http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17125538
Contrary to the appearance of such a headline, you will find I am actually most decidedly on the side of the children. I write this piece with a warning. Not too long from now most children in the UK will be educated in run-for-profit schools. Big business will be the driving force behind your child's future. Open your arms wide and welcome that future; United Kingdom PLC.
Now I don't know about you but I was rather hoping that we might actually be trying to save ourselves and improve our lot. Isn't the true goal for the future supposed to be improvement? Certainly evolution intended it that way, so why are we so inherently intent upon embracing corruption? Have we now become so blinded and jaded that we're going to lie down again and allow our children to be manipulated by financial concerns over personal well-being? What possible ethical good will come from this lovingly crafted piece of social genocide? Make no mistake, introducing business into the education system in this way is one of the most dangerous minefields we've ever created. With the plan as it stands teachers and parents will be encouraged into becoming shareholders, but far from creating accountability we must surely be inviting all manner of possible conflicts into that which should remain neutral. Put another way, can you think of many instances where business has behaved, of it's own volition, in an ethical way when potential profit is dangled before it? Any time business has taken the reins of a service instigated for the public good, it has always turned sour. Public transport, infrastructure, utilities, banks.. all running marvellously.. aren't they!? Very few examples of good private service spring to mind, and yet here we are on the precipice of one of the most dangerous and fundamentally damaging implementations yet conceived. It blows my mind that these people cannot think outside the box and grasp the important and valuable differences between cooperation and competition, and why the latter should forcefully remain within the arena of sport. I'm almost totally convinced that the Tories want no part of actually running the country. Everything that is wrong with the world is being unleashed on the UK at the moment, and education is next. Whilst Michael Gove speaks of all manner of improvement, we're actually about to open the school gates to the same kind of potential financial abuses, and have Headmasters (not all of whom now have to have come up through the education system) shake hands with some of the same people who helped to ruin the economy. I thought academies were his true low point, but they just became hungry bulldogs on a piece of string. Just wait until this government cuts the string, no doubt waxing lyrical about these austere times as they open a bottle of bubbly to celebrate another step towards whatever the great "master plan" of their making actually is.
Your child's future really does rest in your actions and your thoughts from today. Think carefully, reason wisely.
