Skip to content

Tempora, mores, eheu fugaces

If Sunak really wants to revamp the curriculum to equip the next generation for the terrifying and often tedious world of adulthood, these are the life lessons I wish I’d been taught at school.
….

If I were PM, I’d make sure every child left school with three solid Ottolenghi recipes in their arsenal, a starter baggy of ras el hanout and a working knowledge of sous vide techniques.
….
What’s the best sort of cloth for the loo rim? How do you get those streaks off the shiny metallic fridge door?
….
Which drill bits in the box are for wood, which are for brick walls? And why is this drill bit not letting me drill more than a centimetre into this particular bit of wall? If I used a spirit level for putting up my curtain track, why does it look so wonky?

Good God.

This is The Times. Is that being written by people without servants, or the ability to find tradesmen, these days?

Or, worse, is it now being written for an audience that doesn’t?

44 thoughts on “Tempora, mores, eheu fugaces”

  1. He has a point. For decades, too much focus on academic shit (education,education,education, everyone must go to uni) resulting in lorryloads of highly educated thickos with worthless degrees, rather than abilities in practical, real world stuff that would help them get through life.
    Not everbody is academic. Sunaks’ idea of forcing kides with no interest in maths having to study bloody Venn Diagrams & Matrices till they’re 18 is mad.

    And Tim, not all of us can afford a tradesperson to do something we are quite capable of doing with a little study and time. Or are those who look at a problem and relish the challenge in trying to solve it ourselves. Did you ever get your bike fixed?

  2. Ottolhengi?

    Five minutes later I was on their site – pretty well as expected (fuck me these people are SO predictable)

    If you want to visit the actual restaurant, what three words: ///smug.mark.up

  3. “Did you ever get your bike fixed?”

    Yep, the Man Who Did for me before we moved had moved his shop to be closer to where we are after we’ve moved. So, he’s still the Man Who Does for me.

  4. The wood bits are the ones that say “wood bit” on the packet, the masonry bits are the ones that say “masonry bit” on the packet. But by that verbal vomit baggy ras el hanout sous vide he obviously can’t actually read.

  5. And as ever when somebody writes “I wish I’d been taught at school…” I ask: WTH weren’t you? I was. How old are you?

    We were taught maths at (infant!) school, how has he managed not to know sums?
    We were taught cooking at (infant!) school, how has he managed not to know how to cook?
    We were taught woodwork at secondary school, how has he managed to not know one end of a screwdriver from another?
    Does he not have any innate ability to notice the world around him, which would equip you with sufficient knowledge without being taught.

    And in the last two years of secondary school we had what was then called “Design for Living” which was to specifically ensure school-leavers were equiped with the knowledge of how to stay alive once they’d entered the real word, just in case it hadn’t sunk in in the previous decade.

  6. jgh, sometimes the options are just not available. My 14 year old grandson had no option for any ‘practical’ GCE (or whatever they call it this week) subjects apart from ‘Food and Nutrition’. There are NO subjects related to what you would call a ‘trade’ within the curriculum at his ‘Academy’.

  7. Generation problem You now have three generations who are unlikely to have been taught anything useful. (Include my own in that) The first got the opportunity to pick up useful knowledge from the previous. The current one is now two iterations away from that.

  8. “What’s the best sort of cloth for the loo rim?”

    Ah, they mean for cleaning.

    On first reading, I thought they meant some sort of velvet bog seat so you can sit in warmth and comfort.

  9. Rishi Sunak’s demand that pupils should be kept in school doing maths until they’re 18 is all very well, but it’s not new and for some it just becomes an exercise in pointlessness and boredom.

    At my grammar school (mid 1980’s) 6th formers were required to keep doing maths and English until they got at least a C grade pass at both. The rationale behind this was that along with A-Levels a C grade pass at English and Maths was a common entry requirement for university.

    More generally though, its not the thicko’s that are the problem, some will always struggle with basic arithmetic. The bigger problem is when you get into heavy algebra, trigonometry, differential equations and calculus.

    Unless you’re planning on going on to university to study advanced maths or engineering (in which case these are an essential prerequisite) then they’re just a pointless waste of time.

