The history of British Education has so far been plagued by constant political intrusion, which has contributed more to the lowering of standards than any other factor. The most recent of these intrusions has been the latest government’s obsession with monitoring and targets. According to the prescribed policy, high standards can be achieved by making sure they are accurately and meticulously recorded. But such cosmetic measures can only improve the superficial appearance of any complex system. Indeed, if applied to other mechanisms, such as agriculture, a decline in output will result. Continuously weighing a pig will not make it fatter – indeed, the time spent in doing so could be better spent in feeding it, which will fatten it.
However, this target orientated political monitoring is here to stay. In a recent move to ensure targets are met and combat poor discipline in schools, Hypnotherapy will be used in all state funded schools as a uniform teaching and discipline method. All lessons will be delivered with pupils under a deep hypnotic trance. Apparently, 99% of people can be hypnotised in this way.
There are many advantages of this new system, all of which are good for many reasons. Discipline is the most obvious – while in a trance, misbehaviour is simply not an issue. Therefore, the curriculum can be delivered more effectively with minimal stress or strain on teaching staff. With this more efficient means of delivery, the curriculum can be vastly expanded to include topics previously thought to be too time consuming. As hypnotherapy delivers information into the brain permanently, there will be no need to go over any material more than once, and crucially, there will be no need for examinations of any sort. Teachers will therefore be under far less stress and fewer of them will be needed. As teachers are in a shortage anyway, there will be no job losses.
The savings to the government will be immense. All the bureaucracy currently involved in examinations procedures will disappear. Schools will hardly need any physical resources, leading to huge savings in the teaching of science, for example. There will also be further minor savings as the system is “tidied up”. This means that funding can be diverted from the education system to where it is more desperately needed, such as the health and transport infrastructure.
The NUT has welcomed the new policy, which it says will improve the working conditions for all teaching staff, and allow them to do their jobs more effectively. Education minister Charles Clarke has been criticised by Civil Liberties groups, who claim that “brainwashing our children” is not the way forward in education. Minister Clarke responded by saying “brainwashing goes on in schools already – what do you think the national curriculum is?”
There is of course the problem of the 1% of people who are immune to hypnotic techniques. Apparently, with the huge savings that the new policy will make, the state will have ample funding to provide places in private schools for those who are immune.