Kumzalwane
06-07-2007, 17:28
Some people are always whining about social mobility and complain about the comprehensive system failing the poor. The advocate a return to eleven-plus selection as they claim that it would improve social mobility. It is this argument that I will criticise and I believe that people who support selection for this reason are Marxists. I believe the real reason they support selection is because they hate the middle class and want to make sure that some of them will not stay middle class.
Social mobility is about greater equality of educational outcomes from an the perspective of different social groups. However equality of opportunity does not always produce equality of outcomes. Therefore equality of opportunity does not always produce social mobility. This brings me onto the subject of Comprehensive schools. Now I am not defending the current school system. I accept that schools in this country are far from up to standard and I know that some comprehensive schools are very bad indeed. However I will argue that grammar schools are little better than comprehensives with exception of the “hothousing environment” that they create.
Firstly I want to compare Grammar schools with Comprehensive schools. I am putting private schools aside, as they educate only about 8% of children. Now I know that private schools distort equality of opportunity. However, this article is about social mobility into the “middle class”, with access to Oxbridge and other top universities being a separate issue. Besides, the middle class comprises about 60% of the population. Only 8% of children attend private schools and this article will concern the other 52% whose children attend state schools.
Many people make the mistake in believing that Grammar schools provide the same quality of education as private schools do. The truth of the matter is that most grammar schools provide a quality of teaching that is little better than that at an average comprehensive. They have similar levels of funding to comprehensive schools. Also, grammar schools are not market-driven like private schools. Private schools get good results due to focus on examination technique and lots of individual tuition. No selective schools achieve a high proportion of ‘A’ grades at A-level in the same league as the leading independent schools. The bottom line is that selection is not the reason that private schools get good results out of mediocre pupils.
Comprehensive Schools are bad when the teaching and discipline are bad. Also I do admit that grammar schools would suffer fewer discipline problems than comprehensive schools. This is the one area where grammar schools could offer a better education. However, a whole system of grammar schools and secondary moderns can be assessed on the basis of average pupil performance. When an area like Kent that has this system was compared to Cheshire, a fully comprehensive area, pupils in Cheshire had a higher average score. Pupil discipline still remained a problem at secondary modern schools, and so it was self-defeating to suggest that selection improved overall standards.
Comprehensive schools provide “equal” opportunity. Also, hard-working kids can succeed in comprehensive schools where the discipline and teaching are reasonable. Although in practice I admit that the discipline in most comprehensive schools leaves much to be desired. The links given below are for articles that suggest that grammar schools only help the “poor” and that grammar schools do not raise overall standards. Quotes from these articles are shown.
Link http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6539721.stm
"The paradox is that, for the minority of poor children who do gain a place in a grammar school, the advantage this bestows appears to be greater than for more affluent children,"
Link http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2007/05/cps_reaction_to.html
"Areas with grammar schools do no better than those without"
The only difference between Grammar schools and Comprehensive schools is the peer-group ‘environment’. Pupils at grammar schools will be amongst other people who are mostly of above average intelligence. Pupils from “poor” backgrounds will likely benefit from this environment as they will not come from homes that value education. This is opposed to the “lad subculture” that affects only working-class kids at comprehensives. For this reason they will likely be better motivated than at comprehensives.
Pupils need to be better self-motivated if they are to succeed at a comprehensive school. This is why those from more aspirational family backgrounds will more likely succeed at comprehensives without needing the hothouse environment of a grammar school. Therefore grammar schools benefit only those who are otherwise not motivated. This is why it is only “poor” children that do better at grammar schools than at comprehensives.
Even if the selective system did produce higher overall achievement, it’s not the real reason that some people support selection. There are some ignorant people that simply have a bad image of all comprehensive schools as dirty, disorderly, and overrun with violence, drugs and gangs. These people haven’t really thought about the issue and have little experience. They just hate modern comprehensive schools. There is a second more dangerous type of person who supports selection. They are the ones who use “social mobility” as their grounds for supporting selection. Their hidden agenda is one that is about punishing the middle classes in order to artificially engineer success among working-class children.
They want to make everybody sit an eleven-plus test just in order to please their own collectivist agenda. They will put everyone through the stress of an eleven-plus test, and all people will be punished by knowing that their children’s paths in life could be determined without redemption by one test at a very young age. This is so that a few kids can be given an artificial advantage when they would otherwise not succeed on a level playing field. These pro-selection people do not care about hurting people in order to satisfy their own agenda. The truth is that they hate the middle class and in fact anybody else who will work hard without needing to be nannied or put into a hothouse environment.
