I went to a grammar school and I am as common as muck. Daughter went to Grammar School and she's no snob, she'd probably punch your lights out if you suggested so. son went to comp, rounded fellow who seems to me to be a good chap. my parents weren't rich, my grandfather was a snob and a bit of a plonker it seems. My other grandfather was a working man (lorry and horse driver) who was a bit victorian too. I suspect both of them would be horrified about what I've done with their genes.
Grammar Schools?
- Thread starter Mullardman
- Start date
Did you forget the Ventolin inhaler ?
Laurie Saunders
The Full Half-Hour
How could this be achieved?
Or more generally, unless you actually remove children completely from the influence of their parents, I don't see how this ideal caould be realised
The only exmple of anything like this is the kibbutz system in Israel where the upbringing of the children is mostly done collectively, and the biological parents just get visiting time
My experience of children brought up under such a system show a marked freedom from a lot of the normal anxieties and hangups exhibited by "normal" offspring, but there are no free lunches.....they simply have other quirks which can present as much difficulty
Laurie
Laurie Saunders
The Full Half-Hour
That list is certainly a strong case against grammar schools...most of the above are abject failures
Laurie
russel
./_dazed_and_confused
Asthma is not a joke and certainly not in the 70s, a neighbouring child died of it in 1975.
Seanm
pfm Member
The whole thing is just disgusting. Regardless of whether or not the selection process can be arranged to genuinely reflect "ability", the whole idea of sorting the population at age 11 is disgusting. It's an obvious bribe to the middle-class to keep us complacent, and a clear statement of the government's intent to run down the education system as a whole.
Mullardman
Moderately extreme...
I think it was Strummer above who regretted that Grammar Schools have been 'hijacked'.
This is spot on. Wen aaahh wur a lad.. Grammar Schools were open to all who passed the 11 + ( This is not the point to rehearse the iniquities or otherwise of the 11+)
Thus many youngsters from bog standard working class families like mine got a 'leg up'.
Not so now. The remaining grammar schools operate their own selection and mostly seem to exist in relatively wealthy areas.
I respctfully submit that more of that is not what we need.
Mull
This is spot on. Wen aaahh wur a lad.. Grammar Schools were open to all who passed the 11 + ( This is not the point to rehearse the iniquities or otherwise of the 11+)
Thus many youngsters from bog standard working class families like mine got a 'leg up'.
Not so now. The remaining grammar schools operate their own selection and mostly seem to exist in relatively wealthy areas.
I respctfully submit that more of that is not what we need.
Mull
Pete MB&D
Pete Maddex, the one and only!
Being dislexic before it became recognised ment I failed my 11 plus and was sent to a secondary school unlike my sisters, the secondary school didn't help me at all and didn't even let my sit the English exam, back problems and migraines ment I missed a lot of school. I managed to get 2 grade ones CSE's in physics and technical drawing and C's in most of the other subjects.
I think that schools now have support networks that would have helped me and made my school years a lot happier.
So things are a lot better than in my day.
Pete
I think that schools now have support networks that would have helped me and made my school years a lot happier.
So things are a lot better than in my day.
Pete
My question was not intended as a joke. Asthma is very serious but from the early 1970s very good treatments became available.
jackbarron
Chelsea, London
The school I went to was set up in 1553 by King Edward VI and Nicholas Ridley. It wasn't far from Fleet Street.
A proportion of the children were orphans, came from broken homes or had educational problems. They went for free, or got a grant.
The school is now in Surrey and costs paying pupils £33,000 a year to board with. To get in I had to pass the 11-plus, an exam to obtain a grant from the Greater London Council, a school test and an interview with the headmaster.
This was all as stressful as hell and I didn't even want to go to the bloody place. Some of the non-fee-paying kids didn't make it through a term, let alone a year, and we had to go to a Protestant church service every morning. We were caned/slippered and it wasn't unusual for kids to be expelled, which was what happened to me after doing O-levels.
