Educational conundrums!

In the weekend paper there was an article about revisiting Baltimore fifteen years after "The Wire" was first filmed there. The various series looked at drugs, crime, corruption, politics, unions, education - practically an election campaign all on its own.

By a curious coincidence I have just read "A Spool of Blue Thread" by Ann Tyler, also set in Baltimore, but a very different Baltimore. Hers was a very white, mostly middle class Baltimore. How curious!

In the newspaper feature one person commented that you could remake "The Wire" today or in another fifteen years' time and it would not be substantially different. What a sad situation!

The school that was used in the series on education was portrayed as a busy, bustling state secondary school, overcrowded, full of social problems, with teachers striving to do their best for the children of their district. The school building stood empty for some time after the TV people left but now houses a Montessori school with about 450 pupils and its ideals of guided freedom of learning, learning through discovery, and mixed ages in the classrooms. Parents all over the city want to send their children there and there is a waiting list of about 1200! Some small boys who live near the school missed out on the lottery for places and have to attend a different, larger, more traditional state school. They commented that they would like to go to the Montessori school as they have heard that the teachers don't shout at you all the time.

If only funding could make every school, if not a Montessori school for after all some people don't believe in those ideals, than at least a smaller unit where staff can know and nurture all their pupils properly.

This article about education cuts points out that every pound a government invests in education is pounds upon pounds it won’t have to spend later on hospitals, welfare and criminal justice. We should be able to teach our children how to live healthily and thus save money on healthcare and hospitals. We should be able to teach them right from wrong in a meaningful way, with the support to keep them out of prison and possibly in work.

Instead we have a situation where a primary school in Wandsworth is asking their top juniors to vacuum the classrooms at the end of the day as the cutbacks mean they can't afford to replace the cleaner who just left. The headteacher's husband does the school 's plumbing repairs for free. Parents order educational supplies from Amazon and bring them to the school.

If someone put it in a TV series, you might think it was a little over the top. The truth is stranger than fiction!