AIBU to think that Toby Young is...

[LatteLady]

a total twerp? Honestly, what sort of response did he expect when he suggested that Yr 9 late readers should be reading Alice in Wonderland aloud rather than a novel which had captured their imagination and kept a group of 20+ focused and engaged?

What is so sad is that he will not listen to people's views unless they totally chime with his! Aaaaaaaaaargh!

The man is a smug middle class tosspot.

His free school will be for those type who want to go private but feel they cant for social reasons.

One or two kids from a council estate will attend as a form of window dressing.

Smug git

Mollie
thx for the link

don't understand why (in the article) it says it is ironic that the possible site is 3 miles from where Young lives

does it mean his kids wouldn't be eligible for the entrance lottery?

From the programme last night it looks like that site is now a no-go and they have picked a new site the location of which is secret.
Personally, I thought the best moment in the programme was when those teenagers tried to explain to him how his proposed curriculum - compulsory Latin and Victorian children's fiction - would not be practical.
Unlike Toby Young, I did study Latin at school and, in fact, have run an after-school Latin club for a number of years, but I would never make the absurd and ignorant claims for it that he was espousing.
I also liked the way the cameraperson managed to get the (numerous) wine bottles in shot at every meeting they filmed.

First Lady - what were his 'absurd and ignorant' claims? Curious. Missed the programme.

He claimed that compulsory latin for the first three years of senior school would teach the children to think logically and would enable them to learn absolutely anything else. But if this is true, surely it would be true of any pure logic subject - like maths, for example. I do remember my father (who was a maths teacher) telling me that it was important to learn maths because it taught one the skill of working logically through a problem to the right answer, and this was a good skill to have in life, even if you never worked out another simultaneous equation in your life.

He just really overstated the case for learning Latin, and that's not helpful. He told the pupuls that if you could master the basics of Latin, you could master anything because it teaches you how to think both logically and intuitively and after that you can easily master any subject and "the world is your oyster". Of course Latin helps with logic, just as maths does, but saying that learning the basics will confer instant intellectual superiority on you is just nonsense.

MollieO- thank you so much for that link...
"Cosmo Lush"- the name says it all!

I love the stockbroker bleating about how he was privately educated, but he just can't afford it for his children, so he obviously needs Toby School to provide for him.
I wonder how much his house cost then?

BBC2 last night. It's on Iplayer.

I is well posh. I did Latin for five years (and some Ancient Greek). I have an O'Level in it.

It helped me enormously when I went to Cambridge, because I could more or less understand most of the honorary degree speeches, as well as the stuff the Parelector says when you graduate, aka "Presento tibi, Pro Vice Chancellor, hic studenta qui studiat very hard per degree course in Facultatia Educationa and learnt multa disciplinia" - that kind of thing.

I am also terribly proud of being able to understand terms bandied about, such as "In statu pupillari" and so on.

I can read stuff on graves.

I can read newspapers in Spanish and Italian, even though I never really learnt those languages. I can understand medical terms fairly easily.

I think it makes me appear posh, cultured and part of a classical education mafia. Do I think it is an automatic ticket to logical thinking and career success? No, because my mate who studied it at Cambridge ended up in a dead end job in a wine shop she hated. Do I think it's worth teaching school? It's part of our heritage, so it makes sense for kids to have some acquaintance with it, but it ain't going to reconfigure your brain any time soon, seriously. If you want that, you're probably better off learning to play a musical instrument, evidence suggests.

The Tobemeister needs to read a few books on Education, methinks, and not polemical ones his mates have written either.

He can afford private school and each tax payers £ spent on this school is money that could be spent on people who are in need of support from the state.

There are many people out there better equipped to set up a school than him and would be doing it for the correct reasons, not just to educate their own spoiled brats kids for free. Imagine a school that just churned out idiots like Young...

Alice in Wonderland for 14 yr olds - come on. Maybe the Walt Disney film for when they'd had a smoke

In the primary school where I run my Latin Club (using the excellent cartoon-based Minimus scheme which Toby would undoubtedly turn up his nose at), about 10 children out of the 120 in Year 5 and 6 usually join. They come because they are interested and I do it because I think it is important that children who ARE interested have the opportunity to learn Latin. Forcing it on the uninterested would be absurd.

My teenage son was recently fascinated by listening to an audiobook of Alice in Wonderland in the car. He was amazed by the drugs in it so I wouldn't dismiss it, but I wouldn't read it to a class of 13 year olds. Our English teacher read us Equus at that age, a much cooler book for teenagers with debates on swearing in books etc.
I find it bizarre that he's so fond of latin never having done it. When he said he hadn't done it at school I presumed he's done an adult ed course.

I think free schools are fine if they get the same allocation per pupil as state schools, and have a purely catchment area intake. I doubt many would survive with these policies though.
I wouldn't want a would be dictator like Young in charge of 1 though.

I do think state schools need to exclude persistent troublemakers though and have them educated specially not just rotate around the comps disrupting 1 load of kids after another.

I used to be LGP, Dinosaur, if that rings any bells!

Isn't 'Sapere Aude' (Toby School motto) usually translated as 'Dare to be wise' rather than 'Dare to know'? Subtle but important difference.

It can be translated either way.
Scire means to know, in the sense to know something factual, whereas sapere implies knowledge in the sense of wisdom or understanding.

mssoui: How do we know what these people can and can't afford?

Avril: what concepts of Bad Science didn't he grasp? I've had a look at the piece and he seems pretty sympathetic to BG's viewpoint (although, as you point out earlier, not that wise to take chicken-poxy child to a playground where there are potentially lots of pregnant women).

I haven't seen the programme yet - am planning to watch it this evening - but I do take my hat off to people who are trying to improve schooling in their area. I don't care if they are called Toby and Cosmo or Barry and Wayne. It takes tremendous commitment to get this sort of project off the ground and I don't think we can sneer just because they might or might not teach Latin to the students. I don't think we can dismiss him as some sort of Classics dilletante.

The fact that the steering group is largely middle class means that the members probably have the confidence and the know-how to negotiate what must be a obstacle-strewn route. But, at the moment, it seems entrance will be by lottery and I can't see how that discriminates against children from a particular background - surely it means that, as long as a representative section of society apply, then a fairly representative section should be selected?

As for Toby Young being a twerp, well, I think he answered that in How to Lose Friends and Alienate people .

lalalonglegs perhaps I was wrong to assume that, just because he has a certain lifestyle I associate with being affluent enough to afford public school, such as living in a large house in an affluent area of London, writing prolifically as a journalist and author in different arenas, appearing on the radio and on television and coming from a wealthy background, he can afford public school. I don't think I was.

His father, a sociologist, coined the phrase 'meritocracy' which, some say, is an underpinning value of our liberal society. Everyone should have the equal opportunity to become unequal. Well, I think that he is attmpting to do precisely the opposite - give some already privileged kids an unequal opportunity and that is why he should bloody well pay for the privilege. And I thought he was paying lip service to the fact that the school would attract kids from all walks of life.