I'm not one of those voices of doom from the Daily Bigot bemoaning the appalling state of education and saying it's all gone downhill since the *good old days*. The Good Old Days weren't really that golden. People of my Grandad's generation sat in classes of 50 and were never expected to achieve anything academically, being destined for a life of labour in the fields. My Grandad, a highly intelligent man, never got the education his grandchildren took for granted. My fiancé didn't read until he was fourteen - it had never crossed anybody's mind to check whether all pupils were reading and, if not, to give them remedial lessons. The fact he then learnt in a couple of weeks, but simply won't read books today, is an illustration of lost opportunity.
Sparked by Karen's blogging of the The Tay Bridge Disaster I donned my rosy specs to look back fondly at my own education. As I posted the comment I thought about the extreme stimulus to our intellect we received at my fairly ordinary state primary. I say fairly ordinary - it was situated in suburban area, where the majority of people were above the poverty line and relatively aspirational, but it was by no means filled with the offspring of high achievers.
But, after I had posted it, I was struck. The only lessons I remember from Primary School were from one particular teacher, whom we were fortunate enough to be taught by in Junior 1 and Junior 3. Our Reception teacher was also very good as a Reception teacher, but I was only in that class for half a year and was academically advanced and socially backward (I hadn't been to playgroup or nursery and my mother has never been a social mixer, so I struggled to bond with my peers). The more I think about it, there were some pretty poor teachers at the school, and most were mediocre. (I'll give an hon mensh to my Infant 2 teacher, whose lessons I don't remember, but whose enthusiasm for music and her ability to teach it inspired countless hundreds).
So, really, I am judging educational standards in comparison to one exceptionally good teacher who taught me for two out of my 6-and-a-half years at Primary school, who inspired a love of reading and of history, who always pushed me and would never let me coast, and who had the imagination to use varied sources to inspire - when Matchstork Men and Matchstork Cats and Dogs was Number One, she used the song as an introduction to a whole afternoon studying a) Lowry and b) the industrial revolution. She was also a stickler for teaching grammar and spelling. Mrs Hodgkinson, of St Hugh's Primary, Timperley, I salute you.
Scary how one teacher can really make the difference between a good education and an indifferent one.
