Alright Dave?

Actually we don’t need to do anything other than return to the status quo ante before Labour screwed it all up in 1998.

And that, is more or less exactly why we need a Human Responsibilities Act in addition to the Human Rights Act.

That I can agree with. As CD states no responsibility, no rights.

Precisely! I fear that a very large number of people would not even understand the second in relation to the first.

No rights without responsibilities!

And that, is more or less exactly why we need a Human Responsibilities Act in addition to the Human Rights Act.

I think most would agree that the idea that the state should shoulder all responsibility with none being attached to the individual is detrimental to a healthy society.

There is a level at which the state should be involved whilst the individual retains the appropriate amount of responsibility, the tricky bit is finding that point.

I rather suspect that we as human beings are destined to forever veer from one extreme to the other, only ever fleeting occupying the sweet spot at which the appropriate balance between personal responsibility and state involvement is met.

I have returned after few days away to find this easily the most interestingly developed thread in GD.

Meddle – I’d go along with pretty much all you have said and certainly find myself in sympathy with most of John’s points. The problem as you have implied, seems to find its roots in the increasing abnegation of peoples’ responsibility for, not only their own lives and actions, but also for those whom they brought into the world. The sense these days is that the state in all its manifestations will accept and deal with the responsibilities we all once had and recognised.

It seems to me that the more the state meddles (no pun intended) the worse the problem. So there is the solution but it will take another generation to effect, even if there was the will. Which I doubt.

Nevertheless – that is what the two dipsticks did LOL (3 or 4 if you count others)

There was no planning – just because you do not believe it does not necessarily make it untrue snafu – you are still posting on here in a very condescending way my old fruit – try a little friendliness ! LOL

Umm… the point I have been making was that there was no planning…

I genuinely think perhaps you should take some of your own advice! 🙂 (Allow me to offer you some as well, try understanding the point somebody is making!)

Are you seriously suggesting that the indigenous population should reduce the birthrate in order to support more immigrants?

And you’re 100% right about the welfare state, it is effectively a giant pyramid scheme. But importing people en masse is not sustainable, so we will have to find a way of breaking that vicious cycle.

To get from what I posted to the statement you are claiming on my behalf above takes a real desire to misinterpret my words.
I have not expressed a thought along those lines and certainly do not harbour such unexpressed.

I rather think you also could benefit from my advice to bazv.

I think SNAFU, that you ought to go onto some American sites, and see what they have to say about their immigration problems. One s that there is a rebellion going on at present regarding their Vets who have come back from recent confllcts, ie Irack, Afghanistan, and their Welfare benefits have been cut, and given to immigrants.Obama is not very popular.
Jim.
Lincoln .7i

Ok… Why are you suddenly introducing the US? The discussion to date has been about the UK, you’ve made claims about “no go areas” in the UK.
(PS the piece about the vets welfare being cut and given to immigrants is republican propaganda bull****.)
In the case of the US they are all (relatively recent) immigrants anyway, unless they are descended from native Americans, so… well to put it bluntly what the f is your point?
Given your above comment I think it would be interesting to understand what your definition of “immigrant” is in the context of the US?
I also note you haven’t offered your thoughts on non whites in the UK as I requested previously.

Changing that sort of attitude is difficult at best and possibly close to impossible.

I was discussing this very topic yesterday with somebody who happens to work in education. My concern is that parents are, broadly, expecting the state school system to provide a level of care that was not previously expected or required. If anything, the act of a child learning something in any sort of academic sense is a happy bi-product of a day spent trying to equip them with basic social skills, hygiene and providing them with the one basic meal of the day.

In turn the local authority provides education services for parents, but none of them ever turn up. They can wangle it slightly by getting the kids to perform a song and dance number at the beginning of the classes, but the parents are generally not interested. I don’t blame the state for being either tardy or inept at dealing with the current situation here, because they aren’t historically cut out to do so.

