Re: Giving up on education

[Aidan Ward <aidan_ward@antelopes.com>]

(Public) Education is flirting with complete collapse for a reason 
that goes to the heart of the Deming community. It is taken as an 
article of faith that management of the education system can only be 
achieved on the basis of measured educational outcomes. The 
imperative to measure and to manage has caused any worthwhile purpose 
to be lost sight of and abandoned. Political spin is far more 
important that real education and the students know it first hand every day.

A tiny cameo. The head of languages at my children's (high-flying) 
school was telling us parents about a scheme to teach humanities 
subjects in a foreign language. She said that having to deal with 
abstract concepts in a foreign language without worrying about 
linguistic correctness resulted in greatly accelerated language 
learning compared to what happens in language lessons. Of course 
language teaching methods are not going to change.

Aidan Ward