Michael Gove: A psychiatrist writes

Is it just me or does Michael Gove become ever madder and more fanatical with every passing initiative.
About a year ago I heard him address a meeting of mainly educational academics at the RSA where he proposed that all school pupils should read Socrates. This is the sort of crazed ramblings which are quite amusing when you see them on the pages of The Spectator but he actually believes the extraordinary notions that flow from between his ears and is inflicting them on a generation of children and teachers.
Where should we start on the list of revolutionary fervour that  burst on the nation today? How about the plan to turn former members of the armed forces into teachers. Hopefully not using the Deepcut Method of tuition.
A few might make the transition but the skills needed to teach chilldren is rather different from those required to fight the Taliban. Most of us realise that. Not the Secretary of State for Education.
One former officer who had made the jump was on the radio today. What was his greatest achievement? He had got his pupils to do ten press-ups. Perhaps the next Gove initiative will be a GCSE in press-ups - so much more useful than media studies, you can hear him saying.
He doesn't want teachers to have a series of piecemeal changes imposed on them - Good. Thirteen years of New Labour exhausted that avenue - so instead he is changing everything at once. How are teachers supposed to operate at all when they are in the eye of this revolutionary hurricane?
Michael Gove has no contact with reality. Especially the reality many teachers experience in their daily lives. He is effusive in his praise for good teachers but his reforms are fundamentally about rubbishing the teaching profession and just about everyone involved in education.
Bring out the men in white coats.