Michael Gove's recent speech on the need to promote high standards in education is a notable example of how to state the obvious. (Michael Gove is the Secretary of State for Education in England.) Let him speak for himself:
I want to proclaim the importance of education as a good in itself. I want to argue that introducing the young minds of the future to the great minds of the past is our duty. I want to argue that we should be more demanding of our education system, demanding of academics, headteachers, professionals in school and students of all ages. We should recover something of that Victorian earnestness which believed that an audience would be gripped more profoundly by a passionate hour long lecture from a gifted thinker which ranged over poetry and politics than by cheap sensation and easy pleasures.
The idea that a school or university should promote a body of knowledge as worthy to learn for its own sake is a radical idea. This is an age when a university can promote itself as a place of 'useful learning' (and miss the irony) and other Higher Education institutions jump through hoops in order to promote the employability and the transferable skills which 'employers' allegedly seek.
One wonders, however, if the agenda outlined in Gove's speech is no more than a fantasy. Some who agree broadly with Gove's analysis would suggest that things have gone too far and cannot now be remedied. I would beg to differ. We cannot let the heavy rain-laden clouds allow us to forget that one day the sun's rays will again offer us warmth, nurture and comfort.
