Great Uncle Fred, who invented school? When? Why? And why do we have to do homework? (Anonymous person, Summer 2009)

I recently saw a fantastic piece of film - it was of a mother peregrine falcon (the fastest-moving creature of all creatures) and she was teaching two of her young how to kill a flying pigeon. First she found a pigeon to kill, then she pretended to kill the pigeon, then she let the young try and when they failed to kill the pigeon, she killed it. It all happened very very fast. Why I mention this is because all creatures above a certain level of intelligence need to teach their young how to grapple with the world. Parents never stop teaching, they just can`t help it. And I reckon it was pretty early in the development of organised society that people realised it was easiest to put all the children together in the same place and have them all taught together while their parents performed other tasks for the common good. Certainly, all the ancient civilisations we know about had schools. Perhaps it would be fair to suggest that the first school came about at the same time as the first farm. A very long time ago, that`s for sure. I suspect that you are feeling a wee bit disgruntled with school and I can understand that, having felt disgruntled myself. Also, there is clearly a lot to be disgruntled about - otherwise, the politicians would not keep changing the system every five minutes! And why do you learn all this stuff which will never again be any use to you? And why do you not learn about useful things like taxes or car maintenance? Well, yes, there is a lot wrong with the school system, and it will never be perfect, but you are probably getting a lot more from it than you know at the moment. There is a lot to learn and in many areas of life it is best to avoid originality - spelling, for example. We need to be taught. However, we also need to be kept out of the way and schools are very good child-minders. And homework just has to be done. It`s a fact of life - if your teacher requires homework from you (not all of them do) then you must do it, like cleaning your teeth. It`s hard cheese but it can be a good thing - most of the best lessons are learned by ourselves. The real meaning of "to educate" is "to lead out" which is to say that education is about bringing out the best in people, not cramming them with facts. And, by the way, the original meaning of "school" was "leisure". Try to enjoy it. There`s no escape!

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