In the absence of any concrete policy to argue about, the
subject of qualified teachers raised its diversionary head again yesterday as
opposition MPs confused Michael Gove’s quest for educational excellence and competence
with socialism’s insistence that all must have qualifications, titles or some
form of accreditation – yes, we are all winners. Curious then, how they seem less
concerned that parents, who produce the offspring that the state must then
attempt to educate, should be suitably vetted and certified and examined and qualified.
Of course, the last thing we need is politicians deciding what qualifications would
be suitable to judge people fit to breed. But it’s not a bad idea, is it?
We routinely and robustly proscribe all sorts of natural human
activity on the basis that it is counter to civilised behaviour. Humans steal
almost by instinct – you have to actively teach children that theft is wrong, yet
our supposed rulers regularly demonstrate that crime goes effectively unpunished.
Maybe MP criminality is more acceptable than proletariat wrongdoing? Humans also
cause intentional harm to each other with an astonishing regularity; you
could hardly credibly state that murder is dying out, for instance. And one of the most basic drivers
of human violence is the competition for mating rights. Surely, in the quest
for responsible parents there should be obstacles to surmount, exams to pass
and qualifications to be attained?
Of course, as in all things, one of the most difficult of
human instincts to suppress is the opportunism – red in tooth and claw – that ensured
our very survival as a species. Introduce a legal requirement for a parenting
diploma and in the twenty years or so before ministers wake up to the abuses
reported to them from day one by a multitude of whistle-blowers, bogus bratting
colleges will spring up and award undeserved degrees in getting up the duff. I
wouldn’t be at all surprised if an awful lot of lecturers will happily help
their paying students with their ‘homework’. Yes, you say, wagging your finger
at me, you would paint humanity in such a sordid light but, you see, unlike
politicians, I am not seeking election and can therefore tell the truth.
And the truth is that no matter how you layer on the
veneers of civilisation the animal within all of us will find ways to scratch it
off and reveal the crude plywood beneath. It seems to me that some regulation
is needed, but you can only go so far. You can prohibit the physical aspects of
racism, for instance – making it illegal to discriminate on grounds of
differentness and punishing verbal and physical expressions of the same – but you
can’t eradicate antipathy; we haven’t yet perfected thought control. You can
also mandate the acquisition of paper qualifications, but you’re on a hiding to
nothing if you believe that everybody can justify holding them or demonstrate
the actual worth that such parchment purports to confer.
But for some reason, despite all the millennia of
evidence against, our rulers are obsessed with putting barricades in the way of
reason and are too quick in creating structures open to abuse. Insist on
teaching qualifications for all and I guarantee you that standards will not
only not improve, they will probably go down as the unworthy will find ways of
obtaining the closed-shop entry ticket, while assessing their actual competence
will take a back seat for a while. It is as clear as day to those of us who live
in the real world; why is it so difficult for governments to understand?
Testing times...
Maybe, rather than MPs insisting on forever regulating
the rest of us, the rest of us should be quietly regulating them. Next year, if
you hadn’t noticed, there is to be a general election. But why should we have
to put up with candidates selected by obscure and often hereditary processes to
fill party ambitions? I propose that only suitably qualified candidates be
allowed to stand – no diploma, no hat in the ring. That gives them all a year
to stop meddling, put in some hard graft, hand in their homework for scrutiny
and revise for the big day. And we will all be marking the exams.
