Scottish Union for Education – Newsletter No42 – Part 1
Newsletter Themes: a teacher speaks out about collapsing standards, and how the expert class are patronising parents and indoctrinating children.
Help us to change education in Scotland, to raise standards by focusing on subject knowledge, and to stop indoctrination in our schools. It has never been more important to support the need for Education Not Indoctrination.
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Standards are being driven DOWN by the education authorities
This article was written anonymously. It was done so to protect the author from the education authorities, who should be promoting, not preventing, high standards in education.
The Internet and streaming sites like Netflix are awash with documentaries about advanced civilisations which supposedly preceded our own. But you don’t have to go back millennia to find better-educated minds – a few decades will do. And there’s no need to travel to far-flung places when there’s sufficient evidence in any second-hand bookshop. Let me tell you about some of the evidence I’ve found of a civilisation with such exacting educational standards that its recipients would appear to modern-day students as cerebral Midwich Cuckoos.
In a recent foray into a bookshop, I chanced upon a book entitled Poets’ Quair: An Anthology for Scottish Schools. Published in 1950, its editors, David Rintoul and James B. Skinner, write in the introduction that:
Our aim in presenting this anthology is to provide in one book as large and comprehensive a selection of poetry as can conveniently be studied in the last two or three years of a Scottish secondary course... The selection is in keeping with the recommendations in the report of the Advisory Council on Education in Scotland, that ‘at every stage of the secondary school there should be included in the scheme of work in English provision for the study of appropriate examples of Scottish literature’ and that ‘senior pupils should be at least as familiar with Dunbar and Henryson as they are with Chaucer.
In 1950, it would appear, fourth-, fifth- and sixth-year students in Scottish secondary schools were capable of ‘conveniently’ studying up to 203 poems, imbuing them with a familiarity of Dunbar and Henryson, as well as Chaucer. The contemporary National 5 and Higher student might study one poem. One, and that a damned sight simpler than Dunbar or Henryson.
More evidence of advanced civilisations, this time from the sixties, was found amongst my mother-in-law’s books. Once owned by Elizabeth Thompson of class 4G, St Aidan’s R.C. High School in Wishaw, Palgrave’s Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language was inlaid with the following instructions:
Parents and Guardians are asked to co-operate with Teachers in seeing that the Book is kept clean and in good repair.
The Parent or Guardian of a scholar losing or misusing a book will be required to replace it, or to refund to the Education Authority the value of the book.
‘Scholars’ and not ‘young people’? Admonitions to take care of property? These implications that children were at school to learn and that they should respect the tools of learning are anathema today. As a teacher, the picture that comes through of education in Scotland in the not-too-distant past bears almost no relation to the risible standards on display now. There is no possibility whatsoever that even if you could get teaching staff to call them scholars (you can’t: even ‘students’ is out of keeping with modern approaches to educations) that there would arise any expectation that dozens of poems should form the bedrock of the English syllabus, or that, God forbid, parents (eek) should have to reimburse a school for damage to property. This sense of education as a collective responsibility, as something to be guarded and cherished, is gone. An English qualification is now considered a right, and since that’s what it is, then it would be churlish to deny it to our young people. Being a caring government, the SNP has made it very difficult indeed to leave school without a pass.
Very difficult indeed.
For this year’s National 5 English course, a mark of 37% secured you a D grade (now considered a pass). Given that there are approximately 20–25 marks (each mark being equivalent to one percent, so 20–25%) available for quoting from the texts you are given, you can get yourself almost to a pass just by copying correctly from the paper. The folio, which is done at home (once two essays, but now one as the decline continues) is worth 30% of the marks for the year; it is rare for a folio to score less than twelve, and this can be achieved by writing a short poem (ten lines or so) or a 300-word biography of Steven Gerrard or someone. Hey presto, copy from the paper and write some doggerel or rehashed Wikipedia information and you’ve passed. Congratulations.
Teachers live down to these low standards. The habit amongst English teachers is to teach an easy poem for the critical essay section of the exam, which is worth another 20% of the overall mark. The questions usually oscillate very closely between ‘Write about a poem that is memorable’ or ‘Write about a poem that is interesting’. Responses usually focus on word choice, metaphor and symbolism, with poetic structure rarely mentioned – low-hanging fruit is sufficient for a good mark. No need to worry about accurate writing either: I mark the National 5 and Higher English papers for the Scottish Qualifications Authority and writing, we are instructed, should not be marked down so long as it ‘makes sense at first reading’. Incorrect spelling, missing punctuation (including full stops) and flawed grammar should not detract from the mark. It’s boom time for high pass rates, bust for standards.
A basic facility with language, a teacher who understands the exam, and money to pay someone to write your folio (or an artifical intelligence app) and you can quite easily secure an A at National 5 or Higher. The exams call for no rigour or real learning and, as such, the teaching of the course is superficial and formulaic. I don’t have the statistic to hand, but many students are leaving secondary school functionally illiterate – and some of them have an A in English.
Students in the fifties and sixties weren’t a different species to those who populate our schools now, but the expectations were a lot higher. I’d love to teach ‘scholars’ with the support of concerned ‘parents and guardians’. I’d love to teach more than one poem a year, and to teach it at a level beyond what is functional for exam success. I don’t see why this can’t be achieved, and I encourage people to lend their support to SUE as we seek to bring standards back to education.
How ‘experts’ patronise parents and indoctrinate children
Stuart Waiton is chairperson of the Scottish Union for Education.
