Today’s Guardian devotes three pages to a tribute to the recently deceased educationalist Ted Wragg, who, like most educationalists, wouldn’t have known a controlled experiment if it was being performed on one of his own children with a bonesaw. A lot of the space is taken up with the “best of” his quotable declarations on the subject of teaching: mostly smug, evidence-free piffle studded with linguistic clichés. But there are also admiring quotes from others, including Shirley Williams:
He had a synoptic vision of education but he didn’t get bogged down in the little details, he saw the thing as a whole. He visited a lot of schools. He believed in the concept of comprehensive education, but he was perfectly open to tackling the difficulties.
Bright, poor, ethnic, keen? Uppity nigger! The educationalists will see to it that that your ambitions are kicked* out of you by your less motivated peers at a sink comprehensive they’ve engineered specially for you, all in the name of a ramshackle ideology of levelling down so stupid even the Soviet Union rejected it. Funny how, before the state administers them, it’s more thorough in researching drugs whose worst side effects turn out to be headaches and nausea than it is in testing changes to schools whose side effects include the destruction of young lives.
*Actually, stabbing is growing in popularity these days.
Damian, I hate it when you are so obscure – say what you mean for one – are you for or against the comprehensive system?
(From Fascinating Aida – Whites Blues:
“the comprehensive system
gives the greatesy education
but I’m sending my kids to public school
to pass some examinations….
ooooh I ain’t got the blues
I got those “Shouldn’t be elitist
“but I’m doing it for the children”
Angst-ridden middle-class whites.
My state schools were great, (good esprit de corps, little or no vandalism, good teachers) but the trouble was mixed ability classes. They didn’t work either for the least able or the academically bright. And the sheer effort of keeping everyone on the same page must have been murder for the staff. The public school I finished at was academically far stronger – because it picked and chose its pupils – but it still streamed people according to ability, and I ended up in a range of classes – top for English and History, lower down for e.g. German and Maths, and I benefitted from working with people who were moving at the same pace as me.
State education has always been difficult/impossible to get right. The grammar/secondary modern idea had been running for barely 20 years when it was abandoned, and what followed is now on the way out after c. 30 years for all of the same reasons. I can remember my state school teachers already being nostalgic for a lost golden age in 1979, which just goes to show you never know what lies around the corner.
“you never know what lies around the corner”. Oh yes you do: T Blair, or Bovine TB as I prefer to call him.
I listened to a sycophantic tribute to Mr Wragg on BBC R4’s ‘Learning Curve’ last week.
He was obviously a great bloke, warm, wise, witty and courageous.
Pity the education system’s so crap. Ah well, it’s only people’s lives ..