Certain astronomical phenomena seem to go in twenty year cycles of light and darkness. The education supernova of 1944 brought primary schools formally to birth. Over twenty years they left old-time elementary education behind and established a new and promising persona.
Then in the 1960s, Bridget Plowden, an acknowledged star of the public education firmament, shone energy on the blossoming character of primary schools in England and Wales – until progress was eclipsed by the B.Revolution of ‘88, obliterating the radiance of two times two decades of enlightened development (admired world-wide, as some in the know may recall).
Now, after a following twenty years of consequent gloom, three new stars in the ascendant, named Alexander, Robinson and Rose, come together to call the schools forward out of the night.
State regulation of primary schools, they are all looking to agree, has blighted the lives of young children. Can even the mindless Leviathan be made to look a small child in the eye and still not feel a pang of regret for extinguishing the joy of a child bubbling with excitement in its nature-given thirst to learn? Let alone the social opportunity cost of twenty years of impoverished existence?
It could be a field day for human rights lawyers, assessing the penalty for ‘mental cruelty’. Do a rough sum! About one million weenies and winkies per age group in six primary years over two decades = c.1m x 6 x 20 = c.120,000,000 child/units of deliberate harm by the state. Abu Qatada gets £2,600 for his one petty period of loss of freedom to develop his nasty personality. Plot one terrorist :120m innocents! Innumerable angry parents could sue for quite a tidy sum.
Or how about giving the perpetrators a modern-style public flogging in the market place they set so much store by?
Juvenile
edu-can-do 