Theodore Dalrymple on the baleful affects of modern (post-modern?)
pedagogy on the children of the U.K, remembering of course that this essay was
written in 2000:
“ The children themselves
eventually come to know that something is wrong, even if they are not able to
articulate their knowledge. Of the generations of children who grew up with
these pedagogical methods, it is striking how many of the more intelligent
among them sense by their early twenties that something is missing from their
lives. They don’t know what it is, and they ask me[1]
what it could be. I quote them Francis bacon: “It is a poore Center of a mans actions, Himselfe.” They ask me what
I mean, and I reply that they have no interests outside themselves, that their
world is as small as the day they entered it, and that their horizons have not
expanded in the least.
“But how do we get interested in
something?” they ask.
This is where the baleful effect
of education as mere entertainment makes itself felt. For to develop an
interest requires powers of concentration and an ability to tolerate a degree
of boredom while the elements of a skill are learned for the sake of a
worthwhile end. Few people are attracted naturally by the vagaries of English spelling
or by the rules of simple arithmetic, yet they must be mastered if everyday
life in an increasingly complex world is to be negotiated successfully. And it is the plain duty of adults, from the
standpoint of their superior knowledge and experience of the world, to impart to
children what they need to know so that later they may exercise genuine choice.
The demagogic equation of all authority, even over the smallest child, with
unjustifiable political authoritarianism leads only to personal and social
chaos.”
I am not convinced that a devious group of people actually consciously
introduced these educational malpractices into our culture. To be fair I believe
that many truly considered the past practices to be inferior and in some cases
I agree. However, as in many cases of ‘progressive’ thinking; good, viable
ideas are quickly hijacked by radicals whose ideology is to break down the culture
completely and replace it with a ‘better’(Utopianism) culture. I think that
many are shocked by the levels to which western education has sunk, certainly many are talking about it, hence the
‘Gonski review’ where the answer to the problem (according to the heavily unionised
educational culture) is to throw more money at the problem. The facts belie such an approach.
This highlights the differences between a progressive
perspective and a conservative one. The 'progressive' sees a problem and applies
the scorched earth approach; burn it down and start again. The conservative on
the other hand sees much to be admired in the past, many worthwhile facets of
culture that should in fact be strengthened and maintained. Analyse and fix; a
softly, softly approach that is at odds with a young and (seemingly) dynamic structure,
and let’s face it ‘young’ is the buzzword of our age.
Of course the real problem with such a lack of education amongst
many young people in the Western world today is not (merely) that they act (or
react) in an ‘uncivilised’ manner, but that this lack of nous and/or even the ability to reverse this deficiency because of
a inculcated addiction to ‘entertainment education’ relegates them to a
permanent underclass, almost like a return to the feudal state of life where an
elite few hold all the cards. And once again it is the elite who have access to
the best schools where the ‘old ways’ are, to a lesser or large degree still maintained,
thus reinforcing their hegemony over the others.
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