Originally Posted by Lynn R

This is not a fashionable point of view for a socialist, and I used to get a lot of stick for voicing it in those circles, but I do believe that the abolition of the grammar schools (or nearly all of them, a few do still survive) did a great deal of harm to the education and life expectations of bright working class children.

I've listened to all the arguments about how it is wrong to label children "failures" at the age of 11, but can anybody in their right mind still believe that comprehensive education actually benefits any child? What we seem to have now is a system where no-one is ever allowed to fail at anything lest it affect their self-esteem, resulting in almost every child who sits a GCSE or A level exam getting an A grade which is effectively worthless as the exams have been dumbed down to such an extent. I saw a GCSE maths question quoted in The Sunday Times recently - "Write the number 50,000 in words". What?????

I was awarded a free place by my local County Council after the 11 plus to one of the old "direct grant" grammar schools, where the majority of the places were for fee-paying pupils but the County Council funded a small number each year (I had to sit a separate entrance exam for the school of my choice as well). Not only was the education on offer first class, but the school's expectations of all the pupils were very high and I learned (not without some faux pas along the way) to mix with people with very different backgrounds to my own, and to believe that I could compete with them on an equal basis. Removing this kind of aid to social mobility is "pulling up the ladder" so that bright kids from the generations who came after those of us born up to the end of the 1950s never got the advantages that we did.

Originally Posted by bil

Exactly. If State schools were free of losers and dickheads, run in a positive encouraging way with the same level of parental support, and class sizes kept down to barely double figures, then state school results would soar.

As for class sizes, I agree they are less important in those circs, but they still are important.

Originally Posted by HBG

Nobody has yet mentioned it, and the consensus seems to be that given equal opportunities poorer pupils can do just as well as their richer counterparts.

What if that isn't true and genetics do play a part? Even to think of it makes my liberal heart jump. Could David Cameron and Prince William be better than John Prescott because of a purer bloodline over which the latter has no control? If the dumb lottery winners send their children to Eton can those children become future prime ministers?

I don't think anyone would dare to attempt an in-depth investigation into such a topic.

Originally Posted by HBG

Nobody has yet mentioned it, and the consensus seems to be that given equal opportunities poorer pupils can do just as well as their richer counterparts.

What if that isn't true and genetics do play a part? Even to think of it makes my liberal heart jump. Could David Cameron and Prince William be better than John Prescott because of a purer bloodline over which the latter has no control? If the dumb lottery winners send their children to Eton can those children become future prime ministers?

I don't think anyone would dare to attempt an in-depth investigation into such a topic.

Originally Posted by HBG

Nobody has yet mentioned it, and the consensus seems to be that given equal opportunities poorer pupils can do just as well as their richer counterparts.

What if that isn't true and genetics do play a part? Even to think of it makes my liberal heart jump. Could David Cameron and Prince William be better than John Prescott because of a purer bloodline over which the latter has no control? If the dumb lottery winners send their children to Eton can those children become future prime ministers?

I don't think anyone would dare to attempt an in-depth investigation into such a topic.

Originally Posted by whitelinen

I doubt they would because I think most of us already know the answer

Originally Posted by bil

We all may have outr ideas on this, but I don't think anyone actually knows for sure.

There's the initial genetic ability and predisposition to learn, but then there's the diet, the parental encouragement, environment, the list goes on and on, but there is one thing no-one ha sposted, and it's this.

They did a study on very young children seeing how much the parents spoke to them during a typical day.

Children from homes where parents were always talking to them far out classed children who weren't spoken to much. This difference was huge, and what was stunning was this. When those childeren reached the age of 16, that difference between them was still as great, and no amount of teaching etc had done anything to alter it.

Originally Posted by HBG

I read of a study, recently, where it was found that a baby still in the womb already had recognisable characteristics to set it apart from others at the same stage of development.

Of course, even at that stage, a baby whose mother is smoking 40 fags a day and drinking two packs of strong cider, will not develop as well as the one in a womb where cigarettes are banned and a healthy diet is being followed.

But what if you go back even further, to day one in the womb? It seems logical that at this stage the only factors that matter are the mixing of blood which produced the baby. Pure genetics.

If I now jump right forward and get personal, always difficult on a forum with snipers, I finally realised at some middle-aged stage that I had limits; limits of intelligence which came as a blow, and limits of physical ability, a lesser blow.

I foolishly looked around for someone or something to blame, forgetting the elephant in the room, the man in the mirror. I got the answer and don't ask the question any more.

(I prefer lager to cider and smoked Embassy No1 for many years).

Originally Posted by bil

Everyone slams the modern maths, but I know how hard my daughter worked to get her Maths A. It isn't all silly questions.

Originally Posted by The Oddities

I believe the problem is not the quality of the questions they have not really changed over the years but the level at which the pass rate is set. Excellent pass levels are no different to what they were in the sixties but lower the pass rate and it ,on the surface, becomes a joke. Anyone with any knowledge of the system takes this into account and will use their own pass level figure for the perceived job or uni entry requirements.
As to the odd so called easy questions shown in newspapers I remember them doing that and using the same arguements back in the sixties it is all part of the mine is better than yours syndrome which is so pervasive in modern society. Many psychologists put it down to older people being either jealous or fearsome of the young.
As Bil says it is just as difficult to get a good pass now as it always has been.

Graham

Originally Posted by cricketman

I spoke to a headmaster at an international school on the CDS once who said that Brits get much worse grades at their school than the Spanish because they are the sons of builders and manual workers. While the Spanish kids at the school are the sons of lawyers and doctors.