British Education

16. Education and it’s pertinence in the future sustainability of our society

In the past 25 years we have seen a slow decline of an international standard in British education, with some schools favouring the Baccalaureate as a higher echelon. The ensuing degradation resulting poor job skills when entering the workplace, a deeply politicised view of history and an increasingly militant destain for our laws. Potentially we have lost two generations to an agenda that has left older generations slipping down the work ladder and deeper into poverty. Furthermore our children are slipping behind in the international employment arena!

Until the late 1990s Colleges included a wide variety of courses with night classes readily available, this allowing people to study courses including A levels and Degrees while still working full time. Although in the last 20 years with the decline in the variety of courses we have witnessed a great increase in fees, making the possibility of studying far less desirable.

To put icing on the cake in 1998 Tony Blair’s Government introduced tuition fees in universities, starting from £1000 per year this would increase massively to £9250 per year, now in 2021 though in Europe however fees range from Zero to £4000 per year? The sheer dichotomy in fees charged in Britain and that of the continent, although the education system has encouraged students to go to university, the Education for Profit model has left them raddled with a minimum of £27000 of debt and is further likely facilitated the foothold incursion that the neo-Marxist movement has on British Universities and the University system.

Additionally the high fees versus job opportunities and steady decline in wages has undoubtedly deterred some prospectives students.

This invariably raises some obvious questions of the ensuing impact of decisions taken over the past 20 years, however initially there are pertinent questions as to why?

1. A question that has certainly been reiterated over an again in the last 25 years is why has the British education system been slowly dying?

2. Why were the range of college course reduced and further fees increased?

3. Why in 1998 did Tony Blair’s government introduce university fees that massively outweigh any charged in Europe?

A strong investment and realignment in the education system as it stands now pre and post GCSE for children and adults is desperately required. This reform cannot simply be financial but also fundamental, with the very structure of the British education system compromised. Some of the most prevalent issues plaguing our failing education system can be broken down into

• Neo Marxist Teachers and Teaching union

Teachers has been working against the interests of the British public in providing an unfit curriculum of study and certification for the jobs market. Further with a captive audience teachers of a Marxist and pro EU ideology have been tainting our education with their personal politics and opinion. This resulting in the disturbing ungrounded worship of the EU and a violent destain of Britain and our laws, but further an alternative teaching of past and recent history? In addition they are the same individuals that want to instate the Baccalaureate to replace the education system, a system that was frankly inferior to the old GCE O’Level?

• Pupils encouraged to take too many subjects at GCSE

The current education system is encouraging pupils to certify in more GCSE’s, with on average 10 and a maximum 16 being taken. There are simply not enough hours in a day to to learn this many in depth and reach a certifiable standard.

• The internet and technology has become the focal tool of learning

There is too much emphasis on the internet as the tool for learning, this system circumvents the basic skills required to learn or even the subject in question, with IT superseding all else. This framework including where to search – what area of study is pertinent, how do you know the information you have found is relevant or the most relevant, from the information gathered upon request can I write or explain confidently to an adequate depth answer. The issue with the internet is that this search media will just offer you an answer to whatever you desire and is compromised by paid Search Engine Optimisation for websites, consequentially there is no guarantee or understanding if that information is correct without cross referencing. Cementing the ubiquity and pervasive nature of the echo chamber more publicly understood as Social Media.

• NLP must be removed from learning and return to rote

This form of orientation uses emotional content to less teach but programme information, as this process circumvents reasoning in the learning process.

To create balance and support deprived & decaying communities, there must be equal opportunities in education for all ages, that are either free or affordable that have classes at times that are accessible to the young, the unemployed and the employed.

Otherwise this can only add to the ensuing depravity in communities, where local jobs market changes and new skills are required individuals have the ability to chart the course of their own destiny and not see their live torn in unemployment and government benefits. This is a right and the sign of a functioning society in a changing world where we can we move and change with it.

17. The reinstatement of the 1960s GCE and CSE education system

With the current state of our education system, our nations parents must take more interest in their children’s and our own continuing education as the economy and it’s sectors are in constant flux. With the environmental feud, the blight of Covid and the acceleration of the new fourth industrial age in relation to technologies as AI, though there is likely to be a period of economic stability to follow, as through the effects of the 2008 crash to survive in uncertain times we must be adaptable.

