Dumber and Dumber

In one of my previous blogs about the state of British education and its impact on the quality of future freelance writing, I mentioned an academic essay I had read that left me somewhat dazed by the onslaught of literary insults it battered into my grey matter. I’m going to share selected excerpts of that essay with you shortly, and I would like you to hazard a guess as to the age of the author. I will reveal the answer later on, so please don’t be naughty and peek down.

I’m not sure what you will make of what is to follow. It affects me as does a really ill-advised audition on the X-Factor or American Idol. I want to laugh, but it unsettles me so much that people can be allowed to reach such a point of delusion that I start to cringe and cannot watch and have to leave the room and make myself a cup of tea. (Great British Advice: Crisis … Tea.)

I’ve mentioned before why British education so bothers me. Chiefly, the 27 uninterrupted years of more and higher pass marks in key national exams at 16 and 18, given the lie by the despair so audibly expressed on radio and TV shows by the employers who find these exam-laden ex-students not able to read or write properly when entering their employ; and the addition of the A-star grade above a simple A because so many students were gaining A-grades that they were becoming meaningless. An article in The Telegraph 18 months ago had this as a headline: “Oxford and Cambridge introduce new entrance tests”, and this as a subhead: “Students are facing a battery of new tests to get into Oxford and Cambridge amid continuing fears that A-levels fail to mark out the best candidates.” The article opened with this: “70 per cent of Oxford applicants are required to sit a pre-interview entrance exam in subjects such as history, English, languages, mathematics and science this term, compared with 50 per cent just two years ago”, and follows with this: “In the mid-1980s, fewer than half of Oxbridge applicants gained straight As, but this year every candidate is expected to achieve the feat.”

Has there been an evolutionary leap in the intelligence of our kids? Exam results would support that theory. Reality would not. Read this and decide for yourself, and remember to try and assess the student’s age as you read. Admittedly, these are excerpts taken out of context, but, believe me, they don’t look any better in situ – the whole piece is just crap.

There are many advantages to the codification of law but the main advantage of the criminal code of law would be enhanced accessibility, certainty, clarity and coherence of the law dealt by the code law. Criminal law dreadfully requires a codification of law …

Referring back to the English and Welsh law system, in 1989 3 academics drafted a preliminary version in Law com. They didn’t want it to be part of the English Law System but thought for the future, it is something that can be related to that will benefit the Law System as it provides a different approach as the Scottish have created and showed to us that it can be a success …

This basically means that 90 per cent of the offences are related to the code itself however the remaining 10 per cent can not be related to the code sue to language barriers and some offences are unsure as the law commission has not dealt with them properly …

So in the English Law System the draft code can help access the cases to a different approach which will be determined by the offence, typical in England the cases last up to months so if incorporated it will benefit the law system and move things on quickly …

For example, a vehicles being banned from parks but that doesn’t mean that a child’s bike, a unicycle, a horse and horse and a cart, so what about a vehicles? This is a wording of the code that was mentioned earlier. It will be at fault because it should be clear which objects are allowed, if the others are allowed then why not vehicles. The draft code will be criticised for this as it confuses everyone.

“… it confuses everyone.” Indeed it does.

I kid you not, this is the real deal. And if I tell you it was written 18 months ago by a person who is now doing their Masters degree, you’ll understand why I despair so. Yes, this was written by someone in their final Bachelor’s degree year at university, having already passed their first two years.

When I was at school, you would have utterly failed to achieve any sort of pass grade with this drivel when taking your O-level at age 16. Okay, the spelling is essentially fine because it was all lifted from a textbook, but everything else fails. The information has been completely butchered by a total absence of literary skills. That last paragraph is practically non-sensible.

Am I critical of the author? Actually, no. It’s not the author’s fault their schooling and subsequent university education has failed to instill any discernible English language skills. My gripe is with the system that has allowed this pitiful standard to suffice in sending someone through to embark on a Masters degree. A Masters, for goodness sake. There’s a clue in the title. Doesn’t it suggest mastery of some sort? Surely you cannot be masterful in any academic subject if you’re incapable of expressing your thoughts and knowledge in a coherent manner. In many cases, don’t people with Masters go on to positions of authority? Don’t they become the teachers and educators in their particular sphere?

My generation was, I believe, the last one in Britain to enjoy a passable standard of education. The figures, on the contrary, would suggest that we were the pea-brains, failing as we did to attain straight A grades in all subjects. The figures make us appear that we were the ones who just missed out on that evolutionary leap in intelligence miraculously bestowed upon the generation that followed us through school.

In truth, those who followed my generation have been betrayed. They have been lied to and hoodwinked into believing they are more intelligent than they are, that they can achieve more than they can, that they are deserving of a better job than they will ever get. An erosion of educational standards is bad enough, but when it is coupled with a simultaneous and wholly unsupported soaring of exam results, the consequences are disastrous. One self-serving government after another has screwed the British education system in its pursuit of fantasy figures to prove the apparent success of their policies. Hey, look, everyone, look at how many kids have A-grades across the board; we have made our schools truly fab.

No. What was truly fab about the education of old was that it didn’t pull any punches – sometimes literally. Bad behaviour was punished and poor results were marked as such. Teachers told the truth to kids and parents alike, and, by and large, the kids coped with it, because learning to cope with setbacks is and must be a natural part of growing up. Crucially, back in my day, the kids knew in which areas they needed to improve because they weren’t being told they were succeeding in all of them. Contrast that with the hordes of ex-students nowadays who walk out of school, college, and university with perfect grades only to find there simply aren’t enough top jobs waiting for them. And then find that they do not have the emotional mechanism to cope with their disillusionment because no one ever dared confront them with the hard truth of their past failures. You do a child a great and unnecessary disservice by denying them that important lesson in life. Life is not a bed of roses; you can’t be good at everything; you don’t always succeed. Better that’s learned in survivable increments over the formative years than in one devastating fell swoop as an adult.

I don’t have an answer. Well, I do, but I’m not naïve enough to believe it will come about. There will never be a return to the days of yore, because that would necessitate politicians admitting past failures and deceits; it would mean once again marking down when children fail, rather than dumbing down to ensure more and more students appear to succeed. (Lord only knows how bad the attitudes/abilities are of those kids who don’t pass any exams when they’re this easy.)

I would run for political office myself to implement the necessary changes, but I fear my radical opinions would force me to stand under the banner of the Monster Raving Loony Party.