Thoughts on education for half-term | thearticle

Half-term is almost upon us, after what must seem to many parents all too brief a respite. The mere fact that the vast majority of children have been back at school for nearly two months —

albeit with high levels of Covid-related absenteeism — is a tribute to the nation’s collective effort to make up some of the ground lost earlier in the year. Now that the little darlings are

about to stay at home again for a week or more, however, the usual question arises: what are we to do? With large parts of the country closing down, and millions of suddenly redundant

adults asking themselves the same question, the problem is more than usually acute. The unaccustomed experience of home schooling during lockdown has reminded many of us that teaching is not

just a job, but a vocation. Even in normal times, it requires skills that most of us lack; but keeping schools open and pupils learning in the midst of a pandemic is a minor miracle. Nearly

four centuries ago, during a period of even greater turbulence in our history, one of England’s greatest poets turned his mind to the education of his two young nephews. In 1640, as the

country descended into civil war, John Milton (pictured above) moved to London and set himself up as a private tutor. A century later, Samuel Johnson mocked “this wonder-working academy”,

but its alumni included the son of Katherine Boyle, Lady Ranelagh, a leading intellectual patroness of the era. Milton’s methods bore fruit in his 1644 tract _Of Education _and so we know

what he expected of his pupils. Influenced by the European humanism of which Milton was one of the last and pre-eminent products, his programme of study placed great emphasis on languages,

classical and biblical. Besides Latin and Greek, these included Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac. Children were expected to learn Italian, French and other modern languages in their spare time.

There can’t have been very much of that, because the other subjects to be mastered were: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, geography, natural history, natural philosophy, moral

philosophy, logic, rhetoric and poetics. Physical exercise consisted of fencing, wrestling and riding. Milton’s curriculum might seem impossible today, when even sub-disciplines of his

subject-headings have grown beyond the imagination of even the most erudite scholar of the 17th century: moral philosophy, for example, included ethics, economics and politics. Yet young

minds are extraordinarily capacious and, once their interest is aroused, are capable of absorbing unlimited quantities of knowledge. It must strike many older viewers of the long-running

quiz show University Challenge, for example, how encyclopaedic is the mastery of popular music on display, when even the briefest snatch of a song usually suffices to identity its

performers. Yet the same familiarity with classical music is often absent: it is no longer seen as essential listening by the young, however infuriating such ignorance may be for their

elders — including Jeremy Paxman, the quizmaster, who cannot always disguise his incredulity. The volume of knowledge that each generation absorbs is probably much the same, however much the

content varies. The debate about the impact of smartphones and other devices on children is intense but inconclusive; the official guidance to parents is to limit screen time for children

if their use is preventing them from enjoying other beneficial pursuits, but there is no consensus on what the limits should be. Social media and other online activities are undoubtedly

altering all our minds, but the assumption that attention spans are getting shorter so far lacks a firm empirical basis. What we do know is that reading is unambiguously good for us. Plato

was less sure about this, fearing the loss of the facility in learning by heart. He wasn’t entirely wrong: we no longer have poets who, like Homer, can sing or recite entire epics. Nor do we

have a Milton, who wrote his epic poems while totally blind — though loss of sight has not prevented more recent writers, such as Borges, from producing great works. Memory works in

mysterious ways and, given the motivation, our children are certainly no less capable of memorising prodigious quantities of verse, especially in musical form, than their ancestors. It is a

scandal that some English teachers have no time for poetry on the curriculum. The coronavirus pandemic has unquestionably been a heavy blow to educational opportunities for many children.

But it is salutary to be reminded that Milton and his contemporaries, too, had to contend with repeated epidemics of plague as well as civil war. One of these, the Great Plague of 1665,

drove the blind poet out of London to stay in the cottage at Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire that survives as a museum. Life expectancy in the mid-17th century was only 35; not only

were there no vaccines, but most medical treatments were more likely to kill rather than cure the patient. As we make strenuous efforts to relax this half-term, it may amuse us to learn that

a German journalist, Jan Ross of _Die Zeit_, has written a biography of Boris Johnson. What appears to have picqued his interest in his own country’s least favourite British Prime Minister

since Margaret Thatcher is the former’s fascination with Ancient Greece. “It’s amazing how a 21st-century person really subscribes to the world view of Homer,” Ross says — a world view

dominated by “insane competition”. Whatever else you may think of Boris Johnson, his ability to recite passages of the _Iliad_ in the original is impressive. Yet such esoteric

accomplishments are simply the result of good teaching in a peaceful environment. Our children — all of them — deserve nothing less. If the Prime Minister wishes to be remembered with

affection rather than exasperation, he needs to focus urgently on education. Keeping schools open is only half the battle. The fact that parents have of necessity become so much more engaged

in their children’s education during the pandemic could be turned to advantage. A national drive to raise standards in schools across the board would be popular as well as paying dividends

for decades to come. Levelling up in outcomes is difficult; levelling up in opportunities is not. Whatever damage has been done to our children’s life chances by Covid-19 can be made good:

the educational task before us is not _Paradise Lost _but _Paradise Regained. _And there are few writers in the English language who have defended the freedom of the press and extolled the

virtues of reading like the author of _Areopagitica_. This half-term we can all, parents and grandparents, in person or online, try to pass on something precious that we once learned long

ago to our children and grandchildren.