The abuse of education

Two items in The Daily Mail deserve comment today, and both concern education.

First, Peter Hitchens has argued for the non-existence of dyslexia.  He comments that:

There may well be a small number of children who have physical problems that stop them learning to read. The invention of ‘dyslexia’ does nothing to help them. It means they are uselessly lumped in with millions of others who have simply been badly taught.

Mr Hitchens seems to contradict himself here.  If there are physical barriers to learning to read, then surely dyslexia does exist.  My own belief is that dyslexia does exist, and that it is the result of neurological abnormalities.  If you have any doubts on this matter, then please watch this documentary about the actress Kara Tointon.

The problem arises that once we have admitted the existence of dyslexia, then the concept becomes open to abuse.  Poor literacy can result from neurological abnormalities, but also from either lack of intellect or poor teaching - or both.  Parents may be unwilling to admit that poor literacy in their child results from lack of intellect, and teachers may be unwilling to admit that poor literacy in their pupils results from poor teaching.

The second item is a report that the Labour Party is planning to make school pupils study English and mathematics until the age of eighteen.  I can remember that the last time Labour was in opposition it adopted the mantra of education education education, and yet its subsequent thirteen-year tenure of government was far from inspiring.  It happily pandered to the whims of certain interest groups, and I see the same thing here.

Suppose a Labour government recruits more teachers.  Those teachers will then have an obvious incentive to vote Labour at subsequent general elections, because any other party in government might decide that there are too many teachers, and look to make some of them redundant.

This policy may well prove to be an own goal, however.  Employers are unlikely to want their teenage employees to have to take time away from their work to take extra lessons in numeracy and literacy which may well serve no practical purpose.

My own experience suggests strongly that many employers care little for literacy.  There are of course a lot of jobs which require numeracy, but not that many which require a high level of literacy.

I believe that politicians should seek to improve the education of pupils up till the age of sixteen, and not obsess about a belief that more is somehow better.  I also believe that there should be a statutory definition of dyslexia which seeks to restrict the use of the word to situations where a neurological abnormality can be identified.