http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2009/04/evil-poor.html

Not terribly recent but nothing much has changed …

Something which I perhaps ought to have included in my last submission, which included a reference to Summerhill and the fundie Christian academies, is that neither tolerate loutish behaviour or bullying. They’re very different places but both are safe environments for non-violent children.

MJW ought to contribute more to this thread.

I wonder whether he is a parent of school-aged children. If so, some fearlessly truthful personal disclosures are in order.

As for me, my own two children went to Irish State secondary school in Drumkeerin, County Leitrim. Both are now in their twenties, literate and numerate. One is an instructor of outdoor pursuits, the other is currently doing an MA in International Entrepreneurial Management, which sounds like something dreamed up by the Medellin Cartel.

That fictional but drawn-from-life pair, Jeremy and Jocasta, may well have parents who really have to scrimp and save and forgo foreign hols and all sorts of nice treats to afford a better education for their offspring than the local state sector school offers, assuming that it’s awful.

Not all state sector schools in Britain are awful, of course, but enough are ghastly enough to act merely as Stations of the Cross for those with enough get-up-and-go to get up and leave:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/7033452/Teaching-Its-a-job-for-a-saint.html

I’m a weeny bit surprised that the homeschoolers and Summerhillbillies haven’t entered this debate. I have a lot of time for Summerhill and similar heroic endeavours but I’m realistic enough to accept that schooling which is – let’s be honest – appropriate for the creative and neurotic children [or grandchildren] of the well-off cannot be considered as a model for the whole country.

Ditto those Blair-beloved silly Fundamentalist Christian Academies in Gateshead and so on; while they may – it is alleged – insist on telling the nippers in their classrooms that an All-Caring God let his Only Son Die For Our Sins because a gullible woman ate a Magic Fruit after being tricked by a Talking Reptile, those nippers leave school literate and numerate.

But that, like Dave’s very silly point about educational apartheid, brings us to the harsh fact that education is not a cheap pair of slacks in the January Sales: one size does NOT fit all.

“So someone with whom JOHNNO disagrees deserves to be called ‘right wing scum’”

No there are many on the left who I disagree with but at least I know when debating with them they broadly share the same values.

Right wing is an accurate description, the scum bit refers to the far right politics espoused, which coming from the left I find obnoxious. Scum is an adjective I am happy to use. However I didn’t say anything about sweeping ‘dissent’ away, I was just lamenting the fact that this site is fast becoming a talking shop for fascists, racists and ignorant morons.

NuLab has done almost everything in its power to destroy the educational hopes of literally millions of working-class parents – the rich can always look after themselves – and the bloody Tories have, in practice, proved themselves to be no better at all.

Even if all you said on some simplistic level were true it still doesn’t get to the heart of the problem. How does society utilise the talents of it’s people most effectively. Does it do it by ‘elitist’ education. I.E. restricting quality education to those able to afford it, or does it try to foster as much talent as possible to best capture and invest in the brightest students and raise the general level of education.

The Tories want the ‘elitist’ system and the New Labour want the ‘meritocracy’.

Personally I think New Labour have the superior strategy out of the 2.

Internationally you only have to compare the education standards of Haiti and Cuba to see where ‘elitism’ can lead and to see the folly of your ‘bad’ parent red herring.

P.S. Wasn’t this once a blog for socialists to thrash out issues? Where did all the right wing scum come from?

Some people don’t care for their kids education and this results in low aspiration and achievement (this is the real problem), some people do. Some people who do care have the resources to put behind a better education, be it a private school, a home in a better neighbourhood, a few hours a week private tutoring. They’re not trying to get away from the poor, they’re trying to get away from the people who don’t care for education. Some people do care for education, but don’t have resources, they have to make do with encouraging their kids and fostering a culture of achievement and aspiration, and just hope that those who don’t care for education don’t drag them down too much.

Having better teachers isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t deal with the taboo of how to deal with the bad parents who don’t give a fuck about their kids education and hand that attitude on to their kids. It would be wicked and mendacious to set up the straw man that this is because these people are poor, even poor people are able to care about and encourage their kids, so they shouldn’t be tarred as bad parents for the sake of a taboo. By the same token trying to get those who do care for their kids education to take the weight for those who don’t cannot be right, they’ve got enough on their plates being good parents to their own kids, why should they have responsibility for others’ shitty parenting imposed on them if the shitty parents get to opt out of that responsibility?