Call off the search
A fitting monument to the monumental idiocy and endemic hatred of humanity of the Blair years has been found:
Britain’s most expensive state school is being built without a playground because those running it believe that pupils should be treated like company employees and do not need unstructured play time.
The crap spewing from the mouths of those responsible makes you wonder if their colons have gone into reverse: ‘Pupils won’t need to let off steam because they will not be bored’ and ‘[Pupils] will be able to hydrate during the learning experience’.
Needless to say, this joy-killing drone factory is a flagship academy. It’s replacing three other local schools. The pupils will still have a choice though. They can decide whether not to play football, not to play British Bulldogs or not to play Chain Tig (my personal favourite - by the end of the game the kid on the end is moving at near supersonic speed). All very important in this age of children being groomed for their optimal position in the economy.
Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what soulless drudgery you can do for your country.
Posted on May 9th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
| See also • The Times: How No 10 spun schools a line • Shame Academy (sorry) • Smell the glove |
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Filed under Blair, Miscellaneous misanthropy, UK politics |
Meanwhile, Tony’s little Nicky is going to be a teacher when he grows up. Isn’t that sweet?
This is not education it is schooling - where the school is nothing more than a factory production line & the young human beings who have to suffer their formative years in this philistine system are mere tins of peas to be processed in such a way as to produce an object of production satisfactory to the needs of the owners of production rather than as human citizens in a free society.
Most adults in paid employment have a legal right to regular breaks & there is sufficient research material available demonstrating that human performance and concentration levels deteriorates after a certain amount of time when involved in work activity. Even Frederick Taylor, of Scientific management infamy, built in regular breaks.
Yet too many seem to be quite content to subject physical & mental demands on children / young people that they would not dream of considering for adults. Even from the point of view of bottom line philistine efficiency this idea is criminally lunatic. Why not go the whole hog and install the management clone chips into people at birth?
In way shape or form is this an “education” system.
At best it is a “schooling” system where the school is nothing more than a factory production line and the young human beings who have to suffer their formative years in this philistine system are mere tins of peas to be processed in such a way as to produce an object of production satisfactory to the needs of the owners of production rather than as human citizens in a free society.
The majority of people in paid employment have a legal right to regular breaks and there is sufficient research material available that demonstrates that human performance and concentration levels deteriorates after a certain amount of time when involved in work activity. Even Frederick Taylor, of Scientific management infamy, built in regular breaks.
Yet too many seem to be quite content to subject physical and mental demands on children and young people that they would not dream of considering for adults. Even from the point of view of bottom line philistine efficiency this idea is criminally lunatic. Why not go the whole hog and install the management clone chips into people at birth?
… turn you into a New Labour politician…
I couldn’t agree more, Dave. But I’m not sure it’s something we can lay solely at the feet of Blair and New Labour…
Yes, Dave, you’re bang on. But it was ever thus, wasn’t it, as Jim and Albert point out?
I’m partially driven by a personal grudge on this, forever regretting being forbidden to take Art O-level in favour of Geography.
The teacher guiding my choices said Geography would help a career in computer programming if I failed to get Physics. At fourteen, who was I to argue? The decisions you make then can lock you in for years to come. Enjoyment and fulfilment came a lowly second.
And that was nearly twenty years ago. If I met that teacher now I’d be tempted to slap her.