Nanny Knows Best

Nanny Knows Best
Dedicated to exposing, and resisting, the all pervasive nanny state that is corroding the way of life and the freedom of the people of Britain.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Educashun

EducashunGiven Nanny's oft stated predilection for "Educashun, Educashun, Educashun" and the recently announced "Balls Plan" for one stop shops at schools, it has come as a "total surprise" (there is irony in that phrase folks) to learn that classic poetry is in danger of disappearing from English lessons because teachers with little knowledge of literature.

Maybe, on reflection, I shouldn't be too surprised.

Many of the young teachers in schools have been victims of Nanny's lousy educashun system, where competitiveness and a desire for self improvement have been banned.

Only very few primary schools are now using works such as Wordsworth's Daffodils, or Coleridge's the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

It seems that many primary teachers simply do not know enough about poetry to cover the subject properly. They instead opt for the easy option, offered by modern writers.

Taking the easy way out has always been Nanny's philosophy.

Children should not be stretched beyond the limits of the slowest/dimmest pupil in class.

The result?

A classroom full of bored, fractious kids who end up causing trouble as their minds are turned to mush in the stultifying boredom of Nanny's schools.

Seemingly the poem of choice for Nanny's teachers is that redoubtable work by Spike Milligan, "On the Ning, Nang, Nong".

Inspectors who checked poetry teaching at 86 primary and secondary schools concluded it was the worst-taught aspect of English.

One in three schools were merely "satisfactory" while only seven were rated "outstanding".

Passing for teacher feedback these days, instead of a detailed critique, teachers now write "super" or "lovely poem". Thus displaying a remarkable level of ignorance.

Adding to the boredom imposed by Nanny on the hapless kids is the task set by many teachers, that of counting the lines in a poem.

What the fark good is that?

How can we possibly hope to teach children if the teachers themselves are uneducated and unchallenging?

14 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:05 AM

    As with all things related to Nanny, she boasts about how much money has been thrown at an area, in this case education, but she does not grasp that it is not how much money is spent that is important, (Invested in Nanny speak) it is how that money is spent and whether there is value for money that matters.

    The real worry for me, is that these products of today's education system, will be tomorrows teachers, doctors, accountants and bank managers.

    I still say that the general dumbing down of society, look at television news, reality shows, day time tv, children's tv, gossip magazines and our education system for example, is designed to produce mindless worker drones that have no interest in life other than working and paying tax in order to fund Nanny's mad cap politically correct and enviromentally friendly schemes.

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  2. Anonymous12:22 PM

    Yes Tonk, bloody scary isn't it.

    Not being sarky there - I mean that. It's truly scary. And it's not just the education system and its denizens - it's the whole damned society.

    True story:
    A year or two ago I went to my GP and told her I thought I was insane. Then after a pause I added, "Either that or this society I find myself trapped in is"

    "I don't think there's anything wrong with you" she replied, which told me she agreed with me: this society we are trapped in is insane.

    Truly bloody scary.

    Currently I have a probation officer (I'm on a suspended sentence until next May. I'm no angel - I just dont hurt people, or rob, or nonce). She too agrees with me that the system is mental.

    Truly bloody scary

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  3. Anonymous2:14 PM

    Sir HM,

    Catch 22 for you I think.

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  4. Anonymous2:26 PM

    For us all Grant.

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  5. Anonymous2:30 PM

    I suppose there's a third possibility:

    I'm insane AND the society I find myself trapped in is too.

    But I don't think so.

    And neither do I think that the dumbing down is accidental. Such spectacular incompetence in everything this system touches cannot be mere incompetence. That level of incompetence can only be deliberate.

    Like the Cylons ... they have a plan.

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  6. Anonymous7:44 PM

    I was in Primary school in the 70's and we didn't do poetry then eiher...must be a common thing with Labour governments.

    Your comment "Children should not be stretched beyond the limits of the slowest/dimmest pupil in class." is particulary true. Labour governments have a habit of trying to reduce everyone to the lowest possible denominator so that they can control everyone.

    There is an alternative to the dire schools in this country - Home Education. It's completely legal and many people are turning to it to stop their children becomes victims of Nanny's bizarre curriculums.

    You should have a blog entry on the Pre-school national curriculum where babies are given marks for babbling....it's true, and in Oct 08 it becomes law for all child carers!

