by TFP » Mon Mar 13, 2017 12:19 pm
Scottov wrote:I read an interesting article on this subject not so long ago, and I'm going to reproduce some of its soaring rhetoric as it chimed with me. it may not ring so true with others, but it's there to digest as you will
"To borrow an analogy from Allison Pearson of the Daily Telegraph, young people capable of elite sports deserve an education commensurate with their ability, and this is usually best done when they are with other elite sportsmen and women. No one argues with this; the whole country applauds the success this produces. Why do we not do the same with those who are academically interested and gifted? They are both elements of human flourishing; knowledge and play are both, to use the language of John Finnis, “basic” or fundamental or intrinsic goods. They are both worth pursuing and dedicating oneself to. They are both elements in a civil society, both elements of a common good.
Some people soar in the realm of ideas; others do not. Why should there not be establishments in which these people can soar with the least hindrance and the most encouragement? A flourishing society would surely have a large variety of educational possibilities, and it is not for want of money that grammar schools are forbidden. Why should they not be part of a genuinely pluralist vision of society in which there are many different ways for people to flourish?
Grammar schools are not a panacea, but they are not a bogeyman either. They cater very well for the academically motivated; they give opportunities for those who might not have so many; and if they were socially divisive, why has social mobility now declined? Some people suggested that availability of contraception would reduce abortion; yet the opposite has happened. Some people suggested that the number of grammar schools be reduced and social mobility and cohesion will be improved. The opposite has happened. There must be something wrong with the logic here too.
We cannot all be Olympians academically, but some can, and the comprehensive system will and does only produce these if there is, ironically, clear selection within it. Why should there not also be grammar schools to enhance this possibility further?
Yeah, I’d disagree with almost all of that, fairly standard mindless Telegraph propaganda.
A few points, in no particular order:
a) A first advantage of setting within a school over the 11+ - it’s done on the basis of observation over the whole year of the level of kids with an average age of 12, & strongly informed in particular by exams taken by kids with an average age of 12.5. The 11+ turns on a single exam taken by kids with an average age of 10.5.
b) A second advantage of setting – although movement between GS & modern doesn’t *never* happen, & movement between comprehensive sets isn’t an *everyday* occurrence, the latter is vastly, vastly easier & more common, even though the cutoff is much more precise, being based on much better information [see pts [a] & [c]].
c) A third advantage of setting - end of year exams in a comprehensive are sat by [all, without exception] pupils who’ve had largely the same education over the last 12 months, unlike grammar exams, where, with strictly rationed GS places, private tutors and/or prep will always be the norm for the rich, meaning [even to the fairly limited extent that poorer parents are aware enough to register their kids for the 11+] that you’ve got kids going in with really wildly differing levels of preparedness, making the test more or less one of parental means only.
d) The sport analogy is a really bad one because the point there is that there’s not enough money for, or point in, more than a tiny handful of people to engage in the really intensive elite training [since an average person will, with the best will in the world, never be able to go the olympics]. The key point isn’t so much the elite all being grouped together, rather it’s that the training doesn’t make sense for anyone who’s outside the elite. 20 hours of sports training every week would be worse than useless for someone who’s even well above average, it’s only got any chance of paying off for the truly gifted. This isn’t the case at all with modern schools. Unfair as selection may have been, the logic for GGs was a lot better & more coherent back in the 60s or 70s, when O levels & especially A levels were set at a level of difficulty that, with the best will in the world, wasn’t for everybody, O levels were aimed at academically maybe the top 20-25% of the population, A levels much less than that. That level of difficulty was [possibly] appropriate for the immediate post-war economy, where realistically only a very small proportion of the population would go on to do work that could be even loosely termed ‘cognitively challenging’. But we don’t have anything like that system of exams now, and without it just bringing back GSs is segregation as pretty much an end in itself.
e) The claim that GSs ever promote or promoted social mobility is questionable at best. Three of the four PMs up to & including Thatcher went to GSs, PM is obviously a really high profile job & this [alongside daft propaganda such as the article quoted here obviously] helped skew perceptions somewhat, e.g. looking at only one other measure, Oxford took in 34% of its intake from the state sector in 1961, in 2016 the figure was 59% (
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37250916). The evidence from the few places where the system’s in place now is highly dubious, e.g. see
https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/8469.
Lastly though, GSs are almost beyond doubt a bad thing overall but it's incredibly offensive to compare them with something as genuinely heinous as apartheid.
