We are in a kind of dark age

On 26 November 2011, The Times Magazine quoted Sir Chris Woodhead, Chief Inspector of Schools from 1994 to 2000, thus:

"The upper class have got their public schools and the working classes have got their grammar schools. And, with unbelievable perversity, THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT DECIDED THAT THEY WERE GOING TO TAKE AWAY THE GRAMMAR SCHOOLS, AND ALLOW THE RICH TO KEEP THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS…

There are two sorts of policians. There are those who simply want to get their fat a*** on the seat and there are those who want to have a seat because they want to do something with it. But THE LATTER ARE IN VERY, VERY SHORT SUPPLY...

I'm not saying that the failure of teachers led to the Tottenham riots but IT'S A FACTOR. Look at the bestseller lists. What sort of books are we reading? We spend more and more, we keep young people at school for longer and longer. Culturally, do we become better? NO, WE DON'T. WE'VE LOST ALL SENSE OF WHAT'S IMPORTANT...

I THINK WE ARE IN A KIND OF DARK AGE... UNTIL THINGS GET REALLY BAD, THEY'RE NOT GOING TO GET BETTER."

The Times’ William Leith added:

"You might remember Woodhead… he kept saying our education system was in a mess. But NOBODY LISTENED. POLITICIANS KEPT POINTING OUT THAT EXAM RESULTS WERE GETTING BETTER. It all got too much for Woodhead. He wanted to explain that THE WHOLE THING WAS A FIX. But he couldn’t get his message across. He resigned as Chief Inspector in 2000...

He got the job as Chief Inspector of Schools in 1994. By then he thought he knew what was wrong with the system. Everybody was encouraged to spend as much time as possible in academic education, as if English literature, maths and science were the be-all and end-all. THIS MEANT PEOPLE WHO WEREN’T ACADEMIC WERE SITTING IN CLASSROOMS BORED OUT OF THEIR MINDS. And, to accommodate these pupils, STANDARDS HAD TO DROP.

Woodhead inspected… 500 schools in all. Pupils’ ability to read, multiply and write history essays was getting worse. AND YET, EVERY YEAR, THE EXAM RESULTS WERE GETTING BETTER! Why was this? In the eighties, Woodhead says, the marking system changed. Prior to this, the number of A grades at A-level was limited to about 10 percent. So it didn’t matter if the exam was easy or hard, the top ten percent is always the top ten percent. But this system was axed; now the number of A grades is unlimited. And THIS, OF COURSE, OPENS THE SYSTEM TO ABUSE. 20 years on more than 25 percent of A-level candidates were getting A grades; 97 percent were passing. THESE DAYS ALMOST NOBODY FAILS.

‘Ultimately IT’S CORRUPTING.' says Woodhead. ‘IF EVERYBODY GETS PRIZES, THE PRIZE IS MEANINGLESS’.”

THEY dumbed us down. THEY kept the less academic in school and the alien took their jobs as a consequence. THEY also filled these with impossible dreams so that, when they finally emerged from the schoolroom, they wouldn’t want to do the jobs they had always done any more, (so we are constantly told) leaving the way open for the immigrant (riding to the rescue) to do them.

Chris Woodhead’s forthright observations are welcome. However, it always amazes me what those who rate common sense, right-thinking and the old-fashioned British way still don’t get. It never seems to occur to them that it isn’t just a series of wooly-minded, Utopian mistakes made by an arrogant, liberal elite. Those who coaxed such self-approving creatures to engineer the society that we now have were always at war with us. THEY wanted our society destroyed. THEY wanted those who ‘weren’t academic’ reduced to an ‘underclass’ in their own land.

In the land that their labour and their sacrifices had made, in the land that their deaths in all the wars dreamed up for them to die in by their former overlords had built, their nu-global masters did not want them to inherit what was rightly theirs. THEY wanted the British working-classes utterly subjugated or, even better, gone.

Anyway, good for you, Chris. You are one of us. Though I doubt you realise it.