    At 16 I knew that I was going to university to study computers, got the maths, English and misc A-Levels to do that and have never used any of the above in my life since. Not once, ever.

    So what was the point of me sitting in double maths, bored out of my skull, doing pointless equations that I never understood then or now?

    Zero. It was a literal waste of my time…and Rishi wants more pointless time wasting by legal coercion? The mans an idiot, but then that’s why he couldn’t get elected and had to subject us to a coup d’etat to steal No. 10.

    Maybe instead of double maths for 16-to-18 year olds we should have a class or two on the differences between freedom and tyranny.

    Yeah. Thought not.

  10. When my niece & nephew were at school in the 90s the nearest thing to home economics they did spent more time getting them to design the graphics for the wrapper of a food bar than it did on the contents.

    If kids are going to be taught maths for living most of the current curriculum should be dumped and replaced with very basic statistics and compound interest so they can tell when politicians and scammers are lying.

  11. Something I found out a while ago. The suicide rate of the people I went to school with. Around 12%. From memory, they seem to have been amongst the ones who did better at school.
    The why? I’ve a feeling that particular form of education – grammar school – didn’t particularly well prepare for a changing world. I know the first career path I followed would have lead to a dead end. There just aren’t people who do that job any more. Haven’t for years. There’s another one I followed later was the same. Possibly a third. I can well imagine someone, in maybe their forties, who’ve been quite successfully trundling along their chosen path suddenly discovering they’re on the scrapheap with little prospect of ever getting a similar job again, And thus continue to support the lifestyle they’re accustomed to. Because they don’t have any capabilities the market wants & they can’t see any possibility of acquiring them. Must be very dispiriting.

  12. Adollff: these aren’t subject options, they’re *before* O levels, they’re basic core stuff. Nobody “options” to do/omit maths at 11.

    1975, infant school year 1: basic kitchen skills, cooking buns
    1976, infant school year 2: sums using toy money as teaching materials
    1980/2, secondary school year 1/3: woodwork
    1981, secondary school year 2: “hot” cookery, boiling, frying, baking, roasting
    1981, secondary school year 2: metalwork
    1980-1984, secondary school, finance and timetables used as examples in maths
    *ALL* compulsary, *ALL* part of the core curriculm, *ALL* non-opt-out-able, *ALL* non-certification subject.
    1984-1985 ‘O’ level years: 1 lesson per week Design For Living, compulsary, core curriculum, non-opt-out-able, “how to stay alive without getting STDs, how to use banks, voting, avoiding being scammed by scammers, bleeding to death, burning down your house, etc.”

    All in a basic bog standard ordinary English school system.

  13. We were taught woodwork at school – some of the lads were turning out radiograms covered in beautiful veneers, sailing vessels… I learned to cook in the Cubs and Boy Scouts, endless camps (ditto map reading, etc). Fathers, uncles and neighbours taught you how to service and repair your cycle, motor cycle, motor vehicle. I could strip down and rebuild a motor bike engine as a teenager. We all painted and papered the walls of our homes when starting out – basic rewiring and plumbing. Village primary schools and church choirs taught children how to read music and play basic instruments, to dance, to perform on the stage. No one I knew had money to employ a tradesman – there was always someone in the wider family. Would imagine the life skills required by the current kiddie generation are somewhat different to those of mine.

  14. This guy must be an older fossil than me! Any problem with drilling or cooking or jobs around the house, give it a quick google, skip past the ads and there’s a dozen instructional videos on you tube.

    Though I suppose the kids today use TikTok or Instagram or, for the more esoteric stuff, OnlyFans.

  15. “Rishi Sunak’s demand that pupils should be kept in school doing maths until they’re 18 is all very well, but it’s not new and for some it just becomes an exercise in pointlessness and boredom.”

    Meat One

  16. One problem is teachers’ pay scales. We were taught woodwork but the promised metalwork vanished when the teacher went off to earn more as a foreman on a power station.

    We were taught physics by a chemist because the pay meant there was a permanent shortage of physics teachers. Our promised physics & chemistry in our last year at school vanished – nobody to teach it, not even a chemist. My three promised papers in extra maths were reduced to two – not enough maths teachers.

