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Its a radical idea, but I'd quite like there to be a decent local school for people to send their kids too. No fancy pants special schools, no selection, no businesses buying influence, just a decent school people can send their kids to.
Comprehensive education is socially a really good idea and there is no good reason why it cant work for kids of all abilities.
Erm, no, it was set up because mixing children of different backgrounds is good for them and society. Its nothing to do with PC (do you mind explaining what you mean by that?).
It was set up because those who couldn't get into a grammar school were deemed failures and got a really shoddy education.
It is the pure focus on exams which is the problem, not selection.
I'll ask AGAIN what happens to the kids which no school wants? Do they get to go to school at all?
So its good for people of higher class never to meet poor people? Its good that black and white kids dont mix?
Left-wing dogma? What on Earth are you talking about?
Where have I once said that I'm against grading kids in schools?
Again you use this term political correctness as though it has some meaning, I dont understand what you mean by that at all.
So, if I understand your point kids who pass the 11+ get into grammar schools, and the others just drop out? What will they do?
Thsi is very true - I was put into a mixed ability class for science GCSE and I rarely got taught what I needed in order to get a decent grade. (I got DD and was predicted BB)
I rarely went to school after 14. I went working instead.
I got 3 a, 3 b, 2 c.
The thing I strongly notice about all of this is the assumption that the children are just passive containers to have crap poured into. If you get shoved into a mixed ability class and you fail, it's your responsibility.
You don't need academic ability in the real world, you need to be able to get on with people and earn money. The fact that you earn more money if you know more stuff should be all the help you need to go learn voluntarily.
I know that. And at times, I'd be given some higher tier work to do whilst everyone else was being given foundation work.
School shouldn't be about stuffing students with information, it should teach them the skills needed to lead a life they can be proud of. That can be achieved with so many different ways.
As a teacher's child I know that one of the things growing in popularity over here is induvidually based learning. We all learn differently and the aim of that is to enhance every pupil's performance by varying how things are taught. I don't know exactly how it is comparing to the more 'standard' method of teaching but everything that helps kids figure out how to maximise their performance is a step forward.
In my uni, I'm now benefitting from pair and group projects. Needing to work with very different people who I don't always see eye to eye with is definitely helping me with my social skills. Compromise, let my voice be heard, dealing with sour feelings, making the group function, finding time to meet several people... this is, to me, far more important than changing how the text in the textbook is written and calling it an assignment.
The internet interfered with mine.
But you're right. However, I've never really had to work in a group with so many different people. It was usually my own agegroup, mostly. Now I am and it's very helpful.
Most people could learn everything taught at uni by just reading the books taught, and then some. This all comes down to what kind of skills we think uni should provide. I mean, isn't a degree, in essence, just to tell employers that we have been doing what way say we have been doing the past few years?
I may be wrong here, but:
The 'stronger' students will start to play up if the teacher is going at the pace that the 'weaker' students are. And you're right about them getting bored - I found this in Science GCSE. I'd be given a task to do which would take me about 10 minutes or so and it'd take everyone else about half an hour. (It was the same with maths last week as well, but I just told to carry on to the next question)
I take it you mean that they shouldn't just sit there and take notes, they should go and do some practical work instead?
I was not saying you should have it just one way or the other, if that's what you think I meant. But this should not be all a school does. Personally, taking notes is something I learn absolutely nothing from doing. I spent 14 years being bored at school, because if I read the stuff I felt there wasn't anything the teachers were adding.
Yep. How good are you at getting up in the middle of the night to do something unpleasant for people you don't really give two shits about?
Exams are once a year, once a lifetime, working is every day.
Left-wing nutters kept shouting at her to abolish the 11+ at grammar schools. She adamantly refused, and I applaud her for it. How dare these ghastly Labour socialists play politics with our education system. What have they got against selection, when so many of the bastards benefitted from it themselves? :mad:
the problem lies in primary, if a quarter of children leave primary school still unable to spell and to arithmetic, you cannot expect secondary schools to keep teaching primary school material
it's them that need sorting out, and seriously
you cant expect universities to teach spelling, arthmetic and social skills, those are supposed to be learnt in other environments and outside the classroom
Grammar schools would increaseproblems. The academic records of the comprehensives where i went to school, compared to the grammar schools were attrocious!
The 11+ doesnt determine anything. Any idiot can be coached to pass it. There were a fair few idiots in my old school who shouldnt have been there.
Thats because selection would increase the gap between rich and poor, decrease peoples ability to pull themselves out of poverty, further entrench class and colour divisions....
I'll ask you again, under your proposed system, what happens to the kids that no school wants?