Education, Edjukayshun, Edyerwhat?

So we've had another round of exam results come out and -- guess what? -- it's another record year! More passes, better grades, well, fuck me, that's just fantastic!

It couldn't possibly be that the exams are getting easier, could it? No ... our glorious leaders in Government have told us that they're not.

Well, I'm glad we sorted that shit out. Clearly, every year the teachers are getting better, and the kids? Gee, I guess the kids must just be getting smarter, then. That has to be the answer. No other explanation for it.

Unfortunately, that doesn't explain the problem I'm having just at the moment. You see, I'm trying to hire someone to work in my office right now. That means I'm reading CVs. Lots of CVs. From lots of bright young things with lots of A-grade GCSEs and A-levels.

So ... if standards are improving, if the exams aren't getting easier, then will someone please explain to me how these little bastards are getting through 12 or more years of education, are coming out with a better set of grades than I ever managed, and yet, somehow, are complete strangers to elementary grammar? Somehow, have managed to complete a decade and a half of schooling, but never learned how to spell or use the simplest of words.

One CV I've just read managed to use the words "there", "their" and "they're" and use each one incorrectly. Clearly, this well-educated youth had managed to complete his time at school without ever having it explained to him that these words are not interchangeable. Clearly, he had not the slightest concept of the difference between them or the context in which they were appropriate.

Possessive apostrophes float in and out of the text of these documents like quantum fucking phenomena. God forbid anyone actually ever manages to construct an entire sentence, containing a subject, an object and a verb.

So, why? Why are our children being churned out of school as illiterate little morons?

Why? Because the feeble, namby-pamby establishment has decreed that children can't be told that things are wrong. It might upset them. It might knock their confidence. It might stunt their emotional development.

You know what it might also do? It might mean that they FUCKING LEARNT SOMETHING.

I'm sorry to break it to the educational policy-makers of this once-proud nation, but some things are just plain fucking right and wrong.

When some friends of mine have a piece of their child's schoolwork on display proclaiming him to be a "top speller" despite this work containing the word "with" spelled "wiv", then I don't think we have to look very far to see the root of this problem, do we?

Enough.

Enough with this pussy-footing around. Teach the fucking kids. This is right. This is wrong. You got it wrong, kid. Stop fucking blubbing and get right next time. It's called learning and that's what education is for. Or so I thought.

Apparently, it's not any more. The teachers can't teach any more, they have to read a script from the curriculum, because the kids have to learn what's on the paper, so that they can pass it. No ... they're not allowed to learn anything else, because that doesn't help them pass the exams, does it? And the pass rate is what shows how successful the Government has been.

Ooh ... the poor kids are finding the exams too hard. Can't have them dragging the pass rate down. Don't make them study Physics or Maths -- let them do Media Fucking Studies and Applied Hairdressing and How To Tie Your Own Bastard Shoelaces.

If we make them do unpleasant things, like learn HOW TO FUCKING SPELL, they'll play truant, and that makes the figures look bad as well! Tell you what, why don't we let them use SMS abbreviations in their exam papers, because the kids like SMS and they all know how to spell m8 and l8r.

I've got a better idea.

How about we fucking don't. How about we worry a bit less about whether the kids are finding lessons fun and a bit more about making sure that they actually learn something. When did we, the adults, start giving a flying fuck about what the kids want? If we gave them what they wanted, then they wouldn’t go to school at all. They'd be at home on their Xbox 360s or in their chatrooms, or round at their mates' houses drinking cheap cider until they puked. They'd eat nothing but chips and watch TV until their brains turn to mush and dribbled out of their prematurely pierced ears.

For the love of Christ, they're fucking kids. We're supposed to know better than them. We're supposed to build character in the little bastards by making them thoroughly fucking miserable and teaching them stuff that they may not want to learn, but that we know they'll need in later life.

So ... how about we stop pandering to these spotty little shitbags and shake them up a bit? How about we explain to them that they're going to sit their worthless arses in school whether they fucking like it or not, and they're going to learn what we fucking well tell them to learn, because we're the adults and -- gosh! -- we know more than they do.

Or should we just sit back and let them pour out of the school gates illiterate, innumerate, but with a quite miraculous number of GCSE passes?