Michael Gove, the new Education Secretary, announced his plan today to invite all primary and secondary schools in England to become academies. The academy programme was launched under New Labour in 2000, overcoming serious opposition from the left wing of the party – but they have thrived and are now considered to be a huge success - although not everyone agrees. The new academies would no longer be under local authority control and they would have greater freedom over the curriculum, admissions policies and teachers’ pay.
This all sounds laudable but the notion that schools could introduce their own elements into the curriculum is both fraught with peril and open to potential abuse.
For example, in the same year that he published Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) advocated the setting up of a number of special academies – that perhaps might not meet with Michael Gove’s expectations today.
I know very few who are Masters of the Grand Air in Shitting; the generality of People doing it with Precipitancy and Heat, as if frighted with what they are about; or else with Indolence and Unconcern, as if it were an Action of no Moment: The common Form of letting down the Breeches: The awkward Postures in Sitting, the frightful Grimaces and barbarous Exclamations now in vulgar Use, all highly require a Reformation.
I should therefore not think it amiss, if Academies were erected, to be under the Direction of Persons of distinguish’d good Breeding and Ingenuity, where young Gentlemen might learn to do what no Body can do for them, En Cavilier, and little Misses to shit in Pots like Ladies: They should be there taught how to walk to the House of Office or Close-Stool, with a handsome Air and Step, and how to take up, or let down, their Clothes in a genteel Manner, and to sit down with a good Grace, and in an inviting Posture: They should there learn how to draw their Features into agreeable Forms, and to utter musical and significant Interjections; They should moreover be instructed in the Art of wiping, it being, as generally now practis’d, but what the Puritan calls the Paint upon the Face of the Great Whore, a filthy Daubing…
And in order to prevent the Confusion, which often happens in these Affairs; when Time falls short, I would humbly propose, that it may be the Fashion for Men to wear Pullies to their Breeches, and the Ladies the like to their Coats, and other under Garments; which should be so fitted, with Lines and Weights, that on loosing a Cord, in the twinkling of an Eye, the Male Incumbrances may fall down to the Heels, and the Female fly up to the Waste.
(Jonathan Swift – The Grand Mystery, or Art of Meditating Over an House of Office 1726)
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The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has, of course, come to power charged with restoring the state of Britain’s finances. In the eighteenth century, as today, money was tight. Swift is alive to this and Michael Gove could do no worse than to heed Swift’s wise words.
…when People shall be convinced… that Money laid out this Way will be more profitably expended than in any other, I hope there will not be wanting among our wealthy Gentry those who will undertake the Execution of a Project so conducive to their own, and the general Use and Pleasure of the Publick.
(Jonathan Swift – The Grand Mystery, or Art of Meditating Over an House of Office 1726)
Swift, then, proposed encouraging the richest members of society to pay for the academy building programme. Whether Michael Gove will have the courage to pursue a similar path remains to be seen – but if he does, Swift suggests how Gove might go about it and how much such a scheme might cost:
That a Corporation be instituted by Charter, or otherwise, as shall be thought fit, which shall be empower’d to take in Subscriptions for a Sum not exceeding 25000000l. Sterling, to be laid out in building Five Hundred Shitting Colleges, to be erected at convenient Distances…
(Jonathan Swift – The Grand Mystery, or Art of Meditating Over an House of Office 1726)
By Swift’s calculations, five hundred shitting academies could be built for £25 million. It is, of course, hard to calculate just how big this sum might be today, but this website suggests that this sum is equivalent to somewhere between £3.3 billion (using the retail price index) and a staggering £39.5 billion (using average earnings).
In their manifesto, the LibDems advocated a pupil premium of some £2.5 billion for the poorest students – but the Tories are unlikely to agree to even this sum. Now that the coalition has announced that some £6 billion will be clawed back in government cuts, it seems unlikely that the academy scheme, as proposed by Michael Give, will ever aspire to the dizzily shitty heights suggested by Jonathan Swift.
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