A Defence of Grammars

"Against the conventional wisdom, we find little evidence that gaining entry into a grammar school has a positive impact“, the Telegraph, 23 May 2018.

      This leads us to an important conclusion: gaining entry into a grammar school in the UK may actually not be as important as many assume. But one thing this article has managed to avoid saying in its negative assessment of Grammar Schools is the utter failure of the system brought in to replace them, the "Comprehensive System". The comprehensive system has failed and it is, quite frankly, a national disgrace.

     It seems to me that if children are failing it is because the Government have experimented by introducing other kinds of education ie Academies; Comprehensives; Secondary Modern; Religion based schools and not concentrated enough on bringing the quality of education in these State schools up to the same level. It is the State schools that are failing children, because of degraded methods of teaching, not all, but most of them, not the Grammar or High schools.

     At the bottom this is not the fault of comprehensive schools or the comprehensive system itself. It is a direct consequence of academic capitalism and marketisation, which has brought about the replacing of developing deep learning through teaching all pupils in a cognitively challenging way by behaviourist cramming.

     There are few experienced teachers that deny this.

Anyone for England?

Consciously or otherwise, I do remember that there is such thing as Englishness that cut across champion racehorses, fashionable shops, seedy pubs, flirting rather than fighting night-clubs, congenial street corners, leather-clad bikers, Friday dress-down, double-decker buses, maverick royal family members… you name it.
     The more salubrious aspects in the macho field of indoor plumbing England comparing human and primate development include a rather wimpish aversion and a sort of unease to the primitive sanitation and ghastly food that characterise the mud-hut societies of the Eastern European landmass and Russia in particular.

     I am clearly not suggesting that the search for inferiority in the natives’ behaviour becomes almost a reflex or a pathological compulsion of the True Brit. My claim is only that the degree of surprise or outrage provoked by the deviation from English culture provides an indication of premature post-mortems on countries other than Britain. At the same time, I am conscious of the wider danger of blindness to the similarities or cross-cultural universals between the English and other post-Christian cultures.

     Half a century ago England was a Christian country (albeit of the Anglican variety, mostly). It was at one time taken for granted that people were Christians there. Not only that, but it was understood – because it did not have to be stated – that this was a country whose culture, morals and outlook had been formed by the Christian faith.
     This country bent over backwards to be welcoming and tolerant towards those who came here from the 'swingin sixties' onwards who were not Christian, and, indeed, for the most part, Moslem. At the same time, we saw a growth in secularism, materialism, modernism, and the dilution of the Christian foundations of the British society. Only recently has it become apparent that the Christian faith here needs defending, but such has been the progress of those elements in society which oppose it that views which were the norm only thirty or forty years ago are now condemned as rabidly reactionary.
     Good Old England has been rushing along a godless road to destruction for the past fifty years. Britain legalised sodomy, some drugs ('the morning after pill' is among them), pornography, pre-marital sex (Rock N' Roll), murdering unborn children (Latin: abortio), feotal craniotomy (crushing the baby's head with forceps while still alive in the mother's womb). Today Britain is described as brutal and broken even by leading politicians. Most of the towns and cities up and down the country are dealing with the yob culture, with multitudes of young people pouring out of pubs and clubs and vomiting and fighting in the streets, due to excessive binge drinking and supermarkets opening 24/7.
     I hope and pray that mud-hut nations will stand together to tell Britain at the end of the world a few home truths about basic morality and ‘cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease.’ – Isiah 13:11, winning few souls up and down the nation.

     With this new focus, Englishness is often feels rather like you try to admire a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction.