Education, Education, Education.

The Blight of Education Education, Education, Education. It has become a mantra for politicians and a creed for those who have made a lucrative career out of administering Universities. But is education and more education necessarily a good thing? After years in management I begin to wonder is it worthwhile. After all the other great mantra of the Education worshippers is "Back to basics, teach the 3 R s." This of course shows a lack of basic education in those who proclaim the benefits of the 3R's. Either that or a very dysfunctional sense of humour.

I did not make it to University. I would have liked to read English or History, but I was a duffer at Maths. So thick were the educationalists of the mid nineteen - sixties, they thought an O - level in Maths was an essential for those who wished to study Humanities. Out in the real world I found that an O - level in Maths was not even essential for those who wished to take up careers in which some ability at Maths is essential. - like computer programming. I ended up as an Information Technology Consultant, which was not bad for a lad who could not see the point of Pythagoras' Theorem. "What is the point of Pythagoras' Theorem?" I once asked a girlfriend who happened to be a Maths teacher. "Suppose," she said (All Maths teachers are fond of supposing) "we are walking in the country and we see a beautiful tall tree. By using Pythagoras we could work out exactly how tall it is." I told her that if she was ever in the countryside with me and wanted to do anything with a beautiful tree except lie in its shade and take her clothes off I would shave my head, eat my own bollocks and join the Hare Krishna Temple. Soon after that she dumped me. Some people just don't get people who don't get maths.

Another thing that obsessed Maths teachers was exactness. My girlfriend was fond of telling me that Maths is the only exact science. Sure it is. Somebody with enough skill in Maths can always prove that the answer to a problem is exactly what they assumed it was in the first place. I on the other hand, while never having created a formula or done an equation to work out how, could manipulate her body in certain ways and make harmonic sounds emit from her mouth. And if that is not a science in the truest sense of the word then nothing is.

When addressing the question of education most people only think of Qualifications. This is a valid point of course but in a world obsessed with bits of paper, qualifications become devalued . I want to assess the benefit of education. After all, without formal education, life as we know it evolved from microscopic blobs of slime into complex creatures capable of reason, problem solving, adapting to changing environments and building Pyramids. Since Education became the sanctum sanctorum of society we seem to have turned evolution around and are progressing back to highly educated blobs of slime (and I am not just talking about President Dubya here.)

Where it all seems to have gone wrong is that Education has become much more business oriented. This was starting to happen in my schooldays. The Secondary schools unashamedly turned out factory fodder. Council run Grammar Schools educated pupils for careers as teachers or town hall officials while in the posh Grammars and public schools, pupils were taught by men and women who loved to pass on, along with unsavoury habits involving self - flagellation, their joy in learning. One of my teachers defined two distinct types of human brain, the thinking reasoning brain which was a pleasure to teach and the bucket brain, into which information was poured in huge quantities, to be tipped out later on an examination paper. Today' emphasis on qualifications suggests that only bucket brains are catered for. Although Universities are springing up on every street corner some of the degrees on offer are puzzling. Leisure Centre Management springs to mind, as does Feminist Studies, Town Planning and Creative Writing.

I cannot really believe that Leisure Centre Management needs to be taught. A keen interest in sport and some experience of basic business procedures like filing ought to qualify anybody for on the job training. Creative Writing and Feminism cannot be learned ("OK class - today we're going to consider techniques for insulting men who leer at our tits") unless we wish to create a world in which our personalities are taught to us. Who had the better poetic technique, John Betjemin or Allen Ginsberg ? Who is right about the role of women in modern society, Germaine Greer or Andrea Dworkin. And a degree in Town Planning ? One only has to look around any of our cities or larger towns to see that Education, in this field at least, does not address the problems. Why not a degree in hippie studies, slacking or writing T - shirt slogans. The point of Education should be to equip us to form our own views on gender politics, literature, or using buzzwords, to write our own poems and novels in our own style and to live fulfilling and enjoyable lives whether we choose to be Leisure Centre Managers, Brain Surgeons or Telesales Operatives.

Education, we have been told from the early years of this century is "a good thing." Education would enable the working classes to shrug off the stigma of their lowly birth, elevate the poor, spread culture among the ignorant and change society for the better. Rock and Roll changed society, not education. Culture? I worked among the affluent new middle classes in the South East for many years and was hard pressed to find anybody who knew the difference between a Pre - Raphaelite and an Impressionist or could tell Thomas Hardy from Thomas the Tank Engine. (Although I did learn from one wine expert that "Cabinet Sauvignon" is the best wine you can get. - He'd been on a wine appreciation course. Of course.)

The real reason now for the Governments enthusiasm for further education is to create a false picture of the employment situation. A degree, I hear, opens the door to many careers, not necessarily related to the subject studied, because it proves that the graduate has the ability to assimilate and analyse information and work creatively with it. If anybody truly believes this then why are the traditional Academic subjects not being promoted by Universities. The scope of the "office - fodder" degrees offered seems rather narrow when considered in relation to such a broad aim.

I regularly read that the most popular degrees with modern students are Business Studies and Accountancy. These will equip graduates, we are told for careers in business whereas young people lacking a degree can only expect dead end jobs. I have not seen any statistics concerning employment among graduates (and if I had I would probably not believe them.) but in my experience during the past few years the company most ready to offer graduates their first job is MacDonalds.

QED as one of my teachers used to say.

The fast food industry is not the only career path open to new graduates. For the real high - flyers the lure of the call - centre is often irresistible.

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