Albion’s Alchemist

I’ll let’ee in on a little something, come closer, that’s it.

I don’t normally bother with unsolicited email invitations. Well, neither do you, I can tell that just by your presence on the net. However, We all of us must make exceptions to certain of our policies from time to time. A gentleman calling himself ‘Toque’ emailed my during my recent hiatus, but naturally I was not able to read his message until today. It seems there is a new group recently incepted Glorying in the name of the Witanagemot.

If you are anything like the Alchemist you are probably thinking ‘wow, the forerunner of the Privy Council is reforming, only now they will all be wearing chef’s hats instead of mitres and helms’. Or something along those lines certainly. In fact Toque goes under the more explanatory name of ‘Little Man in a ~’ and this Witanagemot is not a group of busybodies who advice the monarch, but a group of busy bodies who bitch because our country enjoys not parity with our neighbouring countries. Count me in!

The objective of the Witanagemot is to highlight the deplorable state England finds herself in, which I know to be a matter as close to your heart as it is to mine.
You probably remember my complaining that England is the only nation in the EU without her own parliament (Alchemy Ante-Intermissio) for instance.

Incidentaly, if you are very like the Alchemist then something about the word ‘Witanagemot’ will have been bothering you since you began this post. I could not quite put my finger on it either, but it seemed wrong. As I so often am forced to do these days I turned to my trusty Dictionary of Old English and Anglo-Saxon – it is a regrettable, but I am afraid disuse dulls the old linguistic blade and one must turn to the books. Lo, we find that the original Old English would have us spell an advisor as ‘wita’, but the plural is ‘witena’, not ‘witana’. Alas, it seems that even our language suffers corruption just as England herself. It is to be hoped the new Witanagemot (for so we shall spell it) might help, in some small way to slow the decline of our land.

Those of you with a craving for more of the gemot will find the blogroll ensconced in one of the Alchemist usefull scrolling boxes in m’sidebar.

Those of you who’d like to see further scholarly discusion of Old English are like to be disapointed, the Alchemist knows a limmited-appeal topic when he sees one.

If one were to take a turn through near any council estate (for we all must at some point) one will, as has been noted before my many and eloquent people, see a satellite dish sprouting from every wall like the fungal growths of some virulent dieses of lower-class housing. There will also be BMW’s and widescreen televisions in evidence. This rather elitist introduction is intended to point out the sort of disposal to which certain peoples’ disposable income is subject to.

You may, depending on how closely you follow such things, have learned of Education Secretary Ruth Kelly’s plans for bolstering the education of poor people’s children. It all started on Radio Four. I won’t try t give the impression that I listen to Radio Four often, I just tune in to Women’s Hour once in a while – but the BBC kindly allow me to listen to recordings of their programmes over the net, which is rather more convenient.

It seems that children from under-privileged (that’s ‘poor’ to’ee) do not do so well in lessons as those from better off (privileged and over-privileged one assumes) families.

I know, I was as shocked as you are.

The introduction to today’s post talked of the apparent affluence of the council estate set because it illustrates the Alchemist’s ‘Theory of Insufficient Incentive’. Essentially the hypothetical poor child sees his family’s widescreen TV with Sky+, and their BMW – he sees his mother has no trouble keeping herself in Malibu and white lighting, he sees his fathers have no trouble paying for their two pouches of Golden Virginia every day, and he finds himself reasoning, not surprisingly, that education is not that vital to a good life.

Given the choice between attending school assiduously with a view to becoming an educated and productive member of Albion’s working corps and skiving off so he can kick over telephone boxes and steal hoodies, it is not surprising he chooses the latter, for he can see no downside. Once he is finally expelled at 16 he will sign on, and get a cash in hand job with a cowboy builder firm and set about raising (or fathering at any rate) the next generation of feral thugs.

The beneficent Kelly believes she can combat this by issuing free books to pre-school children (perfect for kindling the next time said children engage in a little arson), and by offering catch-up lessons to older children. Since truancy is at a record high, and is indeed rising still, one wanders how this last is meant to help. The children who need the catch-up lessons are the very ones who do not bother to attend the mainstream lessons, no?

You may be wandering if the Alchemist has a master plan – having slated phonics, catch-up lessons and teaching assistants at various times, you ask whether I have any better ideas?

As it happens I don’t. I really cannot see that our education system can be fixed in the short to medium term – for it has been crumbling so for long, stone by stone. You may say that we need to return to old school (if you follow) values, but that of course will never, can never happen – but similarly we cannot go on as we are. We have a school system which only plays at educating the poor, and often the rich too – and a university system now virtually inaccessible to a third of the population thanks to a loans system both draconian and Byzantine simultaneously, and in between we have some f the most underpaid and overworked teachers in the civilised world.

I wish I knew how to solve the problem, but more so I wish the Educations Secretary knew…