Education

[pete75]

Yes, my Missus loves doing that. Having a quiet talk with a disruptive kid, getting some mutual respect going and seeing the improvement. But there are some extreme kids that doesn't work on.

Well I managed to convince him it was in his best interests to behave without actually using any physical force.

Perhaps we should follow the French system and have a "surveillant" responsible for discipline rather than teachers. Almost 40 years ago my then girlfriend was a language assistant at a lycée in Poitiers for a year, as part of her degree. The head surveillant was a recently retired Foreign Legion adjudant (Warrant Officer). There was something about the man that said don't mess about with me in very big letters.

Some teachers manage to radiate that impression, but others don't. We can all remember teachers who could not keep order. Can this be taught and learnt, or is it purely a question of personality? It would seem a pity if some otherwise excellent teachers are disbarred by lack of the quality.

A teacher who cannot keep order in the classroom cannot be regarded as excellent.

We had two types of teacher who could keep order. One sort who had a personality pupils respected for some reason and others who were strict disciplinarians. There didn't seem to be nay set pattern for the type of personality pupils respected though.

[pete75]

Some teachers manage to radiate that impression, but others don't. We can all remember teachers who could not keep order. Can this be taught and learnt, or is it purely a question of personality? It would seem a pity if some otherwise excellent teachers are disbarred by lack of the quality.

A teacher who cannot keep order in the classroom cannot be regarded as excellent.

We had two types of teacher who could keep order. One sort who had a personality pupils respected for some reason and others who were strict disciplinarians. There didn't seem to be nay set pattern for the type of personality pupils respected though.

I wrote "otherwise excellent".

And I should have written cannot be regarded as excellent in any way. My apologies

[Cyril Haearn]

How does one remember 30 names, or even 60 or 90?

[pwa]

How does one remember 30 names, or even 60 or 90?

My Missus remembers around 300 pupil names each year. I don't know how.

[Oldjohnw]

How does one remember 30 names, or even 60 or 90?

My mssus still remembers them even when they have children thmselves - and thir parents.

[Cyril Haearn]

How does one remember 30 names, or even 60 or 90?

My mssus still remembers them even when they have children thmselves - and thir parents.

At my school most of the girls were called Amanda, Karen or Linda
What does one do about several with the same name?
Not to mention the numerous Johns, Dereks, Colins..

[Cyril Haearn]

How does one remember 30 names, or even 60 or 90?

My Missus remembers around 300 pupil names each year. I don't know how.

Perhaps you could ask her, carefully

I can identify many of the members of these fora with their names

[francovendee]

I can remember the names of 90% of the fellow pupils in my last year at school (1960). I can't remember the names of people I met a week ago!

[Cyril Haearn]

I can remember the names of 90% of the fellow pupils in my last year at school (1960). I can't remember the names of people I met a week ago!

I can remember some people from school, not sure if I want to
Trouble for the likes of you and I, the language we learned as grownups may be lost, in old age we might only have English left

[Freddie]

Far better to nurture an intellectual, musical, sporting (insert thing here) elite, than to squander it based upon notions that everything must be distributed fairly. If ability for one thing or another is not fairly distributed among individuals, then why should we seek to capitalise upon ability as if it is?

We'll have to disagree,because of your belief that some are more deserving than others due to their wealth,I seek a more fair society,because a fairer society is better for all not just the few.

This is just silly. Either you don't understand "Far better to nurture an intellectual, musical, sporting (insert thing here) elite" (what has that to do with money?) or you are deliberately misunderstanding my points. Do you properly read what I write?

Elite can be based on any particular metric "intellectual, sporting, musical".

Elite does not = wealthy bogeyman alone.

That is what I'll call the Freddy problem: the inclination to define reality as the current status quo, inclusive of all the barriers, limits, cliques, elites and other arrangements that the dominant group wish to ossify in order to maintain their advantage over others.

...and yet there was far more social mobility for the working classes in grammar schools than there is now. Hmmm, who is it that wants to ossify the advantages of the rich, exactly? I want to return to a superior system that allowed a capable proportion of working class students into spheres now largely debarred to them, you would prefer they stagnate under the status quo. The question is why?

No equality of opportunity, only segregation into fixed social roles in a fixed social hierarchy, enforced by the type of education the various classes are allowed (or not).

