about A Level exams in England and Wales..
"The Reform group claims exam modules have created a "learn and forget culture" - which it likens to using a sat-nav rather than map-reading skills."
I really like this analogy. For some time those that know Polko will have heard my many groans about stupid people who plug in a little black box and drive without even consulting a map or double-thinking their route beforehand. Then they moan because they are late, cannot find a property or the sat nav goes into an area without coverage (of which for some unexplained reason there seem plenty on this little island). My attitude is that sat nav's really are one of the least needed pieces of 'technology' we have ever invented as a human race.
But my concern is deeper than worrying about whether a delivery driver can find my house or not - since I live in a relatively rural postcode sector that is actually home to around 200 properties a sat nav will take you to the centre point of the postcode only - a mile away. doh! Those that use sat nav can suffer their own fates. I care very little about them turning onto a rail line or into a canal if they are that dumb.
But, what I really care about is the slow drip-drip of dumbing down and loss of skills in our society - running right through from the ability to read a map to small DIY jobs around the house to inter-personal skills. For example on this latter one, I was recently astounded to hear a barge of groundless diatribe coming out of somebody's mouth in an otherwise friendly happy environment just because that person thought they were being clever - some call it sarcasm. But when that's all you do, it's just plain ill-thought out bad manners and tiresome to be honest.
..Which brings me to a great hero of mine. This time last year Mrs Polko and I had the fortune to find ourselves in Scottsdale, an outer suburb of Phoenix Arizona. We visited Frank Lloyd-Wright's desert home Taliesin West. Lloyd-Wright's central idea and concern was the ongoing loss of skills that was befalling US and world societies during the first few decades of the 20th Century - these he saw being translated into mass manufacturing techniques, mono-culture building design and the basic onset of greying of the population, or dumbing down as we now call it.
Taliesin is a plot of land he moved to with his wife and a few followers (who made up his then fledgling architects business) in 1911. When they arrived there was nothing there. Not even a water supply. After many years of driving over the desert and fetching buckets of water to mix up earth/mud/clay mixes and setting stones that were lying around he and the clan Lloyd-Wright built a fantastic desert home and office complex that housed a large and by now renowned architects practice. It's still there today. And is still part of the Lloyd-Wright Foundation.
Simple but clearly very functional. No need for mod-cons there - the home built around the environment, not fighting it off as we try to do today. A work of art - as much for its ingenuity in embracing and harnessing the values of a clearly barren and harsh place as for its beauty in blending into the environment rather than trying to make a bold look-at-me statement.
So, there we have it. A triumph of 'embracing and accepting' over an ever expanding 'look-at-me culture'. I wish the people with sat nav's and the rather unclever despite thinking they are the most clever people around had thought in the same vain. The world would truly be a different place.
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