On Education

Hail readers!

I have a most unusual proposition in store for you today: one not only concerning education (at which, as you are doubt familiar, I am most adroit) but also one of collaboration. That’s right; there’s a guest with us today, and he goes by the name Oli.

In any case, I feel I ought introduce him. His full name is Oliver Woolley, and I guess you could call him a friend, or perhaps ‘unfortunate acquaintance’. Yes; that would be rather more fitting, I believe. But, anyway: we studied at the same inclement school—he in the Sixth Form; I lower down—until he left for university. I do believe he intends to study philosophy. This, as you can guess, is quite unfortunate for him; nevertheless, he considers it more… intellectually stimulating, than literature.

Which brings me onto our pet secret: both of us are writers. You can just see what a troublesome pair we make, can’t you?

I tend to refer to myself as an occasional writer. I prefer reading and talking about a topic to writing about it, and honestly I often struggle to iterate the complexities of an issue within linguistic bounds, let alone write them down. I’m often stuck in a state of what linguists and psychologists refer to as ‘mentalese’—thoughts or ideas that form without words with which one can describe them. This has lead me to write poetry more than articles, and indeed to study philosophy—the love of knowledge. (Shut it, Stargazer!)

Monsieur Stargazer: for the record, Oli is referring to ‘philos’ (friend; from GREEK) and ‘sophia’ (knowledge) in that little etymology lesson.

In a roundabout way, allow me to use this as in introduction to our topic of education: for me, complexity is key to the issue. The world, the universe, existence itself—and everything we may try to learn about it—is incredibly complicated. There’s just so much to it, so much of it. So many relationships to understand, forces to calculate. Horizons to observe and progress towards.

We as a species have developed the ability to express ideas through language; translating mentalese, in this particular case, to English. We can not only define a horizon, but describe it in greens and reds, as rolling hills or cityscape, as an ever-distant hue of beginnings and ends, or the edge of the world. Even more abstractly, as a frontier of knowledge itself. And through words, we can teach and learn about horizons. Because there is much more to a horizon than the word alone.

This is education: teaching, sharing information and, more crucially, sharing an understanding of the world around us. It is a beautiful, wonderful, complicated thing. So why are we getting it so wrong?

The Purpose of Education

To discuss the topic of education in any meaningful manner, one must first understand the very purpose of such an endeavour. And, believe it or not, this is a topic debated. Some propose—as my friend so eloquently does—that education is the act of inculcating knowledge, from wiser folk to younger prodigy. Others yet propose education to be a question of… economics. Specifically: that education is meant to prepare the young for the world of work, and to transfer to them skills imperative in their financial success.

The more sceptical among us may take issue with such an economical approach to education; it degrades knowledge to a matter of mere supply and demand. Teach a man to fish only if we need fishermen, or he won’t make money and we don’t have a use for him. Perhaps more worryingly, we may say in the current climate ‘he won’t make money and therefore we don’t have a use for him.’

I believe it important to possess a fundamental grounding in economics in order to discuss issues that concern it. The question of supply and demand is somewhat more subtle than the simplistic need and money, as Oli makes clear. Supply and demand is more connected to the concept of allocative efficiency. Specifically, the idea is that ‘demand’ is merely consumer desire. Neoclassical economists believe economic agents (that is to say, you and I) act according to their needs and desires in such a manner that they are able to maximise their utility for given resources. Wiser economists are more aware both of the inherent complexity of the current economic system (do you really believe you’ll select the exact combination that grants you the greatest utility from a supermarket offering millions?) and of the fickle nature of consumerism (e.g.: Apple zealots).

Oli’s point on fisherman making money is extremely important: for the fisherman’s labour does indeed produce utility—in the form of fish. However, current economies don’t use labour and utility as tradable quantities; rather, they use a proxy, in the form of money. Fisherman do not earn a great deal of money, not because their efforts are in vain, but because the nature of the market (and the body of consumers that effectively runs it) leads consumers to devalue and disconsider the fisherman’s fruit.

It may be worth mentioning at this stage that the economic argument tends to negate any notion of our fisherman wanting to fish. Or, in a less clearly fruitful pursuit, he may wish to create art. But if his education has focused on financial viability, it seems he’s even less likely to paint than he is to fish. He may end up unhappy in his financially lucrative career, or lack motivation to work at all if he cannot do what loves: fishing or painting.

