Alright Dave?

The implication from this is that those students who are in state education don’t want to learn?

That certainly is not my experience. Most students I taught were very keen to learn and almost all worked very hard to achieve the best results at AS and A level to reach the universities of their choice or go direct into good jobs or more recently apprenticeships.

Interestingly , it was usually those who came from independent schools at 16 who tended to struggle the most in a state sixth form environment. (Roughly between one quarter and one fifth of the 800 annual intake came from independent schools from a 25 mile radius)
For some this was because they had been so used to having their study time formally structured for them they found it difficult to organise their own independent study that was encouraged as an essential part of the courses, and some because they had been asked to leave their schools through lack of application and continued to stuggle in a new environment.

On the other hand we also had a considerable number who thrived in the less formal environment and confounded their independent teachers lack of expectation by going on to achieve dramatically better results at A level than GCSE
I once had an excruciating interview with one such student, whom I didn’t teach but acted as personal tutor for, and his father. The latter spent the entire time telling his son that he had wasted £100,000 on his education and what was he going to do to pull himself out of the mire he had created again. He went on to get AAB.

Others came from the independent sector because of the much greater range of subjects at AS and A level.
I very much doubt that merely having a right wing view point would have held you back in the state education sector, from my personal experience of school’s and college’s senior management teams. I speak as one who achieved (is that the right term?) middle management level in a large college.

Trekkie,

Your reply is completely at odds with the following:

An internaional league table, very recently published by the OECD, shows that one fifth of fifteen year olds in Britain, lack BASIC maths, reading and science skills compared with one in ten in Vietnam.

Britain is placed 20th behind Poland and Estonia in the ranking of 76 countries for average performance in student achievement tests.

The report goes on to show that in Britain, around 20% of students are performing below a BASIC skills level. In practical terms this eans that they struggle with simple questions such as circling the correct answer when asked: “what happens when muscles are exercised” or, have difficulty doing basic currency conversions.

The report went on to explain the relationship between a countries economic success and educational attainment.

On a different note, in an earlier contribution you mentioned record levels of young people now attending university. My question is; what for ? How are the young and the country benefiting ? Apart from the above report, I know from personal experience that pre entry university school leavers, lack basic skills in literacy and numeracy. Why? What is going on?

Is the massaging of State education exam results, so frequently reported by the media, more widespread than was thought and shaping an opinion of State education that is inconsistent with reality?

At no time did I ever feel that my right of center opinions – which I kept to myself – erected any barriers. My conviction that State educationalists are to a man or woman left of center in their political outlook, is based on my personal experience of such.

I was never a career teacher. I came to teaching late in life, by way of a decision to try and put something back. I quickly knew that I was temperamentally unsuited for a job that was student centered – for the convenience of lazy teachers, and lacking in structure and prescription unlike that found in abundance in private education.

British State education is in a mess. Fortunately, we still have a thriving private education establishment to provide enough expertise to run the country.

Sadly and astonishingly the answer to your last question is that a very large number of people simply fail to comprehend the problem. Whether their heads are in the sand or they are just stupid I don’t know.

While we live in a country that seems to believe in self-advancement over all, that thinks ‘f*ck you Jack, I’m alright’ is some kind of thought-out manifesto rather than the statement of a selfish a*sehole, for no other reason than because someone who went to Eton told us so then I agree. There is indeed precious little sign of individual (or collective) responsibility.

Jesus! This forum gets more like a playground every day…

…what with all the name-calling and misunderstanding of the realities of government economics!

Read this report from the BBC website (which I’m sure is unbiased enough for everybody):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32841016

Now, given that the United Kingdom is borrowing nearly nine billion pounds per month, and adding it to the massive debt mountain, and the last time the government got through a year without borrowing any money, let alone had any decent surplus, is a distant memory…

…can anybody see why that may be a problem going forward? :rolleyes:

So, I went to private education, among students who were there because they actually wanted to learn.

The implication from this is that those students who are in state education don’t want to learn?

That certainly is not my experience. Most students I taught were very keen to learn and almost all worked very hard to achieve the best results at AS and A level to reach the universities of their choice or go direct into good jobs or more recently apprenticeships.

Interestingly , it was usually those who came from independent schools at 16 who tended to struggle the most in a state sixth form environment. (Roughly between one quarter and one fifth of the 800 annual intake came from independent schools from a 25 mile radius)
For some this was because they had been so used to having their study time formally structured for them they found it difficult to organise their own independent study that was encouraged as an essential part of the courses, and some because they had been asked to leave their schools through lack of application and continued to stuggle in a new environment.

