The Angry Exile: Only monopolised education could come up with this.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Saturday, 2 January 2010

Only monopolised education could come up with this.

From The Tele:

Top schools risk being branded inadequate by Government inspectors for failing to promote race relations, gender equality and human rights, it has been disclosed.
They could be plunged into "special measures" by Ofsted under new rules that place equality on a par with exam results and child safety for the first time.
In official guidance, inspectors are told to be aware of “gender imbalances” in upper-ability sets and ensure after-school sport is not dominated by pupils belonging to one ethnic group.

How the hell do you attack something that's so detached from reality? Where the fuck do you even start? It'd be like saying that driving test examiners will give as much weight to a learner's knowledge of alternative forms of transport and their relative environmental impact as their ability to control a car safely and maintain awareness of what's going on around them.* 'Political correctness gone mad' is an overused expression so I'll settle for simply saying that the idea is fucking stupid, benefits nobody and is only possible at all because the government have a virtual monopoly. Can you imagine what would happen if education was completely subject to market conditions? Let's imagine a third of schools decided to do this - good or bad news for the other two thirds? Let's go further and imagine that 90% decided to go mad. The sane 10% would become massively oversubscribed very quickly and most would end up having to leave the kids to be taught by ideologies rather than educators, so not good news for anyone but the PC nutjobs. But there'd probably be a scale of stupid, a gradient along which you'd find schools are buying into the new policy to greater and lesser extents. If, as I suspect, the money goes towards the end where daft policies are practised least the effect would be similar - the most mad would lose out to the least mad, the worst would lose out to the best. In the current government monopoly there is nothing to stop the next decree being that school age boys, all 5ish million of them, will henceforth wear pink in order to get them in touch with their feminine sides at an early age. It'd be deranged and as popular as, well, Gordon Brown going back to Sellyoaks and doing a stand up routine. But aside from voting against the idiots that do it, which might be out of the question for anything up to five years (possibly more in certain circumstances) there's fuck all anyone can do about it because the state has the control that comes with a monopoly on supplying education. That's got to end.

Now I know people like to talk about externalities and that education benefits even those without kids, and I'd be prepared to buy into that if there wasn't so much evidence that standards have taken a dive - sorry kids, but when I see sample GCSE papers online and find them a breeze without the two years of study and revision I had to put in to pass O levels twenty years ago I think there probably is a problem. So let's say then that I'd concede that state funding of education can be, though not necessarily is, worthwhile. Why does it need to be the monopoly supplier as well? Why does it need to supply the service at all? Ultimately I'd like to see the state give up education and handing it back to parents, but as a stepping stone to that I can't help thinking that a voucher system has to be the way to go. In the British education system parental choice is often Hobson's choice except that even those who take the 'none' option are being made to pay as if they'd accepted the metaphorical horse nearest the door.* Those of us without kids will still continue paying for those who have, which isn't ideal by a long way, but with schools competing for the money at least we could reasonably expect an ROI slightly more exciting than hordes of semi-literate, semi-numerate, non-thinkers who were all in suitably diverse classes.

It'll be interesting to see if Camernong, assuming he wins the election, has either the inclination or the balls to tackle this. Personally I think he's bought into the NuLab belief that spending more = it's better, and he's won't be all that keen to take on the teaching unions and the DFCS. The thing is, you see, the customer is king - always. But in state education the customer is neither the children being taught*, nor their parents, nor the taxpayers who have to stump up for the whole thing. The customer is OFSTED and the DFCS, and ultimately the government. Cameron is probably free market enough to understand this, but if (oh please) Broon and Co get sent packing in a few months, and if (well, any port in a storm) Cameron and Co become the government, they will then become the customer, won't they? They'll be awfully tempted to hang on. Result: expect the details to change and maybe an end to some of the extreme PC ideology, but the underlying system will remain the same.

It's a relief not to have kids, really.

UPDATE: The Ambush Predator's been at this one too. Having lost the will to live, or at least carry on reading, I blogged a bit and then fucked off out for a takeaway and put the finishing touches on over my chips. JuliaM apparently read through to the end and...

Could the Tories win some kudos here by utterly monstering these plans and vowing to remove them as soon as they take power? Let's see:
Nick Gibb, the shadow schools minister, said: “The primary focus of schools should be to provide a good education for their pupils.
Good start! So, you plan to scrap these guideli...
“We all want discrimination and inequality to be tackled wherever they exist, but the Government has given too much of the responsibility for tackling social problems to schools alone...”
/facepalm

No /facepalm for me. Just a weary sign of depressed resignation since it looks like my earlier guess was good.

* They're also being pressured and accused of being potential monsters, but that's another issue entirely.