Their claim is that abolishing grammar schools reduced social mobility. This implies that working class kids needed grammar schools in order to succeed. They are implying that they need to be put into a special environment with academic hothousing and a good social environment. They are implying that working-class kids need special treatment whereas middle-class kids can succeed on a level playing field without special treatment. The truth is that these pro-selection people hate our supposedly class-based society.
They hate a society where proper parental nurturing of children pays off. They hate a society where middle-class values pay off. They hate a society where self-reliance and individual motivation pay off. This is why they complain about low social mobility, while refusing to accept what is the natural order of things in all free societies. Children will more likely succeed if they have dedicated parents who value education. It is also often the case that their parents will happen to have “middle-class” occupations as a result of their values and hard work.
At the moment hard-working middle-class people can work hard to get their children into a good comprehensive school. Parents can hardly be blamed for making the financial sacrifice of moving to an area with a good local school. Government-imposed selection would put an end to this school choice, and would artificially push some children out of the middle class. The bottom line is that pro-selection people want to prevent hard-working and caring parents from doing the best for their children.
Pro-selection advocates want to destroy the middle-class for what it is. They want to attack the freedoms and securities of the middle class. By securities I mean being secure in the knowledge that your children will likely be successful if they are properly brought up and motivated. The aim of selection is to destroy this class stability. The middle-classes would be punished by knowing that whether their children can stay middle class depends on their performance at a single examination.
The “social mobility” agenda is about equality of outcomes. That is equality of outcomes from a group perspective in that equal proportions of people from different social groups are academically successful. Pro-selection advocates want equal outcomes and are against equality of opportunity when it does not result in equal outcomes. Comprehensive schools provide equal opportunities, but this does not result on equal outcomes. This is because middle-class parents motivate and instil proper vales into their children, whereas working-class parents have little aspirations for their children.
Many middle-class kids succeed in good and even mediocre comprehensive schools. However they were not born with success given to them on a plate. They worked hard for it. Also, I had some folks in my sixth form who had made it despite coming from some of the worst schools in the country. They were from immigrant families. There are many indigenous white and black working class kids in the country who fail despite being not as poor and going to schools that are mediocre but not the worst in the country. Why do some people call the comprehensive system “social engineering”? How can a system that puts all kids into the same sort of school to succeed or fail by their own merits be social engineering?
Putting some kids into a hothouse environment when they would otherwise fail could in fact be considered to be social engineering. This however is exactly what pro-selection advocates are supporting. They want the government to create privileges for some in order to favour certain social groups rather than treating everyone equally. They want a system where the government controls the number of grammar school places and therefore controls the number of the next generation that can stay in or join the middle class. This is how pro-selection people intend to engineer downward social mobility as well as upward social mobility.
This kind of social engineering involves putting unmotivated working-class kids into the hothouse environment of a grammar school when they would not succeed in a comprehensive school. Government imposed selection at the age of eleven would punish everybody by making them go though the stresses of the selection mechanism. Such stresses involve knowing that your child could be condemned to the scrap heap on the basis of this single method of testing that is imposed by the government.
Working-class people are not poor. They just do not motive their kids. People defined as “below the poverty line” in Britain typically own colour TVs, microwaves, DVD players and can afford at least one annual holiday to Spain. How they differ from middle-class people is in terms of their values and aspirations. Why should the hard-working middle classes be punished because a lazy underclass is contributing to low social mobility? The middle classes nowadays are already heavily burdened by taxation that is needed to pay for benefits that go to the so-called “poor”. The “social ladder” has not been “whipped away”. It’s just that people are too lazy to climb it.
Pro-selection people are jealous of middle-class kids who succeed at comprehensive schools. But keep in mind that most middle-class kids earn their success through hard work, often spending many hours a day studying for examinations. It’s not their fault working-class kids don’t succeed at comprehensives. Everybody has the opportunity to work hard in a comprehensive school. Oh but now I hear you argue “but everybody would have the equal opportunity to attend a grammar school…”. This however, misses the point. The selection system could rather be considered as “equally” unfair, as it is a very crude method of distributing opportunities.
In a free society opportunities are given to individuals and not to groups. Opportunity involves individuals and families taking advantage of programs through their own choice. Government-imposed selection of young children is not “opportunity”. Pro-selection people treat people as members of a group and not as individuals. They want equal proportions of middle-class kids and working-class kids to succeed, and are not concerned if just as many kids are failing in school, as long as they are not disproportionably working-class.
The irony is this. Most people who support selection for social mobility reasons either brand themselves as “right-wingers” or “conservatives”, or belong to a right-wing political party such as UKIP or the BNP. Or are these people really genuine conservative thinkers? Maybe they jumped on the “right wing” bandwagon in order to present themselves with a macho appeal. These are people who in fact disguise themselves as right-wingers but who in reality are Marxists whose motive is to punish the middle class.
