Toby Young is on a rant. He states that “dumbing down ofstate education has made Britain more unequal than 25 years ago.”
The latest frenzy began with tweets from a teacherencouraging a student to be content with lower grades and be happy instead ofdriven to pass the test. Maybe there’s more to that story.
Other evidence of dumbing down came from high-performingstate schools accused of discriminatory admissions policies. The accused “comprehensiveschools” are by definition inclusive, but there must be an admission process in place.
In Young’s words good comprehensive schools, “Thanks to their reputations for academicexcellence, they were attracting more than their fair share of above-averagepupils, thereby relegating the surrounding schools to secondary modern status. In the eyes of the progressive elite thatcontrols our educational establishment, the best is the enemy of the good.Mediocrity for all is preferable to excellence for some.”
Is making the curriculum more accessible, i.e., teaching the “new unit in the Edexcel GCSE Englishsyllabus called English Today Theme Two(Talent Television), in which pupils are expected to study the home page of'Britain’s Got Talent' and a 2009 cover of 'Heat' magazine,” preferable for anyor all students? What happened to Shakespeare?
Read the full article in TheTelegraph.
