School has banned Kickers shoes! I have bought them for DS. AIBU to to let him wear them and start a fight with them if they try to sanction him?

[CarefulDriver]

DS is starting secondary school next week. The school uniform regulations on the school website dictate that they wear black shoes (no trainer like shoes). Fine.

I bought him a pair of Kickers as I wanted comfy shoes which will last him most of the year. I know from previous experience with DS1 and 2 that the ‘businessman’ style shoes don’t last if they’re playing footie at break! Most of the DCs at their school wore Kickers and so did they once I caught on.

Chatting to friend who’s DC is also going to the same school yesterday and apparently the school has banned shoes with visible branding on which Kickers have. This is not on the main school uniform webpage which is what I checked to get his uniform but on a sub page for new Yr7s which I had read but only skimmed over the uniform bit as assumed it was the same as the main page.

I spent £68 on shoes, which IMO are common school shoes, he may not now be able to wear. He won’t be wearing out of school either obviously! I got them online direct from Kickers with a 14 day return policy which has runout now.

WIBU to just send him in on his first day in them?

Someone, somewhere will always be cringing at something you don’t know that they do

Of course. Because nobody knows everything. I have the utmost respect for other people’s knowledge. That’s why we employ professionals, after all.

I went to York where nobody would have a clue what plodge was, there would have been lots of blank looks. We seem to have struggled through life without knowing somehow.

None of which is remotely relevant because the discussion was about the state of contemporary education compared with its historic counterpart.

@MadameMinimes but you still haven't explained why literacy standards amongst post 92 graduates are lower in 2021 than they were amongst the upper/middle classes in the 1920s who had no formal qualifications.

I’m a secondary teacher. We get forced to check shoes and get passive aggressive emails if a member of senior staff finds a member of our tutor group in the wrong shoes. For me it is the path of least resistance. I’m not getting down on my hands and knees to check but if I can see obvious logos as they walk in or when I’m stood at front of the class I will do something about it. If the locus can easily be seen from 2m away they will not be allowed.

But @Blossomtoes two members of this family are Cambridge educated; one Oxford. None of them use plodge, tute or bop in common parlance. They often went to the Porters' Lodge or a tutorial though. . I'm not sure about the point MadameMinime was making about that except to draw a parallel with school teachers calling children kids to score a point.

@RosesAndHellebores

But *@Blossomtoes* two members of this family are Cambridge educated; one Oxford. None of them use plodge, tute or bop in common parlance. They often went to the Porters' Lodge or a tutorial though. . I'm not sure about the point MadameMinime was making about that except to draw a parallel with school teachers calling children kids to score a point.

I think she was showing off about being Oxbridge educated, personally 😁

It’s an interesting point about background. My dad came from a solidly working class mining community. One of his grandmas was illiterate; she paid for one of her grandchildren to the cinema to read the sub-titles to her. The other devoured three novels a week. Both were miners’ wives of roughly the same age.

Because the upper and middle classes of the 1920s, regardless of their final level of education, were a much smaller proportion of the population than graduates are today.

If you’re recruiting graduates from post ‘92 unis then comparing their literacy to upper and middle class people from a hundred years ago, even if they left school at 12, will give a very skewed picture.

Imagine literacy in centiles. If you look at a letter from an upper or upper-middle class person from 1920 they are likely to be in the top 10-15%i in terms of literacy. Over half of young people now go to university, so looking at the literacy of people at lower ranked individuals means that you are looking at people further down the literacy centiles than your “less educated” forbears.

I’m not Oxbridge educated. I just accompany a lot of outreach visits to Oxbridge colleges where my inner-city students regularly say “Miss, what is she/he on about”.

On "Should of..."

If it's anything, it's a spelling mistake, quite possibly born of a desire to appease grammar-pedants who don't like contractions, rather like 'haitch,' which greatly annoys me, and hadding a haitch where there hisn't a haitch to sound posh.

Standard English is moving towards using more spoken contractions in written text. Nothing new about that. Hello, Goodbye, Today and Yesterday are all abbreviations, now standard.

Nor is there anything new about txt-spk. It is a modified revival of telegram-English, such as the enquiry from a New York magazine to a Hollywood studio about an actor's birthday: "How Old Cary Grant?"

Back came the reply: "Old Cary Grant Fine. How You?"

Not much point in going to a post 92 is there then. Where do the school teachers who can't construct grammatically correct sentences stand?

What a shame young people have been encouraged to take on thousands of pounds of debt to remain in the lower literacy centres. It seems a bit of a con to me.

