Genuine question - why do some people have a problem with the grammar school system thread 2

[octopusinastringbag]

Original thread full so here goes.

I think the people who are concerned about aspirational/non-aspirational need to trust their DCs to select friends who are like minded. Generally it is my experience that they find their own groups who are similar to them, especially with setting and especially once the GCSEs have started.

woowoo There is no reason at all why a Grammar School should have better or worse discipline than a comp. If you believed that a grammar school (qua grammar) was less likely to have behavioural issues than a comp (which I certainly don't) hen there might be an argument for thinking that those in charge of firefighting/smiting/enforcing at the comp would have more practice at it than the staff/leadership at the grammar and would therefore be more, you know, smitey. And more effective.

Woowoo
My ever so segregated school (by genitals, wallet and exam) did such a great job of dealing with stuff that nearly half my year group had to retake our A levels - the first the parents knew how bad things had got was in the August. My reports were a pack of lies - which I was happy to go along with as the truth would have got me in trouble.

Good luck if you think segregated schools are any less crap at dealing with things than non segregated.
They just tend to have less to deal with because the real problem kids never got in the door.

Talkin it's not true that the 'real problem kids' never get in the door, either. There really is no link between intelligence and being nice. Look at The Master! Or Davros (please don't use their fictional nature as an argument against my thesis. That would be boring! :D ).

Xoanon. The very fact that pupils have had to work hard to get in surely
means they are less likely to throw their chance away.

When you say misbehave at a grammar school, are we talking Educating
Yorkshire or are we talking at bit of back chat. The back chat can be fixed
by a couple of detentions and informing their parents about their behavior.

Or are we talking about "EDUCATING MARMALADE TYPE BEHAVIOR".....

Xoanon
There is a difference between bright but nasty
and so utterly disorganised and disruptive and ignored that they are an utter PITA

The former often get into good schools - and become politicians and the executives of banks
The latter only have a chance of success if they can be isolated from the chaos that is home and shown that there is another way and supported hour by hour to reach it.

soul You;d think. But you'd be wrong in some cases. Also, many of the kids at Grammar school haven't actually had to 'work hard' to get there.

I'm afraid I haven't seen either of the programmes to which you refer (I assume they are TV programmes...). I doubt they contain aliens or dragons therefore they would not fall within my sphere of interest.

Talkin honestly, the disorganised and disruptive can and do get into Grammar Schools. Perhaps not in huge hordes. But they do. Innocent disruptive and malicious disruptive kids can genuinely be found anywhere except at posh schools which can and do manage them out.

Xoanon. Your right they are both television programs, educating yorkshire
of course was a look in to a modern day comprehensive in a working class
town i.

Educating marmalade is probably the funniest kids television program ever made. It shows the alarming level standards of dropped over the last 30 years (1983).The show was designed to shock in a funny way about one
girls behavior (LOTS OF KIDS WERE NOT ALLOWED TO WATCH IT). You
were actually watching Marmalade in real life on educating Yorkshire.

If you have a spare five minutes take a look on you tube .
You will see some familiar faces.

The point i am making, a complete joke about the worst behaved kid in the world ever 30 yrs ago as come common today.

I wasn't saying it was only when they started GCSEs. My eldest was at a school where they set by ability in terms of table groups from day 1 and then in different classes from year 5. From year 5 onwards she was filtering her friends (for want of a better term) and is doing her GCSEs and has a group of like minded friends. Some of her peers were out at a party and got violently drunk in the park, the police were called. Meanwhile she and her peers were at home revising.
She does socialise a lot within her group but a different kind of socialising to the peers mentioned above - last week they had a birthday party with 10 or so of them all congregated at a house together and having a Dr. Who fest, all in fancy dress.
She is slightly awkward socially, at least according to her. I would say she knows her friends, knows what she wants from life and is prepared to go all out to get it.

The point i was making was a joke television show about the worst behaved kid in the world, that behavior that was deemed "SHOCKING" in
a comedy way is now mainstream behavior.

What surprisesme about the last few replies here is how anyone willdefend, let alone simply accept that there should be disruption or "backchat" of any kind in a classroom. Or indeed that we can excuse such behaviour because DC come from chaotic homes.

Thats the attitude which seems to underpin comprehensive education and why I doint want my DC in the local comp near me. School should not be made chaotic because chaotic pupils arrive there. Neither should a good learning environment be subject to nastiness back chat or disruption imo. It doesnt have to be ime.

I dont know about others but I dont want my DC having to negotiate chaotic classrooms and poor learning environments.

