Primary Digressions

Today my daughter, the muse of this blog, began Primary School, and the long road through the formal education system that may lead her, in time, to some kind of University in the mid 2020's. She is attending a mid sized, well equipped suburban single sex school, a world away from the primitive rural two teacher school I attended in the early 1980s.

Primary and Secondary education is not something I know a lot about, but I should. It's the big machine on which tertiary education sits, mining and refining brains and souls to be fed into the Tertiary system and there recast, by some magic, as functioning adults. The systems move in lockstep, with much of secondary education twisted to get people through the entry requirements to University, and a fair chunk of the undergraduate University system trying to untwist them again. If there is to be a revolution in tertiary education, it's as likely to come from below, driven by change in the Primary and Secondary systems, as anywhere. To understand the future of Tertiary Education, I think we really need to understand Primary and Secondary as well, at least a little.

So this blog post is a warning of Primary Digressions to come. As my daughters path gives me a more current data point to reflect on, you can expect some posts from time to time about Primary Education, alas, probably rather ill informed and biased. You have been warned.