🚀 go-pugleaf

Jon Livesey writes
:In article <253@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>, mmh@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:
:> If someone sits you down with a paper full of daft questions that you could
:> answer but you really couldn't be bothered with, you may just spend your
:> time thinking about what you're going to do tonight, wondering what's for dinner
:> or so on. If that paper happens to be an IQ test you're going to score low.
:	I kind of wonder about this.   I took the eleven-plus exam in London
:in 1956, and we knew ahead of time what day the exam was on, what the
:significance of the exam was, and what the approximate content of the exam
:was, since we had a rehearsal exam a couple of months ahead of time. 
:only that, but you could buy books of tests which were similar to eleven-plus
:questions, and try them out as much as you like.

The point I was making was that tests are influenced by motivation.
So merely passing round IQ numbers as if they were height measurements is
ridiculous. Of course my teachers were wrong not to tell me in advance
what was happening, but maybe someone gets stuck with a low IQ measurement
because they too weren't told what was happening.

:	By the way, Matthew's memory has let him down again here.   There was
:also a thirteen-plus exam, to allow mis-categorised kids to moved from one
:stream to another.

One point I didn't make is that some kids weren't even allowed to take
the 11-plus. I have heard of someone who wasn't allowed to take it because
her handwriting was bad. Much later on she went to university and got a
good degree. Once one is labelled it's very difficult to shake off the
label - I have heard of very few who were regraded at 13+.

:Rigorous testing seems to work just fine for the Japanese, and yet it seems to 
:me that Japanese testing must also divide children who will receive more academic 
:education, and children who will receive more practical education.   Are we 
:going to say that it works for them, but not for us?

How perfect are the Japanese? - they have a very bad problem with creativity
which they have acknowledged themselves. Also we very rarely hear about the
working class Japanese - a lot of what people say about the Japanese
only applies to the top 30% or so.

:> If you failed it you went to a school which would train you to accept that
:> you would always be a second-class citizen and you should not have ideas above
:> your station - called a secondary modern.
:
:	I lived in a rough area of London (Fulham) amongst people who existed 
:from day to day on low wages, and we still managed to know what education was 
:about.   We were (very) poor, but we were not lazy or foolish.   Coming from
:a working class area is not the same thing as seeing education as child-watching,
:If you have that kind of attitude towards your children's education, then you
:have that attitude.    Implying that a working person automatically has that
:attitude is a) insulting, and b) wrong.
:about?    In London, grammar schools were in the community, where schools always
:are, and they tended to be in the older, Victorian, school buildings, with poor
:physical facilities.    The secondary Modern schools were often in new buildings,
:with swimming pools and fancy laboratories.  

My point was that testing can be biased not that it necessarily is. 
Of course some among the working class are very keen to get their kids a 
good education, but some are not. I was brought up in Britain's wealthy
'Deep South' (Sussex) where the middle class are so dominant and the 
working class small in numbers, demoralised and poorly organised that it was
very difficult to break through, and there were no local politicians to 
speak up for you.
:
:	I read that Maggie's policy is to allow the parents in each district 
:to decide for themselves what school system they want, complete with a voucher 
:system, if they want that.   Is that wrong?   Are the US papers telling me 
:lies about that?   (Oh yes, the 'ruling' Conservative party.   Don't you mean 
:the 'elected' Conservative party?)

No - that's what it is at present. Maggie wants to introduce national laws
governing schools, and more or less destroy local government which currently
runs schools.
Also the Conservative party only received 41% of the votes in the last 
election, but got a landslide victory because of our distorted voting system.
:
:> Also there are a lot of campaigns to bring it back, or in those few areas 
:> which still have it, not to abolish it. Funnily enough, those campaigns always
:> call themselves 'Save' or 'Restore' the grammar schools, whereas in fact what
:> they want is to keep or bring back secondary moderns since that's where the
:> majority of kids go to under the selection system.
:
:	Ah, the anthropomorphised 'campaign' which is going to do something 
:against everyone's will.    That must be something else the US press is lying
:about.    I read that the British voters had just re-elected Maggie for, what is
:it, the third time now?     I also read that getting back to a more traditional
:school system has been part of the Tory platform for years.   Is Matthew saying
:that the voters re-elected Maggie because they *didn't* approve of her policies,
:or because they *did* approve of them?   Choose one.
:

I am very tempted to answer that, though it would be getting off the subject.
Anyone who wants a polemic on why Maggie was re-elected despite her 
records and policies should mail me (incidentally isn't it strange we're talking
about "Maggie" and not the "Conservative Party" here - Britain is supposed to
have a parliamentary not a presidential government ... oops back to the subject)

:	As you can probably guess, although Matthew has not made it quite
:clear, education has become highly politicised in the UK over the last forty
:years.    Labour party voters tend to support so-called 'comprehensive'
:education, in which serious testing is delayed until university entry, and
:Tory party supporters tend to like traditional education.   Unfortunately,
:it has become one of the 'religious' political issues, like School Prayer in the
:US, and people tend to damn one policy or another, without admitting that both
:policies have some good and some not-so-good features.    In particular, people
:tend to slough off their own responsibility in education onto the system, and
:blame it for whatever happens to them.
:

I went to a comprehensive school and passed with flying colours.
There was regular testing every year, but at least the fact that you
weren't permanently divided at the age of eleven meant you weren't 
labelled as a success/failure for the rest of your life.

If those who want to bring back selection made a genuine argument that
the less academic were better educated in a separate school, I would have a
lot more respect for them.  There is a good argument here, but I've never
heard it made without prompting from anti-selectionists like myself.

Selectionists give no sign of even thinking about
the sort of education the majority would get so long as the *Grammar Schools*
are restored. The problem with education in Britain isn't with those who
would go to the grammar schools - they're getting on perfectly well at the
comprehensives as the records on exam passes show. The problem is with
the less able whose needs tend to get ignored in the fight for prestige at
the top end. 
 
   Matthew Huntbach