It seems slightly dystopian to me; the heavy reliance on the state to provide basic education for all facets of a child’s life. This reminds me a lot of Calhoun’s ‘behavioral sink’ experiments. The material standard of living has increased in the UK over the last few decades. Whilst I wasn’t around in the ’70s, I’ve spoken to a lot of people who were and none of them wish to go back to living like that. We have better access to material goods (thanks China), food and other services. Yet we don’t appreciate any of this, and don’t place any meaning or significance on this improved quality of life. To quote from Calhoun’s experiment:

Many [female mice] were unable to carry pregnancy to full term or to survive delivery of their litters if they did. An even greater number, after successfully giving birth, fell short in their maternal functions. Among the males the behavior disturbances ranged from sexual deviation to cannibalism and from frenetic overactivity to a pathological withdrawal from which individuals would emerge to eat, drink and move about only when other members of the community were asleep. The social organization of the animals showed equal disruption.

In short, you give laboratory mice everything they need and they become selfish, anti-social and lose all grasp of their duties towards parenthood. In a roundabout way I agree with John Green’s sentiments in this thread

Amen to that.

Very many parents treat schools as a service to educate their children, and will do nothing at all outside of that. Yet, they expect their children, based on what others can achieve with the right parental input, to perform brilliantly.

A few months ago, a personal light switched on when I realised that as an organisation, the school had to be more focussed on managing expectations, particularly within the less well off community. Most of the playground grumbles focus on things that parents believe a school ought to be doing as opposed to what they should be doing. Its a difficult balancing act.

JG

We are slowly getting closer to agreement, yes attitude has a big part to play, but attitude alone can’t magic the funding needed for private education, taking the figures as per Creaking Door, there are many families who don’t even earn the sort of money needed to for instance put just 2 children through private school.

Must agree however on the attitude of too many parents, both our daughters had stories read to them from long before they knew what we were saying and of course that progressed with helping them to read and with help wherever we could, I do remember one teacher telling us just how noticeable the difference between children who had help with reading, writing etc and those who had little or no help.

Changing that sort of attitude is difficult at best and possibly close to impossible.

Nor I, but it certainly exists. Without wishing to ‘tar everybody with the same brush’ I have personal experience of one instance of an almost total lack of interest by parents in the very basics of education at a local primary school:

Five years ago it was a small school of about seventy pupils (over 95% white, over 95% English as a first language) and rated ‘excellent’ by OFSTED. One evening, as part of a national effort to improve maths skills, the entire school teaching staff (six including the headmaster) held a meeting so that they could explain to parents what they were teaching in maths and, more importantly, how they were teaching maths to their children (as many of the methods had changed radically since the parents were at school themselves).

A total of seven parents turned-up, including both parents of one child at the school…

…so from a school of seventy children only six families could be bothered to show-up! And, as it happened, certainly not the six families whose children were struggling the most with maths. And all this at a meeting that was partially designed to change attitudes towards mathematics!

And there I think you’ve hit either ‘the nail’ or, ‘a nail’ squarely !

There is more than a strong possiblity, that because many parents were not sufficently encouraged by or, enthused with, State education, they are not able to enthuse their children who will in turn…………..

I really do not know what steps can be taken to change this around.

It isn’t easy for some of those that can afford it but for others full-time private education is simply impossible; even if they took every ‘spare’ penny of their net income it would still be utterly unaffordable.

I agree with your other point; by far the most important contribution that any parent can make towards their child’s education is a positive attitude. Not only towards the benefit of making the most of the state education opportunities that exist but also lavishing time and interest on that education and, where affordable, possibly money too.

Not every parent is academically equipped to help educate their own children but even those that ‘failed’ at their own education, maybe especially those that failed themselves, must make the effort to ‘indoctrinate’ their own children with the value of education.

CD

You’re quite right; it isn’t easy. Again you are right. It isn’t simply a matter of attitude.

But, it emphatically begins with attitude, values and prioritising. If money is tight and education can’t be at the top of your priorities, then settle for what is at the moment, second best, and put your best energies into making State education more successful and therefore more desirable.

Consider also the possibility of providing additional home tutoring at a frequency and cost tailored to your pocket or, taking on that particular job yourself. It is easier than you think.

Depends on your priorities.

Permit me to amend: “determined by ability to re-organise one’s attitudes and priorities”. If, as a parent your priorities are foreign holidays, big screen TVs, drinking, eating out etc. and the expense entailed, then of course you won’t be able to pay school fees – if you were so minded…

No. I have two private schools near me and both charge about £1600 per month (nine term months) for a child entering at year-five (10 years old) rising to about £1900 for the sixth-form years…

…even you must admit that even if a family didn’t go on foreign holidays, didn’t buy a big-screen TV and cut out drinking and eating-out completely there are many, many families that simply couldn’t afford to put a single child through a private education!

