A selective approach

Malcolm was debating the issue of Northern Ireland’s secondary schools on Slugger O’Toole.

He was invited to explain his position.

The following is the gist of his response:

A cynic might argue that a school’s basic function is childminding, keeping the little sods off the street for much of the time, and trying to inculcate some basic manners and skills: in that order.

The original concept of public education (i.e. the justification why we should pay to educate others’ brats) amounted to:

1.1 health (education as a prophylactic);
1.2 the 3Rs (command of essential skills: numeracy; communication; decoding text);
1.3 preparing the individual with basic social skills to operate in the community and in the democracy;
1.4 vocational preparation (allowing the individual to participate usefully in the economy);
1.5 personal enrichment (allowing the individual to use leisure fruitfully); and
1.6 ethical and moral development (which, because of the Great Divide, is the prime criterion for Northern Ireland).

Again, this list could (absent episcopal meddling) be regarded as a descending hierarchy of desiderata.

In the 21st century it would translate into something like:

2.1 learning to acquire, sort and use relevant information. The knowledge is out there: what we need are the skills to acquire, analyse, apply and report what is relevant in any particular task—and then move on.
2.2 as part of that, we still need to grasp the “big ideas” as a frame-story for the above, to have an appreciation of basic concepts.
2.3 problem-solving (using 2.2 to facilitate 2.1); and construction (getting beyond simple cut-and-paste by extracting meaning from different, even contradictory sources).
2.4 enquiry: defining a problem, and applying discovered data, rather than relying on second-hand opinion or supposition (which might be relevant to the parallel argy-bargy between fundamentalists and evolutionists over the age of the Giant’s Causeway).
2.5 “personal, social and health education”: that whole area where society and its politicians suddenly decide “something must be done” and off-load it onto schools. This covers everything from AIDS and contraception to “proper manners” and, among the latest fads, Jamie Oliverism.

What is missing in that last list is any specific vocational element. Which raises two points:

3.1 This is where the great class divide shows up. The “middle-class” professional parent is, generally, more tolerant of the sprog postponing career decisions until 18+, or even to post-degree level. That, of course, is one of the benefits of disposable income. It is not so easily an option for a less-affluent, “working-class” parent.
3.2 How relevant is “vocational training” anyway, in a fast-changing economic environment, where typically we change jobs and need re-skilling repeatedly over a working life?

Now, to the specific problem of “selection”. In the spirit of “discovery learning” (2.3 and 2.4 above), Malcolm recommends Googling “academic selection”. The finding from such an experiment is that the term applies, almost exclusively,

4.1 to the current debate in Northern Ireland;
4.2 to factions, modernisers versus traditionalists, in the British Tory Party; and
4.3 to job specifications in higher education.

Where “selection” fails is:

5.1 It perpetuates an artificial class-division (see 3.1 above). Every study shows that the beneficiaries of a selective system, any selective process, are the affluent and professional. And, therefore, the élite Belfast (or provincial) grammar school is precisely what Malcolm would want for his sweet-peas. So much for self-interest versus the objective theory.
5.2 It asserts a higher status for the intellect over “skills”. However, the purpose of secondary education is not merely to service the needs of the “best” universities. The great failing of the British system is in fostering and developing technical education. This is evidenced all the way from G.B.Shaw in “Man and Superman”, over a century ago, through the aborted tripartite system envisaged by the 1944 Act, to the present demand for Polish plumbers.
5.3 Selection changed this society between the 1940s and 1960s, by facilitating the transition from an economy based on primary and secondary sectors (mining, farming, manufacture) to one dominated by the tertiary sector, and to the “meritocracy”. Good show. Now the wheel is turning again, and “the knowledge economy” (see 2.1 and 2.2 above) is not well served by pure academicism.
5.4 We are all “meritocrats” now, except the unfortunate “under-class” (which is another way of looking at what Malcolm suggested in 3.1 above). Education should not be a way of artificially maintaining that division (which, in any case, runs contrary to the principle in 1.1 above: unless we want to exist entirely in our gated community).
5.5 Any selection is automatically linked to an age-criterion (11+ or 14+) which pays no heed to individual personal development.

Malcolm’s bottom line? The smallest number of generally good (and – inevitably – large, and – preferably – secular) schools, offering individually and collectively a curriculum based on 2.1 to 2.5 above, but with flexibility and scope for personal development.

There is one caveat to all this, defined for Malcolm by a formidable lady, of certain years, as “culture sag”. He had the benefit of being taught by the war-time generation (his English teacher was an ex-fighter pilot, complete with handlebar, laid-back and inspirational, to whom Malcolm owes the ability to compose this). Malcolm’s generation of entrants to the staff-room were diverse, eclectic and committed. Today, the young graduate has a far wider choice of careers: teaching is by no means the most desirable. The result is that too many entrants to the profession lack that extra sparkle or indefinable X-factor (and, when they do have it, are not allowed to use it). Where they persist, it is likely to be in one of those “selective” schools which Malcolm has scorned herein.