    But will teachers ever be paid according to market demand for their skills? Not likely as far as I can see. Maybe private schools are more rational.

  17. If Sunak really wants to revamp the curriculum

    You can stop reading there, lol.

    Prime Minister Rashee Sanook wasn’t inflicted on us because they give a fuck about children’s education.

  18. Can’t say that beyond a bit of handycrafts anything in my school curriculum focussed on “Real Life™ Skills”.

    The point being that you were supposed to have been taught basic technical skills by father/grandfather/uncle/older cousin, starting with that bicycle maintenance/repair.
    the Teaching of cooking and general household chores were supposed to be handled by the female variant of that list. For a bloke at least The Washing of the Dishes, and making your own damn breakfast/lunch.
    If you were unfortunate enough to not get those basics taught in Youf , military service most certainly would.

    But school? School was for school. You either got an education, or learned a trade. They didn’t bother with stuff you were supposed to learn at home.

  19. I’d make sure every child left school with three solid Ottolenghi recipes in their arsenal, a starter baggy of ras el hanout and a working knowledge of sous vide techniques.

    Surely this demonstrates the entire article is satire?

    Maths til 18 is pointless. Just ensure everyone capable of leaving school with basic literacy and numeracy does so.

  20. Meat One

    Do they still do mandatory day release courses for apprentice butchers and the like a la “Wilt”? I’m guessing not, since our former apprentices are now being shoehorned into inappropriate university courses thanks to Tony Bliar’s “50% university attendance” bullshit.

  21. . . . there’s a dozen instructional videos on you tube.

    They often assume a base knowledge many people don’t have. It’s actually quite difficult to teach a subject you know well to someone who knows nothing of it, and good plumbers earn far more doing plumbing than making videos.

  22. I recall that MPs were recently asked the probability of getting two heads from two coin tosses, and only 40% got the right answer. Nobody should leave school unable to do sufficient mental arithmetic to perform reasonableness tests and handle powers of 10 (and understand the different between a megawatt and a gigajoule). Combine that with some basic stats and probability and you have the tools to see through a great deal of the bullshit that’s thrown at us all.

    Sadly, it would appear there’s nobody within the UK system of governance with the capacity to do this – how else can you explain HS2 and Net Zero? (Well, brown envelopes could have something to do with it, I suppose.)

  23. as I understand it what we used to call the quality press have managed to emulate the red tops, allbeit without the bare breasts.

  24. I recall that MPs were recently asked the probability of getting two heads from two coin tosses, and only 40% got the right answer.

    It may have been more a case of overthinking it than a mental arithmetic fail. They might have remembered something-something about one random event not affecting a consecutive random event and so dismissed the obvious answer.

    I remember a statistician girlie at a sciency place I worked being a bit confused by a simple doubling game on odds and evens. To be fair to her she was a practicing American Christian so was unfamiliar with gambling (I had to disguise the “game” to get her involved). To start with she just couldn’t get how I appeared to be able to regularly win on unrelated random selections. When I mentioned the green segment/s on roulette wheels, all of a sudden the numbers fell into place in her mind and she understood what was going on.

    She also didn’t know that the upcoming turn of the century actually happened on 00/01 rather than 99/00, which was surprising for a number-aware Christian. Even the acceptance that there was no year zero in the calendar didn’t persuade her. My credibility was less than all the parties being planned.

    Bullshit baffles brains, etc.

  25. @Adolff: ” There are NO subjects related to what you would call a ‘trade’ within the curriculum at his ‘Academy’.”

    That will be because of Elf n’Safety, I am sure.

    Can’t have the little darlings handling sharp (or any other) tools, now can we?

  26. “Can’t have the little darlings handling sharp (or any other) tools, now can we?”

    Especially as the ‘diverse’ elements would probably use them to stab someone……

  27. Rishi Sunak’s demand that pupils should be kept in school doing maths until they’re 18 is all very well, but it’s not new and for some it just becomes an exercise in pointlessness and boredom.

    One thing I haven’t seen mentioned about this Grand Idea (granted, I haven’t looked too hard) is that, if the shit teachers haven’t managed to teach someone maths in the first 11 years of a state education how are the same shit teachers going to manage it in the last 2?

