"Destroy every fucking grammar school in the country"
Right then, S&M's wrongness - more as an example of the type than any particular wrongness on his part. He wonders why Prescott - and Labour backbenchers - are setting themselves against the 11-plus, and decides:
...because clearly there aren't any proper reasons for opposing the reintroduction of goat/sheep distinctions at age 11.
I have to admire the utter confidence of the grammar school apologists. They've all learned the rhetorical arts rather well, perhaps in-between double Latin and extra-hard sums such as were learned in Proper Schools back in the Good Old Days, c.1950. Maybe this is why they feel a return to those happy years are so important. It is impressive, in its own way, that a deeply elitist and anti-egalitarian system should be wheeled on-board under the guise of giving the deserving poor a chance, &c.
Because the last thing grammar schools promoted was social mobility. Isakofsky summarised the problem well, in an earlier discussion at DML:
This missing 75% is rather strange: where are all those former secondary modern pupils demanding a return to selection? If, as the meritocrats claim, the 11-plus is so clearly a superior system, why are not more of these (doubtless) happy, contented failures, secure in their particular places, beseeching the government to deliver more grammar schools?
Better yet than this apparently selfless concern for the suitably aspirational working classes is the pretence that the 11-plus will undermine the market. Now, there's no doubting that house-price selection, age 11, is a problem. But introducing more selection at the same age hardly seems the best way to tackle the inequalities it produces. More likely to reinforce them, in fact: not only are the supposedly objective, value-neutral "intelligence" tests of the type favoured by the 11-plus notoriously value-heavy and subjective, but - as isakofsky suggests - middle class parents will already have performed some house-price selection.
You want little Timothy and Tabitha to attend the grammar school? You'd better get them in the right primary school, then: pay through the nose for the right catchment area, use - if little Tim is indeed nice but more than a little dim - private tuition, and leap through the appropriate financial hoops on their behalfs. Unless our Tory anti-capitalists want to introduce selection at age five - a possibility, I suppose, leading on to selection at age 2, age zero, and then perhaps a pre-natal multiple-choice test - they're going to have to think a little harder about this one. Selection is not the answer.
Still, the apologists continue. Research evidence showing decreasing social mobility is dragged out to support a return to grammars, drawing protests from the researchers themselves. Complaints about history teaching in schools are press-ganged into support for selection. Prescott, for one of the few times in eight years of government, says something sensible on the issue, and is denounced - and you can smell the class hatred here - as too stupid to understand.
It's slightly depressing; or it would be, if I thought that the argument was even close to being won for the elitists. The truth is that no working-class parent is going to accept a system that, more likely than not, will so obviously and so arbitrarily condemn their child at such an early age. Grammar schools will remain electoral suicide.
...tho not complete chiz becos Justin uterly wet and weedy tho he his draw atention to st custerd's online site hurah hurah.
Paternalism. Giving poor but bright students an education is bad for them. it takes them out of their natural society and places them in an alien environment. Even if they jump through the hoops, pass all the exams and get well-paid jobs, they suffer isolation and loneliness. Why not protect them from this fate?
...because clearly there aren't any proper reasons for opposing the reintroduction of goat/sheep distinctions at age 11.
I have to admire the utter confidence of the grammar school apologists. They've all learned the rhetorical arts rather well, perhaps in-between double Latin and extra-hard sums such as were learned in Proper Schools back in the Good Old Days, c.1950. Maybe this is why they feel a return to those happy years are so important. It is impressive, in its own way, that a deeply elitist and anti-egalitarian system should be wheeled on-board under the guise of giving the deserving poor a chance, &c.
Because the last thing grammar schools promoted was social mobility. Isakofsky summarised the problem well, in an earlier discussion at DML:
The defenders of grammar schools all went to grammar schools. Amongst those, some were working class, though the research done at the time found that many of the people who described themselves as working class grammar school boys or girls had one parent who came from a distinctly professional background - mother at home was concealed in the stats.
People like John Marks claim that grammar schools created class mobility. Problem here: only a small percentage at grammar school came from (on their classification) manual working class. Meanwhile, grammar schools on average across the country were less than 25% of population. So how much social mobility can you squeeze out of that. Add in the imponderable effects of immigration having the consequence of squeezing the host working class up a notch into supervisory roles and the supervisors into lower management...and talk of grammar schools creating social mobility is tosh. John Marks and others argue from their own experience. We never hear from the 75%. It's bogus history we keep being fed.
This missing 75% is rather strange: where are all those former secondary modern pupils demanding a return to selection? If, as the meritocrats claim, the 11-plus is so clearly a superior system, why are not more of these (doubtless) happy, contented failures, secure in their particular places, beseeching the government to deliver more grammar schools?
Better yet than this apparently selfless concern for the suitably aspirational working classes is the pretence that the 11-plus will undermine the market. Now, there's no doubting that house-price selection, age 11, is a problem. But introducing more selection at the same age hardly seems the best way to tackle the inequalities it produces. More likely to reinforce them, in fact: not only are the supposedly objective, value-neutral "intelligence" tests of the type favoured by the 11-plus notoriously value-heavy and subjective, but - as isakofsky suggests - middle class parents will already have performed some house-price selection.
You want little Timothy and Tabitha to attend the grammar school? You'd better get them in the right primary school, then: pay through the nose for the right catchment area, use - if little Tim is indeed nice but more than a little dim - private tuition, and leap through the appropriate financial hoops on their behalfs. Unless our Tory anti-capitalists want to introduce selection at age five - a possibility, I suppose, leading on to selection at age 2, age zero, and then perhaps a pre-natal multiple-choice test - they're going to have to think a little harder about this one. Selection is not the answer.
Still, the apologists continue. Research evidence showing decreasing social mobility is dragged out to support a return to grammars, drawing protests from the researchers themselves. Complaints about history teaching in schools are press-ganged into support for selection. Prescott, for one of the few times in eight years of government, says something sensible on the issue, and is denounced - and you can smell the class hatred here - as too stupid to understand.
It's slightly depressing; or it would be, if I thought that the argument was even close to being won for the elitists. The truth is that no working-class parent is going to accept a system that, more likely than not, will so obviously and so arbitrarily condemn their child at such an early age. Grammar schools will remain electoral suicide.
...tho not complete chiz becos Justin uterly wet and weedy tho he his draw atention to st custerd's online site hurah hurah.
posted by Meaders at
2:10 pm