What is equality of opportunity? No two people are equal, irrespective of having the same schooling, yet they should have equality of opportunity? Children should have an education which befits their abilities and can make the best of them.

To think that you accuse me of oversimplification when you say such things as 'equality of opportunity'. If children were afforded an education that best suited them, there would be far more social mobility than now. There was a system that worked quite well for academically forward working class children. Must these children, perhaps for ideological reasons unbeknownst to me, stay working class forever? Is it too likely that if you give them a rigorous education that they may turn away from the politics of envy, as their own personal success will mean they have not much use for it.

Do you want children to succeed or do you want grist for the ideological mill? If you want success, then there is a system with a track record already. We need but return to it.

No doubt Freddy will call this "reality". In fact it was (and is) a particular arrangement made by a social elite to favour their own class and beliefs about which kinds of people are worthy (people like themselves) and which are not. There was an attempt throughout the 50s and 60s to reduce this elitism and many changes in the education system (and elsewhere) did allow some of us plebs to emerge from the mean streets.

If the rich wanted to keep the plebs out, then why bother having a state system that streamlined on ability at all? Why not just have fee charging public schools and...comprehensive schools? You contradict yourself.

One aspect is: should so-called public schools be allowed to operate as hot houses for elites who perpetuate their grasp on political and other large institutional powers in a society via the old boys arrangements first created at these schools? We're currently observing the ill-effects of allowing these sorts of vastly over-privileged educational modes free reign.

So you want to do away with the public schools, why not emulate the best aspects of them instead? Didn't that happen already with grammar schools. Oh, but everyone couldn't go, so they must be destroyed?

Everyone can't pay for a public school education, so they must go too?

One wonders why you stayed in Britain, when Communism was alive and well in Russia and China for so many years. I suppose these things are always better admired from a distance, when viewed close up they don't have quite the same allure.

[reohn2]

Far better to nurture an intellectual, musical, sporting (insert thing here) elite, than to squander it based upon notions that everything must be distributed fairly. If ability for one thing or another is not fairly distributed among individuals, then why should we seek to capitalise upon ability as if it is?

We'll have to disagree,because of your belief that some are more deserving than others due to their wealth,I seek a more fair society,because a fairer society is better for all not just the few.

This is just silly. Either you don't understand "Far better to nurture an intellectual, musical, sporting (insert thing here) elite" (what has that to do with money?) or you are deliberately misunderstanding my points. Do you properly read what I write?

Elite can be based on any particular metric "intellectual, sporting, musical".

Elite does not = wealthy bogeyman alone......

I read what you wirte and I profoundly disagree with you,nuff said,end of,no point continuing,bye,bye.

[Cugel]

(snip)
...... there was far more social mobility for the working classes in grammar schools than there is now. Hmmm, who is it that wants to ossify the advantages of the rich, exactly? I want to return to a superior system that allowed a capable proportion of working class students into spheres now largely debarred to them, you would prefer they stagnate under the status quo. The question is why?

The reason "working class" students are finding it difficult to enter "spheres now largely debarred to them" has little to do with the absence of grammar schools and a great deal to do with the degradation of the lives of the less well-off by neoliberal economics and austerity, as implemented for some decades by the Tories and their clones New Labour.

Personally I would prefer to change that status quo (the neoliberalist hegemony) but it wouldn't be via a return to the arrangements of the 50s & 60s with grammar schools, since that would mean also the return of secondary (probably very secondary) schools. Nor would I continue the status quo of an aristocracy with their own highly exclusive arrangements for the provision of schools to educate their offspring in the methods & techniques of annexing all power and privilege for themselves at the expense of everyone else in society.

To think that you accuse me of oversimplification when you say such things as 'equality of opportunity'. If children were afforded an education that best suited them, there would be far more social mobility than now. There was a system that worked quite well for academically forward working class children. (snip)

You seem confused about the difference between "equality" and "equality of opportunity". The latter doesn't mean "everyone treated the same, with access to the same education" but rather "everyone given equal means to have the education they want and can follow successfully". Your back-to-grammar-schools notion merely returns to an arrangement wherein most children not passing their 11+ were abandoned to a second rate education that was often barely worthy of the name - a situation from which it was very hard to arise.

If the rich wanted to keep the plebs out, then why bother having a state system that streamlined on ability at all? Why not just have fee charging public schools and...comprehensive schools? You contradict yourself.