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  7. Anonymous9:14 PM

    First of all, let me confess that I am an ‘Educatıon Professıonal’ (I used to be a teacher, but they changed all that divısive terminology). When, in the late 90s, I took a second - refresher - teaching degree, I got tired of telling my ‘Professor’ that ‘th’ and the letter ‘g’ still exısted in the English Language. As his speciality was ‘classroom organisation’, he seemed to fink that such fings din’t ma’’er and ennyow, nobody else ‘ad never said noffink about it. As you may guess, these were not happy days for me.

    What appalled me most, however, was the educational standard of the people that I shared the course with. My particular speciality on the course was the teaching of English Lang. & Lit. to University students and adults. No-one (and this includes the ar..hole who was ‘teaching’ the course) had read any of the classic British novels, (but the women did fancy that bloke in ‘Pride and Prejerdiss’), knew nofink about poytry and fort Shakespeare was dead borin.

    At the party which was held on finishing the course, I asked the Principle of the College how he felt about releasing such morons onto an unsuspecting Education system; he proudly proclaimed that the College’s reputation was excellent, that the College’s Degree was so well-respected that he was able to ‘hand-pick’ his students, that his students were, thus, the pick of the crop and that he hoped that people like myself, with elitist views about learning and outdated views about teaching would soon be ‘purged from the system’.

    A little later, while teaching at an Adult Education College, I was asked (told) to give a pass mark to the History student who had claimed in an essay that Mussolini had been a British General in the First World War and that Hitler was a Japanese Emperor [I kid you not]. I asked why, given that she clearly understood nothing, the woman should pass and was told, “She wants to go to University to become a teacher”. Unfortunately, I laughed and told my superior that she must be taking the piss. She wasn’t, I resigned; thus purging myself from the system.
    Has as already been said, if the education of the kids is in the hands of the uneducated, who themselves have been educated by the uneducated, who can be surprised at the result?

    Things are a great deal better here in Turkey, where the politicians – by and large – keep their noses out of education and the students still get the chance of the education that most of them are determined to receive. I recently had a long conversation with an 18 year old student who was desperate to tell me his views about Shakespeare’s tragedies. I could, of course, have countered with a non-fictional modern tragedy – that of British education.

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  8. Nanny Agonistes

    Nanny's grasp
    of plot and rhyme
    Is exhausted in
    Five seconds time.

    Her sing-song verse
    Of connect-the-dots
    Was written to
    Be taught by twats!

    The End



    Where's my award?

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  9. Spike Milligan would have had something to say about all this. And it would have been more incisive than 'Ying Tong Iddle I Po'.

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  10. Dear Grumpy

    Yer terzer rimer's
    gone off track
    I fink dat you'f been
    smokin' crack.

    Wif some trainers
    and some bling
    your raps could somedays
    really sting

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  11. Anonymous12:56 AM

    So, those relatively few - say about 5% like it used to be - youngsters who have enough nous to educate themselves as they pass through what we refer to as the Educational system in the UK will in fact become the new Elite whether they intend to or not.

    Hmm.

    Write im orf too fil inn a naplikashon 4 thee open univercsaly 2 git a dugry rearittin istory.

    Cool.

    Then on to New Math [sic] ready for a job application to become the Chancer of the Ex-checker.

    Then I'll have all the MONEY so 'Eds' to the lot of you.

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  12. Anonymous1:00 AM

    Sir HM said...

    For us all Grant.


    HA!

    Not me Sir HM.

    As I have told Nanny many times this is a perfect country in a perfect world and she should be proud of herself.

    I have the staitjacket to prove that she appreciated my wisdom and thought highly of it.

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  13. Anonymous9:15 AM

    'Instead of the cross, the albatross,
    Around my neck was hung'

    Do you think Sam T-C anticipated that we may have to be more culturally 'sensitive' in verse in order to appease and not upset those children who are from the ROP? Would shooting an albatross with a crossbow be deemed 'halal' I wonder?

    F**k 'em! Skydog

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  14. Anonymous3:29 PM

    I hate poetry, I don't like the genre at all - being a novelist, I like my facts hard and clear instead of having to read between the lines. I detest most non-nonsense poetry written after the Romantic period, and I made that very clear to all my secondary English teachers and my university lecturers.

    However...teach 'em Poe. That'll scare the socks off 'em and make 'em sit up a little. *evil grin*

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