Asian families in Britain are known to outstrip their White and Black counterparts in education, as a matter of culture they try to ensure the future affluence of their children. Though now in the current climate White working class children in the most impoverished areas have already failed and have been failed by the education system before they reach GCSE. Now as a result of cancelling GCSE and A Level exams in covid lockdowns for the second year, teachers and the teaching union are looking to remove exams entirely and to scrap GCSE & A level for the International Baccalaureate? Although this is likely to be spin and the European Baccalaureate is what they are trying to instate!

The current consensus is that exams are far too stressful for pupils and is unfair on them, the degradation of our education system has been ensuing on this path since the Labour Government from 1997 and what we have seen is a pro EU teaching establishment complicit in moving our Globally recognised qualification to an unsustainable car crash.

It seems that on average pupils are taking 10 qualifications to a maximum of 16 in some cases? This is far too many subjects being studied for GCSE exams, you cannot expect to have any depth of a subject when you have 2 years to try and bring these to examination standard, even the brightest should not try to certify for more than 10. The mystery of certifying for so many subjects is that Colleges and Employers are only interested in 5-7 GCSE and it is the grade of those qualifications that is more important.

What also must be considered is the academic focus of the current GCSE when in reality people are not all wired this way, some are academically minded and some are more practical & trade focused, this is where the GCSE is no longer fit for purpose and has been manipulated to create under skilled job seekers that believe that they are most highly qualified generation ever?

Such a regime can only reap a negative consequence with the ensuing impact of Stress, Depression and inadequate job skills, though further the current system has produced an unadaptable, inflexible even unimaginative workforce!

As a matter of history this qualification was criticised at its inception in 1986 for being somewhere between the previous GCE and CSE what was an international standard produced better work ready and adaptable personal. The question that has been asked and has never been more pertinent is why? The public has never been happy the explanations and lead to left wing press producing unsatisfactory comparisons between O level and GCSE tests by pitting children against their parents to answer question on subject as GCSE trigonometry as a measure to validate the difficulty. Though conveniently forgetting that most parents would not have utilised this kind of formulae for more than 20 years and where the o level and even some GCSE questions were on A level papers.

A documented and known factor that has always marred the Labour Parties continual defence of their Comprehensive School concept and vilified the Grammar school, has been the fact that there are three categories of pupils, Low, Middle and High achievers. The Comprehensive school concept believes that all children will receive a high standard of education, not only has been proven to be not that simple, but in the past 25 years in impoverished communities will completely fail children of poor backgrounds.

The issue is that Low achieving pupils require the most support and the Highest achievers will become apathetic when the subject work does not stretch them appropriately, requiring more advanced material to keep their interest. This leaving only the middle group adequately stimulated and can learn requiring less support. Realistically only two of these can be appropriately educated, removing the Low achievers to another school is likely to see them achieve less and keeping the highest achievers in the classroom would be detrimental to their development, the system cannot be all things to all pupils!

Grammar Schools have long been met with Labour party disapproval stating that they don’t work, labelling the 11+ exam as unfair and flawed. This is an interesting stance and we would challenge people to research the number of Labour MPs and their Children who have attended Grammar Schools or even Private Schools since the 1997 Labour government alone? The fundamental difference is that the Comprehensive framework tries to support all three learning streams, but only to be compounded by pupil numbers making balanced and focused teaching a profoundly difficult task, hindering current and potential future learning.

The strength of the Grammar school framework is that it only focuses on one stream of pupil, with the support of the 11+ exam these institutions pool the brightest local students to teach in greater depth and to a higher level, allowing even children from poor backgrounds to excel and reach higher economic status.

However, this does beg an obvious question ‘why are the Labour Party so opposed to their voters children attending Grammar Schools?

Britain’s future talent can never be realised in a compromised education system that will see the poorest decidedly hand to mouth for the length of their employable lives. It is for parents to decide whether they believe their child can achieve better and if so to prepare them & seek out schools that will allow them to reach their higher potential. In some Labour run cities the Grammar school has been removed, though there are selective schools that require an entrance exam but educate from the state curriculum.

