Teaching our children - People vs Possessions

I have received a missive from someone who describes themselves as an educator who takes offence at what I have written. Have a read (seems I might have touched a nerve):

"The role of education is to equip our young people to be effective and productive members of society. The education process teaches them how to indeed maximise their income and make themselves attractive to the employers, what else should it do? Your bleeding heart, sugar-coated, unreal words suggest that you are yourself little more than someone with little real experience of the world of men or of work. As a career teacher I have taught for over thirty-five years and have seen my students enter well-paid and successful careers because of that which I have instilled in them.

We seek to produce people who can demand the highest salaries and command the highest positions. This is what education is about, not the 'be happy and make a difference fluffiness you preach. Good job you are a priest, you can do little damage there."

Some interesting points arise from this communication. Some are, I fear, far from the the reality of my work life and some of my correspondent's comments rely strongly upon assumptions made from their own life which I suspect is a life lived outside of the real, working, world.

Now before my teaching friends reach for shotguns and hounds, please understand that I am not saying that being a teacher isn't work, for it most certainly is (and very challenging  and rewarding work too), but I am saying that it is not the world of work the majority of those in work experience and that the parameters from within which conclusions are drawn are not the 'real' world.

So, let's address the issues and see what this brings forth:

The role of education - is surely to 'educate. Simples? Education is the art of imparting the skills, knowledge, customs, values and beliefs of the society in which the pupil finds themselves. It opens the eyes, encourages questions and brings forth answers that the student can make their own in such a way as they can develop their passions, practice the things they enjoy and maximise their potential to be creative, scientific, linguistically-enabled or any other art, craft or science that makes them who they are.

I recall in one of the Lawrence books Ursula Brangwen sees cruelty in a botany lesson for it makes the children aware of something that will never be open to them in their drab mill-worker's lives. Their being aware of stamen and the biology of the plant is a door to a world they now know of and yet will never be part of. The education she sees in the closely knit rows of back-to-back worker's cottages is that which trains the children to respond to the alarms for the start and close of work and for meal breaks. It teaches enough to generate the drones of the Industrial age and leaves nothing of the person developed or revealed. This is surely:

Education that teaches maximised income and attracts employers - The blue collar drones who once laboured in out dark satanic mills and grimy, unsafe mines, factories and industrial places. The underclass who were not taught to think but merely be obedient and submissive. The very people who (generally) no longer exist in today's society. To think as my correspondent does is to think with the mindset of the post-war, Daily Mail, dinosaur rather than as an effective or realistic educator. I would rather have Neill's 'Summerhill' than this glimpse of days (thankfully) long gone.

That said, I'm not sure whether this person is a teacher of the elite or the proletariat but I'm assuming that this person is turning out 'haves' rather than the 'have nots'. In seeking to produce 'people who can demand the highest salaries and command the highest positions' I fear that they might be breeding those among us who have found that they can live their miserable lives miserably in comfort and plenty. This, is as I understand it not at all what education is about and without those who are 'happy and make a difference' the world we live would be even sadder than that which such'educators as this correspondent seek to create (for surely this is hell rather than heaven).

"I can but end with a rejoinder to the comment, "Good job you are a priest, you can do little damage there."

What a sadness you are an educator, for you do untold damage!

Good job I'm a priest isn't it? Someone needs to remedy the errors and antisocial outworkings of educators such are portrayed here;)

Then when you get your converts you make them twice as fit for hell as you are yourselves perhaps?

Pax