Rant: Schools out

Sometimes something is so wrong that it seems right.

Eddie Izzard's 'circle of cool' gives a great example:- chewing on one matchstick takes you from uncool to cool. Chewing on two matchsticks takes you right round the circle back to not cool. Education too is like that - a little is cool - but a whole great chunk when you are young and nothing more afterwards is entirely uncool.

Universal, free education for all was one of those great things that the Victorians did for us. Before then, only the church was involved in educating - setting up colleges to train the first professionals: priests. And it worked too. Once a novice could read the Bible and knew how to handle a congregation he could then gain a greater inspiration in his faith through contemplation and prayer. Further formal education was not needed.

That system suited the Victorian's world where prices were carved in wood (literally) and there was the certainty of empire.

Now, however, prices change by the second - trades come and go. Your bathroom is installed by a Pole. Your car is made in China. Your bank account is handled in Mumbai.

And yet, our children are given one long spell in school and university then let loose on the world. Skills ageing nowadays more quickly than ever. Your kids are great in IT? Fantastic! For the next five years at least. Then the computer has disappeared to be replaced by ... ? I don't know either. One thing for sure, though, is that it will be new, different and entirely unlike that learnt at school.

Computers? Everyone expects them to change, so what? What if, however, it is something else. TV for example. That box has been sat in the corner of our living rooms for 50 years now. Unchanging, toying with new things like colour or a fifth channel, but fundamentally the same. Or so we train our kids to think. What if that gray box went? What if the whole idea of TV vanished? Overnight?

Couldn't happen, you say. Or not? Is it wise to let our young adult spend four years studying a degree course in media studies when the media that they are studying could have been replaced in the same time by TV over the internet? Programmes streamed live from Brazil, India or China? Congratulations on your degree - the employer says to the newly graduated student - how is your knowledge of mandarin or portuguese by the way ... ?

The whole concept of education is so fundamentally on its head that it seems normal. Safe. Cosy. Go to school, spend a life at the same firm and retire with a watch to a semi in Eastbourne. That's how it always was and always will be ...

Only problem is that the world has changed and is changing ever more quickly.

How about though, if the children never left school? Always learning, always keeping up to date? Picking up new ideas while they learn and grow in the working and social world of adulthood?

How about giving every child the right to a fixed number of years of education, but with no fixed school leaving age. Totally free education to be taken when the child / adult wants. Whatever they choose to do?

And how about if that education could be taken whenever and wherever they wanted? 17 to 79. Brigg or Brazil? Free. Skills kept entirely up to date over an entire lifetime. Changing to match a changing world. One which Britain could be at the forefront - rather than lagging behind as the least productive country in Europe.

Yes, there would need to be some way to ensure that children had the basic skills before they left to find their own way in the working world. Proof of ability in communication, how to learn, and how to manage their own destinies.

Pipe dream? Almost certainly: the educational system has become too much that - a system. With its own logic and momentum. 'Education, Education, Education!' was the cry. That would work too if the world didn't change. If we still lived in our Victorian world.

Don't get me wrong: I think that the Victorians were a great people who changed our world. We are still using their legacy when we go on the tube, watch the boobtube or let the water out of the tub. One Victorian value we should let go of however is our faith in an educational system designed to train the clergy.

Perhaps, who knows, your children could be talking about when they are going to university (again) rather than where - while they are completing a contract in Dusseldorf for a Chinese banking corporation. A year later they may want to become a baker - if they could use their education when they needed to, they could be free to adapt.

Time to take that other matchstick out, in fact, and make better use of it at the right time.

In one: Education for life - or throughout life?

(Name supplied)