Social mobility is about greater equality of educational outcomes from an the perspective of different social groups. However equality of opportunity does not always produce equality of outcomes. Therefore equality of opportunity does not always produce social mobility. This brings me onto the subject of Comprehensive schools. Now I am not defending the current school system. I accept that schools in this country are far from up to standard and I know that some comprehensive schools are very bad indeed. However I will argue that grammar schools are little better than comprehensives with exception of the “hothousing environment” that they create.
Firstly I want to compare Grammar schools with Comprehensive schools. I am putting private schools aside, as they educate only about 8% of children. Now I know that private schools distort equality of opportunity. However, this article is about social mobility into the “middle class”, with access to Oxbridge and other top universities being a separate issue. Besides, the middle class comprises about 60% of the population. Only 8% of children attend private schools and this article will concern the other 52% whose children attend state schools.
Many people make the mistake in believing that Grammar schools provide the same quality of education as private schools do. The truth of the matter is that most grammar schools provide a quality of teaching that is little better than that at an average comprehensive. They have similar levels of funding to comprehensive schools. Also, grammar schools are not market-driven like private schools. Private schools get good results due to focus on examination technique and lots of individual tuition. No selective schools achieve a high proportion of ‘A’ grades at A-level in the same league as the leading independent schools. The bottom line is that selection is not the reason that private schools get good results out of mediocre pupils.
Comprehensive Schools are bad when the teaching and discipline are bad. Also I do admit that grammar schools would suffer fewer discipline problems than comprehensive schools. This is the one area where grammar schools could offer a better education. However, a whole system of grammar schools and secondary moderns can be assessed on the basis of average pupil performance. When an area like Kent that has this system was compared to Cheshire, a fully comprehensive area, pupils in Cheshire had a higher average score. Pupil discipline still remained a problem at secondary modern schools, and so it was self-defeating to suggest that selection improved overall standards.
Comprehensive schools provide “equal” opportunity. Also, hard-working kids can succeed in comprehensive schools where the discipline and teaching are reasonable. Although in practice I admit that the discipline in most comprehensive schools leaves much to be desired. The links given below are for articles that suggest that grammar schools only help the “poor” and that grammar schools do not raise overall standards. Quotes from these articles are shown.
Link http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6539721.stm
"The paradox is that, for the minority of poor children who do gain a place in a grammar school, the advantage this bestows appears to be greater than for more affluent children,"
Link http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2007/05/cps_reaction_to.html
"Areas with grammar schools do no better than those without"
The only difference between Grammar schools and Comprehensive schools is the peer-group ‘environment’. Pupils at grammar schools will be amongst other people who are mostly of above average intelligence. Pupils from “poor” backgrounds will likely benefit from this environment as they will not come from homes that value education. This is opposed to the “lad subculture” that affects only working-class kids at comprehensives. For this reason they will likely be better motivated than at comprehensives.
Pupils need to be better self-motivated if they are to succeed at a comprehensive school. This is why those from more aspirational family backgrounds will more likely succeed at comprehensives without needing the hothouse environment of a grammar school. Therefore grammar schools benefit only those who are otherwise not motivated. This is why it is only “poor” children that do better at grammar schools than at comprehensives.
Even if the selective system did produce higher overall achievement, it’s not the real reason that some people support selection. There are some ignorant people that simply have a bad image of all comprehensive schools as dirty, disorderly, and overrun with violence, drugs and gangs. These people haven’t really thought about the issue and have little experience. They just hate modern comprehensive schools. There is a second more dangerous type of person who supports selection. They are the ones who use “social mobility” as their grounds for supporting selection. Their hidden agenda is one that is about punishing the middle classes in order to artificially engineer success among working-class children.
They want to make everybody sit an eleven-plus test just in order to please their own collectivist agenda. They will put everyone through the stress of an eleven-plus test, and all people will be punished by knowing that their children’s paths in life could be determined without redemption by one test at a very young age. This is so that a few kids can be given an artificial advantage when they would otherwise not succeed on a level playing field. These pro-selection people do not care about hurting people in order to satisfy their own agenda. The truth is that they hate the middle class and in fact anybody else who will work hard without needing to be nannied or put into a hothouse environment.
Their claim is that abolishing grammar schools reduced social mobility. This implies that working class kids needed grammar schools in order to succeed. They are implying that they need to be put into a special environment with academic hothousing and a good social environment. They are implying that working-class kids need special treatment whereas middle-class kids can succeed on a level playing field without special treatment. The truth is that these pro-selection people hate our supposedly class-based society.