If you excuse tolerate it or even negotiate with such behaviour you quickly get to Mad Max rather than Educating Yorkshire.

abbiefield
what would you do with those children - speaking as a professional teacher ?

abbie There is a difference between defending something and acknowledging it happens. I don't think anybody is seeking to excuse things - I believe Talkin was making a (valid) point that some of the causes of disruptive behaviour may not be conducive to academic achievement, I commented that in my experience this wasn't always the case. I don't like generalisations, partly because as an outlier myself for lots of different reasons, they rankle with my own historic dislike of faulty pigeonholing.But I'm old enough and ugly enough to know that some generalisations are, generally, accurate. Just not universally.

IME comprehensive education is NOT in anyway underpinned by the idea that bad behaviour is acceptable or excusable. There is a prevailing attitude that to sort out a thing it helps to understand the thing, and I believe that;s fair enough. Call me an old lefty if you wish (I am indeed an old lefty - so old and so left that I;m fine with the old intelligentsia paradigm ;) )

Locally, the schools with drug problems are private. The ones with suicides are either private or grammar....

Just checked the local newspaper website for any article, over the last x years, referring to any trouble of any kind at any of the comprehensives - drugs, suicides, violent incidents? None.

The chaotic classrooms thing is also interesting. I have moved from a school - admittedly primary - with a very, very non-MN intake, to one which is overwhelmingly 'naice' in terms of catchment, family backgrounds etc. In my old school, behaviour was outstanding, despite children's out-of-school lives being ull of stuff that would make you weep. In my new one, it has taken quite a long time to adust my pupils' behaviour to my expectations, because they see my expectations as 'unreasonably high'. I know this is not true o all schools, but IME in-school behaviour is much more a function of the particular school and its internal culture than it is of intake.

Talkingpeace,I woulddo what most educationally successful countriesand schools do, manage the behaviour so it does not affect other pupils, whatever that takes, as they say in Finland.

(To understand something is not to condone it. I may understand that X's mum is in prison, that they have been abused, and that we are their 6th school in 4 years. That does not mean that I condone X talking in class. I teach in the one, safe place with rules that are clear and enforced in X's life, and it's important that I keep it that way.)

Teacherwith2kids, I would agree that aschools internal culture is what decides the behaviour and not so much its intake, hence I have said elsewhere I do not buy intosocialdeprivation theories of educational success or failure.

Exactly. I know of a school that - with an intake that has actually increased in terms of deprivation - has reduced the number of serious incidents from one every couple of days to virtually zero over 2 years, simply by a change of leadership and a total focus on the internal culture of the school.

There's always a bit of a wilful mistranslation of the idea that it might be good for children of all kinds to mix into an invented argument that some of us think two middle class children a year should be sacrificed to terrible comprehensives to set examples, but that's not really what anyone's saying.

I was thinking about this today, as big(gish) news where I live is that the student paper at one university - lets call it The University of Fulchester - gave in a list of Things To Do In Freshers Week 'stand outside [let's call it] Fulchester Trinity Universiity] and hand out peasant hats'.

Leaving aside the thorny question of what the fuck a peasant hat might be when it's at home, I do wonder if, if some nineteen year olds aren't past this kind of thing, eleven year olds might not experience something similar in terms of attitude.

abbiefield
What exactly does Finland do? genuine question :

How do they cope with the kids who never knew who dad was, mum is a junkie in and out of prison, boyfriends vary with the weather, several siblings in the house of variable parentage?
"mealtimes" do not exist, nor does personal space.

how does the school keep that child - who has no specific learning difficulties - on an even keel in the classroom

Talkinpeace, in Finland (oft presented to us all asthe best in the worldand one to be emulated - and it has been my posterson another thread), the school system is ideologically without any segregation, any fee paying alternatives and all children will go to a "local" school designatedto them. There are , they say, no deadends in their educational system.

The system also gives total autonomy to teachers and schools tofind the best way of dealing with the needs of children. Around 30% of children have "needs" ( although I am not sure how many are likethose here with disruption issues). Teachers are trusted to find an apporpriate way, in the classroom or working individually with a child, to meet their educational needs.

As I said , whatever it takes. The internal culture of the school is trustedto deal with the problem and teachers do not get challenged or questioned as they do here.

abbiefield
Yes, but what do they actually DO?
There must be case studies out there ..... otherwise its all refutable
As Finland also has an unenviable reputation for ignoring excellence.

hmmm..... yes, what do they do?

I just did a bit of looking up and one of the 'things' is that Finland is a very homogeneous society with a very thick social welfare mattress and has the North Sea and Nokia money as an even thicker duvet.
Therefore they do not HAVE the sorts of families that live near my chip shop

Educating Marmalade was indeed a horrific portrayal of today's education system: a damning indictment, striking in its prescience of social ills, poor behaviour, and erm, talking donkeys.