In recent years we have seen the implementation of STEM schools, these being the modern Secondary Technical that will produce our future scientists and Technicians, but to the point though there are schools offering training for pupils to become builders and plumbers, however as a whole what of those that are less academically inclined or those striving for non technical careers? Although these still require a good standard of general education in Science, Maths and English is this enough to just leave school with 5 average or lower passes competing against millions of other post 16’s? What is required are Trade style schools incorporated into the secondary school framework, preparing children of lower ability or lesser interest in academic studies the opportunity to train at school in careers that will pay wages and bring apprenticeships with local and regional firm. Though the T level qualifications are a welcome addition as business has given input as to their requirements for the workplace and does offer 3 A levels, these will unlikely attract many of the lower stream. They will be looking to enter the workforce and further their skills in the role and potentially expand their horizons through hard work & real world learning or potentially being the only or full time breadwinner. Such areas of employment can include Cooks, Chefs, Hospitality, Construction skills (Bricklayers, Plumbers, Plasterers, electricians, painters & decorators), Administrator skills, Customer services, Hospitality, Warehouse operatives etc.

All of these require a minimum of level 2 skills to start work and learning one or more of these skills will expand the opportunities for employment, with working and paying taxes a better start to life than the many that find themselves relying on state benefits to exist.

18. Technology before creativity
    The use of technology is now so deeply entrenched in the education system where it is almost more important than the subjects being oriented. So long has the use of computers and the internet been a prerequisite of education that parents buy their children mobile phone toys and educational laptops for their 2 and 3 year olds, as they are afraid that their children will fall behind in a future of ubiquitous computing. This is an interesting idea but a sadly false assumption as boomers and Generation X saw the expansion of Mainframe, the advent of the Honeywell bull, Home Computers, PC’s, games Consoles, the mobile phone and the internet.
    We have grown and worked with these technologies from the first in the 1960’s to the 1990’s and today. What is clear is that the only change in these generations is that constant advancement of computer technology frankly begins to lose its lustre in middle age, but we are by no means incapable of flowing with the continual tide into our 60’s. For a great many of us our experience of computers were in our homes with systems like Binatone, Sinclair, Tandy, BBC, the PC and Commodore where we played games, programmed and imagined what could be achieved with the new interface hardware being added as the technology advanced and tuning in weekly to Tomorrows World. But also using BBC computers in Schools to learn word processing, spreadsheets and digital media, even graphic design.
    The fundamental difference being that IT equipment was strictly for use in this area only, with subject books and libraries the tools of our expanding education. It has become obvious that the use of ICT is dominating our lives and has circumvented part of the learning process leaving later generations under skilled with a difficulty in adapting to new or different methodologies.
19. NLP
    A seldomly discussed issue that has contributed to the poor level of education and lack of work associated skills has been the implementation of NLP is the classroom. Neural Linguistic Programming is a controversial technique that by its very nature circumvents the reasoning center of the Brain and will hinder the development of objective thought.
    This has created generations of imbalanced minds that lean to hysteria, traits not beneficial in a working environment, further still this suitable form of manipulation is deployed in the press and throughout social media. The use of such suitable emotive persuasion from an early age can only lead to more easily malleable or suggestible thought patterns in adult life, effectively leaving a backdoor into the frontal lobe, making scepticism unlikely as there is little room for the development of independent thought. This is not to say that the general public are not susceptible to manipulation through media and advertising, but older people have developed multiple layers of reasoning to filter information through before making a decision that include experience, wisdom and older styles of education that can help distinguish fact, fiction and emotion, applying the objective process. Applying such a technique to adults is a decision that lies that individual alone but the use of such a technique in children can and has only been detrimental to their ability for higher reasoning.
    What would the purpose be of using such technique when they be required to show Independent thought in multiple work and life situations as they advance?
20. Evolution and the advent of AI
    Our evolution and continued growth of society is directly related to our wellbeing, to our curiosity and our desire to learn & experience new things. The dominating and misguided belief in the power of technology over wisdom and experience has been helping to drive the lack of creativity and the brain drain being witnessed over the past 30 years. Now escalating toward the technology singularity, the development of the quantum or biological computer was believed to advent the dawn of Artificial Intelligence, unbeknownst to anyone the currently dying silicon based technology has received a temporary new lease of life.
    With the creation of the Graphics Accelerator or now known as the Graphics Processing Unit, this being a Graphics card with its own CPU, when used in multiples can greatly improve processing ability but further has been found that in use with large scale computers and supercomputers will produce leaps of computational processing. As a result it is now believed that we may only be a year away from Artificial Intelligence and that the dullness in culture and progression of our society can in part be due to the ubiquity of computer technology.
    It is not our intention to be seen as a new Luddite movement, though it must be stated that their cause was just and echoes through history to show new relevance in the light of coming automation leaps in business. Computers have only ever been able to process results based on the quality of data inputted and limitation of the technology itself, though now it must be acknowledged that with the pervasive nature of computers in education and our lives we have abdicated our creative responsibility in the belief that computers are superior.
    Our ability to input perception, experience and passion allow us to contemplate and resolve multiple problems, but with the way our brains are structured we can do these at the same time throughout our lives in the conscious and subconscious, further thinking in the abstract, but also to dream and these are the qualities of the human mind that define us from computers. A gift that has an unknown number of evolutionary leaps before us, that we can either embrace with the right stimulation or squander with the unsustainable lives and environment that we are told is for our betterment but really the profit and control of major corporations who have their own plans for the future.