They hate a society where proper parental nurturing of children pays off. They hate a society where middle-class values pay off. They hate a society where self-reliance and individual motivation pay off. This is why they complain about low social mobility, while refusing to accept what is the natural order of things in all free societies. Children will more likely succeed if they have dedicated parents who value education. It is also often the case that their parents will happen to have “middle-class” occupations as a result of their values and hard work.
At the moment hard-working middle-class people can work hard to get their children into a good comprehensive school. Parents can hardly be blamed for making the financial sacrifice of moving to an area with a good local school. Government-imposed selection would put an end to this school choice, and would artificially push some children out of the middle class. The bottom line is that pro-selection people want to prevent hard-working and caring parents from doing the best for their children.
Pro-selection advocates want to destroy the middle-class for what it is. They want to attack the freedoms and securities of the middle class. By securities I mean being secure in the knowledge that your children will likely be successful if they are properly brought up and motivated. The aim of selection is to destroy this class stability. The middle-classes would be punished by knowing that whether their children can stay middle class depends on their performance at a single examination.
The “social mobility” agenda is about equality of outcomes. That is equality of outcomes from a group perspective in that equal proportions of people from different social groups are academically successful. Pro-selection advocates want equal outcomes and are against equality of opportunity when it does not result in equal outcomes. Comprehensive schools provide equal opportunities, but this does not result on equal outcomes. This is because middle-class parents motivate and instil proper vales into their children, whereas working-class parents have little aspirations for their children.
Many middle-class kids succeed in good and even mediocre comprehensive schools. However they were not born with success given to them on a plate. They worked hard for it. Also, I had some folks in my sixth form who had made it despite coming from some of the worst schools in the country. They were from immigrant families. There are many indigenous white and black working class kids in the country who fail despite being not as poor and going to schools that are mediocre but not the worst in the country. Why do some people call the comprehensive system “social engineering”? How can a system that puts all kids into the same sort of school to succeed or fail by their own merits be social engineering?
Putting some kids into a hothouse environment when they would otherwise fail could in fact be considered to be social engineering. This however is exactly what pro-selection advocates are supporting. They want the government to create privileges for some in order to favour certain social groups rather than treating everyone equally. They want a system where the government controls the number of grammar school places and therefore controls the number of the next generation that can stay in or join the middle class. This is how pro-selection people intend to engineer downward social mobility as well as upward social mobility.
This kind of social engineering involves putting unmotivated working-class kids into the hothouse environment of a grammar school when they would not succeed in a comprehensive school. Government imposed selection at the age of eleven would punish everybody by making them go though the stresses of the selection mechanism. Such stresses involve knowing that your child could be condemned to the scrap heap on the basis of this single method of testing that is imposed by the government.
Working-class people are not poor. They just do not motive their kids. People defined as “below the poverty line” in Britain typically own colour TVs, microwaves, DVD players and can afford at least one annual holiday to Spain. How they differ from middle-class people is in terms of their values and aspirations. Why should the hard-working middle classes be punished because a lazy underclass is contributing to low social mobility? The middle classes nowadays are already heavily burdened by taxation that is needed to pay for benefits that go to the so-called “poor”. The “social ladder” has not been “whipped away”. It’s just that people are too lazy to climb it.
Pro-selection people are jealous of middle-class kids who succeed at comprehensive schools. But keep in mind that most middle-class kids earn their success through hard work, often spending many hours a day studying for examinations. It’s not their fault working-class kids don’t succeed at comprehensives. Everybody has the opportunity to work hard in a comprehensive school. Oh but now I hear you argue “but everybody would have the equal opportunity to attend a grammar school…”. This however, misses the point. The selection system could rather be considered as “equally” unfair, as it is a very crude method of distributing opportunities.
In a free society opportunities are given to individuals and not to groups. Opportunity involves individuals and families taking advantage of programs through their own choice. Government-imposed selection of young children is not “opportunity”. Pro-selection people treat people as members of a group and not as individuals. They want equal proportions of middle-class kids and working-class kids to succeed, and are not concerned if just as many kids are failing in school, as long as they are not disproportionably working-class.
The irony is this. Most people who support selection for social mobility reasons either brand themselves as “right-wingers” or “conservatives”, or belong to a right-wing political party such as UKIP or the BNP. Or are these people really genuine conservative thinkers? Maybe they jumped on the “right wing” bandwagon in order to present themselves with a macho appeal. These are people who in fact disguise themselves as right-wingers but who in reality are Marxists whose motive is to punish the middle class.