Kids should have equal opportunities and the state should pay for their education. All the rest is just class, snobbery and religious BS.
The Tory plan for more grammar schools is an example of this. I don't think Theresa May gives a f*** about working class kids on council estates.
Jack
Tony L
Administrator
I had it bad enough that I was removed from junior school and sent to a residential medical school for a year or two (what would earlier have been called an 'open air school'). I suspect that cost me the 11+, though I can't remember for sure. I had a really disrupted early childhood anyway. The asthma slowly improved through my teens and went pretty much entirely in my early 20s. For the first time in many decades I now find myself back on Beclometasone (a steroid), though I suspect that is down to cycling in inner city diesel fumes as things have improved substantially in that regard since my cycle accident!
Disbeliever
pfm Member
Its total nonsense to say fate determined at 11 years old, I came from a poor family went to Grammar School left before 16. . However I was able to retire at 59 years of age and continue to enjoy my Hi-Fi Hobby. I agree that new Grammar Schools should be increased, it was crazy to stop then, but then all our Governments are totally incompetant, their sole expertise is how to waste tax payers money. No Civil servant, NHS manager, Useless Council Chief Executives should be paid more than the PM
Seanm
pfm Member
Yes, apologies, stupid to invoke fate. Lots of people manage just fine, whatever's done to them at that age. I'm just really angry, having seen at first hand what system-wide selection means in a de-industrialised economy.
stephen bennett
Mr Enigma
May is also trying to allow faith schools to choose all their pupils based on their religion.
That's good for social cohesion.
Who voted these people and their policies in? Oh yes, no-one did.
Stephen
That's good for social cohesion.
Who voted these people and their policies in? Oh yes, no-one did.
Stephen
Tony L
Administrator
...and with that the nut-job hard-right moves us one step closer to dinosaur/science denying bullshit taught as fact along with all the institutionalised racism, sexism and homophobia that always accompanies religion. The state should have no part at all in brainwashing/radicalising children, though as the political right moves so far to the lunatic extremes this becomes an inevitability. Welcolme to Michael Gove's post-expert world!
stephen bennett
Mr Enigma
It's not rocket science—look an other countries who are like us culturally and import the best idea. So that will be Finnish comprehensive education.
Personally, I'm not against streaming in schools for academic, technical and/or vocational skills. But in a single school, you can move between streams—try moving to a Grammar at 13 when you suddenly discover you are academically gifted after all.
Some idiot on the Radio yesterday suggested that all schools could be selective.
Right.
Stephen
Personally, I'm not against streaming in schools for academic, technical and/or vocational skills. But in a single school, you can move between streams—try moving to a Grammar at 13 when you suddenly discover you are academically gifted after all.
Some idiot on the Radio yesterday suggested that all schools could be selective.
Right.
Stephen
Mullardman
Moderately extreme...
May is pontificating on the telly as I type.
She's just praised Gove for his 'pioneering vision' over Free Schools. Anyone who thinks that little shit did anything positive for anything is sadly deluded. Not a good start.
She's basically pushing a thinly veiled lower middle class agenda. And she is talking about the working poor with such condescension as to almost as nauseatingly insincere as Thatch. Oh dear...
She's just praised Gove for his 'pioneering vision' over Free Schools. Anyone who thinks that little shit did anything positive for anything is sadly deluded. Not a good start.
She's basically pushing a thinly veiled lower middle class agenda. And she is talking about the working poor with such condescension as to almost as nauseatingly insincere as Thatch. Oh dear...
Seanm
pfm Member
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I suspect she thought she'd squared the circle when they came up with this one: it allows them to talk about social mobility in a way that pleases the hard-right, and sends a signal to the middle-class that they'll be taken care of whatever happens. But it's woken even the Guardian up, inspired a temporary cessation of violence in the Labour Party, and might even some of the "progressive" types in her own party to take their exploding neck-collars off.
I was worried when May took over, she looked like what the English at least want in a PM. After this, and PMQs yesterday, I'm a little less worried.