Reflecions on the students' unrest
Written by Editor Monday, 10 January 2011 09:29
We practically saw a repeat of the French Revolution in England with royalty threatened when the students took to the streets in December. Fortunately, it was just a lot of bark with no bite.
In years to come, university education will inevitably be restricted to those with the means to pay for it. Yet, there will always be those who can afford it, especially by parents who can plan well ahead the educational career of their offspring.
Education, Education, Education, yes, education is saturated. The system needs to be reformed, but how does one reform a system that is totally rotten and out of control from bottom to top. It is not an uncommon occurrence that children are leaving school unable to spell or add up. The three Rs of Reading, Rithmetic and Riting do no longer apply. Ah yes, many are very clever with their mobiles and consoles, but where will that lead them.
The ratios of pupils to teachers have long been laid by the wayside. In reality blackboard jungle mentality prevails in many classes. Children, each with at least two mobile phones in their pockets make the rules and the teacher is for most of the time is reduced to a state of perplexity.
At secondary level it’s the attitude of the bully that prevails. You study only if the bullies concur. One Mauritian teacher was so harassed by the girls in his class that he finally gave up teaching as a career, and yet he loves the language so much. Because some cucumber-head could not take in the language, the class as whole was penalised.
Students with bikes always want to ride over the others on pavement to the school. To whom do you complain? Teachers are themselves at the mercy of the bullies.
Most of these dregs of society will leave secondary school with a certificate of some sort with a few cheap GCSCs, which is not a big deal to obtain. Pass them and rid us of them, est le mot d’ordre!
But the problem does not end there. Thro’ the automatic promotion, they will proceed to the A-level, with aim to obtain a university place, as it has so far been, the most common thing to do.
Of course, universities, via the UCAS process of selection, will have creamed off the best elements. What is to be done with the rest? They all want a university place, and it is the dream of parents that their offspring should go to university. After all, everyone else does it.
Conversion of polytechnics
That where the Government came up trump. To increase the number of places, they converted all the polytechnics into universities, e.g. nearer to us, South Bank Polytechnic became University of South Bank, etc etc.
These new ‘poly-universities’ are themselves saturated now. They cannot absorb any more. What is there to do next? Today, they talk of ACADEMIES – a big word which soon will mean nothing when the government will have converted all secondary schools into academies, and subsequently … into universities. It may well be that one day, pupils will move from primary education to universities direct. How are they, otherwise going to satisfy the evergrowing demand for university places?
There is need for a revision of our way of tackling studies and employment. When the first migrants came to the UK in 1960s in great numbers, there was no question of going to universities, even for the English students. Yet, it did not prevent many of those in employment to carry on with their studies ‘extra mural’, as it used to be called by attending evening classes.
On leaving secondary school, people would take up any job to earn a living while at the same time carry on with their studies. Once they complete their studies, they have both work experience and an academic qualification that helped them to improve their station in life. They did not have to be in debt as they are today. The government even encouraged people in work to further their studies by making grants available to mature students.
But today, the situation has changed, secondary school-leavers will not be seen in menial job, so pampered are they by parents. The fact remains that the country will never be able to carry on providing university education to everyone, this is the simple truth. There may be more students’ riots, but all the same the country cannot afford it.
