Geoff Dawe, Byrrill Creek
The education debate about the amount of money available to schools on a needs basis is well worth having, but it needs to go beyond money available to re-carpet classrooms or update computers.
A root cause of ignorance in our culture is the negative reinforcing of learning that takes place when children are stressed by what they are supposed to be learning.
Once there is obligation, it is not education taking place, but the inculcation of ignorance, because whatever is a learning stress for children will tend to be steered away from in the latter part of their lives.
League tables in education are the stressing of both teachers and children, the ol’ double whammy.
Throughout history, reaching back as far as Greek civilisation, there have always been people who have called for child-centred education, where true education takes place by the child setting its own agenda of what it wants to learn and teachers facilitating this.
But in a technocratic civilisation, that sort of education is not wanted because it would produce geniuses all over the place in far more varied subject fields than we are used to, and, they would refuse to function like sheep.