You've made the papers @CarefulDriver
www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/parenting/mum-questions-schools-kickers-ban-21436258?fbclid=IwAR0BWSAomnG1owTaoqDfFbjd06LwCMsU5AucF6HtfYclCJFVXHXm64wY_t4

And the term "Correct Grammar" could mean one of two things:

It could mean a sentence that is fully-formed, cohesive and coherent, such as "I got it off me mate," as I would have said at Haselrigge Infants in Brixton, or "Is you is or is you aint my baby?" as Louis Jordan put it so brilliantly. Both sentences entirely grammatically correct.

Or maybe you mean something else, something that Gramsci would have something to say about?

No more than 20% of people can ever be in the top 20%.

However, if you took the standard of literacy of someone at the average 50% line in 1920 and compared it to the literacy of someone at the the 50% line today, you’d see the historical improvement. That’s before you’ve even considered how much broader their curriculum is today.

However, if you took the standard of literacy of someone at the average 50% line in 1920 and compared it to the literacy of someone at the the 50% line today, you’d see the historical improvement

Is there any scientific proof of that? Or is it an example of cognitive bias?

"No more than 20% of people can ever be in the top 20%."

Not according to Govey when he was Education Secretary. He wanted more people to be above average.

@RosesAndHellebores, if you are going to be so scathing about the grammar of others, perhaps you should check your own posts a little more carefully.

rather like 'haitch,' which greatly annoys me, and hadding a haitch where there hisn't a haitch to sound posh.

I remember having an argument with DD when she was 7 over haitch and aitch. Her (Yorkshire) teacher said haitch I (London) said aitch. Because the teacher said haitch DD thought she was right.

And, don't get me started about people who say "I" instead of "me". I think people think they are being posh when they say "I".

My husband and I were given a bottle of wine - correct
Someone gave my husband and I a bottle of wine - incorrect. You don't say someone gave I a bottle of wine, so when you add your husband in front it doesn't change "me" to "I"

Apologies. I'm beginning to sound like the grammar police now

The sort of person at the 50th centile in 1920 would have likely been a coal miner, factory worker, manual labourer or similar. They formed the bulk of the employed male population in the 1920 census. I don’t think I’m saying anything controversial by saying that a graduate today, even one from a post ‘92 university (shock, horror), is more literate and better educated than the average coal miner or factory worker in 1920.

Don’t apologise @RampantIvy, never apologise. Both the bloke and I are massive grammar pedants and it gives us enormous pleasure.

@MadameMinimes

The sort of person at the 50th centile in 1920 would have likely been a coal miner, factory worker, manual labourer or similar. They formed the bulk of the employed male population in the 1920 census. I don’t think I’m saying anything controversial by saying that a graduate today, even one from a post ‘92 university (shock, horror), is more literate and better educated than the average coal miner or factory worker in 1920.

Surely that depends on how you define better educated?

@Blossomtoes

Don’t apologise *@RampantIvy*, never apologise. Both the bloke and I are massive grammar pedants and it gives us enormous pleasure.

But the person at the 50th centile in 1920 didn't think they were entitled to a graduate entry job.

I’m just going to copy/paste. Will live to lost have I.

“The economy required far fewer people to have those skills back then though. Yes, secretaries needed those skills, but the number of secretaries was very small compared to the number of people who worked in manual labour jobs or factories. Many of those people were functionally illiterate a couple of generations ago. Now we are expecting pretty much everyone to have these skills and work in jobs that require them, so we notice the deficiencies, even though in mathematical terms a far smaller proportion of people are unable to do them.”

Economy geared towards graduate jobs = more graduates and fewer coal miners. Number of literate adults can go up, without going up quickly enough to meet demand.

@RosesAndHellebores

But the person at the 50th centile in 1920 didn't think they were entitled to a graduate entry job.

Given there were about five self-awarding universities in England at this time, hardly surprising.

Take the case of Amy Johnson, bright working class girl from Hull who graduated with an Economics degree from Sheffield but found no one would let her take a job outside the typing pool.

But industry/commerce doesn't need post 92 graduates who can think critically. It needs literate and numerate young people post GCSE or A'Level who may be able to develop critical thinking skills as they mature.

@RosesAndHellebores

But industry/commerce doesn't need post 92 graduates who can think critically. It needs literate and numerate young people post GCSE or A'Level who may be able to develop critical thinking skills as they mature.

Exactly this. And the jobs aren’t available for all those graduates. There are many Amy Johnson equivalents working in call centres.