My point being, however, that the nature of the market is ephemeral; temporary; the antonym of immutability. It is dangerously naive to believe that a skill not in demand now will not be so in the future; or that, even, future economies will demand skills hitherto unknown to the present day. Programming is one such example.

So, if education even in the economic sense must be considered carefully, what do we say of preparing the young for the world of work in general?

It is my belief that education is not a process that ought fundamentally attempt to meet the desires of the market; but nor is this to say that it can be divorced from it. The fundamental skills of any examined life (the only life worth living, to quote that ancient philosopher)—writing, logic, critical thinking and what have you—are the foundations by which any satisfied individual relies on. Such skills as coding, or writing fiction, or engineering cars; these rely on such skills as much as, say, philosophy.

My key point is that these are the virtues that a successful education system needs impel. Specific skills—such as engineering—cannot be ignored however. These particular skills, though, are damned by their virtue: they are specific enough to possess direct application, but also specific enough to be left obsolete, like the Luddites of old.

The question regarding economics, ultimately, is to some degree one of choice. Education must never attempt to machine its charges into productive workers, but nor must it ignore their needs in the field of work.

So, we’ve established that on a pragmatic level education must reflect not only the current job market, but attempt to meet the needs of the future as well. To some extent this can be an organic process of incorporating modern interests and advances which youth are often a part of. But this is limited by the scope of the visionaries who have control of the educational system, who are sadly often neither educators nor economists. On top of all this, there’s the troublesome issue of agency itself; we’ve already acknowledged that agents are unlikely to select greatest utility for even themselves, so asking each youthful agent (read: naive student) who we are trying to educate to consider the needs of society as a whole seems unfair, ludicrous even. But of course, there must be a limit to the removal of agency, and we cannot force STEM subjects upon everyone who does not want them.

All these issues aside, one thing is clear: there are certain virtues—the ability to think clearly; to analyse accurately; to research, and to consider evidence; to be conscientious thinkers—that are the staple of any successful system. And if we cannot do this… all else will, to some degree, be useless.

In essence—if we can give them the very basic tools of learning from the world and making useful sense of it, at the very least, they’ll be good at whatever they may choose to do. Indeed, one could say that a working populace who excel in their chosen fields would be more useful to society than abundant mediocrity in STEM subjects. A good fisherman compared to a bad engineer, if you will. I bet the fisherman is happier, too.

Ultimately, the purpose of education can be interpreted as either to manufacture students and workers as a machine of utility, or to simply educate them in a sense of achieving worldliness, wholeness, akin to the Aristotlean concept of Eudaimonia (literally: ‘flourishing’; to become ‘virtuous’ in the sense of appropriate action). This brings us back to Socrates’ ‘examined life’ and an idea of ‘education qua education’, or rather, learning for the sake of learning. The education system needs to strike a balance between the two interpretations. I think we’re somewhat in favour of the latter.

The Powers that Be

The purpose of education aside (I believe we have reached a reasonable consensus) there are other matters that concern education. Such as: leadership.

The exam boards are a particularly British peculiarity. Whereas most other nations have marking undertaken by the school (though the curricular may be made by an agency) the UK differs in that the entire process of marking is done by a centralised, and—more worryingly—virtually unaccountable exam board.

Let’s take a real-life example. A few years back, (2010 to be precise) the Edexcel board had a conundrum: their science paper and marking system had resulted in vastly lower grades than average. B grade students ended up with Cs—and Ds. A grade students got Bs, A* students got Bs; tears were shed; anger unleashed.

Their solution? Cut down the grade boundaries by an average 20%. This had the wonderful effect of leaving students that got just 60% of the paper right… with an A.

This not only shows the UK system to be dangerously dysfunctional, but also disconcertingly arbitrary. What decides an A or a B? Why do boundaries vary by subject; by paper; by year? Is there some sort of reasonable objective standard by which we are judged… or are we merely separated into strata for the purposes of employment, class, and future?

In fact, one exam board is so dysfunctional that it produces two versions of its own paper and mark scheme every year. I am of course talking about AQA, with their ‘A’ and ‘B’ papers reminiscent of the two earlier exam boards of the north and south who combined for no discernible purpose other than to continue to disagree (but, like the couple from Modern Family, refuse to get a divorce). I believe they’re under strict instructions to get their act together, but the damage has already been done; equivalent qualifications in equivalent subjects from the same exam board have produced differing papers—if that isn’t an arbitrary goal post, I don’t know what is.

