Gove’s in charge? Seriously?
His lack of professionalism is remarkable
I try not to listen to BBC Radio if I can help it, because I want old age to hold some surprises and given that I already eat mint imperials all day and complain about ‘the youth’ I’m feeling that it’s not holding much back.
Last week a friend linked me to a radio segment that involved Michael Gove, current education secretary and former Elmer Fudd impersonator, going toe-to-toe with a listener calling in to a Radio 5 discussion on education. Being the classy sort of guy that he apparently is, Gove cut the man off, misinterpreted most of his remarks, and stalled more than a in a .
The conversation was about the usual petty stuff like the education of a nation’s children, but Gove’s lack of professionalism was remarkable. The man’s running a section of our government. His desk probably has tiny red buttons on it that cause things to explode when pressed.
The button he’s been mashing lately is the one about education reform. The soundbite Gove attempted to manufacture was that he wanted more ‘facts’ in education; the flaw being that not only does this sound massively idiotic, but once you get past the “I guess that’s better than teaching stuff we made up on the commute in to work, Mr. Gove” stage of comprehension, you realise what he actually means: learning by rote.
Gove’s noticed that children from other countries are outperforming British children and has decided that the answer to this is to emulate their education system entirely. Although apparently he may be taking it slightly too far, as in December he wrote that “like Chairman Mao, we’ve embarked on a Long March to reform our education system”. I’m assuming he won’t be actually murdering teachers in the street like Mao did.
I don’t think anyone would disagree with Gove’s appraisal of the current situation. Our children are, on the whole, not performing as well as the best in other countries. There are a lot of factors affecting this, but before we go off investigating them and trying to emulate the education policies of infamous communist revolutionaries it might be wise to ask whether we want to have their education systems.
India’s engineering industry is taking off in a big way. Everything from software to civil via aeronautics - you name it, they’ve got a university producing students as good as Imperial’s or better. Two, three, four years ago this was big news, and people were talking about the rise of their university system like it was the future. That’s calmed down a bit lately, however, as more and more of their graduates reach the workplace and people notice an unusual trend - a lot of them don’t really want to be there.
I’m not an education theorist, but I do know that the reason the teachers’ unions want relaxed curriculums is because it allows creativity on the part of teachers, and exploration on the part of students. Both of these things allow for children to find their place in the world and do a job they really want to.
Anyway, hopefully that answers all those dozens of emails I get asking for my opinion on education reform in the post-Labour United Kingdom. Next week on Angry University: could the Israel-Palestine conflict have been resolved by stealing everyone’s maps and refusing to give them back?