  28. Jim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs-mt9jhXsQ

    Sirt PTerry has the answer, as always..

    (And yes, at events I regularly get to use this one, or a variety thereof.
    Similarly, the trader in sharp, stabby stuff where I do most of my swordfighting workshops makes it a point to NOT have a first-aid kit on the premise.
    We rarely have actual children cut themselves. The Large Children, however… For us it’s a good indication that we won’t sell to that person. Often much to their disbelief and offense… )

  29. Our O level physics & chemistry teacher was an ex-accountant who gave it up and became a science teacher instead, it was even worse than you might imagine.

  30. BNIC, when I was doing my articles, my fellow students included large numbers of graduates in STEM subjects. Maybe there just aren’t enough jobs for chemists, physicists etc. I recall that geographers tended to struggle most, while historians and linguists were better than everyone expected.

  31. PJF. There is a year 0 on the calendar, so centuries start at the 00s.

    That many others uses a stupid calendar is not my problem.

    The numbers have gone -2, -1, 0 1, 2 for as long as we have had the concepts of negatives.

    For calendars to not do that is crazy.

    ≈==========

    The idea you can teach life skills as school is hopeless.

    Students will only pay attention if interested.

    And whatever you teach will be out of date anyway. I remember teaching how to balance a chequebook. That was four wasted hours for everyone involved!

    Teach them something trendy like “sous vide”? That has to be a pisstake.

  32. @Chester
    “And whatever you teach will be out of date anyway. I remember teaching how to balance a chequebook. That was four wasted hours for everyone involved! “

    My school taught typing, but only to girls, and only to those in the lower streams, destined to become ‘the typing pool’ for the benefit of senior management. Ahem.

    To A-stream boys, studying serious STEM subjects? Not a chance.
    I have spent most of my professional life typinge, badly.

  33. One thing they don’t seem to teach these days is approximation. So at least you get the correct order of magnitude or the sign right. Read any journalist. Not saying those in the STEM subjects are much better.

  34. We didn’t get taught cooking and housekeeping at ‘high school’; I assume because it’s so simple to do the basics, and there were so many everyday examples, that being taught it formally would be silly.
    We were taught woodworking, and safety with tools. We were taught to swim (down at the town swimming pool, which was bloody cold). The school supported an Army-focussed CCF, and did Outward Bound Stuff, so there was available mechanicals and outdoor behaviors etc. I joined the AFS, and learned – in principle – how to put out flaming cities.
    And we had music classes and art classes, along with various languages (English, French, German, Latin, Ancient Greek and Russian for varying amounts of time to O level for me) plus all the good science stuff.

  35. That many others uses a stupid calendar is not my problem.

    The entire world, either directly or for convenience via international convention, uses the Gregorian calendar – which does not have a year zero; the centuries really do “turn” at 00/01.

    . . . for as long as we have had the concepts of negatives.

    The concept of negatives is as arbitrary as religious time periods. A year “−0001” is no more or less meaningful than “2BC”; one is more convenient for astronomers and computer scientists, the other for historians and god botherers.

  36. The ability to find a competent tradesman, and not get ripped off, is a skill in itself. Also, dare I whisper it in these parts, the supply of tradesmen and cleaning ladies has dwindled since Brexit. Our cleaner raised her prices to £15/hr.

  37. Also, dare I whisper it in these parts, the supply of tradesmen and cleaning ladies has dwindled since Brexit.

    Yup, there are pros and cons to most things. Sometimes people will be willing to take a cut to their standard of living for some wider goal, and sometimes they won’t.

  38. jgh. Ah, the good old days. I fondly remember both woodwork and metal work despite being crap at both of them (1970 – 1975).
    As I said, at my Grandsons Academy other than cooking, there are NO practical subjects in the curriculum, either as options or “All in a basic bog standard ordinary English school system”:
    English
    Maths
    Hospitality
    Science
    Expressive Arts
    Geography
    Music
    Art and Design
    Media
    Modern Foreign languages
    Physicasl Education
    History
    Health and Social Care
    Childcare
    Computing
    Sociology
    PSHE (Mental wellbeing etc)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *