Brown: The Scottish Raj
I think it is shocking that the supposedly left-wing media and Labour/Liberal Democrats continually say that those from ‘disadvantaged’ (a synonym for “poor”) social backgrounds would be excluded by academic selection. Why must it be the case that people from poor backgrounds are mentally less capable?
The mobility of people between classes (or wealth brackets these days) is a stark indicator that intelligence is not a simple average of the parent’s intellect. There’s no reason to write off the children of less academically able parents. But by declaring selection unfair on the poor Labour are claiming that these people have no natural ability.
It is also alleged that trust schools would “squeeze out” poorer or less able pupils.
Source: BBC
I also see lives which are shaped too much by wider social factors - where their parents come from; their ethnicity, income, gender or class.
This is why self-improvement among the lower-income families was higher under the Tories and has been reducing since 1997 — Labour genuinely believes that the poor are less able while the Tories believe in allowing people to excel. Anyone who associates themselves with the anti-selection lobby and condones this attitude, should be ashamed.
January 27th, 2006 at 8:41 pm
Now I have a grandchild, I have every intention of paying for extra, private tuition for her; something which I was unable to do for my own children, being from a low income working class married household.
I do not take holidays or go out drinking and I consider her education to be very good value for money.
My problem is, I know that maths and english will serve her well for the future, but its looking like she only needs to learn to play the triangle to make advances in New Labour world
January 28th, 2006 at 2:30 am
I don’t entirely subscribe to your analysis regarding the tories helping the poor to better themselves…
I *DO* agree with your comments regarding “new labour”. But we’re not exactly talking about a socialist government here, are we?
January 28th, 2006 at 10:34 am
I don’t think the Tories have historically set out to help the poor to help themselves (though tuition fees certainly hurt), but I do think it was a natural result of Tory policy…
I am going to go over Labour’s new socialism shortly… Suffice to say that environmentalism is the new socialism.
January 28th, 2006 at 10:57 am
What a load of self-deluding bullshit. The tories did nothing for the poor except leave their children in leaking-roofed classrooms and bully thousands of teachers into leaving the job. Not to mention shoving the majority of their kids into secondary-moderns, where they were trained to see themselves as failures. Like thousands of graduates, I left university in the eighties to go straight onto the unemployment lines, where we were taunted as lazy and stupid by that utter piece of sh*t Tebbit. I passed the 11-plus but because I went to a comprehensive I now have to listen to arrogant little middle-class tossers telling me what a knuckle-dragging illiterate waste of space I am. So I took my bachelors degree, my two masters degrees and my skills to Australia, where I was welcomed and treated with respect as an educated person. I will never lose my absolute hatred for the Tory party and what it put me, and people far more vulnerable than me through during the 1980’s. I vote Tory here though, because they are not the same as the UK ones - public-school snobs who pathetically despise state-educated people like me, who are their intellectual, if not their educational superiors.
January 28th, 2006 at 11:18 am
Hi Sick
Are you sure you’re talking about the same Tories? The party has the largest membership of any party (which means it cannot be snobs only), the party was the major party responsible, sadly, for the closure of grammar schools and the abolition of the 11+…
And you’ve done it again for the poor: “Not to mention shoving the majority of their kids into secondary-moderns”. A secondary modern is not where kids are shoved, it’s where children who failed the 11+ (which is academically discriminatory, not socially) are taught. In previous posts I’ve said that the 11+ should not be the final decision on grammar vs. secondary modern.
And on “I left university in the eighties to go straight onto the unemployment lines” — presumably you’d now be on the incapacity benefit instead because, unlike in the 1980’s, the are more people out of work now than at any time since records began in 1971.
Not only are the Tories of Australia far more right-wing than the Tories of the UK (from what one can gather in any case) but you’re also comparing a party which largely no longer exists. There is no class-designation for party-political split in England these days (just look at Blair’s education and background) and the Tories who advocated draconian social treatment which, in some cases, was worse than the current administration (which is saying something, believe me — we cannot protest near parliament these days) are no more.
January 28th, 2006 at 6:31 pm
Couldn’t help posting this quote from Simon Heffer on the subject of John Prescott:
“He is also, of course, totally, completely incompetent and utterly, graphically stupid. If ever there was a testament to the rigour and good sense of the 11-plus - which Mr Prescott famously failed - he is it.”
The Telegraph
January 28th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
Excellent Alec!
January 29th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
Hear hear, Gav.
It seems to us that selection, and the higher standards from which the selectee would benefit, is statistically far more likely to lift them out of their “disadvanted” situation than, say, a career in football or a day or two in the sun (pun intended) as a topless model, which seem to be the preferred methods currently.