What concerns me is not merely the board’s incompetence; rather, the boards seem to operate under a very different axiom to both the majority of the pupils’ and teachers’ expectations. Most of the students, teachers—and the rest of the world—regard ‘doing well’ in education to be a question of… doing well. That is to say: understanding the subject matter; knowing the basics; applying one’s knowledge; and perhaps even bringing something new to the subject.

To the exam boards, ‘doing well’ has no objective meaning. To them, possessing a superficial understanding whilst regurgitating some facts (for example) is ‘doing well’ provided that you manage to superficially understand a tiny bit more than your peers. It is not so much a matter of being capable, as it is being in the top decile. This also conveniently allows them and the government to dictate what grades will be achieved year on year; for they can easily decide that instead of awarding an A, to, say, 20% of candidates—they’ll award it to 10%. If our former education secretary wanted grades to drop—definite proof of ‘toughening up’ the exams, or declining standards in schools (whichever best fits your narrative)—he would merely need to regulate the exam boards.

What the students actually learn is quite irrelevant to this process.

And this is where the teachers and students most disagree with the exam boards and government on education. Because, we say to them, education ought to be about learning. Former education secretary Michael Gove very publicly disagreed with this, instead focusing his policy on ‘toughening up’ of exams, removal of coursework, restructuring of A levels into more focused events of unnecessary stress (by removing January exams). And the story continues as the current government wants to abolish AS exams, talks of introducing SAT style papers as early as six months into the education system, and whittles away at coursework until only exams remain. Throughout all these changes and proposals, teachers and students alike have complained, rallied, reasoned with the powers that be, to let them know that they are missing the point of the system entirely.

But it is to no avail—whilst the narrative of a ‘competitive’ system can be woven from the grades and figures which Alex already proved arbitrary, they’ll listen to neither sense nor sensibility. Never mind that self harm, mental illness and stress-induced anxiety are on the rise in our youth. Never mind that children leave school clueless about how to vote or who to vote for; how to pay taxes or why they pay taxes; how to cook; how to perform basic first aid; how to conduct their own behaviour in public, in interviews, in professional positions; how to apply for a job or write a CV; how to cope with the stress of all of the above, or how to value themselves based on anything other than the grades they were given.

Yes—the system is failing them. But it is a fundamental issue with the structure of the system, not the minutiae of the courses our students are taking. It is the exam boards, the exam environments, the fact that they have to be taught exam technique separately in order to be recognised for their ability in a subject. The fact that their coursework efforts, whilst more stimulating and a more realistic representation of the world of work (as well as their own abilities), are considered less worthwhile than their performance on one particular paper on one particular day.

Britain could learn from countries such as France, where philosophy and politics are taught within the national curriculum. Students are resultantly more aware of their political position, and of how the education system functions as part of society. Perhaps then, when we are told by the education secretary that education is an economic tool to advance our position in the world as a nation, those within education will be heard to say it is a social tool of progressive thinking, and ought not be reduced to a sophists’ auditorium.

Money

Firstly, some numbers. A great many schools in the UK—mine in particular—operate on a budget of around £4000 per student. This allows schools to pay teachers competitive salaries; procure sports and science equipment; and equip their schools with modern tools such as computers and projectors.

What it doesn’t allow? Enough teachers. GCSE classes are understaffed; interested students are not given enough attention to help develop their interests outside the curriculum; and teachers are often subject to long working hours: 50 hours is typical for many, but some work even more than that.

Nor is funding quite adequate for all equipment—as the unfortunate business students discover when they struggle with the sluggish computers in the business department.

In short: yes, the education system needs more money. But this money needs to be spent where it matters. Building shiny new buildings won’t make students learn better; and if renovating and expanding existing buildings is cheaper, well… frivolity at its finest.

An unfortunate truth of the education system in its current state is that shiny new buildings increase both ratings and funding for a school (by increasing student capacity). The idea, of course, is to then be able to use the additional funding to the benefit of students. This is no bad thing in itself—but it perpetuates a system of misplaced funds. Just a microcosm of the larger picture of misplaced goals.

