Comments on: Cause & effect

By: man-in-shed

man-in-shed — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:28:52 +0000

David Willetts, shadow universities secretary, asserted that “Going to university should be about academic ability, not where you were born.” he is right of course, and that is exactly why “the richest 10% of young people are almost twice as likely to go to University as the poorest 10%”. This is because the young people are not themselves “rich”, it is their parents who are “rich”. They are rich because most of them are High Achievers. And they tend to produce High Achieving offspring – with notable exceptions, no doubt. So, it is no suprise that High Achieving parents tend to produce children who are more likely to go to University. It has nothing to do with how much money they have – if it was about money, then throwing taxpayer’s money, eg 2.3 Billion, at the problem would solve it. But it doesn’t solve it, does it ? And it never will.

By: Simon Denis

Simon Denis — Sat, 30 May 2009 23:52:48 +0000

To be quite blunt, having debauched secondary education in the name of equality, the despicable left are now taking the cudgels to the tertiary sector. I am shocked that Willets should be going along with this. His proposed year’s coaching is not only too late, it is utterly inadequate. Worse, it props up the revolting system from which poor Mrs Patel so justly recoils. It is time to reintroduce selection – fast. The High Master of St Paul’s, Martin Stephen, suggests that 13 might be a better moment of decision than 11. Others have concerns about the notion of basing selection purely upon a sequence of exams. Fair enough: continuous assessment in tandem with psychometric testing at the primary level should offer a wealth of information on which to make a judgement. Selection might equally be diversified – recognising not merely general intelligence but biases or strengths. But getting rid of it entirely; hurling pupils into the vast, unfocussed, purposeless turmoil of the mammoth comprehensive; removing all power of discipline; adding to the mulch a crowd of children once catered for in specialist schools; topping it off with a stream of non-anglophone immigrants – this has been Labour’s prescription for success. It has been a near criminal failure – like most of their “experiments”. The bully, the pusher and lately the cut-throat have thrived in this abominable socialist swamp. It is time it was drained.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Sat, 30 May 2009 12:48:31 +0000

“The key perhaps to both dilemmas is to raise the standards of education, rather than simply lowering the entry standards: for university and schools too. ”

One is tempted to utter, “No sh*t, Sherlock!”

Isn’t it the more general case that – so eager for self-aggrandisation and personal virtue – social policy has become ruled by a general sentimentality which does no one good but its self-congratulatory guardians?

(1) Let us go back to what education aspires to do: Namely, equip young people to live as good a life as possible later on.

(2) Let us interpret this: Surely, it means to provide a vision of choices and opportunities that are open and provide the skills to successfully engage with those opportunities?

(3) Let us interpret this: Surely, it means that the standards ought to be what are necessary to successfully engage with the opportunities to which the students are drawn. It also suggests that the system should not tolerate behaviour which would later see that pupil ostracise themselves from society, damaging or negating their capability to succeed, if continuing to exhibit it.

(4) Let us therefore recognise key characteristics of a “caring” system: That the different levels of abilities of students means it would be unkind (vindictive even) to set levels of standards either knowingly higher or lower than that which the pupils could achieve. Moreover, strong discipline is potentially important as part of the socialisation process alongside the academic process.

Thus, (1) discrimination in education (rather than making university nigh compulsory), (2) the potential to attain high standards, and (3) strong discipline become necessary.

The lefties view that these are somehow ‘fascist’ concepts is only borne from sentimentality and warped, self-centred priorities.