Stupid iliterate inumerate kids!

Two related items caught Walt's eye yesterday. The first was a speech given by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to the Centre for Policy Studies. In his address, entitled "What would Maggie [Thatcher] do today?", Bojo averred that achieving economic equality is impossible because some people are simply too stupid to get ahead in the modern world.

Mr. Johnson's remarks were immediately decried by the usual suspects as elitist and possibly racist, but no-one had the temerity to challenge his basic premise. That's because it's true! Remember what George Carlin used to say about the stupidity of the average person. If you think the average person is as stupid as he/she appears, consider that half the population is even more stupid than that!

Apart from genetic differences, today's younger people are the victims of bad education. Boris Johnson may have been thinking about a major study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which showed that that young adults in England scored among the lowest results in the industrialised world in international literacy and numeracy tests.

Out of 24 countries, England ranked 22nd for literacy and 21st for numeracy. The study also showed that, unlike in other developed countries, young people in England are no better at these tests than people in the 55 to 65 age range.

When this is weighted with other factors, such as the socio-economic background of people taking the test, it shows that England is the only country in the survey where results are going backwards. The older cohort scores higher than the younger.

British Skills Minister Matthew Hancock was shocked -- SHOCKED -- by the report. "This shocking report shows England has some of the least literate and numerate young adults in the developed world," he said. Then he came to the nub of the problem. "These are Labour's children," he added, "educated under a Labour government and force-fed a diet of dumbing down and low expectations." [My emphasis. Walt.]

Walt wonders if Mr. Hancock has visited North America. If the average British yoof is thick as a plank, the average American (and his/her Canadian cousin) is thick as two planks! If you don't believe me, ask one of them. A couple of days ago Walt saw a news reporter asking students at Harvard to name the capital of Canada. The only one who could was a visiting student from, errr, China.

And that's Harvard, the institution which educates America's brightest and best! Those kids aren't the ones who would have been left behind but for the Bush league educational reforms. If you want to see what those kids are like, try conversing with one of the gum-chewing, glassy-eyed "associates" at the Gap.

These are the kids who graduated from high schools and colleges unable to read their diplomas or make change without using a calculator. See also "Downward mobility haunts US education", from BBC News, December 2012.

The problem is with "child-centred education", the 60s fad that persists half a century later, under which no-one is "left behind" and no-one "fails" because that would be damaging to their self-esteem [and probably racist too! Ed.] Instead, our educational institutions turn out [churn out? Ed.] graduates utterly unprepared to cope with a troubled economy and shrinking job market. It is there -- in the real world -- that these kids fail.

The problem is hardly new. Dr. Rudolf Flesch wrote about it way back in 1951, in the original Why Johnny Can't Read. Why Johnny Still Can't Read: A New Look at the Scandal of Our Schools appeared in 1981. And yes, Dr. Flesch does propose a solution -- part of the home schooling answer to the crisis in education.

What you should do is teach your kids phonics! Walt recommends Why Johnny Can't Read and What You Can Do About It, from Harper Collins. The book is endorsed -- but apparently not followed -- by the US Department of Education. You can find it at your local library. Your community does still have a library, doesn't it?