Education Issues Are a Mess, And Dialogue Cannot Be Had

I saw the tweet below by Ben Pile and I was intrigued. Then I read the tweet he was responding to, by Teach First, and I was even more intrigued. So I followed up.

Did you ever wonder why schools often fail to live up to expectations? https://t.co/2kPYvl3tDh

— Ben Pile (@clim8resistance) October 28, 2017

We made a mistake.We published 2 blogs with opposing views as part of a recent debate on education. One was wrong. We’ve removed it. Sorry

— Teach First (@TeachFirst) October 28, 2017

Teach First is based in the U.K. Teach First put this explanation on their website:

We recently held a social mobility summit, where we invited a range of external speakers with differing views to debate issues around education. As part of this event we asked two of our speakers to write independent blogs for our website with opposing views. This was in order to continue the conversation in the areas the conference explored. 

One of the pieces submitted, by Toby Young, we disagreed with. We wanted to give the opposing view, so we published Toby’s piece alongside a rebuttal from Sonia Blandford, who has recently written on similar subjects. The aim was to drive debate. But we shouldn’t have published his blog, even with the rebuttal: it was against what we believe is true and against our values and vision. We apologise. Although we don’t want to provide a platform for those views we also don’t want to cover over our mistake, so this note also serves as a record.

So there you have it. Yes, I agree with Ben Pile's initial tweet. I will not be so bold as to say "every problem we have in education can be seen right there," but it is tempting.

Ultimately, no country is finished growing or developing. As long as people occupy a land and there is a civilization, people will grow and things will change in some way or another. I am reminded of a great quote from an episode of West Wing of all places, "We're meant to keep doing better. We're meant to keep discussing and debating and we're meant to read books by great historical scholars and then talk about them." Exactly right. Yes, he was talking about the United States, but the comment can apply to any free peoples.

This Teach First example was a grand opportunity for a great debate, a genuine dialogue. Instead, they opted for cowardice and censorship.

Update:

Toby Young has posted a response about the situation that is well worth reading.