very idea of ghettoised schooling. The notion that, by controlling education, the whole thought processes of a generation can be shaped to order ... well, it's abhorrent. To add to that, the early stages of the project were marked by frighteningly amateur teaching, and the early guinea pigs must have learned very little.
So far, I doubt any onlooker would disagree.
The positive side comes from the fact that it's a grand scheme, and grand schemes rarely work out as they're meant to. The brethren schools are a classic case of the unintended consequences being at least as important as the intended ones.
One thing that might have been expected is that the teaching quality is now quite good. That's because the teachers are professionals, well paid, and insist on doing their work properly. Unless some brethren somehow get qualified themselves, they can't change that.
Now, though, I don't think they'd want to, because of the bigger, more subtle, unintended consequence.
That is that the brethren have been forced to take education seriously. In the past, school was something of a necessary evil, and the community outside school would constantly belittle and downgrade its importance. That can't happen now the community runs its own schools. The attitude hung on for a while, but the project couldn't have survived without a concerted effort to make good education seem of serious value. It's costing a lot, after all.
I still think the children are disadvantaged, because they are losing out on the skills required to deal with the wider world (as intended). But I find my feelings unexpectedly mixed after seeing the whole group infected with the education-is-good virus. The children are emerging more capable in some ways, simply because they are no longer getting mixed messages about what they're doing. That has to be good, even if it's hard to decide whether the costs and benefits balance.
My suggestion to those worried about all this is to be careful where you apply pressure so that you minimise the damage to the unexpected good as you try to change the bad.
4 comments:
Dear Survivor,
You said: "...the teachers are professionals, well paid, and insist on doing their work properly." As I have a non-EB friend who teaches in an EB school I know that this is not the case. The restrictions placed on teachers as to what they cannot teach I would find unendurable - I would not be able to insist on doing my job properly, therefore I could not teach in an EB school.
I was a little dismayed by your comment regarding the failing EB Swansea school (made on 2nd July): you suggested that there was no need to worry, that only EB children would be affected. For me, the greatest crime of the EBs is their indoctrination of children - it is mental child abuse. To suggest that we shouldn't worry about such schools because only EB children will suffer is to imply that it is the children's fault - that it is their problem that they were born into the EBs.
I do agree with your concern that what is already slightly good about their education should not be taken away - I certainly wouldn't want to see them resort to home-schooling as in the US.
But I think the government should not be allowed to view the EBs as a sweet little quirky Christian group. The government should be addressing the restrictions the EBs place on professional teachers and the government should apply their mantra at EB schools - that EVERY child matters.
As a bystander I agree that the ranking you give this issue is appropriate. You yourself clearly are intelligent ; imagine how much more exciting it would be for you if you were exposed to the critical tempering imposed by, say, postgraduate education in philosophy. Although as you say the teachers are professional and well paid they have also taken their 30 pieces of silver to support a system which denies their students’ exposure to true learning.
I want to be careful here, because the last thing I'd like to happen is that anyone stops worrying about the EB schools.
The Swansea comment was made in response to a specific concern: that with the brethren pursuing state funding, other parents might find their children unwittingly taught in their schools or under their rules. This is a needless worry. What's more, the person the comment was addressed to understood the point. Check the original posting if you want the full context.
As for the rest, I fully expected the brethren schooling project to be a disaster. All I am saying is that, to my surprise, it is at least possible that the situation is better than before.
To be against it in spite of that is to make the best the enemy of the good. The brethren are marginally more likely to acknowledge the Pope than to embrace postgraduate philosophy, so let's be realistic. If, before, the children were discarding most of what they learned because community pressure told them it was worse than worthless, it is surely better that they now happily embrace the learning they get. More, that the adults around them are happy to see them learn.
Personally, I can't get too worked up about the gaps in the curriculum as, in my experience, the overall concept of learning something is what counts. Of course things could be better than they are. Of course everything possible should be done to make it better. But the picture is not wholly negative.
And as for me, I'm not a good example. I found school (a normal school) tedious and was glad to leave. Maybe that disqualifies my comments.
Apologies, sir, I appreciate I was taking your comment out of context. Your last point is valid too, - the British education system is certainly not exemplary.
(Mind you, growing up in the brethren I found there was nothing else to do but homework, reading, piano practice...however tedious!)
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