By Leslie Robins
I read the other day that Lord Dearing, Chairman of a Government Committee on educational reform, had recommended the abolition of oral tests in foreign languages because they were too stressful for the pupils.
Quite right too. We can’t expose the little darlings to this sort of pressure or they’ll end up suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (on top of the Attention Deficit Syndrome and Compulsory Education Phobia that some of them have already got) and there simply won’t be enough child psychologists to go round.
Why do we bother with foreign languages anyway? They’re all inferior to English, and everybody knows that Johnny Foreigner understands English perfectly well if you shout loud enough. I’d close down all Foreign Language Departments right away, and save about £300 p.a. in Council tax.
But that’s only the half of it. The truth is that most of what we learn at school is absolutely useless in later life.
Take Mathematics. Arithmetic, for a start, is a job for pocket calculators nowadays, and as for Algebra – now, be honest: when did you last solve a quadratic equation? Geometry? For all I remember about isosceles triangles and squares on the hypotenuse old Euclid and Pythagoras need not have bothered, and I bet you feel the same. And Trigonometry? You’ve got to admit that you wouldn’t know what to do with a tangent if it were given away free with Saturday’s Guardian.
Then there’s Chemistry. I remember at school spending the whole of one afternoon making copper sulphate crystals, which we afterwards washed down the sink. That was 72 years ago, and I can honestly say that I haven’t made a single copper sulphate crystal since.
As for Physics, it’s common knowledge that the basic laws are being completely re-written by Professor Stephen Hawking. He’s still working on it, and there’s absolutely no point in studying the subject until he’s finished. So there’s another £300 p.a. off the Council tax.
History? Dull as ditchwater, and utterly irrelevant to modern life. What were the Gordon riots about? What were the causes of the Thirty Years’ War? What, if anything, was decided at the Diet of Worms? Do you know? Do you care? I bet you don’t.
English Literature? Too quaint and old-fashioned by far. Milton’s Paradise Lost, for example, has lost all its allegorical force since we’ve become, more or less, a nation of atheists, and anyway the language is too refined for modern tastes – there’s not a single four-letter word in it from start to finish. As for Shakespeare, he was all very well in his day, no doubt, but his ignorance of rock music, same-sex marriages and Rugby Union football goes dead against him now.
English Grammar, then? Don’t make me laugh – we gave up on that years ago, and as far as I can see it ain’t made no difference.
On top of all this there’s the question of homework. Some A-level students get two hours a night, I’m told. Two hours a night! – what time does that leave for binge-drinking and gang warfare? We seem to have lost all sense of proportion.
The whole thing’s an absolute disgrace. Here’s this chap Lord Dearing with the ear of the Government and all he can think of is getting rid of a few oral exams, whereas it’s obvious that we could scrap the present system altogether and substitute a few practical lessons on the real challenges of our age, such as how to zap a speed camera or fiddle a parking meter.
I’ve written to Lord Dearing to complain, but I understand from his Secretary that he’s too stressed to reply.