Education

We always hear that politicians are going to hold a radical rethink of this, or a radical rethink of that. But always it is the same few ideas that come up. This can be seen whenever the shocking state of our education system comes up, not that they are alone in thinking that there is one proposal that will solve everything for everybody. For example you will always always and without fail somebody will claim that somehow bringing back corporal punishment would be a cure all. Equally you will find this ignored by the political establishment as it is not one of their proscribed ideas. Here is an example of what I mean, and for a bit of fun try to guess where the next quote comes from:

we find the astronomer and mathematician, James Inman ... deploring the abolition of the rod. He further remarks that a “black hole” as a place of confinement is needed [for his pupils as a result]!

The Daily Mail perhaps? Unfold to find out.

Nope! The answer is a book written in 1938 by Lt.Commander C. F. Walker R.N. about the training of Royal Navy officers, from a passage describing the results of banning corporal punishment in the Royal Naval college in 1806. But the third of what Winston Churchill considered the naval traditions was restored in 1873, as the book goes on say:

In the end, however, it was found necessary to revert to beating once more, and in the regulations of 1873, there appears the following manuscript note, which is not without significance:

“when reduction to second or third class seems to be non-effective with troublesome cadets, caning over the breech has been tried and found effective.”

Thereafter an official thrashing remained the chief punishment for the more serious offences, and continues to this day, though it is seldom awarded.

Corporal punishment certainly wasn’t, and isn’t, the only method of instilling discipline available, and the Navy would have had many more options than most establishments. But they tried with it and they tried without it, and so found it to be a useful tool at that time. Maybe today in our more enlightened times that it is no longer needed, hopefully this is true, and that more modern methods are more appropriate. As they might well have also though in the heady atmosphere 1806 at the beginning of a new century and the dawn of the industrial age. They where in the 1800s now so modern times required different more modern methods.

Keeping kids in order has always been a problem. How it can be done has always been debated and always will be debated. Methods have been tried, discarded, and tried again. Personally I don’t know the best method that will solve all the problems. I just know that the current state, where discipline is so low as to make education impossible, is unacceptable. What I do know however one guaranteed way of not finding the correct way to better education, which is to keep it as a state regulated state monopoly.

We cannot find out if something is right for todays circumstances if it is never tried. Some people will do well in the anomnymity of a large establishment, others in the one-to-one situation of home schooling. For some probably the Steiner schools should be the model and maybe there are a few that would need a fairly strict system. Ultimately the only way of letting children get the education that suits them is for the people that know them best to find what is best for them, which could well mean trying sevarl systems until the correct one is found. But it is impossible for a parent to find the system that will be best for their children if there is only one available to try since it is the only one sanctioned by the State. So I feel that we have to get rid of the failing one-size-fits-none state monopoly and trust the parents that they will try to do what is best for their children, without any ulterior motives like gaining political capital. Not a radical thought really.