On the other hand we also had a considerable number who thrived in the less formal environment and confounded their independent teachers lack of expectation by going on to achieve dramatically better results at A level than GCSE
I once had an excruciating interview with one such student, whom I didn’t teach but acted as personal tutor for, and his father. The latter spent the entire time telling his son that he had wasted £100,000 on his education and what was he going to do to pull himself out of the mire he had created again. He went on to get AAB.

Others came from the independent sector because of the much greater range of subjects at AS and A level.
I very much doubt that merely having a right wing view point would have held you back in the state education sector, from my personal experience of school’s and college’s senior management teams. I speak as one who achieved (is that the right term?) middle management level in a large college.

So that’s a no then Beermat?;)

While we live in a country that seems to believe in self-advancement over all, that thinks ‘f*ck you Jack, I’m alright’ is some kind of thought-out manifesto rather than the statement of a selfish a*sehole, for no other reason than because someone who went to Eton told us so then I agree. There is indeed precious little sign of individual (or collective) responsibility.

Most ‘actions’ taken that lead to the ‘greater good’ are good actions. The ‘right of individual self determination’. Not sure what you mean by that. I don’t believe or accept any rights unless they are balanced by responsibilities.

And there is precious little sign of those.

That’s a good argument that unfortunately doesn’t stand up but, full marks anyway. One way of determining if such and such an action is acceptable is by asking the question: Is it for the greater good ? In respect to our debate the answer is quite clearly, no.

It is no, because of numbers. Numbers that are out of control. Numbers that cannot adequately and respectably be housed, educated and obtain satisfactory healthcare; numbers so excessive, that they cannot be reconciled to welfare opportunites never mind employment.

The Office for National Statistics has just revealed that net migration to this country in 2014 was 318,000. That is over 100,000 more than the previous year. To the most diehard supporter of uncontrolled or controlled immigration, those numbers are unsustainable.

It is further estimated that there up to 600,000 illegal immigrants living in Britain.

So the state should take action to restrict individual ‘freedom to aspire’ in the name of a greater good?

In what way does my argument not stand up?

And following snafu’s ‘logic’ – if I have not personally seen it or suffered it – then it simply does not exist or happen LOL

My job and preferences keep me ‘in the countryside’ – so therefore I rarely venture into the cities/large towns – if I go on holiday it is normally to somewhere even more remote – I am afraid that I have to agree with Linc7 and that snafu really has no idea about the realities of life in certain areas !

It is better to learn than lecture ! – please stop giving us the ‘party line’ snafu – one of the things which is impossible to teach is common sense ! – sadly lacking in many areas and in modern life the bizarre has become the norm ; )

SNAFU. Having read your 103 2nd paragraph from the end it’s bleedin obvious you havn;t a clue what your on about. If indeed, which I doubt you live where you say you do, get you 6 over here, and I will take you walkies around the places I mentioned. Then you will have a better idea of what I mean, before shouting, RACISM.
Jim.
Lincoln .7

Just an observation

Before the election, UKIP were virtually the only party to talk about immigration.
With everyone jumping on the bandwagon to call Farage a racist.

Since the election, the media are now broaching the subject in far more depth than they did before.
With some of the pundits doing a 180 on their views.

Even more so after today’s figures.

Do you mean left wing, or just left of your own position?
If left wing, do you have real evidence that they then attempted to push that ideology directly or are you just assuming that they were not professional enough to keep their politics out of their work?

If you did ever have clear evidence of such politicising then I would be the first to condemn the practice, whatever their political persuasion.

I never discussed my perspective with students. As I taught a technical subject, there was no part of the any of the specifications that I taught that could be ‘twisted’ to express a particular view anyway. Nor did I ever discuss ideology with colleagues. I would expect if any of them were asked how I voted, no one would be sure (although some may have guessed who I didn’t vote for on 23rd November 1990)
I reiterate a point I have made a number of times. I have never seen any evidence of teachers attempting to influence their students in a political way, either directly or indirectly through omission.
I would agree that there are a very small minority of teachers who are nearing the end of their careers who are counting down the days rather than concentrating developing new initiatives and enthusiasm for the work with students.

Trekkie,

I’m not talking about teachers trying to influence me or anyone else for that matter as to their political beliefs. No one to my knowledge was evangelising their political stance. Whether it was just my particular ‘luck’ or the particular ‘college’ that I attended, with possibly just one exception, all the staff with whom I came into contact were left wing with a varying degree of intensity.

