Sarah Smith used to be a teacher. She has now written an essay in a national newspaper about how she was one of countless state school teachers who were paid salaries well above the minimum wage despite being barely literate.
If you do not have time to read her essay in full, she observes that:
The products of a liberal
education system that eschewed the ‘rules’ of the English language for
trendy educational methods, we were as bemused as the children we
taught. So how on earth are teachers going to deliver the Government’s
demanding new school curriculum with its emphasis on grammar?
While I am sure that there is a lot of truth in what she says, I am not impressed by her attempt to smear the Labour Party. She argues that:
... the rot
started in 1964 when Harold Wilson’s Labour government came to power and
abolished the 11-plus in many areas. Parents were told this was to
enable primary schools to develop a more informal, child-centred,
progressive style of teaching, with the emphasis on learning by
discovery.
As a teacher, I can see
this is rubbish. The belief that grammar could be ignored was virtually
all pervasive until 1988, when the Conservative government introduced
the National Curriculum.
I can assure her that standards in schools did not improve after 1988, or at least not significantly. I would also note that the Conservatives had been in power for nine years in 1988, which hardly suggests that improving education was a priority for them.
Sarah Smith says she entered the profession in 2005, and yet someone starting as a teacher in 2005 could have been as young as five years old when the national curriculum was introduced, and so would have been educated very much according to Conservative Party ideals.
Are we really to believe that the failings of our educational system should be blamed entirely or even primarily on the Labour Party?
I repeat what I have said before on this blog: the Conservative Party is the Labour Party. They both believe in failure, and both are happy to indulge in a stupid game of blaming the other.
If the Labour Party is really so bad, then why don't Conservative politicians urge us never to vote Labour? If the Conservative Party is really so bad, then why don't Labour politicians urge us never to vote Conservative? And why don't the Liberal Democrats urge us never to vote either Labour or Conservative?
I care about the future of my country, and that is why I will never vote Labour or Conservative or Liberal Democrat.
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