One of the major problems for any child wishing to be educated is the modern obsession with the idols of Equality and Fairness. Caring and Sharing are pretty dangerous idols too. All these concepts are used to debilitate the common person. The powerful ignore such concepts. They make sure their own children are equipped with the tools to ensure 'success' in the hierarchy of political and economic life.
In effect, Equality and Fairness are ways of telling the powerless, 'Don't get above your station!' The purpose is divide and rule. It tells us to look at our fellow peasants and to resent their achievement. There must be no more top of the class or bottom of the class, no more recognition of achievement, only recognition of effort and improvement. The objective gold star for coming top is replaced by the subjective smiley face of Teacher. Discipline is replaced by management, learning by control.
In the post war years, up until the late Seventies, autonomous working class organisations, the Trades Unions, had claimed a role in the political process. Working class life was vibrant. Ordinary people sat at the top table. We had never had it so good.
But the Imperative of Power does not allow such a situation to last for long. The young Managers coming out of the red brick universities with their social science degrees, had new weapons to unleash on ordinary people; Equality, Diversity, Fairness and Care.
In the schools the masses were to be treated the same. They were all little savages, tainted with the original sin of powerlessness, and they were to be proselytised, civilised, and made sick.
It was not fair if a girl did not behave like a boy, or a boy like a girl. Being a working class boy was in itself something of a crime, especially if he was of indigenous stock.
Ignorance was peddled. Nothing could be expected from these inferiors who would only become electricians, plumbers, cooks and cleaners. They were damned by their background, supposedly ill or 'disadvantaged'.
Once upon a time education had been a route to material and financial betterment for the working class. They might go to grammar school, and if they were more practically inclined there were apprenticeships and night schools. Where once he learnt so that he might earn enough to support a family, now the working class boy is damned, dumbed down and drugged up.
As long as the young have to bow to the false gods of Equality and Fairness, English education will continue to decline. The young will continue to be under-achieving and self -pitying.
School instills patterns of docility and consumerism, the glass ceiling of Fairness.
Our masters have to decide what they want - either education is a matter of learning or it is a matter of control.
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