University: Then and Now.

As a teacher for forty years, I was constantly surprised and disappointed in the intellectual abilities of so many state school colleagues.
I felt as if I was a neutral observer to a process of unrelenting decay.

When I first arrived at Wales High School in South Yorks in 1975, a large proportion of the staff were my intellectual betters. At the time, that did not surprise me too greatly - why would it? - As well as having a degree, they were self-educating, and so many possessed a self-improving approach to life. To this they were able to add life experience.

Within a year or two, I was able to slot comfortably into this erudite body. I noticed too the depth in so many who were considered to be teaching non-academic subjects. So many deep thinkers.

As the years passed, I began to notice how many new staff possessed few of these qualities. Chatting to them, a shallowness began to peep through which was not a mere blip. It was something which continued - as did the decline for the rest of my time in that establishment.

In many ways, these staff were better teachers of their more limited material than the often uninspired generation which had preceded them. One of life's ironies, I suppose.

I watched as exam standards to be achieved by pupils were gradually and inexorably lowered - and in some cases, you felt that it was perhaps because the teachers would not have been able to cope with the former requirements of intellectual rigour in advanced level teaching!
'O' levels and then GCSEs were no longer able to support those going on to study in depth 'A' levels - consequently the 'A' levels had to become easier.

At this point, I must note that leftists reading this will be wetting themselves in fits of apoplexy as they screech, "But you are belittling the achievements of pupils, today."
Leftists - masters of the non sequitur - cannot fight the point made and so will resort to their casuistry and customary diversionary tactics of abuse whilst attempting to get you to discuss an unrelated topic - which is only vaguely connected to the original point. A superficiality extraordinaire!

Let us return to the main issue. This naturally means that there has been a huge social decline in scholastic achievement.
Link these points to the abolition of the grammar schools, which was a knife in the heart to genuine education; leftist propagandising of pupils and students, often through subtle - and not always so subtle - methods; tricks such as manipulation of syllabuses; a general social decline in morals and responsibility; the opening up of universities to numpties - and again, the movement is ineluctably downwards.

During a sleepless night, I think I managed to put my finger on the differences between then and now in both 'A' levels and university degrees.
In the past, true thought was required along with deep analysis if you were to succeed.
Today, the sound-bite generation relies on the aforementioned clips of heavily-edited information and tends to learn how to merely accumulate data from a variety of sources.

There are still erudite young people out there - and even a few from comprehensives - but these are essentially from the naturally self-motivating. Sadly, these are becoming a rare breed threatened with extinction in our increasingly mindless culture.

The left, of course, have scored something of an own goal. This means that schools which teach pupils to a much deeper level will see most pupils waltz through the easier exams without turning a hair. With the sole exception of the comprehensives in 'posh districts' - this means that those parents who can afford to do so and send their children to independent schools will be the winners.

The consolation for the left though, is that this new intelligentsia will be able to move straight into liberal left and even marxist indoctrination in so many parts of higher education.