The elephant in the class room

Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:58.

Unlike those who stick with the MSM, MR readers know that liberalism, like love, is blind. “Deprived children”, “rich and poor”, “inner city areas” ... the tiresome political trash-talk trips of the liberal tongue quicker - much quicker - than Chris Brand could say, “IQ?” But it was ever thus, and will be so as long as blacks and Moslems live among us, and as long as our taxes can be so pleasurably squandered on them by people like:-

Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, will today admit that billions of pounds of Labour investment in improving school facilities since 1998 has failed to narrow the “class gap”.

In a speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research, she will signal a fundamental shift in policy away from investment in deprived schools, to investment targeted more specifically at pupils in those schools who need the most help.

“Schools with more deprived intakes are getting better and catching up,” Miss Kelly will say.

“All groups of pupils have made significant improvement in attainment since 1998.

“But despite that, it appears that we have not managed to narrow the gap between the attainment of children from lower and higher income families.”

The admission follows the first research of its kind into pupil attainment at Key Stage 2 level (when pupils are aged 11). While overall standards had risen in schools, the data showed the gap in achievement between those children taking free school meals and the rest had widened slightly.

Officials said this was because middle class pupils in deprived schools had advanced rapidly while the poorer ones had not done so well.

A senior government insider said Miss Kelly’s remarks were an admission that Labour had failed in one of its key education objectives. “It is the kind of thing you can only really say shortly after an election.”

... Officials said the special tuition would mean they would be given “more teacher time”, either during or after the main school day.

“We want to see more targeted intervention at the poorest children. What we have to recognise from this is that it may not be enough just to improve the institutions.

“We actually need to direct help more at those who need it most. This will mean separating them off more for targeted help.”

Miss Kelly will say that Labour should redouble its efforts to increase social mobility if it is live up to its claim to be a radical, progressive party.

Since coming to power in 1997 Tony Blair has said he is committed to narrowing the “class gap” in education.

According to briefing papers, this means “reducing the impact of parental background on educational achievement and narrowing the attainment gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged”.

Tags: Education

Comments:

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Wed, 27 Jul 2005 04:27 | #

“According to briefing papers, this means ‘reducing the impact of parental background on educational achievement and narrowing the attainment gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged.’ “ (—from the linked article)

It’s been known since “The Bell Curve” demonstrated it that, while this is partly correctible through special governmental efforts in the schools and so on, it will never be possible to completely eradicate such class-related disparities because societies tend to stratify themselves into naturally-graded meritocracies characterised by differing levels of inborn (genetic) talent and cognitive endowment.

“In a speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research, she will signal a fundamental shift in policy away from investment in deprived schools, to investment targeted more specifically at pupils in those schools who need the most help.”

Roughly translated, that means fundamentally that she and her colleagues in the teaching and social-services bureaucracies stand to gain—however small or large the increment will be—in salary, bureaucratic power, and/or social status as a result of the changes that have been decided. It almost goes without saying that, were it otherwise—were the contemplated changes to portend a stagnation of or a diminution in either her salary, her bureaucratic power, or her social status—she wouldn’t be chirping their praises so delightedly as she’s doing here but, if anything, would as likely as not be sullen and dark in her attitude toward them, no matter what their theoretical educational merit—which, in either case, is almost certainly nil, zero, nichts, rien, nada. To learn, a child needs five things: a chair to sit on, a table to write at, a textbook to learn from, a pencil to write with, and sheet of paper to write on. Much of the rest amounts in reality to a government welfare scheme for members of the teaching and social-services bureaucracies: just handing them sums of money for no good reason at all.

Posted by Pericles on Wed, 27 Jul 2005 09:41 | #

“To learn, a child needs five things: a chair to sit on, a table to write at, a textbook to learn from, a pencil to write with, and sheet of paper to write on.”

One other thing makes the first five less important. A rage to learn. This is lacking in so many kids. I speak from experience. Some where in the process of attending schools, my kids became infected with the disease of mediocrity.

Before they went to school, Tony Blair and his jackass cronies were voted into power and since then, in spite of all the money that has been “dun up against a wall”, state schools are dens of iniquity. My middle son is now 17 and although he has an professionally measured IQ of only 100, he was considered gifted at the school he attended. That does not surprise me, as the majority of the other kids are the descendents of London overspill resettlements of the 1950s.

My youngest lad has a verbal IQ score of 126, but has no wisdom. he managed to get expelled from boarding school and now a “researcher” on notschool.net, because no local school would take him back into mainstream education.

It is possible that this home education process will work for him. It certainly prevents further contamination by the dross in local schools. Some “bleeding heart do-gooders” have bemoaned the lack of socialising. I pointed out that before he attended primary school he was well spoken and polite. By age 9, I was all for hanging him up by his thumbs.

I have managed to reverse the trend towards loutishness and “Scumbaggery”, but it would have been nice not to have had to go that route.

Pericles

Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 27 Jul 2005 10:26 | #

He’ll be OK, Perry. I recall reading, whileI was in school and aged about 14, a father’s complaint from the fifteenth century. It wasn’t any different - “the young these days!” - from what we so often say today. Youth is what youth does, and fatherhood does its nut.

Having said that, the two big wheels in the educational decline of our sons are:-

1. Lack of intellectual rigour for the able.

2. Lack of the traditional mono-culture for the rest.

No.1 is self-evident. But no.2 is just as significant. Our magnificent culture - in which I was steeped as a boy - has been replaced by “modernity”, with all its political distortions and media-led vulgarity. No protection whatsoever from the pace of change has been offered to our young. Why would they not emerge infected by disillusion and anomie?

Posted by sr on Wed, 27 Jul 2005 16:53 | #

Guessedworker, Svigor, others: have any of you read Wyndham Lewis? He was, let us say, not an egalitarian.