Gross inequality becomes a self fulfilling system by those who benefit most from it. People become divided into the worthy and the shirkers, regardless that extremes of wealth are created more through inheritance than by actual earning.
The more extreme the inequality and the more normalised, the greater extremes are tolerated. It is interesting to note that following the fall of Lehman Brothers and after declaring bankruptcy, they paid out $2.5 billion in bonuses and, indeed, are still paying bonuses to this day. It says a great deal that this is tolerated and allowed in a world which is inured to extremes of wealth, inequality and injustice.
Over the last six years of Tory misrule, they have pursued a bitter war against the poor, propagandising poor people as unworthy, shirkers, of having a perverse sense of entitlement, and even calling recipients of social security, ‘stock’.
Meanwhile, Tory policies have enriched the already wealthy whilst suppressing wages and targeting the social security budget, and therefore the unworthy poor, to ‘pay down the (bankers) debt’.
Theresa May’s latest scheme in this tale of worth and unworth is the resurrection of Grammar schools. The entire idea is predicated on the ‘bright’ and the ‘not bright’ and therefore testing, to sort the chaff from the wheat.
The Tories obsession with testing, from Gove onwards, is little more than a filter system which favours the already advantaged over the disadvantaged during their formative years, separating them for life into their allotted places.
It has little do with learning and education so much as creating hierarchies of worth. Education becomes a system of formalised test training, or streaming, towards that slot which test results define as the child’s place in education and society and in which wealth, or lack of it, plays a vital role in creating advantage in gaining the ‘best’ position in the ‘best’ schools.
It also means the, so called, brightest pupils receive the greater investment in their education, they are the hope of better things to come, the rest receive less.
‘Uneducated’ is a common term these days, a derogatory, shaming, term for the ‘docile’ masses and yet education, by the state, is entirely at fault if people are under educated. Schools are not democracies and, certainly, children and have little or no say in the form of education they receive. If children are not encouraged to inquire, something which is innate, they learn merely to memorise data for the tests which are imposed upon them. Such tests, far from encouraging learning in any real sense, merely stratify children in a hierarchical system dictated by test results.
Testing, as such, creates and promotes inequality. The lower one is in the system the fewer opportunities there are for advancement or progression.
Standardised tests, which they all are, fail to take into consideration the abilities unique to each child. Tests have a suffocating effect on children’s creativity and innate hunger for life.
Children’s natural domain is what we call ‘play’, a word sadly misunderstood by many adults for children’s innate creative drive to actively discover the world about them. Play, as Dr. Stuart Brown describes it, is transformative. Play engages creativity and studies have shown that play builds and promotes innovative and joyous exploration and where play is suppressed, innovation and exploration are suppressed. Play people are problem solvers and risk takers, where non play people are less so and tend to be risk averse.
Play is the antithesis of testing, children at play are always testing themselves in their activities in the real world, yet in play their natural inclination is to overcome obstacles and the boundaries of their abilities, it is innate. Learning to walk is a challenge and yet every infant with the physical capability to do so will learn to walk regardless of the difficulty of the challenge.
Externalised and standardised testing has the opposite effect, the effort of learning ceases at the point of receiving the results, where the child learns whether s/he has succeeded, is mediocre, or has failed. Both success and failure essentially cheat the child of the learning process, which healthily should last a life time, but which for many becomes stifled, often for life.
May’s Grammar schools are retrogressive, serving the best interests of no one. Streaming continues, pupils compete for results, and few rise to the top. That is the way the system is designed to be and as long as that system exists, it is largely inescapable, in which the exceptions prove the rule.
It does not mean that the most innovative and creative people make it to the top, but the most conformist. In May’s eyes that might be the ideal as a breeding ground for conservatism, allowing few into the hallowed ground of the elites. History is littered with the doings of the elites, and their self serving agendas, and the world in general is not doing well under their continued efforts to treat the world as their exclusive domain for possession and prosperity.
Natural justice does not favour streaming and testing and Grammar schools in any way other than maintaining a status quo which excludes the many for the benefit of the few.
Innate life demands better, and that better should be more fun, satisfying and engaging. The very idea of streaming, testing and standardising is just depressing and should be opposed if for no other reason.
The world right now is screaming out for innovative, creative and playful people. People find themselves when they find their abilities, those areas in life which captivate their attention and desire to do something which has value and worth to them. That makes sense, if you think about it, and right now the world needs that kind of sense as never before. No one, surely, wants a dull education, but that is all that is on offer from Theresa May and her government.
We are so much better than this and it is innate, even whilst it may be suppressed, making children (and adults) depressed. The solution is not more of the same, that’s for sure.
The penultimate last word goes to Pink Floyd and ‘The Wall’, written by Roger Waters:
We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey teacher leave them kids alone
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall
Last word (life school report) – we can do better than this.
KOG 19 October 2016
https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-bankruptcy-lehman-pays-44-million-in-bonuses-1425322205
https://kittysjones.wordpress.com/2013/05/05/1993/
https://www.ted.com/talks/stuart_brown_says_play_is_more_than_fun_it_s_vital?language=en#t-965695
Recommended reading: Injustice: ‘Why social inequality still persists’ by Danny Dorling
