Time to Meddle: Ogden on Actually Educating People

When I was a young lad at school, exactly what education was meant to be eluded me. To my mind, education meant preparing young gentlemen like me for the world, endowing a wide range of knowledge in all fields and specific expertise in a chosen few areas of interest. On paper, at least, that is what the curriculum was supposed to do, but the reality was rather different.

I was awful at Maths, and I never understood how trigonometry or the theories of Pythagoras were meant to prepare me to apply for a mortgage or understand how to pay taxes. I was told time and again that I needed to learn how to divide and add ludicrous sums, being reminded by my teacher that “You won't have a calculator to do this in real life”. Ignoring the fact that if I ever needed to times seven hundred and forty-two by sixteen then my life will have undoubtedly taken a turn for the worse, I produced my mobile phone and showed him the calculator app. I was told not to be insolent.

I was good at History, mostly because it was (and is) a hobby of mine. However, school did not give me much room to spread my wings on this, since the same periods of time were covered every year, just in a little more depth; 1066, the Tudors, the causes of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the rise of Hitler. Of Roman and medieval history there was little, of the British Empire even less, and most students associated the name Napoleon with the pig from Animal Farm.

On a parents' night, my mother was told by a History teacher that all of us were bound to get good grades, since we were repeating what we had done before. “Is this what I'm paying you for?” she demanded, as well she might. This, from the sixth oldest school on the planet, was nothing short of disgraceful.

French classes were eye-opening in other ways, since I spent most of my holidays in France and was exposed to the chatter of our neighbors. Although I could tell them that last weekend I had been to the cinema but I didn't like to play football, I was unable to say much else. Only after years of exposure to the French reality did I learn to speak their language with any proficiency.

To put it succinctly, my school education was geared towards passing exams. To return to the example of our History course, in a Politics class, a straight-A student called Alys was heard to say that “The attack on Pearl Harbour triggered the Vietnam War”, and in a Classics lesson, a girl called Catherine argued that the Emperor Augustus had taken control of the Church and killed the Pope...in 26 BC. It was a prestigious school once, I promise.

Britain needs an education program that actually educates people, and so does Georgia. This morning I read an article about child brides in Georgia, and the gloomy thought crossed my mind once again that the only time Georgia makes the Western headlines is when something awful happens: a war, zoo animals rampaging around the capital, or young girls being raped and told “Gaixare” (bless you); they're going to have children, after all, and what could be better than that?

Most Georgians complain that they simply don't have the opportunities that people in other countries do, and while this is true, I've met too many Georgians who have come from humble backgrounds and achieved great things to have much sympathy for the young men squatting on street corners drinking beer and eating sunflower seeds before it's time to go home to mother.

Georgian friends of mine have forged their own path (and I hold those who join the uniformed services in the same high regard), but I admit that it is not in everyone to have the strength to emulate them. However, with an education program grounded in reality, the government could make things easier for them, especially for people in Georgia's many villages. Teenage girls could be taught that getting married before 18 to a man considered the local-boy-done-good because he makes 500 GEL a month might not be the wisest life choice, and perhaps young men could be shown how their lives could improve if they could stomach university for a few years.

It would be difficult to implement, of course, due to cultural pressures. It is the parents of young women who encourage them to marry and the parents of young men who do not pressure them into working or staying in school. Tampering with the education system in this way is tantamount to attempting to change the culture of the country, and something happens every year that shows how badly Georgians react when they feel (I emphasise 'feel') that their culture is being meddled with; it only takes someone to open a vegan cafe or a group of gay people to say “We're gay” for things to get out of hand.

It is an issue the government will have to address sooner or later, as the disparity between 'the regions' and the cities continues to grow.

Although now that I think of it, if they hadn't attacked that vegan cafe, we wouldn't have Rosemary. Every cloud has a silver lining, I suppose.

Tim Ogden