Why do we do it?

Bridge Story

One day, as they stood on the river bank, the townspeople noticed several people frantically screaming for help as they were being carried downstream by the river’s raging currents. Moved by their plight, the caring townspeople immediately rescued the victims from the furious waters. However, as time went on, they discovered more and more people being carried downstream by the river. Research revealed what everyone had suspected. The bridge further up the river had been badly damaged, and only half the people were making it across.

As time went on, matters got worse. An ever increasing number of people needed to be rescued. The town committed more and more of their annual budget to the problem. They hired permanent rescue workers, built a riverside hospital, created rehabilitation programmes, invented ever more sophisticated rescue devices, and trained more volunteers.

One day, after several years of pulling people out of the river, one young man began to ask, “Wouldn’t it be better if we fixed the bridge?” Many of the rescue workers were too busy to pay attention to this idea. Others had never seen the bridge and were afraid to venture away from the familiar. Still others said that they hadn’t the slightest idea how to repair a bridge. And so the bodies kept coming.

We think this is a metaphor for the current education system in th UK.