Medworth links to a von Mises Institute article on education in England:

And:

Good.

The Catallarchy crowd pick up on a quote (from of all places, Crooked Timber).

...it's not what it's cracked up to be (according to Brian Micklethwait quoting from Terence Kealey).

Kealey is one of my favourite writers. Actually, he's one of my only writers - I am not a great reader. A pamphlet by him (on university science funding) for the Centre for Policy Studies from 1988 survived several purges and may still be up in my mother's loft. At the time he was (and for all I know still is) the only person to dare to challenge the state-must-fund-science orthodoxy.

I'd sort of given up on this sort of thing but it's been something of a bumper day in Blogland today. I really cannot a remember a day when there has been so much good writing.

Let us terrify those whom reason cannot reach - Natalie Solent

Vote Briffa - Public Interest

What should we learn from Diana - LPITC

To the rest of us, he seems more like a real life Inspector Clouseau - Stephen Pollard

State schools are immoral - Liberty Log

Ironically, the British left struck the best notes when it sounded like the force more devoted to conserving the social bonds and duties that their own doctrines had destroyed - Conservative Commentary

Estelle Morris, formerly Secretary of State for Education has resigned. She did so because she felt that she was not up to the job. She believed herself to be incompetent.

Well, of course she is incompetent. They are all incompetent. There's Gordon Brown stuffing up the economy with ever more regulation. And David Blunkett turning the country into a police state thugocracy not to mention Alistair Darling's cunning plan to spend billions to little effect on the railways and to saddle future generations with the debt.

Incompetence is what government does best. Damn it, it's about the only thing it does.

Actually, the fact that Estelle Morris is incompetent and knows she is, makes her an ideal candidate for the job. Any job.

The dangerous ministers are the ones who think they know what they are doing. These are the sorts of ministers who jam up the Commons with pointless legislation while frittering away ever greater sums of public money for ever less result.

We need far more of the Estelle Morris sort - the sort who don't think they know what they are doing. We need ministers who are fully aware of their eye-watering incompetence and act accordingly. The self-aware incompetent will make great efforts to reduce his workload. He will know that every decision he makes will be wrong so he will start reducing the number of decisions he has to make. He will reduce the size of his department, abolish legislation and cut back the budget.

Come back Estelle, all is forgiven.

Lowbrow Leftie broadsheet, the Independent, has been blasted for trying to make political capital out of the deaf prodigy and Oxford reject who got 6 grade As at A Level. Writing in Public Interest, Peter Briffa said: "This university didn't play PC ball, unlike 'most universities' and the Indy doesn't like it. Who cares if it is the wrong or the right decision, just so long as it looks good in the brochures? It isn't her deafness, or righting an injustice that gets their goat, it's merely how things look. A sign of the times, I guess."

Getting into Oxford doesn't make you smart. Not getting into Oxford doesn't make you stupid. Getting into Oxford...

Saddam is dangerous - Liberty Log
Gadaffi to head human rights body - The Captain
Students not paying enough - Liberty Log
Thick Scot, smart Paddies - Samizdata
End the dividend tax - Samizdata
Good book on buildings - Junius
Clinton snout in Enron trough - Hawkgirl
Quiz of the Day: how geeky are you? - The Captain

With school standards seemingly in permanent decline, Our Man in Scotland, David Farrar has come up with a novel fix. He said: "I have a better idea. Every newborn child in Scotland should be given a PhD, signed by "education" minister Cathy Jamieson. All teachers can be fired; the rest of us can enjoy a huge tax cut. School buildings could be used as places where computerphobes can work out their anger."

There was a time when PhDs were given out to clever people but now they are given out to people like Jack Cunningham and Mo Mowlem.

In the future university places could be for party members only. That's the implication of the experiences of Conservative Commentary supremo and recent A Level candidate, Peter Cuthbertson. In addition to his 3 proper A Levels, Cuthbertson decided to take namby-pamby "General Studies" but when he got his marks he was shocked to discover that he had been marked down for supporting private schools and opposing multi-culturalism. He said: "Now I do not care about my General Studies marks. I got offers from five colleges in the last year, all of them excluding it from the list of subjects the grades in which they were interested. But it does seem awfully strange that I can get such different grades for filling in similar papers in the same way. If these tests are really vetting for political views, it is a disgrace, and I have to wonder what the markers of the second and third papers were thinking."

In the Soviet Union all university students had to take a compulsory course in Marxism-Leninism.

Stephen Pollard has hit out at too easy A Levels. In an article for Stephen Pollard he said: "Bristol University had 1800 applicants this year for 65 places in English. 900 were predicted to get three As at A-level. What use is an exam which produces that result?"

A Levels are Britain's main university entrance exam. After many years of continuous improvement they reached their zenith in, ooh, about 1983/4. It's been downhill ever since. Opinion formers are divided on whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. One set believe that it represents watering down. Another set enjoy being able to say: "It's so much easier than it was in my day."

In the future people will ask what people did before Brian's Education Blog but seeing as we are indeed living in the time before Brian's Education Blog this is what we were doing: noting that some of the top commentators have noticed that state education isn't very good. This is A N Wilson in the Standard:

In 1870, before "state" education was pioneered by the Victorians, literacy in Britain stood at 92 per cent. Most people picked up some schooling somewhere, even in workhouses. After more than a century of "state" education, it is doubtful whether literacy is anything like so high. Three hundred and fifty trainee teachers have just failed a simple English and maths test, but they have been told by Education Secretary Estelle Morris that they are still needed to instruct our children.