A Few Benevolent Suggestions

I, for one, would recommend the following:

• That any who are appointed to run an education system know and understand both the crucial tenets of any successful education (the need to inculcate reason, a desire for knowledge, and the skill of the written word) and also the practical requiems, both present and potential;
• To view the education system not as one designed to attempt to reactively meet the market, but rather, to lead it;
• To understand that to regard education as some sort of ‘filter’ for candidates is a pernicious idea.
• And also, to know that a great deal of funding is not necessary; but nor is this to demand unrealistic budgets from schools. Of notable concern also is how one spends the money…
• Exams can serve a purpose… but coursework, too, can be a realistic and feasible way to assess students.
• A test must measure a student’s understanding of a subject—not how well they’ve memorised the mark scheme, or their degree of exam technique.
• If exams are easily passed, assume either that students are good, or that the content itself is too trivial.
• A note from me: education needs to have the student’s learning as its core interest, not more arbitrary career-oriented targets that treat learning as a means to an end—or serve only to make the education secretary look competent.
• Note also that the number of ‘C and above’ targets result in teachers teaching to the test in order to scrape out a pass. Learning itself is made even less desirable in the process. The problem of ‘bad schools’ is a deep one, and cannot be fixed by arbitrary target-setting.

Conclusion

We have discussed at length. Perhaps we may have even bored you; apologies if this is the case, dear readers. Though education is not the primary topic of this blog of mine, I believe we have learned some important lessons—for future, for present, and in hindsight.

For all its numerous failures, our education system may at least be commended on what it does right. I do not presume to wonder what would have been had I not been so determinedly taught English, when I was but young; nor whatever would have happened had not generations of good English teachers (and libraries) not brought out this passion in words.

Let us consider that. We may think ourselves independent and impervious, but education is a process that shapes us deep inside; a fundamental feature of our early lives. It would be good if we didn’t screw it up.

Education in Britain has got us this far, and that is no mean feat. But it must continue to move forwards, and be a tool of progress for future generations. We all have something we can thank it for, so give a little back, look to the future, and help to foster a system of support, innovation and enlightenment—not one of solely economic benefit. I therefore fully support Alex’s suggestion of closing sentiment: let’s not screw it up.

If you wish either for me to write more on this topic, or if you have valued my friend’s contributions (and wish for more), contact me; feedback is always welcome. For the record, Oli is on Google+ and has provided an email address: woolleyoli AT gmail DOT com

Off-topic: UK Education

Education is a contentious subject in any developed country. This is for a number of different reasons: it co-mingles children of all classes in the same environment; it costs a lot of money; and it is integral to the very future of a country.

This post will be centred on UK education. The reason for this is simple: I don’t know enough about other countries to comment. And yes, there are statistics; but these don’t give you the full picture—and as I shall elaborate on next, they’re often inaccurate.

Here’s another thing: this post will be anecdotal. Don’t expect to see wonderfully coloured pie charts anywhere; don’t expect numbers and algebra; don’t look for the bureaucrats’ report. (There are enough of those in the world.)

Of course, any anecdotal argument will—by definition—be less empirically sound than one based on statistics and ‘fact’ (however that may be determined). But: an argument that has no personal basis will not be complete. It will not tell you about the quality (or otherwise) of the mark schemes; it will not tell you what the pupils are actually learning; what they’re gaining. It will not even tell you much about the money.

Teachers—and pupils, who play along—will always put on a good show for the bureaucrat. They will always plan lessons in advance, and use all of the technology on offer.

Likewise, a bureaucrat may not always see the class at their best. They won’t know about the ingenious solutions teachers have to circumvent problems in their students’ learning, desire for sucess, or for those dealing with material constraints.

This post will not show a rainbow-filled, dancing unicorns version of education; neither will it present education as this dark, unpleasant place where everyone cheats and no one actually learns anything.

The reality is that education in any UK school will generally fall somewhere in between; and yes, this varies from school to school. (Though not as much as you’d think.)

My Background: And Why You Should Keep Reading

I am a sixteen year old student. My GCSE exams are next week. So yes: I have a deeply personal view on this. Perhaps it will interest you.

I am now studying at a grammar school; previously, I was in a comprehensive. I have a dual background, therefore: I have seen the best; I have seen the worst; and I know of everything in between.

I have also studied in the Netherlands and Romania. Both have given me an interesting perspective. In the case of the former, I saw that education does not have to be segregated—either through grammar schools or sets. I saw that anyone can get a reasonable grade. I saw that widespread bilinguality is perfectly possible... under the right cirumstances.

Being a native Romanian, I have some familiarity with my own system. Would I call it good? Probably not. Would I call it bad? No. My system has taught me that it is possible to learn a subject in real depth, even early on; but likewise, it has taught me that hard exams will often dissuade the less determined and interested pupils to the point of failiure.

As far as I can say, the Dutch system is the best out of these three. It is well-funded, first of all—that does help, though how the money is spent matters as well—and, moreover, it is fair, well set-up, considerate of different pupils’ needs; and it teaches the pupils a thing or two.

The Romanian system will give you the most in-depth knowledge out of these three, without a doubt. However, its disservice to the lower-grade pupils is detestable; and it is also, unquestionably, stressful.

The UK system won’t teach you a great deal. It will give you some useful skills—mainly in exam technique, literacy, and dealing with people. (Most of which is down to the teachers, not the spec.) It is reasonably well funded. It is good; it isn’t great. It can be an easy ride; but it depends hugely on the school. In my school, we do 11 GCSEs. It’s stressful, tiring and depressing. The school is thinking of cutting one.

Let’s go into more detail...

The UK System: Good, Bad, or Mediocre?

Let me start by saying that the Dutch system is one of the best in Europe—and by association, the world, since the only real competition comes from Australia and Canada. (No, Asian countries aren’t comparable. I’ll go into that later.)

The UK system isn’t far behind.

But this isn’t saying much. African countries are poor as peasants; and all that war, violence, disease, religiosity and social repression does them no good. Arab countries are plagued by religious fanaticism, a contempt of literature (aside from that damn book of theirs, of course), disturbing hatred of anyone who is different—whether they wish it or not—and a lack of free speech.

I could go on and on. The point is: the world-wide standard is pretty damn low.

And, objectively, the UK standard is pretty average.

So there you go. Now as to the why...

The Purpose of Education: And How the UK Fares

There is a fair amount of philosophy and debate around that question. Should education teach you life lessons? Should it give you skills that are valuable, or that employers specifically seek? Should it impart knowledge—and what kind of knowledge? Knowledge of intellectual merit; or knowledge that allows you to do something?

My answer to all the preceding: yes. Education should do every one of those... though of course, some are more important than others.

Teaching students to be good people; to think critically, objectively and without depth; to consider other people’s feelings; and to possess deep or very general knowledge—that is more important than anything else.

Sure, teaching them more maths or science or employability skills might give the economy a small boost; but these things can be learned in the course of time. And judging by the huge number of atrocities that go on in the world—mutinies, perfunctory trials, the imprisonment of innocent people—teaching people to be human beings is a pretty damn good idea, in my view.

However, education must be tempered by realism. Teaching pupils philosophy is all well and good; but realistically, many will not truly learn this until they have lived in the real world for a while. And of course, not preparing children for the world of work would inflict a great deal of stress and (righteous) anger towards their school.

So, there are two things to learn here: humanity is more important than employer skills or facts; but there is a limit to how much the former can be practically taught. Plus, skills and facts are pretty useful.

Okay, Okay, But What About Good Ol’ Britain?

Right... where to start.

One major weakness of the UK is that it does not impart deep knowledge. A GCSE in something won’t mean much to you; it’ll only mean something to universities, employers, and gov’t—will you be a shop assistant, plumber or banker. Marxian classism to the very best.

This is not entirely without benefit: you get to study lots of subjects. However, the amount of depth is so low that it really doesn’t mean much.

Let me give you an example: the English Language GCSE is totally meaningless. You learn absolutely nothing about creating good prose; and the analysis is so low-level that how well you do on it lies mainly on your exam technique. (You have to answer the questions in a very specific manner, not like you would in normal life or even in higher education.)

So, my first recommendation would be to beef up the GCSE syllabi.

The second problem I have with the UK system is autonomy. Schools get too much of the damn stuff. While every school is different—a true one size-fits-all is impractical—at the current stage, a school can teach religious bull**** or make their students do 11 GCSEs, or make them do GCSEs they aren’t any good at, or make them do GCSEs that they hate and do them early...

Schools don’t always know best. I encountered these problems both in my comprehensive and in my grammar; both of whom are top in the league tables (if we take those to be any good).

So, yeah. Let’s put some reasonable limits on autonomy. Don’t allow schools to make mandatory subjects outside the national curriculum. Don’t allow schools to force their pupils to do more than 9 GCSEs. (Unless they want to.) And for God’s sake, look at what they actually teach!

However, I must admit that UK schools have excellent teachers; and that the GCSE curriculi—in particular, the RE one—do open the road to critical thought and understanding. And in fairness, exam technique is a useful skill.