Since the first world war computers have served a vital function in society few though more vital than Turing’s Bombe in cracking the enigma codes and the supercomputers utilised in mapping the human genome. Medicine, computational modelling and quantum mechanics & astrophysics, though even the furthering of our understanding and practical application of terraforming will bring answers and a deeper understanding of environmental change.
These are the functions that will serve society in the future as the length of numbers in calculations and number of separate types of datasets in solving single problems would take too long to for the human mind or even a collective of mathematicians to calculate. It is speed in solving vital issues that make computers essential in areas of society, but it must be emphasised that as far back as the Egyptian empire and Mayan culture that it was mechanical computation machines that have been found to be build to solve problems such as astronomical calculations.

So why do we expect computers to realise our dreams & drive the future of our society and not simply support in the manifestation of the design of own creations?

21. Longer hours in school
    There are many skills lacking in the workplace today but further with the new 4th industrial age our children need to be able to compete and with the current financial demands on parents, the current cost of child care and with parents working to school operating hours, especially since the corona virus epidemic with a good balance of mental and physical education, families can survive better at the best of times.
    Japan has one of the best education systems in the world, where children have an 8 hour day and are required to certify in 8 subjects at age 16, though many children also attend an evening school, with a good balance of learning, sport and after school activities children and families would be better supported & better adjusted when they leave school.
    This is not a maverick or unfounded notion but simply a return to a successful education style of the past, private and public.
22. Military cadets
    Our world has become a more violent place with a general mentality of pure self interest among many younger people. These are all facets of the growing nihilism stemming from the ensuance of unbridled liberalism, producing further undesirable traits as a lack of self responsibility and a destain of our history & culture. A society devoid of the basic morality past down through our parents and grandparents leading to a decent toward a chaos many of us can see in less than a generation or is already here.
    In some Schools around the country military programmes have been attached to the educational curriculum to instil positive traits including courage, respect, hard work and loyalty. Making this a part of the national curriculum from the age of 13 to be taught alongside academia and sport such experience would go a long way to preparing young people for the working environment and skills necessary for behaviours beneficial to creating a wholesome and progress society.
    Furthermore such cadet programmes tailored to direct entry can provide career avenues for those whom are of less academic interest and expand the horizons & worldliness of many that would not have thought of such a path otherwise.
23. The Frankfurt School and the Architects of society’s undoing
    In the past 20 or so years it has become increasingly obvious that school, college and university education has become held hostage to a counter political ideology in Neo-Marxism, this movement though mixing ideals of Carl Marx are in fact a Nihilistic philosophy born out the work of a group Marxist Psychologists and Psychoanalysts, upon witnessing the failure of a Socialist revolution in Europe and the ensuing horror of World War I, in 1932 this group of individuals would come together at the Frankfurt School in Germany.
    Here they would create a new programme of ideological belief woven into a fabric of Marxist socialism, though unlike Marx their theories and ideas did not promote the betterment of society, with such movements as Political correctness, Critical theory, Social grouping, environment change, Feminist theory, the concept of LGBT, diversity as a weapon and marginalisation of the family. The names listed below have been highlighted as their published and even previously criticized work are the architects of our broken society.
    Below are the names of the Psychologists and Philosophers of the unspoken cabal that appear to be the architects of the madness now twist and manipulating the damage in our society:

Max Horkheimer
• Theodor W. Adorno
• Herbert Marcuse
• Friedrich Pollock
• Erich Fromm
• Otto Kirchheimer
• Leo Löwenthal
• Franz Leopold Neumann
• Henryk Grossman

Within 70 years we were witnessing the decay in the fabric of our society with record levels of divorce and by 2015 a hatred of older people, where there is zero balance bias in the teaching of sex education, where sexual preference and the over identification of racial identity to create further divide and fear of violent retaliation from voicing any opinions & truths unless they are inline with the perception of the mob and even the concept of white male privilege?

