Education Reform (Curriculums)

My mother, that's her with me in a picture taken last year, wrote to me this morning rightly asking what my interest was in Education Reform in the UK. She is confused perhaps because she knows my love of and commitment to the USA.

She is prompted to ask because I recently created a petition to the British Prime Minister asking for Education Reform of Curriculums in Public Schools (SEE THIS LINK AND, IF BRITISH, PLEASE SIGN). I am still a UK citizen, and this may well be my last act as one since I will apply for US citizenship in the coming year.

Here is how I explained it:

"First, I am at an age where I feel some responsibility to my origins. I am in general interested in working-class issues and have developed a number of proposals that, I think, will help. I advocate these proposals when the opportunity arises and they apply globally. I do what I can to help kids like my brothers and me here or in the UK, from a social and political point of view. I do so by developing new ideas for the problems they face, by someone that has faced a few of them. I am also at an age that people actually listen to my crazy ideas :-)

Second, I have a professional interest in all systems like the petition system Downing Street is developing. I study not only the technologies but how people use such systems (that's my field, "semeiotics") and I have found that the best way to understand the system, both from a technology point of view and from a "human" point of view is to do something with it. So I try everything, anyway.

I also applaud the effort being made here. The petition system actually supports true democracy - which makes a change. True democracy, remember, is not "the vote." It is the right of dissent and a fair hearing for individuals. It will be interesting to see if this is truly aided by this effort.

This particular proposal has merit. The Public Education systems design their curriculum's so that good working-class people will be good working-class people, they sell them short. I find that offensive, since it amounts to education directed by the state. My proposal is that everyone deserves the opportunity to develop freely - and especially in the working-classes, to be given the capacity to fully appreciate their circumstances, and the skills necessary to direct their own destiny.

If anything could change the class system in the UK, this one proposal could."