But don’t evaluate students solely on it. Or even primarily on it. Knowledge and understanding is far more important.

Gove

I won’t say much on this. The man is an idiot living in the 20th century. Get rid of him.

Modern Foreign Languages

This is a topic of great annoyance for me. I hate learning languages in school. (And this is coming from someone who has native-speaker fluency in two languages.)

It shouldn’t be like this. Learning a language gives you insight into another culture; it gives you perspective, and forces you to question your own beliefs. Plus, it’s useful.

But MFL teachers are obsessed with grammar. Absolutely, fucking obsessed. We do grammar in every lesson. I hate it.

Grammar is boring; and it’s not how a language works. I don’t come up with all the rules in a tense and use that to write something. That’s stupid. You will get nothing but boring, lifeless word vomit.

The entire pedagogy in this subject should be overhauled. The only people who like it are the grammar geeks: everyone else can’t stand it. You can keep repeating it all you like; we’ll never understand it.

It is of no surprise to me that the UK is very monolingual. And to a degree, I don’t actually care: this language is the world-standard; and every hour not spent learning a language is an hour spent learning how to build an engine, or a computer, or thinking about why we exist.

The UK will never have the linguistic skills of a country like Holland. It doesn’t need it: and that’s a real benefit. Moreover, we have nowhere near enough exposure to do so even if we wanted to.

But for the people who genuinely like and want to learn a language, the MFL course is a failiure. It’s bad enough forcing people who don’t like languages to go through the arduous process of obtaining a GCSE in it; but blocking the option for non-grammar Nazis?

That’s criminal.

(I’m doing French though, which is a particularly unintuitive language. It might not be so bad for other ones.)

What Do You Suggest We Do?

Make the language focused on speaking, reading, and listening; writing a language is incredibly difficult, and beyond what a secondary school student should reasonably be expected to achieve. (I’m talking about more than ‘Je joue le foot’ here.)

Make us watch French films. Make us read French books. Give us a taste of the real thing—you never know. We might just like it.

Information Technology and Bullshit

In my grammar school, I am doing IGCSE Computer Studies. It’s a great course: there’s programming; there’s networks and systems; there’s a focus on practicality and business; and it’s a useful, all round course.

I did GCSE IT at my old school. It was crap.

All we did was Microsoft Excel—oh God, the spreadsheets!—and a tiny bit of audio editing. It was incredibly dull, boring and unintellectual.

So why the discrepancy?

I really think the IT courses in this country should get some serious quality control, preferably from people who work in the industry. The current state of affairs in this subject is frankly unacceptable.

Asia

The OECD has released a funny little education benchmark called PISA; it compares the performance of international students.

According to it, we should all be like China.

Of course, the OECD also predicted that the financial crisis of 2007–2014 (and beyond) would never have happened:

Our central forecast remains indeed quite benign: a soft landing in the United States, a strong and sustained recovery in Europe, a solid trajectory in Japan and buoyant activity in China and India. In line with recent trends, sustained growth in OECD economies would be underpinned by strong job creation and falling unemployment.

—OECD, 2007.

Frankly, the organisation is full of idiot economists and bureaucrats. I wouldn’t believe a word they say.

Besides, the report is wrong on so many levels it seems barely worth my time to debunk it. But in short: the report only tests maths, science and literacy, completely ignoring the fact that students can study more broadly or concentrate in other subjects; the report took a top school in Shanghai, completely ignoring the poorly funded Chinese schools outside of the city; and Asian education in general is extremely stressful for the students, causes real psychological problems, and treats art with contempt.

Also, the history classes in China present an inaccurate and politically-skewed picture. And their country has an atrocious human rights record. And it’s poor. Not the signs of the world’s greatest education system, eh?

Conclusion

I’ve talked a lot. I have probably bored you with all the detail; but I hope you understand my point.

Education is not about memorising facts and learning how to do exams. Neither can it be all discussion, because those skills are necessary in the real world. It must be a combination of both.

Most of all though, I’d like to see some more common sense. Few people can learn 11 subjects meaningfully with 25 hours of lessons a week; even fewer can gain insight and do well on an exam.

IT is not Word. A language isn’t about forming tenses.

We, as a society, should have a long, in-depth think about what our education system aims to do; and whether it is any good.

Success in this department will save us young people a great deal of stress, effort and depression.

Perhaps it is too much to hope for. Or perhaps we might actually begin to solve the problems that have corrupted us for so long.