Gobsmcked by Google

I have to say that I'm at a bit of a loss as to understand why the Head of Google, Eric Schmidt, would want Britain to return to a Victorian era of education.

Educationalists and historians would have us believe that schools were revered in Victorian times as a way of educating the poor so that they could benefit society. Utter nonsense, schools were revered as a way of the ruling classes being able to indoctrinate children from an early age with the right ideas and not those of revolutionaries such as Marx or Engels. They were a way of effectively preventing social unrest through programing and thus preventing potential revolution.

Schmidt claims in his MacTaggart lecture that we are simply behind in our thinking and we should combine art and science again as many of the past theorists had done.

Reading comments across the web it would appear that people are concerned that our children are only learning answers. Well that is true.

Let us look at this calmly and in particularly at mathematics. When I did my A Levels in maths I learned how to do differential calculus and integral calculus from what is called first principles. Calculus gives us the tools we need to perform theoretical physics and therefore is vital. It is not a science purely though because mathematics is without a doubt an art at a higher level. There is great beauty about it just as there is in a classical opera or painting or poem. Yet my son, who is undertaking an engineering degree did not learn these things until he was at university even though he took A Level maths.

Today's teaching is aimed at one thing, results, The schools with the best results get the plaudits and ultimately more money.

The schools with the best results do not necessarily have the best educators but they do have the best people at teaching children how to pass a test!

And that Herr Schmidt is quintessentially the challenge.

I was blessed by wonderful educators, free thinkers educated themselves by the post war thinkers, the new generation dedicated to improvement of our knowledge and understanding. Many of today's teachers are cattle fodder churned out by a system that is only interested in passing exams rather than opening young minds to possibilities of expansion.

If we have no inspiration from our educators then is it surprising that children will look elsewhere for their impetus such as rap music or TV reality shows.

The human mind is always searching how to evolve, it is its' destiny. If we do not show our children how to do this then nature will take it's course and chaos will ensue. Let our teachers become educators again and let us fall in love with learning and inspire our children to grow rather than to reach false benchmarks.

So Herr Schmidt is that really described best by Victorian schooling or is it better described elsewhere in history by people such as Da Vinci?