'Edukashun, edukashun, edukashun'

I hope, very sincerely, that those words are engraved on Tony Blair's headstone after we have hung him, quartered him, driven a stake through his heart and then buried him!  Regular readers will know that my default mode is grumpy but when it comes to the monstrosity that is our current education system I am moved to deep anger.  I mentioned in a previous post that an article in 'Rupe's Rag' by the distinguished classical actress, Imogen Stubbs, had depressed me.  In it, she describes her daughter's efforts to obtain an A* grading at 'AS'-level in Theatre Studies.  Apparently the girl had a Shakespeare and a Chekhov text to study and be examined on.  Naturally, with a mother such as Ms. Stubbs and a father called Trevor Nunn(!), they both offered their daughter insights and suggestions and you would expect her to sail through.  Not these days!  She received a very poor grade.  Her university place depended on a good grade and so her parents asked to have her paper re-marked and were then allowed to see the results.  All of the ideas she put in and which were imparted to her by her parents received no marks at all - because, as they learned later, she had "deviated from the objectives"!

Objectives?!  Apparently, as the horrified parents discovered, there are set 'objectives' to be taught in the study of these great theatrical texts, or to put it another way, there is a 'party line' which must at all costs be adhered to lest 're-education' be threatened!  As an experiment, her husband, Trevor Nunn, and a friend who is one of the founders of The Reduced Shakespeare Company, took on one of the questions from a recent 'A'-level paper and attempted to answer it under exam conditions and the results were 'marked' by a senior examiner who did not know their true identities.  The question was on Hamlet and both men were given poor-ish marks - Trever Nunn was given a mid-'B' grade.  This man, the premier classical director in British theatre for the last 30 years, has directed Hamlet three times!

According to Ms. Stubbs the examining authorities have certain agreed concepts which are applied to English literature and drama studies and those are the only acceptable answers which students should present at an exam.  In other words, the 'art' of studying a text in depth and drawing your own conclusions which can be supported by your knowledge of that text, your ideas on the sub-text, what you may have learned of the background to the writer's life and times, or indeed, anything which is not specified in the 'party line' is strictly verboten! 

Consequently, as Ms. Stubbs has discovered, students do not even bother to study the entire text, they simply learn the bits which will support the answers that their 'teachers' (useless, spineless shits!) have told them that the examiners (even more useless and shitty) are looking for.  Of course,the reason for all this is to ensure that anyone with brains and originality and imagination is kept out so that the plodders may plod on, learning nothing but getting the 'A' grades by ticking the right boxes and thus preparing themselves for lucrative careers in government employment.

The utterly crass, stupid, ignorant and arrogant pieces of intellectual detritus who teach and mark such non-exams should be taken out, buried up to their necks in the same shit which constitutes their brains and then stoned to death by heavy volumes of the complete works of William Shakespeare! 

And yes, I do feel better after that, thank you for asking! 

 

Comments

[Umbongo]

DD

Well this Guardian commentator (at http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/aug/17/how-get-a-star-review ) doesn't agree with you. In our state "education" system, when it comes to a battle between luvvies and irredeemable, polically motivated ignorance, ignorance wins every time.

[David Duff]

Alas, Ms. Mahoney only gains a'C-' from me! Apart from anything else, her English is clumsy and thoughtless:

"It all went a bit awry, though, when she wheeled in her two guinea pigs"

'A bit awry'? It's either awry or not.

And does one 'wheel in guinea pigs'? I think not.

I bet she has a First in English from one of our finer universities, Doncaster, or Milton Keynes, perhaps.

[JK]

Of course this perspective is from your cousins across the sea but it may help in 'splaining:

http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/

[H]

I read this article and concluded that, easy as the exams have become, you still get penalised for failing to answer the question. Ms Stubbs then attempts to obfuscate by bemoaning the narrowness of the examiners for failing to give credit for a load of irrelevant (and probably pretentious) waffle.

[David Duff]

Sorry, 'H', can't agree. I suspect that perhaps you are of a scientific or technological bent rather than English drama. The question Trevor Nunn was asked came from a recent exam paper and was as follows: Hamlet avenges his mother rather than his father: how far and inwhat ways do you agree?"

There is no objectively correct answer to that question. You simply have to know the text well enough to deduce any sub-text and support your argument accordingly. I think the 'answer' is 'no' but were I an examiner I would look favourably upon any candidate who put forward a cogent argument in favour provided it was supported by text. In other words, it is not for the examiner to seek confirmation of his or her theory, only to ensure that the candidates display a thorough knowledge of the text.