As a criminologist, I’ve watched as law after law is introduced in Scotland, not because people are calling for them, but because the ‘aware’ experts think it is in your best interest.
The ban on smacking is a good example of this. Whatever your opinion about smacking, the reality is that only 30 percent of Scots thought that even the lightest smack, for whatever reason, should be made into a criminal offence. However, for those who pushed for this law, that the majority of people oppose it is an irrelevance. Indeed, the very fact that most people don’t support this new law is, for the expert class, all the more reason to introduce it.
Why?
Because laws in Scotland are no longer (as they should be in a democracy) about the will of the people. In fact, the very opposite is the case. Laws are now used by the expert and political class to ‘change the culture’ and to make us all ‘aware’ of how we should behave.
I mention this because the expert contempt for parents, and their obsession with changing our culture and teaching us ‘correct’ values, is now what education in Scotland is all about. As a result, what we find is that a chasm is growing between schools and parents.
Schools, helped by the education authorities and the government, are trying to teach your child (and you) ‘correct’ values. These ‘correct’ values come through the caring language of inclusion and rights, but in reality they simply reflect the values of the 30 percent who run our institutions – values that often clash with those of ordinary Scottish people.
One outcome of the rise and rise of the ‘expert’ values system, one that has taken root in our schools, is that we often find that children (or at least the children we hear from) sound just like the experts. As Sam Cowie showed in a recent SUE Newsletter, we find that children are actually being used by ‘right-thinking’ adults to affirm their own ‘correct’ values.
We saw this recently with Douglas Hutchison, Glasgow’s executive director of education, who was celebrating Glasgow pupils who demanded ‘safe spaces, an end to gender stereotypes and respect for preferred pronouns of trans and non-binary classmates’.
Perhaps it doesn’t occur to Douglas that perhaps the reason that some pupils provide this transgender ideological script, is because it is a script that he helped to write, one that is in the curriculum, and one that is backed up by the government, the educational establishment, and any teacher who knows what line to follow if they want a promoted post.
Hutchison went on to explain to any concerned adults who may be listening that:
Some of the areas of concern and solutions that they [the children] come up with will be uncomfortable for some people, but we need to challenge people’s thinking. This is the only way that we will see tangible change and to better meet the needs of our children and young people.
We need to challenge people’s thinking! Who is this ‘we’? I thought that this was what some schoolchildren wanted, rather than what Mr Hutchison demands. But of course, in reality, what we are hearing is the voice of power, the elites who run our institutions, and who, like our chief of education, want to see ‘tangible change’ to the values of both children and their parents.
Change your thinking people – the chief and the child [sic] have spoken.
Correct values are being poured into children every day – values and ideologies that often clash with the outlook and ideas of parents. In the process, a gap is forming between schools and ordinary Scottish people, as past generations and their common-sense views are portrayed as backward and dangerous. Even our language is being changed, with sex, a biologically definable category, being erased in favour of the undefinable gender identity.
Schools have become obsessed with the values of children and their parents. But these are not the values of education. Scottish education, helped by the likes of Douglas Hutchison, is in serious trouble. With your help, the Scottish Union for Education hopes to change this.
News round-up
A selection of the main stories with relevance to Scottish education in the press in recent weeks, by Simon Knight
Frank Furedi, The Pronoun Elites And The Struggle To Gain Control Of Language. For the ruling elites dispossessing the public of its traditional vocabulary is essential to secure cultural hegemony. 04/11/23
https://archive.is/E3XlG Helen Puttick,What went wrong with the Scottish education system? Once trumpeted as egalitarian springboards for children, the nation’s schools now seem to be on the slide, reports. 12/11/23
Daisy Christodoulou, Skills vs knowledge, 13 years on. What can we learn from widespread dissatisfaction with the Curriculum for Excellence? 13/11/23
https://archive.md/2023.11.11-190732/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/11/children-told-read-woke-schools-scotland-study-racism/ Craig Simpson, Children told ‘read woke’ as schools study books that claim white people invented racism: Scottish government's new literacy programme was piloted to help 'enlighten' pupils. 11/11/23
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/12/how-multiculturalism-fuels-hate/?fbclid=IwAR3j0J7ajGlbI7g-OIC8rJpIQ3MO6WqFAAJNiuOA_iBg62ClfwrWsmC-qBU_aem_ASJhNtrDqqwZojXBnwWQOdSVXR7OjEjx6saylkiHKB1jV2SorNQ6fZseneWnjoxGJcE Frank Furedi, How multiculturalism fuels hate. This elite ideology has cultivated and inflamed ethnic tensions. 12/11/23
https://www.scottishlegal.com/articles/police-scotland-readies-itself-for-activation-of-hate-crime-law editorial, Police Scotland readies itself for activation of hate crime law. Police Scotland is gearing up to launch a specialist unit focused on hate crimes, ahead of new legislation set to take effect next year. 21/09/23
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/democracy-watch/democracy-watch-dont-ask-the-state-to-ban-hate/Mick Hume, DEMOCRACY WATCH
Don’t Ask the State to Ban Hate. 10/11/23
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Parents have been commenting on the perception of failed educational standards for sometime. In particular parents with kids with some years behind them. I note that there is often a comment repeated 'tests are no good anyway' 'not all kids are academic' 'tests disadvantage kids' as a way to undermine the questions asked. We KNOW the standards are poor, but are being gaslit into thinking 'this is the way it is' when our children's 'assessors' use words like 'on track'. I do wonder how society will function when we have cultivated a largely illiterate, unskilled, narcissistic population. We really need to come up with something better.