Miseducation

I was very depressed to see the following in the press recently:

"Children should no longer be taught traditional subjects at school because they are "middle-class" creations, a Government adviser will claim today.

Professor John White, who contributed to a controversial shake-up of the secondary curriculum, believes lessons should instead cover a series of personal skills.

Pupils would no longer study history, geography and science but learn skills such as energy-saving and civic responsibility through projects and themes."

Note the evasive language with obscure or question begging terms like 'middle-class' and 'civic responsibility'

I shall concentrate on the first, which is often used without any indication of its precise meaning or relevance to the subject under discussion.

'Middle-class' is often used as a term of disapproval by people who consider it important to assert that they themselves are 'left wing', and I get the impression that they object to people who try to be honest and polite, to save and generally to order their finances prudently.

In summarising the results of market research, the term 'middle class' tends to be applied to professionals, such as lawyers, doctors, accountants academics, and to the self employed. In that sense of 'middle class' the people concerned include those whose careers are most dependent on extensive education, so that in a sense education must be largely 'middle class'. To disapprove of such people and the education that produces them comes near to disapproving of civilisation itself.

John White's proposals amount to teaching children his opinions while denying them the knowledge on the basis of which they might form their own opinions. A man who appears to disapprove of careful rigorous thought wants to to exclude such thought from education.