Education revolution anyone?

Because little children are able to learn “stuff” a lot earlier than they are comfortable leaving the protective wing of a parent or known and loved significant other, all early schooling should be in the presence of a parent who functions as a co-teacher.

If one were to combine providing children with early reading (and math) skills with schooling that was teacher-centred and content rich, one would have a recipe for explosive intellectual growth that would raise the levels of functional intelligence and cultural sophistication across the entire ability spectrum of the population.

It sounds so easy. Why don’t we do it? What is the greatest stumbling block to this educational revolution?

Here we have to go back for another look at the assumptions of progressivism, and the post-Enlightenment certainties that human beings reach their fullest potential as self-actualised “independent individuals” living out their days in an egalitarian universe of similar others.

This might be most usefully regarded as a HORIZONTALIST social theory. It works most obviously to ensure the equal incompetence of everyone, a dystopic utopia fast being implemented on a global scale. God help us all! Theodore Dalrymple’s reports from the wastelands of post imperial, post industrial England’s prison-bound drug-addicted young men may be regarded as data on this apocalyptic doom awaiting the world when full Anglicisation has taken place. (Please note that in modernising China’s Beijing capital, where speaking English may be assumed to have the greatest number of practitioners, that there is a boom in old folks nursing homes - aka dumping grounds - directly linked to the increasing numbers of “nuclear” - that is, stripped down - families in increasingly small apartments within which the old folks are supernumerary.)

So why don’t we reconsider the virtues of VERTICALIST social theory. In a verticalist society olders would care for youngers, youngers would respect olders, authority would be institutionalised in symbolic terms, and social and work roles would be linked. Parents would slip easily into high-investment parenting. Children would be nurtured. Excellence would be admired. Achievements would be acknowledged. Innovations would be plentiful.

Yes, there are quite a few more details needed to fill out this prescription. But if the central spine stays vertical, the details should not be too hard to specify.

And for a postscript thought - the Japanese are now apparently getting enthusiastic about enrolling their children in Indian schools, that they see as embodying intellectual virtues they think are slipping out of the Japanese system. Indian culture has long been typified by scholars as “hierarchical” and contrasted with western “egalitarianism”. These terms must be linked to “verticalist” and “horizontalist”, but this is a new day, and needs new terminology to avoid the baggage of the old.