Education without tears
Andrew Brown
Gothenburg Even educationalists have now realised that the Swedish comprehensive school system does not promote equality. This failure cannot be blamed on lack of effort. Jan Myrdal, whose mother, Alva, was one of the earliest and most effective Social Democratic propagandists for the introduction of American teaching methods here, has described the results of these methods: 'The ability of schoolchildren to use words, to read books, and to follow an argument is being deliberately destroyed . . . The historical dimension is cut out of their field of view. The necessary formal skills are delivered as predigested formulae . . Intellectual freedom is nourished in the sense that they assume the right to say whatever they feel like.'
This was written in 1973. Times have moved on, and a new history textbook for use in secondary schools has just been announced. 'Simple language and a low density of facts,' distinguish this book, according to the publishers. One of the editors elucidated this: 'Pupils ought to know the course of events, but to know that it was Gustavus Adolphus who died at Liitzen in 1632 is less important.' Translated into English terms this would read: Pupils ought to know that the French have conquered England, but modern people do not need to know that it happened in 1066, or that they were led by William the Conqueror.'
It is worth noting that this view is subscribed to here by professional historians; only one of the 11 co-authors was unable to continue with the project after their first manuscripts came back from the editors with the helpful advice to use simple language, to avoid arguments or examples, and never to use direct quotations, as these would be too difficult for today's secondary school pupils. In case this advice was too complicated for today's teachers of history, it was expanded with the words 'N.B. In principle, no more facts.'
So, in principle, no more facts. This has made possible the extension of educational success to almost anyone who wants it. There is no job so humble — not even hospital portering or cleaning — that you cannot be educated to do it. People are selected for these courses, and for all higher education, on the basis of an enormously complicated system of quotas and points which is designed to ensure that nothing, not even ability, can disbar anyone from learning the trade of their choice.
In practice this system means that no one but the unemployed and the exceptionally able can be trained to do anything that they are not already doing. But almost every body can be trained to do something: two girls who had managed to qualify themselves for a course in children's nursing, by working at a succession of temporary jobs in day nurseries for the last three years, abandoned their studies after half a term in protest against the refusal of the authorities to do anything about the fact that a third of their fellow pupils smoke so much 'hash' in school that they are virtually comatose during the lessons. The school authorities, while shocked, take the view that they cannot possibly expel people in such urgent need of rehabilitation. More experienced teachers were quoted as saying that this proportion of drug-takers was normal in all the courses that train people for the caring professions. People with problems naturally want to help other people with problems. The reaction of these teachers would seem to suggest that a large minority of the younger staff in urban day nurseries smoke hashish at work. If this is true, it does something to explain the appallingly high proportion of psychologically disturbed children who start school each year. There are of course other possible reasons; whole classes in urban primary schools consist of children who do not live with both their parents; but, whatever the causes, something between a quarter and a half of this year's urban primary school intake consists of children who are unable to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes at a time, to keep quiet, to sit still, or even to listen to what they are told. These children are quite literally unteachable: they lack the social skills one would expect of a four-yearold.
When they arrive in school, children are placed in unstreamed classes and taught to read. In three weeks they have reached the letter D, and the treatment is so effective that after a year or two the children who were literate when they started school are doing worse than the model pupils who were not. The younger teachers themselves have only recently learned to spell, they , have had respect for their pupils' integrity drilled into them, and they cannot bring themselves to correct their pupils' mistakes. Estimates vary as to the consequences of this diffidence: teachers I have spoken to suggest that about five per cent of the children who finish their education at 16 are unable to read or write after nine years in school.
If these children are put into special classes, they regard this as proof of their excommunication from society and react accordingly. If they still bother to turn up at school after they reach the age of 12 or thereabouts, their behaviour comes to resemble that of the characters in Lord of the Flies. There was an incident last week in a provincial town in which a 13-year-old girl was abducted from the school canteen at lunchtime by six older girls, two of whom were 15, and the others 14. They took her to some woods, forced her to strip, and then beat and sexually assaulted her for an hour. They then allowed her to put on her clothes and return to the school, where they dragged her into the lavatories and repeated the whole treatment. They explained to the police that they had been offended by their victim's table manners.
Two days after that story broke, an interview with a 16-year-old gang leader appeared. He regretted that he was no longer able to spend all his evenings looking for suitable victims — 'toffs, drunks, and queers' — for the younger members of the gang to beat senseless, but he has to get ,plenty of sleep nowadays because he has found work helping in a day nursery. When he grows up, he wants to be a social worker.
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