“It’s a red letter day, too: the new set of science textbooks hasfinally arrived.This may not seem much to you but I feel like bringing inchampagne to celebrate or asking the Head for a half day’s holiday.In the past, we have shared one dirty, dog-eared textbook betweentwo or even three children and it’s a book which doesn’t even coverthe right topics for our syllabus.These new ones are written by the people who set the exam, sothey must cover the relevant stuff.The Head of Department arrives carrying the books and handsthem out to the kids, handling them with great reverence.‘These books are brand new,’ he intones solemnly, placing oneneatly on my desk. ‘They must be treated with great respect and careso that others may use them in the future.”

“As he drones on, I examine one of the books. It has that pleasantsmell of newly-printed paper and, like all modern textbooks, is amasterpiece of political correctness. It is chock-full of brightpictures of children from ethnic minority backgrounds doing scienceexperiments and photographs of every kind of phenomena. Even theteachers are in wheelchairs. Any wrongdoing is illustrated by a whiteboy; here is one, foolishly sticking his fork into an electrical socketand being electrocuted. Here’s another, drinking from a test tube.What I cannot find, to my mounting horror as I flip through thebook, are any questions.Oh, bloody hell!Why are all modern textbooks in every subject full ofphotographs but devoid of questions?I also notice that, actually, it doesn’t quite seem to cover thesyllabus to which we have recently changed after the head ofdepartment assured us that it was ‘the easiest one yet’.”

“Glancing at the paper, I see once again how much exams have changed these days. For example. Old Fashioned Question: ‘What is 5x3?’ (1 Mark) Modern question: ‘How would you feel if you were a number 5 and two new number 5s came to join you from somewhere else? Would you make friends with them, because they are the same as you, or would you feel that they were not as good as you because you had been here longer? Do you think other number 5s would treat them differently? Can you think of any similar situation in the world today?’ (25 Marks).”

“As with so many child-related problems, I blame the parents. Many, I’m afraid, are simply too lazy, too stupid or too uncaring to cook properly; it’s much easier to shovel sugary, salty ‘convenience food’ into your kids from an early age. Food habits are built early in life and a poor start is impossible, or at least extremely difficult, to correct, once an addiction has set in.”

“If, redesigning our education system from scratch, it was suggested that we should attempt to teach Swahili to children but carry out those lessons in another foreign tongue, such as Swedish, this would rightly be derided as lunacy. Yet this is not so very far from what we are attempting to do. Take Coyne, for example. He is 14 now. His grasp of English is, at best, tenuous. Despite this, we are trying to teach him to speak French. Equally, his mathematical ability is next to nil; we are trying, in economics lessons, to explain concepts like inflation and money supply to a boy who can’t add..”

“Far too many incidents are simply brushed under the carpet, as it is much easier to hold meetings and presentations than support those teachers below them who are trying to improve discipline.”

“Let's get one thing straight:when gangs of youth throw stones at passing cars,shout abuse at innocent people going about their daily business or beat up random passers-by,they are not doing it 'because there is nothing to do' they are doing it because it's fun and in modern day, punishment-free Britain, there is no reason for them not to.”