As terrified as I am that they're blaming a 0.5% shrinkage of the economy on the weather and their increasingly vociferous attempts to re brand control orders (and still use them as an excuse to restrict the civil liberties of people who pray to a different God than them) I'm still more terrified about the state of education.
Michael Gove is without a doubt the worst thing to happen to education since the cane was abolished. I'm quite certain that if I'd put a mortar board on a macaque monkey, got it off its furry tits on absinthe and let it into a GCSE Chemistry lesson it would do a better job at managing the learning experiences of today's young people.
In case you were wondering who Michael Gove is, Michael Gove is the worst kind of Tory. The kind that went to public school and has absolutely no professional experience in the business he manages at a national level.
Think about it.
Would you let a chef run your software company?
Would you let a punk rock guitarist manage a high end interior design outfit?
Then why is a former journalist who had never set foot in a school in a professional capacity in his life telling thousands of heads, teachers and educational staff how to do their jobs?
Especially one who's made such a rancorous string of ill conceived balls ups in less than a year in office. To compound maters, he even looks like a caricature of a Tory. Have a look;
Chinless milk fed gimp!
God knows, I wasn't the biggest fan of Ed Balls but at least he seemed to genuinely value the needs of today's youth rather than trying to pursue his own fundamentalist agenda at the expense of their educational experience.
First he scrapped BSF funding for 712 schools that sorely needed it! In fact, in one particularly embarrassing case, funding was even denied to a Central London school to carry out work that meant the school failed its basic health and safety requirements.
He then did away with specialist college status creating a massive schism in schools' ideologies that will have massive implications for schools all over the country.
Now the tedious toff is trying to garner armchair pundit support by touting a 'back to basics' approach to education, which I'm sure will appease Daily Mail readers who think that all we do is teach kids how to put condoms on bananas all day.
In short, humanities, science, English literature and languages are the order of the day. Artsy fartsy subjects like my own are treated with derisory sneering from the galleries, as are things like design and technology and PE has lost the respect and importance as a subject that it has fought for in recent decades. Music faces the very real threat of being wiped from the National Curriculum altogether.
I'm aware that this sounds like sour grapes.
Let me make it clear that I'm absolutely for engendering a fondness for classics of literature. I used to be a member of a theatre company whose mandate was doing exactly that.
And it is a cultural embarrassment that our command of languages pales in comparison to that of our European counterparts.
I do, however, strongly believe that ramming these subjects down young people's throats is absolutely the wrong way to go about it.
I also believe that as a generation of graduates stride, proudly clutching their degree certificates, into the forbidden gloom of the sparse job market education needs to have a vocational bent. Students need to build a portfolio of multifaceted skills that can be applied to any vocation. This includes the ability to express themselves in a range of capacities.
Who in their right mind then, could deny the educational and vocational importance of drama?
My tongue is only ever so slightly in my cheek here.
Of course education is, and needs to be, in a constant state of self evaluation but this conservative revisionism seems suspiciously like Gove pushing his own personal agenda for education and not considering the learning needs of today's youth.
This is unacceptable!
As I frequently tell my students, we are here for them not the other way around.
And to Gove and his fundamentalist agenda I say this.
Self expression is not a frivolity.
Culture is not a luxury.
And unless your government is prepared to consider a more holistic approach to education that balances academia, vocational training, physical exercise and artistic expression... Well expect to see a lot of PhDs discussing Ulysses in the dole queue!
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