The results to last week's poll are as follows:
Do you support the idea of selective state grammar schools?
Yes 87%
No 13%
Thank you to everybody who took part (a good turnout with 111 votes) and I think that the results speak for themselves.
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Nothing springs to mind for this week's Fun Online Poll, I'm afraid.
Vile Hatred
1 hour ago
8 comments:
Great: 87% want their kids to go to grammar school .But only 30% will get in. So kids will stand 1 in 2 chance of going to a grammar- school-rejects school .Fatheads always assume their children will succeed in selection processes.
I don't want my kids to go to grammar school, despite the fact I am one of the 87%, because I don't have any. You don't need kids to think that grammar schools are a good idea.
DBC, what 30%? It's more like 3%.
Neither of my kids passed local grammar school exam, so what? I put them in for the exams and therefore by default I must support the idea.
(As a separate topic, all this private school education is a mugs' game, it's just rent collection. Far better for state schools just to be good.)
B, good answer.
Yes, funny how the left-wingers always talk of forcing parents to send their children to a state school by abolishing "the public schools" and never of improving state education to the point where most parents wouldn't want to pay for their children's education.
This is worse:87% people believe in grammar schools as some kind of superior education provider knowing that a vast majority of children (not necessarily their own) will be excluded. Then there is implied support for the public schools (despite their well-known expertise in paedophilia)and grumbles about the cost of private schools.If you want to get all schools up to the same standard, following the same curriculum using comparatively tested and officially inspected teaching methods , you also have to get rid of grammar schools and private schools and all alternative / improvised education from people who believe they have a vocation to re-invent the wheel everyday differently.
The problem in education is not where things are taught but what is on the curriculum : too much Parkinson's Law Maths and Asperger's Science.And an unreformed spelling system.
DBC, has it occurred to you that more children would be able to go to grammar school if there were more grammar schools? I would have thought that most people would think that if 87% of people thought that something that only 3% of people had access to was a good idea, that would be an argument in favour of increasing supply, not against it.
"(despite their well-known expertise in paedophilia)"
Well known eh? Perhaps you could give some examples, to set against all the state-school educated paedophiles that we know about, like Jimmy Savile or Cyril Smith (allegedly). Or is it just the case that paedophilia is the new witchcraft and that allegations of it can be bandied around with impunity against anyone you happen not to like?
Why is it necessary to remove private education to improve state education?
Surely it would have the opposite effect: the parents who currently privately educate their children would be paying no more tax, whereas the state would have to find the funds to educate all those extra children, thus spreading the resources even more thinly or is this simply a matter of dogma?
"all alternative / improvised education from people who believe they have a vocation to re-invent the wheel everyday differently"
Something which is largely the preserve of the state education system as a result of having ideologue politicians in charge, with all parts of the political spectrum being equally bad in this respect. As you rightly point out, what we need is an education system free from interference by ideologues. Unfortunately it appears impossible for the UK to provide this in a state-run system. It should be possible and in an ideal world it would be possible, but in the real world it's proven not to be.
New Witchcraft? Worse than that since it was impossible for the old women to commune with the Devil.
Schoolo paedophilia close to the heart of the political establishment: George Osborne's St Paul's: Nick Clegg's Caldicott School. Clegg's case is interesting.He was one of two head boys.The other one gave evidence:Clegg didn't see anything although the Headmaster touched up the other one as he sat opposite Clegg at the top of the top table.
Your point about ideologues shaping the school curriculum is fair.This is why it should be devised and revised (rarely)by an independent body like the HMI's (give these patronising fuckers something to do) after extensive field trials (with full gamut of control groups and everything) leading to adoption of which ever methods work best on a totally pragmatic basis.
If you increase the number of grammar schools, you will destroy their raison d'etre.
"New Witchcraft? Worse than that since it was impossible for the old women to commune with the Devil."
Didn't stop them getting burned, though.
I'm not saying that paedophilia didn't happen at public schools, but it seems a bit of a logical leap to extrapolate a few cases into "an expertise". No one I know who went to a private school has ever mentioned that any of the teaching staff at their schools were paedophiles and, believe me, pupils always know if there is one. Paedophiles are attracted to jobs that involve dealing with children, so in the period you are talking about, it would be very unlikely that there weren't quite a few in state schools as well. Ever seen the film "The History Boys"?
If education stopped being compulsory at age 11, you wouldn't need grammar schools. All those pupils who didn't want to learn would take themselves off and the remaining ones would have a better environment in which to pursue their studies.
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