[quote="Scottov"]I read an interesting article on this subject not so long ago, and I'm going to reproduce some of its soaring rhetoric as it chimed with me. it may not ring so true with others, but it's there to digest as you will
"[i]To borrow an analogy from Allison Pearson of the Daily Telegraph, young people capable of elite sports deserve an education commensurate with their ability, and this is usually best done when they are with other elite sportsmen and women. No one argues with this; the whole country applauds the success this produces. Why do we not do the same with those who are academically interested and gifted? They are both elements of human flourishing; knowledge and play are both, to use the language of John Finnis, “basic” or fundamental or intrinsic goods. They are both worth pursuing and dedicating oneself to. They are both elements in a civil society, both elements of a common good.
Some people soar in the realm of ideas; others do not. Why should there not be establishments in which these people can soar with the least hindrance and the most encouragement? A flourishing society would surely have a large variety of educational possibilities, and it is not for want of money that grammar schools are forbidden. Why should they not be part of a genuinely pluralist vision of society in which there are many different ways for people to flourish?
Grammar schools are not a panacea, but they are not a bogeyman either. They cater very well for the academically motivated; they give opportunities for those who might not have so many; and if they were socially divisive, why has social mobility now declined? Some people suggested that availability of contraception would reduce abortion; yet the opposite has happened. Some people suggested that the number of grammar schools be reduced and social mobility and cohesion will be improved. The opposite has happened. There must be something wrong with the logic here too.
We cannot all be Olympians academically, but some can, and the comprehensive system will and does only produce these if there is, ironically, clear selection within it. Why should there not also be grammar schools to enhance this possibility further?[/i][/quote]
Yeah, I’d disagree with almost all of that, fairly standard mindless Telegraph propaganda.
A few points, in no particular order:
a) A first advantage of setting within a school over the 11+ - it’s done on the basis of observation over the whole year of the level of kids with an average age of 12, & strongly informed in particular by exams taken by kids with an average age of 12.5. The 11+ turns on a single exam taken by kids with an average age of 10.5.
b) A second advantage of setting – although movement between GS & modern doesn’t *never* happen, & movement between comprehensive sets isn’t an *everyday* occurrence, the latter is vastly, vastly easier & more common, even though the cutoff is much more precise, being based on much better information [see pts [a] & [c]].
c) A third advantage of setting - end of year exams in a comprehensive are sat by [all, without exception] pupils who’ve had largely the same education over the last 12 months, unlike grammar exams, where, with strictly rationed GS places, private tutors and/or prep will always be the norm for the rich, meaning [even to the fairly limited extent that poorer parents are aware enough to register their kids for the 11+] that you’ve got kids going in with really wildly differing levels of preparedness, making the test more or less one of parental means only.
d) The sport analogy is a really bad one because the point there is that there’s not enough money for, or point in, more than a tiny handful of people to engage in the really intensive elite training [since an average person will, with the best will in the world, never be able to go the olympics]. The key point isn’t so much the elite all being grouped together, rather it’s that the training doesn’t make sense for anyone who’s outside the elite. 20 hours of sports training every week would be worse than useless for someone who’s even well above average, it’s only got any chance of paying off for the truly gifted. This isn’t the case at all with modern schools. Unfair as selection may have been, the logic for GGs was a lot better & more coherent back in the 60s or 70s, when O levels & especially A levels were set at a level of difficulty that, with the best will in the world, wasn’t for everybody, O levels were aimed at academically maybe the top 20-25% of the population, A levels much less than that. That level of difficulty was [possibly] appropriate for the immediate post-war economy, where realistically only a very small proportion of the population would go on to do work that could be even loosely termed ‘cognitively challenging’. But we don’t have anything like that system of exams now, and without it just bringing back GSs is segregation as pretty much an end in itself.
e) The claim that GSs ever promote or promoted social mobility is questionable at best. Three of the four PMs up to & including Thatcher went to GSs, PM is obviously a really high profile job & this [alongside daft propaganda such as the article quoted here obviously] helped skew perceptions somewhat, e.g. looking at only one other measure, Oxford took in 34% of its intake from the state sector in 1961, in 2016 the figure was 59% (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37250916). The evidence from the few places where the system’s in place now is highly dubious, e.g. see https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/8469.
Lastly though, GSs are almost beyond doubt a bad thing overall but it's incredibly offensive to compare them with something as genuinely heinous as apartheid.