Freedom of thought has been erased from the education system – no wonder there’s a shortage of trainee teachers

‘The reasons for this model are clear. The economic thesis of our society means schools simply measure employability, rather than providing a medium of education – an oversimplified standardisation of people in the interests of employment is the norm. What suffers is free intellectual discourse for its own sake.
These views aren’t new. Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society states: “The pupil is thereby schooled to confuse teaching with learning, grade achievement with education, a diploma with competence.”
The current thesis on education rewards conformity, box ticking, acceptance without question of both ideas and authority – certainly favourable in a corporate society – with the skewed result that those teachers whose asides still espouse the value of knowledge as the zenith of education are considered somehow revolutionary. Of course the general sentiment of teachers in secondary education is that the temporary subjugation of these tenets of academic discourse is the necessary sacrifice to reach university, that bastion of free thought, but for how long?’
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