On the upside, Latin teaching in schools has doubled in the last seven years, but that hasn't been reflected in exams yet. I think this is good. I think a classical education is important - and not because I'm a snob. I think when we try to take a curriculum and make it more "relevant", we are actually screwing the people who we are trying to help. For every education reform that the Government puts forward, there is a very simple question you need to ask - would this curriculum be one which the Prime Minister would subject his own children to? Or, in other words, how many Prime Ministers do you know who eschewed Eton and Oxbridge for an NVQ in Business Studies? Education - in this country - is about power, and we all know it. We just conveniently forget it in order to not sound judgmental.
Sorry, but I don't think that intelligence falls along class lines. Government trying to make working and middle class kids do "relevant" or "practical" qualifications is a way of keeping their ambitions and horizons low. The government introduce these "practical" curricula on the basis that it'll provide choice, but all it ends up doing is supplanting the harder, academic courses and, in the process, lower people's intellectual horizons. Even if this is not the intent, this is the result - and it's a damn good reason to resist the vocationalisation trend. I think people are smart - I'm actually an optimist, even though people accuse me of being very jaded and cynical - and can achieve great things if they set their minds to it. But I fear that a lot of people will be doing that in spite of their schooling.