But I’m not really discussing personal issues. The bit that interests me is why the State educational establishment appears to be so firmly possessed of left wing ideology ? Is it because those beliefs are possibly the only way to gain advancement thru’ their profession ? I do not know. It is possible, I suppose.

How did I know that the staff were predominantly left wing ? My clear understanding of items of their conversation. Their constant reference to left wing educationalists chiefly responsible for trying to turn would be teachers into philosophers rather developing the talent of communication.

With my right of center view of the world there was no way on this Earth that I would ever prosper in that environment. So, I went to private education, among students who were there because they actually wanted to learn.

Snafu

Your rebuttal stands up only if some notion of planning was required and applied. It wasn’t. All the Chuckle Bros (aka Blair/Brown) had to do, having decided that uncontrolled immigration was just what we needed, was to stand back open the borders, let it be known that all were welcome – the news spread faster than a whore’s legs open – and issue National Insurance numbers and British passports as fast as they could be printed.

Planning? I don’t think it mattered.

To give traffic problems as a example of immigration problems rather undermines your position I think.

I quite clearly said I’m not blaming immigration. I’m blaming our country being overcrowded, and the only method we have of slowing the unsustainable increases in population is to put the brakes on immigration. Unless you have another suggestion? (As I have made clear, I will not accept building ANYTHING on the green belt as a suitable answer)

Why if the EU is the root cause of all the ill’s in British society as another post would (almost) have it do all the other EU countries seemingly suffer so little in comparison?

It is the root cause of some of our problems, not all of them. And a visit to Paris or Berlin will show you that they are suffering from the side effects of mass immigration. When I was in Paris 10 years ago there were large tented migrant camps in the city center, I can’t imagine that situation has improved. And just look at the state of poor Calais. 🙁

Everyone is so preoccupied with human rights, what happened to our responsibilities? Making sure that future generations of Britons don’t live in an overcrowded mess. ensuring they still had some countryside left? Not leaving the nation as a polluted bog.

And pollution will always be relative to population size, no matter how green we become.

John.. yeah, a stroppy idealist, you got me there.

The immigration debate is interesting from a political viewpoint, in that closing borders and ending economic migrancy is an act of state control on behalf of the collective that takes away the right of individual self-determination, the chance to make good and do well in the Thatcherite mould – albeit from ‘foreigners’. In that respect it is far from the free-market neo-liberalism espoused by the nu-right, and closer to the state-interventionist controlled market politics of the old left!

That’s a good argument that unfortunately doesn’t stand up but, full marks anyway. One way of determining if such and such an action is acceptable is by asking the question: Is it for the greater good ? In respect to our debate the answer is quite clearly, no.

It is no, because of numbers. Numbers that are out of control. Numbers that cannot adequately and respectably be housed, educated and obtain satisfactory healthcare; numbers so excessive, that they cannot be reconciled to welfare opportunites never mind employment.

The Office for National Statistics has just revealed that net migration to this country in 2014 was 318,000. That is over 100,000 more than the previous year. To the most diehard supporter of uncontrolled or controlled immigration, those numbers are unsustainable.

It is further estimated that there up to 600,000 illegal immigrants living in Britain.

…they would ultimately create that socialist Shangri La; a client state.

If nothing else I think you give these folk far too much credit for a) being able to come up with such a plan and b) being in any way competent to execute it.

Not saying that their actions were not and are not stupid and may have had the effect you describe, but to claim that they were executed as part of some dastardly plot is laughable, almost as much as any British politician since 1945! These fools have time and time again proven they are not capable of planning in any form at all really and certainly not beyond the next election event. As for their comprehension of the effect of their policies, medium and long term, they would not have the faintest clue where to begin. Once upon a time British engineering and science based work was world beating, it still is in many cases, in spite of the disgraceful lack of understanding and appreciation those in politics have for the sector. Financial services and quick bucks are the darling of the politicians despite the fact that the sector has shown, repeatedly, that it is a mirage with its foundations in sand. It’s all short termism, so the idea that any of these idiots had or have a master plan for anything is just beyond the realm of reality.

