YesBut can schools help establish a moral code?

YesBut are schools capable of engendering in their pupils the qualities necessary to establish a community having a moral code?

Two-thirds of inmates of British prisons have innumeracy and literacy levels below 7 year old children! How on release from jail can these 50,000 prisoners hope to get good jobs and become worthwhile members of society? When New Labour came into power in 1997 they announced from the rooftops their priority would be education, education and education! Why ten years later are schools failing to provide even minimum standards of education to so many children?

The answer is very simple. Schools objectives are no longer the education of children, but to meet targets set by Government. Children are coached to pass tests so the school satisfies targets. Sports grounds have been sold off, so children cannot participate in sports and team games.

Schools should have only one objective, to prepare children for life. This includes not only teaching children to read, write and do arithmetic but also how to function in society.

A school has a problem child. What happens? They are excluded from the school. Throwing children out of school isn’t the answer. All that achieves is for the excluded kids to form gangs and get into trouble. Why should they obey the laws of a society, which has rejected them? They drift from just “mucking about” to “trouble making” to petty crime and on to drug dependency and gun crime, finishing up as one of the illiterate inmates in Her Royal Majesty’s Jails.

Schools will not have a new ethos until Government itself alters its concept of educational objectives.