This is a concept that does not hold water as in mid December 2020 as White children from impoverished communities have not even been reaching GCSE level education, this resulting in limited job prospects and continually lowered lifetime income.

But most importantly where the leftist movements go so far left they become right wing at the extreme end, though ask yourself what is the difference between right and left at the fringe ends?

This leading to an anti democratic movement that has been defiant against the 2016 referendum result in relation to our detachment from the EU because they did not want to and that the other side were stupid and or simply racist?

Politics has no place being taught anywhere but within the confines of the subject that it is encompassed unless pertinent to the topic of study at the time and further without the added context of opinion disguised as fact though equally the inclusion of the impact to society and the lives of those within.

It has been alleged that the infiltration of the culture within Universities began more than 35 years ago, this the staging platform for a new Technical elite that would replace the already debt ridden middle class of old to spread a new and unfamiliar but decidedly insidious ideology. The counter culture in relation to neo-Marxism infiltrating our institutions has been the direct consequence of a campaign described the Long March, a little known and suitable insurgency into Western Culture that has been 70 years in the making, now plaguing our society driving division and ban any freedom of speech other than their own.

Do we not send our children to University to prepare them for higher roles in our society? But what is abundantly obvious, that fact we do not rejoice in their acceptance for them to return, less with a degree but an ideology that despises everything we are!

In the battle curb such an undebated and enforced culture, we have little choice but to legislate changes to ensure that learning is the paramount objective and that freedom of choice & expression are upheld. There are two such circumstances have lead to the dominance of this prevailing edeology:

• With the autonomy of universities free of non left leaning Government observation, this anti-British culture has gained an uncontested almost military foothold.
• The extreme cost of tuition in British Universities has bred an atmosphere conducive in attracting like minded personnel.

Finally and perhaps one of the most important issues spoken with great frustration for more than 30 years has been the regularly ridiculed and conspicuous destructions of British English. A cornerstone of our identity the original form of modern English is being swept away for the international standard, a Phonetically devised version of our language is spoken devoid of many the evolutionary changes and suitabilities that form a part of our history. Though further rejects much of the grammar and vocabulary that formed a language of articulation and diplomacy.

Leaving a final question that for many as with previous topics discussed in the section conjures memories of Orwell and 1984, why has someone been so hell bent of destroying the English language?

There are many changes and additions or realignments that are required now to fix our ailing education system for children and adults:

• British history (unpoliticised) should be fully reinstated, illustrating the positive & negative attributes of historical figures, but with the additional studies of our laws including the Magna Carta and the Bill of rights 1689. Though further still a history of the first Parliament & our Constitution, finally an update of our modern history to include Windrush. Our American family teach their law and democracy with great pride, why should we not as the worlds modern democracy styles are based on the English Blueprint.
• The fundamental British Values to be included from Primary school
• Freedom of Speech must be included in our education to explain their right of expression in our nation.
• Political ideologies and opinion should removed any and all educational settings unless pertinent to the subject or political science as a matter of law with prosecutable consequences.
• A real music lesson programme with teaching of real instruments, this has been proven to improve the learning skills and comprehension of growing children.
• The removal of sex education before 9 years of age and that further homosexual and heterosexual relationships to be taught in balance
• The reinstatement of British English and the removal phonetic learning
• Military cadets as a mainstream part of the education curriculum
• Computers must removed from the learning process, they currently have too much involvement.
• Qualification at age 16 should be focused to no more than 5-7 subjects and up to 10 for pupils that prove they have the capability.
• The education system will need to reflect the practical and academic requirements of employers/jobs market.
• The reinstatement of the GCE and CSE system
• A wider variety of sport to include Boxing, wrestling and other martial arts.
• The removal of extravagant and unjustifiable fees in Universities.
• More direct administration of universities from Government with stronger penalties for Shill Lecturers teaching opinion as fact and injecting political ideology into subjects where there is no parallel.

These changes are a core reflection of the issues that have been undermining our education that would need to be implemented to begin the process of reversing the damage inflected upon our society that we still have years to overcome. We will take these to the Government however we need your support to apply the public weight required to force the change fundamental in this fight.

Copyright © by Stephen Pryor 2021