Tim Worstall

Eddukashun Today

Oh my, yes, this is a strong argument indeed:

A quarter of teenagers are leaving school with practically nothing to
show for 11 years of compulsory education, a report discloses today.

Obviously, clearly, an argument in favour of our current highly centralized and State directed education system. Just a little tinkering at the edges is all that’s required, eh? One or two more directives on how children should be taught to read, a little more concern about self-realization and Britishness and everything will be fine, don’t you think?

In

8 responses

  1. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    I’m sure that I must have irritated many bloggers for years by often posting this quote from chapter 7 of George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (1937):
    “The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a ‘job’ should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly.”
    http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/6.html
    As the result of Bob Cassen’s research project and others, it’s now indisputably clear that in some localities not much has changed in laddish values for the last 70 something years.
    “Last year [2004], a report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) revealed that Britain came seventh from bottom in a league table of staying-on rates [in education] for 19 countries. Only Mexico and Turkey had significantly lower rates of participation for this age group. Italy, New Zealand, Portugal and Slovakia have marginally lower rates.”
    http://education.guardian.co.uk/gcses/story/0,16086,1555547,00.html
    Maybe it’s not altogether irrational:
    “The average Premiership footballer earns a basic salary of £676,000, according to a survey published today [April 2006].
    “The survey, conducted by The Independent in conjunction with players’ union PFA, puts the average top flight player on £13,000 a week – but that figure rises by anything between 60 and 100% when bonuses are factored in. . ”
    http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,1751542,00.html

    Reply
  2. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    No, I’ve never seen you post that before.

    Reply
  3. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    “No, I’ve never seen you post that before.”
    For starters, try:
    http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2006/08/deepak_lals_rev.html
    http://timworstall.typepad.com/timworstall/2006/06/scottish_stereo.html

    Reply
  4. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    My apologies. Well seeing that repeated on Tim Worstall’s site beats comment spam, that’s for sure.

    Reply
  5. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    The brutal fact is that low schooling attainment by “poor white boys” has been an issue of continuing concern on the part of several parties as these links to previous reports on the web demonstrate:
    “An ethnic breakdown of this year’s GCSE results in England shows that ‘black African’ girls are scoring higher grades than ‘white British’ boys.”
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3517171.stm
    “The research says: ‘One striking fact is that poor white students are the lowest performing of all groups at age 16, showing a substantial deterioration in their relative scores through secondary school.’”
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/5051850.stm
    “White British boys from poor families perform worse at GCSE than almost any other racial group. Official figures show that only 24% of those entitled to free school meals gained five or more good GCSEs last year, compared with 65% of the poorest Chinese boys and 48% of poor Indian and Bangladeshi boys.”
    http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mike_ion/2007/01/the_bnp_and_the_white_boys.html
    The Economist report of 26 October 2006 on: The forgotten underclass:
    “Last year white teenagers entitled to free school meals—the poorest tenth—did worse in crucial GCSE examinations than equally poor members of any other ethnic or racial group (see chart). In the borough of Barking and Dagenham, the contrast is sharper still. Just 32% of all white children there got five “good” GCSEs last year, compared with 39% of blacks and 52% of Asians. In Leicester, just 24% of whites got five decent GCSEs”
    http://www.economist.com/research/backgrounders/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8089315
    I know from my own comment archives that I’ve been posting that same quote from Orwell in online comments to schooling debates for nearly 10 years. In some place, there’s been no change in laddish values for at least 70+ years – whereas the attainment of girls in school leaving exams overtook that of boys in the early 1990s and the gap has gone on widening since albeit it at a diminishing rate. “And last year (2006), 57% of first degree graduates were women.”
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6314055.stm
    Sadly, it wasn’t like that when I was an undergrad – girls at uni were scarce then.

    Reply
  6. Mark Wadsworth Avatar
    Mark Wadsworth

    It’s a good quote, Bob B. I have seen it before but so what?
    Tim, Nulab don’t do “tinkering at the edges”, they do “radical shake-ups”.

    Reply
  7. ad Avatar
    ad

    A quarter of teenagers are leaving school with practically nothing to show for 11 years of compulsory education, a report discloses today.
    Clearly then, they should be kept in school for 13 years.
    And then 15 years. And then…

    Reply
  8. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    “And then 15 years. And then… ”
    The trouble is that is increasingly likely to happen except that the “school” will be inside prison. The brute fact is that the number of unkilled manual jobs is falling and that decline on trend is set to continue.

    Reply

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