Not inspiring confidence

I've blogged for quite a while now on various recurring themes (as well as anything else that takes my fancy) but a major one has always been the state of education in England and the deliberate dumbing down of a large percentage of the populace whether by accident or design. Being highly suspicious of government motives along with a growing understanding of the powers that be and their desire to keep themselves as the powers that be, I soon recognised that this was deliberate, if a mistake on their part. In order to keep power you need fresh injections of talent and ideas, you don't get that from a stagnant group, just take a look at the results of inbreeding if you like. I'm still not convinced they've given up on the idea, but you only have to look at the efforts they are going too to try and improve education to see the damage they've done to it over the years.
Mail.

Tens of thousands of teachers will be forced back to the classroom to study grammar and maths because they lack the knowledge to deliver tough new primary school lessons.
Ministers yesterday unveiled an overhaul of England’s ‘substandard’ primary curriculum in an attempt to reverse more than a decade of dumbing down.
English lessons will contain tougher grammar and spelling, while maths classes will put greater emphasis on times tables, fractions, mental arithmetic and long division.
But experts warn many teachers will need intensive retraining to deliver the new lessons.

That's right, in order to just teach the basics, teachers themselves are going to have to be taught. Why? Simply because they've never learned them themselves. The system didn't require the knowledge it just required ever increasing results. So teachers taught kids how to pass exams, not how to actually think and work things out, bit like driving instructors teach people how to pass the driving test, not necessarily driving as it's done.
Will it work? I'm not so sure, perhaps if the government made educationalists drop all the excess baggage they are throwing at kids such as gender equality, racial awareness, religious equivalence and enviroloonyism. There's even a proposal to make learning a foreign language compulsory from the age of seven.
Whilst agreeing in principle with the basics system, I do think it will fail unless something else gives way. However I cannot see the powers that be wanting to give up on brainwashing kids with their pet likes.