In practice, many state schools are very poorly funded and overwhelmed by reams of government directives and bureaucracy of no value to the education of their pupils, whereas public schools are treated as charities and are effectively barred to all but the very well off whilst being allowed to teach how they like. Public school education tends to be a hothouse for those who will go on to reap further privilege in the form of positions of power and wealth in many of society's institutions, from politics to the BBC to large corporations, The City, The Law and much else.

So you want to do away with the public schools, why not emulate the best aspects of them instead? Didn't that happen already with grammar schools. Oh, but everyone couldn't go, so they must be destroyed?

Everyone can't pay for a public school education, so they must go too?

No, that's not what I said. I suggested that public school education should (like State education) be regulated not given free reign. Another poster remarked that education should, at bottom, be about socialising children into the society of a nation. Many public schools currently socialise a privileged elite of effective aristocrats into the modes and means of retaining and misusing power and position for their own ends rather than the wider good of society.

Personally I don't object to public schools "being the best" - if that means the positions of authority they teach children to understand and aspire to are discharged in a way beneficial to all of us, not just the new aristocrats. And if the public schools can do so, I'd be in favour of introducing their methods (but also the quality of their facilities) to state schools. Do you see that happening anywhere?

One wonders why you stayed in Britain, when Communism was alive and well in Russia and China for so many years. I suppose these things are always better admired from a distance, when viewed close up they don't have quite the same allure.

Now you're just being infantile.

Cugel

[Carlton green]

By chance, a few weeks back, I happened to be talking to a recently retired teacher. She was convinced that league tables were a very mixed blessing with such down sides as to warrant a move away from their use. Focus on just academic results pits school against school and focuses on academic achievement rather than developing the pupil in a rounded way in preparation for their adult life. Academic achievement is, of course, an important part of school life - when used with care goals and metrics are valuable tools - however we have lost sight of the broader picture and what school should be about (a well rounded preparation for adult life).

Again, by chance, I happen to be talking to the spouse of a teacher the other day. This year discipline has been further heightened at their school and is reaching the point where children are marched from one subject to another where on arrival they have yet more information pushed into them. They are constantly ‘kept on track’ and have too little scope to let off steam or just relax and chat to their friends. We wouldn’t be happy to allow adults in the workplace to be treated that way so why do we determine that children should be miserable at school? Discipline in a school is important however some schools seem to go OTT, my friend’s spouse doesn’t have discipline problems and finds that children do behave once a reasonable set of rules and expectations are in place.

For too many of us it wasn’t so but a child’s school days should be happy ones and current thinking in education doesn’t (it seems to me) have that as a core value.

[Cyril Haearn]

There have been some bizarre reports about rules, discipline, punishment at academies, whatever they are
I think there should be more emphasis on happiness
Maybe kiddies could leave school at 14, sniff around the world outside, maybe find a particular interest, then go back into education to pursue it

[Cugel]

There have been some bizarre reports about rules, discipline, punishment at academies, whatever they are
I think there should be more emphasis on happiness
Maybe kiddies could leave school at 14, sniff around the world outside, maybe find a particular interest, then go back into education to pursue it

In many ways, education is wasted on the young. I should know! I was once ever so young and did tend to be elsewhere than doing me homework or writing an essay. Still, I was getting other sorts of education instead at those times. Oh yes.

My own tekneek was to wait until the last minute then swot like a good 'un, packing a whole term's worth of maths into two weeks of doing past exam papers; or conjuring up learned essays about the views of David Hume that were generally finished at 3am on the morning of their due date. A couple of years (perhaps less) after those stirling efforts, the whole subject was once more a mystery. I'd pick up the old math books or essays I had wrote and gawp at them stupidly.

Still, in those days they did teach you how to learn anything; and how to think. Well, they did some of us. I learned lots more outside the skool and uni than in it, later on. Don't we all.

However, I would like to repeat my education again now. I would get triple As and firsts in everything! Oh yes I would. But what would it all be for? These days I'd rather push a woodworking plane or ride a bike or walk the dogs. They never taught us any of that at skool or collij. Well, there was a woodworking class but it seemed to be about some bloke in a dun coloured overall hitting us all with a ruler a yard long because we failed to put the chisel back in the right place.

Cugel

PS Children sniffing around the world would be better sniffing around their own neighbourhood for experience, instead of being a gas-guzzling tourist.