Nice Dream

I’ve had an idea for a show. I’m branching out a little here, so bear with me. I take all of the skills I’ve learnt as a teacher and open up an oil rig. Not just any oil rig, mind, one with the best celebrity riggers in the business. I’m thinking Bruce Willis from Armageddon, Ricky Tomlinson from Roughnecks and Mel Gibson from Lethal Weapon as his name was Riggs. Episode one sees the gang finally realising oil is black and Gibson walking off set because he’s a filthy, stupid racist.

OK, so I’m not actually pitching that idea, it was just supposed to be some smartarse way of segwaying into a post about Jamie’s Dream School. And I apologise. It’s good that everyone’s favourite child snatcher is back on the screen again though, telling us we should be ashamed of ourselves. Turns out Oliver left school without any qualifications (who knew?) and wants to know what we, as a society, do about the frighteningly large 15% of kids doing exactly the same thing these days. What are we going to do about it then? Come on, what are you going to do about it?

Actually, what is he going to do about it? Well, a short-term solution seems to be to wheel in some of the country’s oldest people and get them jowl-to-face with a generation who don’t know them, don’t care about them and can’t ever, ever shutthefuckup. It’s less a dream and more of a depressing indictment of our country’s youth’s inability to help themselves, even when they’re offered a jewel-encrusted leg-up. I’m in no doubt as to the direction of a show like this – where we’re going to end up is about as difficult to predict as stink on doo-doo: “Thank you, Jamie! Now we know what we must do to make it better! You are the bestest friend a horrible, futureless skip rat could ever have hoped for!” More formulaic than a Grand Prix, we all know how it will conclude. My concern is – what’s the point?

One good thing the show does is to accurately portray what it’s like to stand at the front of a class in schools these days and since I started three years ago this only seems to be getting worse. Even the good classes can’t shutthefuckup and the ‘teachers’ in the Dream School are all getting a taste of this demoralising exercise in futility. Although he’s a pompous, stuck-up relic, I did enjoy David Starkey (historian, academic, shortarse) calling the pointless thug, Connor, fat in the first episode. Even better than this was his defence in front of the headteacher (who obviously took fatty’s side) where the word ‘porcine’ was used. So he likes history because he is some, but that’s a great cuss in anyone’s book.

Unsurprisingly, the lessons which the losers actually took to were all practical (Ellen McArthur on a yacht, Jazzy B helping them mix tracks on Macs) but so what? Is sailing going to help them write an application form? Is Magix Music Maker going pay their gas and leccy? Nope. I appreciate that this is an attempt to address the appalling figures quoted above by looking at alternatives to the traditional curriculum, but the focus in schools these days must be on getting children to take some responsibility for their own learning.

At one point, after the vermin have sobbed their stories out in front of each other about how they weren’t catered for, respected, or helped in any way at nasty-nasty school-school, Jamie stands before them and bleats, “I’m sad that all of you feel consistently let down by the education system.” How fucking dare you?! These are the kids who don’t just mess up their own lives through perpetual rudeness and disruption, but also those of their classmates and they’re the ones who feel let down? I think they should be made to travel to every teacher and pupil’s home whose lives they destroyed or made a misery of and offer themselves as human furniture for the rest of their lives. While Jamie cooks a great, big lovely steak and shutsthefuckup. Mmmm, steak.

Thanks again for the comments from last week's effort. Particular thanks to Al for making my supercilious spewtum all the more unconvincing by showing how dumb I actually am and of course to my lovely girlfriend for adding her two pennieth worth. I agree about keeping them behind if they fail the year too. Except in cages. In a lake. Until next time!