POLITICS
Mr Baker discovers the virtue of vagueness
NOEL MALCOLM Anyone concerned with declining standards of literacy in this country should study the following piece of prose:
Are we delivering the basics right? Has the move away from formal rote learning — whatever the merits of the new teaching methods — carry the risk of deskilling a generation, by failing to equip them with the hard-headed basic skills of literacy and num- eracy which they need to survive. What are our proposals for monitoring the progress of each individual child both against their peer group and against national standards?
This extract is from a speech delivered by Neil Fletcher, the Leader of Ilea, to a fringe meeting at the Labour Party confer- ence this year. When the speech was published it was greeted by cries of protest, not all of them from grammarians or literary critics. In the eyes of many of his socialist colleagues, Mr Fletcher was guilty of ideological treason when he called for the imposition of national standards and a return to the basic skill of literacy which he (or his typist) so patently lacked.
There is, of course, no reason why Labour politicians should not be just as concerned in principle with the achieve- ment of standards as their opponents are. It just happens that some of them object on ideological grounds to the methods which most teachers and all parents know to be necessary if standards are to be achieved: firm discipline, frequent testing, the ap- plication of incentives and disincentives (which normally implies competition) and also — yes, why not? — a little rote- learning.
In the popular imagination, Mr Baker's National Curriculum is the great engine of change which will bring these things about. According to one recent survey, 65 per cent of parents support the imposition of a core curriculum and 71 per cent approve of the use of written tests. The tests, to be applied at the ages of seven, 11 and 14, may indeed have some effect on classroom practices where children are prepared for them by conscientious teachers; but the existence of a National Curriculum will not of itself ensure that teachers teach better or that children learn more. It will simply mean that the things which the pupils fail to learn will have been defined a little more clearly. The skills required for a maths 0 level are already quite well defined; yet two thirds of all children leave school without having attained even a bottom- grade 0 level pass, or its CSE equivalent, in the subject.
By now, the popular imagination prob- ably also thinks of a National Curriculum as a specifically Conservative measure. It smacks of centralism and authoritarianism, two of the Left's favourite, and not always unjustified, accusations against this Gov- ernment. All governments, by their very nature, are tempted to centralise, to con- trol more rather than less; but nowhere is the urge stronger than in the bureaucracy which remains permanently in place while governments come and go. The call for a curriculum goes back at least as far as 1976, when Mr Callaghan asked the Department of Education and Science for a briefing document and it obliged with a 'Yellow Paper' recommending that a core curricu- lum should be drawn up. Four years later it issued a more detailed study entitled A Framework for the Curriculum. The cur- ricular campaign has been pushed slowly forward by the DES, come rain or shine, Labour rule or Tory.
Socialists may be suspicious of centralis- ing measures today, because they become, for the time being, the means to extend and enforce Tory values. But Conserva- tives should be suspicious of centralising measures at all times, because they presup- pose the existence of a superior abstract wisdom at the centre — the wisdom of `social scientists', managers, planners. This is especially dangerous where education is concerned, since the planners are bound to formulate and justify their plans in terms of quantifiable results, such as the number of engineers they produce. In this case, creep- ing centralism joins forces with creeping utilitarianism. And even if the utilitarian sums were appropriate, the planners would probably get them wrong; no one can predict precisely which skills today's seven- year-olds will need in 20 years' time.
Mr Baker is keen on making education 'relevant'. He is, after all, the man who installed computers in every school in the country. In the traditional popular wis- dom, literacy and numeracy are the only primary skills — the three alias English and maths. To these Mr Baker has added science as a 'core' subject; and his second-string list of 'foundation' subjects includes technology, which was never on the syllabus of any school I attended (unless you count a year's carpentry lessons at the age of nine, which bore fruit in a sturdy but solitary book-end). Some cri- tics, searching for a reactionary figure to compare him to, have likened Kenneth Baker to Mr Gradgrind, who believed in teaching children hard facts. To my mind, however, Mr Baker's emphasis on teaching children skills which are 'relevant to the needs of society' suggests comparison with an altogether more progressive educational theorist:
'Now, then, where's the first boy?'
'Please, sir, he's cleaning the back parlour window.'
'So he is, to be sure', rejoined Squeers. 'We go upon the practical mode of teaching, Nickleby: the regular education system. C-l- e-a-n, clean, verb active, to make bright, to scour. W-i-n, win, d-e-r, a casement. When the boy knows this out of the book, he goes and does it.'
To do him justice, the first page of Mr Baker's Bill says that the curriculum should promote 'the spiritual, moral, cultu- ral, mental and physical development' of pupils. The plundering of Roget's The- saurus continues on the next page, where it is decreed that children shall be taught 'matters, skills and processes'. This is all very vague; and the vaguer it stays, the better. Similarly, the one major concession Mr Baker has made while drafting the bill is to be applauded; he has given up the attempt to decree what percentage of the timetable should be taken up by his com- pulsory subjects. The more closely central bureaucracy tries to define the contents of school courses, the more it will stifle the energy and initiative of the good teachers and good headmasters on whom, ultimate- ly, the whole scheme depends. It is suffi- cient to lay down the standards.
For the curriculum will, on its own, achieve nothing. It is the devolving of greater powers to schools and parents which will be the real engine of change: the national standards are there simply to give a signal that change is needed, when children fail to achieve them. There will be some shift of power from teachers to the shadowy 'National Curriculum Council', and some powers will also be transferred from local authorities to the Secretary of State. But the biggest shift of power will be into the hands of parents, governors and headmasters. It is this — not least the power to sack bad teachers and hire more good ones — which will enable them, in Mr Fletcher's elegant phrase, to deliver the basics right.
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