THE ROLE OF PRIMARY EDUCATION.
What is primary education for? In a nutshell, it is to equip young people with all the tools they will need to get the most out of the education system and make the most of their talents. Fashions and priorities and methods change regularly but two things have been the bedrock foundation of our education for generations -- numeracy and literacy.
Literacy is our ability to read and understand the English language and the ability to express ourselves comfortably and with variety, both verbally and in writing. Grammar and spelling are integral to the process. Numeracy isn't advanced maths: it's being comfortable in using and manipulating the basic arithmetic functions, both mentally and written. All other education, from pre-Norman history at age nine to pilot training or medical School requires those skills. They are absolutely fundamental to subsequent learning and if learned early, they make future learning easier and faster.
What else? A sound basic grasp of the Earth's geography -- continents, oceans, the world's great rivers, deserts and mountains will give some context to the UK. A good basic knowledge of the UK -- main cities, rivers, ports. The map of Europe and its constituent countries should be familiar images.
Our history is important. It is essential that everybody here, including those who choose to come here and make their lives here, should grow up with a sound basic understanding of how, why and when this country came about, up to the Norman conquest at least. At this stage, if the teachers have done their job, secondary schools should be welcoming pupils with all the resources and training they will need for some serious education.
An old school friend of mine -- Grammar School, not public -- told me that he had been obliged to give additional ("remedial" was his word) English lessons to some of his first-year students at Cambridge! They have the brains, he told me but had been very badly-served by their teachers. They needed showing how to write properly-constructed papers for their course and even needed guidance on the use of English! He was a Fellow of King's College and in despair at the quality of modern secondary teaching.
It's no surprise that secondary education standards are dropping when the politicisation of teaching methods in primary schools and the knee-jerk rejection by the left – politicians and teaching unions both – to the old-fashioned methods of our parents and grandparents is creating generation after generation of pupils completely unprepared for and unable to benefit from secondary education. Add to that the fact that many of today's teachers are themselves victims of this dumbing down process. Like many of today's pupils, they are far better than the teaching system has allowed them to demonstrate -- while telling them that their academic record is excellent. It isn't always the case. When they are the result of the corrupted system that tells them that they are "excellent" when clearly they are not, they are bound to fight back against their detractors. They are victims, defending the system that victimised them and determined to carry on the process! You couldn't make it up.
If anything, technology may have made things worse, by enabling young people to manage without those basic skills. That way, they may even be solving problems without properly understanding the nature of the problem -- or how & why it was solved!