Without quoting the comments, a few responses.
To give traffic problems as a example of immigration problems rather undermines your position I think.
Why if the EU is the root cause of all the ill’s in British society as another post would (almost) have it do all the other EU countries seemingly suffer so little in comparison?
The logical conclusion is one of these; 1) the ill’s in Britain are rather over exaggerated 2) other countries have managed integration better resulting in less areas of tension 3) the UK has allowed the situation to develop itself with no influence from Europe.
Besides which I fail to see how Afghan immigrants have anything to do with the EU!
Charlie makes a good point, in that it is not the EU that is at fault it is our own British Government. (Sadly soon to be yours rather than mine because the last election was the last the British Administration will allow me to vote in as I will have been abroad for over 15 years by the time of the next one.)
As for the comments concerning the changing face of society, may I introduce you to The World. This has been a fact of human existence forever and will continue to be forever.
Just because you were born in a white faced society does not mean there is some divine gift that will maintain that status quo, you may not like it but hey ho.
I’m sure certain non whites weren’t best pleased when whites arrived and a few years later had taken ownership. Tough titty I think encapsulates the appropriate level of concern. Please note I’m in no way advocating that the values of a society should be cast aside, particularly in favour of some medieval nutjob stupidity, simply that you cannot expect to exist in a state that does not change.
As for believing all immigration is good, well no far from it. As I’ve stated elsewhere I firmly believe that the poor folk on the boats in the Med should be forcibly returned whence they came. Tough titty applies again.
Especially for bazv, the Luxembourg population is made up of something like 42% immigrants. You’d hate it 🙂

A late thought: Those who make statements that the (white) population of a particular area will soon be a minority may not think of themselves as racist and may bear no ill will towards individual non whites but sadly demonstrate that they are indeed institutionally racist by making such comments. It is not “PC” or similar to call that out it is simple truth. Claiming that a “white” person has more “right” to live someplace than a non white is a racist position. I don’t care whether somebodies family has lived somewhere for centuries if somebody else comes ago with the cash to buy the place it’s simply free market capitalism at work. People have a choice not to sell up. Alternatively if people have chosen to move to a new development and have met all the criteria for permanent residence in the UK, it is also free market capitalism in play if they can afford to buy and others can not.

An even later thought, although it was one of my first upon returning to the thread, I just forgot about it in writing the above…:
I asked for people to give examples where they themselves have suffered hardship, not one person has supplied such an anecdote.

How exactly does the reality differ from the perception?

Why are there warning signs of undercover police operating on the London underground in Romanian? Why do areas like Chapeltown in Leeds, Tower Hamlets etc resemble Kabul? Or go to Boston highstreet and not hear a single word of English being spoken? Have you been to a Police station, Hospital etc recently? How much are we spending on translation services?
.

In your list of Boston, where 1in 5 are foreigners, you can add Wisbech, Cambs, and Holbeach, Lincs. Those living in these town, will soon be in an ethnic minority in the towns where they have lived all their lives. As regards “Translators” Many years ago, when I arrested a man of eastern origin, he, “No speak English” (Now the norm, as I have been told) a translator, who had to translate the questions I asked the prisoner, cost my Force £500.00. Now, if those who commit minor offences, are “Let go” as it would cost so much. Food for thouught, isnt it?.
Jim.
Lincoln .7

But, I did not meet anyone whose conversation did not reveal them as left wing. Sorry. That’s the way it was.

Do you mean left wing, or just left of your own position?
If left wing, do you have real evidence that they then attempted to push that ideology directly or are you just assuming that they were not professional enough to keep their politics out of their work?

If you did ever have clear evidence of such politicising then I would be the first to condemn the practice, whatever their political persuasion.

I never discussed my perspective with students. As I taught a technical subject, there was no part of the any of the specifications that I taught that could be ‘twisted’ to express a particular view anyway. Nor did I ever discuss ideology with colleagues. I would expect if any of them were asked how I voted, no one would be sure (although some may have guessed who I didn’t vote for on 23rd November 1990)
I reiterate a point I have made a number of times. I have never seen any evidence of teachers attempting to influence their students in a political way, either directly or indirectly through omission.
I would agree that there are a very small minority of teachers who are nearing the end of their careers who are counting down the days rather than concentrating developing new initiatives and enthusiasm for the work with students.

John.. yeah, a stroppy idealist, you got me there.

The immigration debate is interesting from a political viewpoint, in that closing borders and ending economic migrancy is an act of state control on behalf of the collective that takes away the right of individual self-determination, the chance to make good and do well in the Thatcherite mould – albeit from ‘foreigners’. In that respect it is far from the free-market neo-liberalism espoused by the nu-right, and closer to the state-interventionist controlled market politics of the old left!