Ambitious British Youngsters

I saw a news item on the BBC Breakfast show the other day about the ambition of British children. They had five children who had moved to Britain from other countries and they were asked about the British youngsters’ drive to succeed. It was quite interesting to see the opinions of those children.

There was a very polite, well spoken French girl who essentially said that she thought British children had dreams but were very laid back about achieving them. Two things immediately went through my head:

1.       Wow! She speaks extremely good English, in fact better than a lot of English kids. Would most English children be able to give such a lucid interview in French?

2.       She’s being extremely polite, and doesn’t want to offend anyone. What she really wanted to say was “British kids can’t be bothered – they want lots of money and a great job, but aren’t prepared to get off their backsides and do anything about it.

There then followed an interview with a fat bearded man from Ofsted whose view was this:

“I believe that children in Britain have ambition, but schools don’t give them belief in themselves.”

At this point the air went blue. This bloke’s supposed to be leading and monitoring improvement in British education but all he is capable of doing is whacking teachers over the head for something they can do little about, i.e. the laziness of the current generation of school children.

There has been lots of talk recently about the people constantly putting the attitude of young people in this country down. I hate to use a cliché at this point, but there’s no smoke without fire. Maybe the young people of this country deserve to be talked about in that way (I nearly said “put down”, but that would be a bit harsh). Laziness can’t be applied to all young people in the country, but a significant percentage allow the cap to fit.

And why don’t people feel sorry for teachers having to deal with the daily apathy? Loads of people say to me upon hearing that I’m a teacher “I couldn’t do that job”, but are quite happy to defend their lazy offspring to hilt in the next breath. If I had a pound every time I heard “I don’t care whether I get maths GCSE” I wouldn’t be in the classroom anymore; I’d have bought my own island in the sun and would be sticking two fingers up at the educational profession.

I’m still doing the lottery, but am now buying twice as many tickets.