We Name and Shame the Guilty Parties

Schooled for a price hike

What is the future of education?

Vigilante writes ...

Though we may not have appreciated it at the time, those of us old enough to get a free state education were the lucky ones. Moreover, it was a good education where the majority competently mastered the three Rs (reeding, riting and rifmatik, as they are now known) before they moved on to secondary education.

Now we are seeing the effects of teachers who often never managed to get to grips with the three Rs themselves and are now passing this fabulous knowledge on to their students. Things can only get worse.

Indeed they can. In the old days you didn't need a university degree to become a dustbin man or a builder so only a small percentage strove for university places. Others went to technical colleges to learn trades and others did evening courses to study business methods. Others still got jobs at sixteen years old and learned their skills at work.

Then along came some idiots who decided that the vast majority should gain a university degree and that all jobs should require degree knowledge. Furthermore, they decided that future students should pay for the education they themselves had received free of charge. It was the very nature of the self-financing dragon that New Labour had become.

To ensure the targets were met (targets being all important in New Labour's books - sod the students, patients, and various recipients of any other labour-controlled doctrines), standards were reduced and the three Rs became unimportant. Technical colleges and night schools gained university status and new courses were devised to cater for the thickest students - courses that produced degrees in the most unlikely subjects. Jobs were created to make use of these wonderful new degree qualifications, particularly at local government level (i.e. Binge Drinking Co-ordinator), and the old farts in industry -who would have liked to employ someone who could write a decent letter - were totally ignored.

Thank God there are still jobs that do not require a university degree. We all have one of them as we become Recycling Efficiency Executives. Unfortunately, we do this work without reimbursement as the dustbin man (Refuse Disposal Operative) now has a degree - probably in Arrogant Rudeness - and doesn't even carry the bin from the premises, much less sort it into recyclable components. Before long he will be telling us to load our own bins on the dustcart and the council will no doubt increase the council tax so that we pay for the privilege.

But there was a niche in life for lesser-educated beings in the old days while the cleverer people went off and did their degrees. Everyone was happy and some of the lesser mortals even went on to achieve great things courtesy of the University of Life.

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