Education, education, education

Where have I heard that before?
I was pleased to hear a government advisor repeat, yesterday, that it should be pupils and parents who choose their education or that of their children. Emphatically, NOT government, local authorities, or, worst of all, teachers.
I have to ask, "What was wrong with my education?". It was MY generation (and the one before it) that built Concorde (an astonishing collaboration itself) and put a man on the moon: Without much aid from computers, at that! All done with slide rules and log tables.
My first computer - a Sinclair Spectrum with booster - with 32 kbytes had three times the RAM of the computers used to help design Concorde and control the moon landing module.

When we saw how dire the local secondary schools were - the state choice for our child - my dear wife went out and got a job to pay for a private schooling. During the sales pitch to the assembled parents (this is mid-80s) the Head said "We know what you want from us, and we will have to give you what you want so that we can all pay our mortgages" (or words to that effect). As a result, said child was given the sort of education that was given to me by the state thirty years earlier, was given a sound base of maths, physics, chemistry, and languages, and went on to obtain an Honours Degree in aeronautical engineering. This would NOT (COULD not) have happened had she gone to the local-authority-run state school, for the simple reason that said school didn't do physics as a separate subject.

Sad, isn't it? All those children let down by the state and militant teachers.

Funny how "Power to the People" has been turned on it's head by the Socialists, isn't it? What they really mean is "Power to the State".