And that is without paying any extras such as school trips, school meals, school transport or coping with childcare over the (longer) private school holidays.

No. It is not simply a matter of ‘attitude’.

SF

Your second paragraph: “solely determined by ability to pay the fees.”

Not quite. Permit me to amend: “determined by ability to re-organise one’s attitudes and priorities”. If, as a parent your priorities are foreign holidays, big screen TVs, drinking, eating out etc. and the expense entailed, then of course you won’t be able to pay school fees – if you were so minded.

When you have children – as I’m quite sure you know – sacrifices have to be made. Things have to go by the board. Hard and difficult choices are the order of the day. As I’ve said over and over again, the choices that one makes are the choices that reflect one’s attitude and priorities.

My wife and I scrimped and scraped to pay school fees for my three. It was our choice because we wanted to give the best possible start.

Whether our sense of fairness and egalitarianism agrees or not, it appears to be a fact that private education – at the moment – offers the best possible means of advancement for our children. When I mention education I do not mean just the academic, I mean general behaviour, social attitudes, personal discipline and all the other qualities that go to make the rounded individual an asset for the future.

JG

Careful with your big brush “leftie” comments, I am probably well away from yourself politically, but I would not support dumbing down standards for all so that no-one gets left behind, in most schools there is more than an element of streaming which some would call elitism.

Of course many of us contribute to a division based on relative wealth, you were extolling the virtues of private education over and above state education, that is solely determined by ability to pay the fees.

I like many others tried to ensure that we do the best for our children, I agree that the emphasis on university etc, is not always the best route for everyone and yes for many a more practical course would be more beneficial than studying for degrees etc, how to balance this with ensuring that the opportunities are available to all is the tricky one.

SF

You are very wide of the mark ! I do not think that any of us ‘contribute to a division based on wealth or social class’

If, the division to which you refer exists at all, then it is based on values and attitudes. I’ve referred to this in previous comments, as has Bruce.

Until society places a value upon education, and it becomes clearly understood by a majority that education is the clearest possible pathway to ambition and betterment, and offers the only chance of success in the life of the indivdual, we are doomed to slide further down the scale of international educational ability as recently confirmed by the OECD.

Valuing education means possessing an attitude. An attitude that impels us as parents – to which you have referred – to obtain the best possible schooling for our offspring. If that means valuing academic rigour and – the lefties will hang me from the nearest lampost for this – supporting a spirit of elitism as a necessary means of making ‘education’ a special subject then personally, I’m all in favour.

Our society is at present beset with a contradiction. On the one hand the forces of conservatism have been overwhelmed. We now espouse and encourage, homosexuality, same sex marriage, ‘let it all hang out, unbridled public behaviour’ underage pregnancies etc. The propaganda that supports these activities has been unrelentingly successful and as a consequence, we loom large as a nation in the international league tables that are from time to time published in the media.

On the other hand, education of the nation, on which subject there is little that is more important, the OECD has just had the last word; we as a narion are a dismal failure. Perhaps we need to hire the propagandists mentioned above.

We need a huge re-appraisal of the way we arrange the education of this nation. Not everyone needs or is equipped for the rigours of academia. We do not need millions of young people to go to university especially when to-day, many have to have remedial teaching in literacy and numeracy before they can proceed.

Education can take different forms, especially for young men. The importance, status and usefulness to the nation in acquiring practical skills cannot be overstated. Many youngsters would be better served in following this route. There are signs – apprenticeships – that this route is becoming popular.

Impelled by political motives, there has been much too much time and energy spent at all stages of the educational process in learning how to change society; equal opportunities, fake egalitarianism; feminist considerations etc. The persistent political indoctrination implicit in the educational establishment is an affront and one that is primarily responsible for its present condition.

Right, so what we’re talking about isn’t so much ‘class struggle’ as ‘life struggle’…

…and as you say, every parent wants (well, most parents want) the best for their children; nothing wrong with that of course, it’s just natural human instinct.