Not all driving instructors felt comfortable going back to work on "super Saturday" (3 days ago), but many did, and shock horror, life goes on. It sits very uncomfortably for me (and you would think the government although I doubt it somehow), that despite driving instructors being given the green light schools still haven't. I follow edutwitter and can't help but see how out of touch they are with the rest of the working world. I've not been a keen supporter of the output from the education system for many years now - based on the experience of my two sons. But for the government to have me giving driving lessons to people while my 15-year-old son goes to school for two days a week, followed by three the next (and repeat), is nothing short of insane. I hesitate to say it as so many of my family are involved in schools, but teachers are so far removed from reality; it is frightening. I appreciate that it must be getting rather comfortable being paid 100% of your salary for sitting at home and making the occasional appearance either at school or on Zoom but come on, these teachers are harming the long-term health of children.
I see comments from teachers on Twitter stating that the proposal of only focussing on english and maths is going to be such a miserable existence. They are completely oblivious to how thoroughly dire it has been for years before lockdown. One of my younger sisters who is linked with primary schools did a family quiz in lockdown and from what I gather the point was to demonstrate to us samples of the content that our five and six-year-olds are taught these days. It wasn't very sensible and for sure, set them up perfectly for many more years of garbage education. Teachers have lost their sense of purpose which brings me on nicely to the subject of this blog.
Driving instructors exist to help create safe drivers. I don't think there is anything too controversial in that statement. The next sentence is slightly more tricky. The question is, how do they achieve that goal? While it would be natural to mention the DVSA driving standards, the GDE Matrix, the competency of the driving instructors, I want to emphasise something else. Help create safe drivers for sure but do it in a way that recognises who the customer is because it is this point that I believe has been entirely lost within the UK education system. Learning is meant to be enjoyable. If you left a baby to their own devices and just let them develop, they would; it is in us all to learn. No one has to teach us how to speak, walk or eat, soothe an ache, sing or kick a ball. We naturally want to develop ourselves. Why our education system is so intent on extinguishing that natural desire is beyond me, but they have been working hard at it for many years now. Universities are now about to learn just how awful they have been at providing a customer experience. The Chinese customers they have become so reliant on are voting with their feet. UK students don't much like the thought of paying near on £10,000 for poor, remote learning. The British public is dismayed at the behaviour of youngsters who attend our universities and their obvious disregard for the history of their homeland. There are now loud calls for the fees to be paid in full by the individual - with no public funding support. What a mess.
Why is this all happening? Fundamentally, our young people are not engaged in meaningful learning that inspires, creates passion and develops a sense of self-worth. To put it in rather a common terminology, if you treat people like mindless idiots, eventually they will start behaving like mindless idiots. And as the owner of a driving school, if you have any desire in seeing out this depression, it might be beneficial to keep this in mind. Business owners who treat their customers with utter contempt and disrespect will not survive.
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