Education

The state of Florida recently passed a piece of legislation making it illegal for teachers to hold discussions with pupils under the age of eight about gender orientation. It seemed a very reasonable idea to me and I would guess that a largeish proportion of parents in this country, perhaps even a majority, would concur. I would not wish to indulge in an unrealistically idyllic view of childhood, but my own life was certainly less complicated in the years before I suddenly realised, much in the manner of Henry Miller’s famous epiphany, that (to bowdlerise a little) girls were all in possession of cervixes and might thus be receptive to overtures of a sexual nature – or that there might be boys who for complex reasons would remain unmoved by such a revelation.

One night in December 1977, when Saddam Hussein was deputy leader of Iraq and already the strongman of the government, Nadhim Zahawi’s father was tipped off that Saddam’s secret police were after him. Zahawi, a Kurd working in Baghdad, decided to leave right away. He phoned the office to say that he was travelling to the north of the country for work and quickly set about his escape. The Baathist secret police did come for him that night, but by the time they arrived at his house, he was at Baghdad International Airport with a ticket to London.

This week, Nadeem Zahawi told teachers that they have ‘an important role in preparing children and young people for life in modern Britain, and teaching them about the society and world they grow up in.’ Actually, after 26 years in the classroom, I had worked that out for myself. Children spend significant periods of their lives with their teachers, and we have a huge responsibility that goes far beyond drilling our pupils for exams. But something has gone amiss in schools, and it seems that Zahawi might even realise that as well. In new guidance he has told teachers this week to avoid political bias in the classrooms.

German archaeologists have found ancient Egyptian tablets covered in repetitive writing exercises and ask — were they pupil punishments? But if classical examples are anything to go by, they sound more like normal education. For elite Roman boys, education began with elementary reading, writing and numbers. From about the age of nine, they developed these skills further, especially in the study of poetry, and began Greek; and at 15, they were taught the arts of political and legal argument, drawing widely on mythical, historical and philosophical precedents, to prepare them for life at the top of Roman society. Rote learning, memorisation, repetition (and the whip) were the means of ‘driving into the memory the lessons to be learned’. The educationist Quintilian (d.

Schools are far more than mere exam factories. Across the UK, teachers in 32,000 schools and colleges care for children on over half the days in any given year. Or we did until the lockdown in March 2020. Since then, children have missed the best part of two full terms. And while they were out of our sight, some were at risk. Six year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, for example, may have been rescued from the terrible abuse he suffered had his teachers been able to see him every day. But while most children have returned to class now that Covid restrictions are ending, some are still absent. News of anecdotal cases circulate within the profession. A colleague tells me that two sisters in her school never returned.