Comprehensive school teaching - is it really this bad?

[jackstarbright]

I have just found this very disturbing article published in the Reader a few months ago. It's Gabriella Gruder-Poni's essay, 'Scenes from a PGCE'. here.

It provides one woman's view of teaching methods in a comprehensive school. Any comments?

It's those sitting at home eating donuts who tend to be obese rather than successfully professional women who work hard and the working 5 - 7am at one phase on a Saturday was so I could be there at 7am to breastfeed the twins and then spend the day with them and I'm home all week. I'd done a good bit of work today by 7.15am - lovely and peaceful, almost serene to do it with the gorgeous garden outside covered in snow. My twins don't go to holiday clubs although they could if they chose. They are asleep upstairs - now almost 7 days into Christmas holidays from school - had a week off already and I'm working. It works very well and i'm lucky and the harder I work the luckier I get, believe it or not. Don't often work all night but will if I need to. Love sleep. I think not watching TV ever probably means I get more sleep.

I agree, cory, that so-called brain work can be very physically demanding. A very good friend of mine (whom I have both studied and worked with - and I know she is not more intelligent than I am!) does a job where she takes intercontinental flights many times a year and stays in hotels many hours and time zones away from home for several nights at a time. Quite apart from the fact that I would hate to be away from my family like that, I just do not have the physical strength to do a job with that sort of demands upon me. I'm not made that way! Good for her though, if she doesn't mind it, as she makes a lot of money.

interesting thread. i have probably attended every type of school mentioned here. i actually learnt latin at state school rather than at public school. incidentally, i learnt nothing at the very prestigious london public school (other than how to fake a ski tan and how to dye your hair with lemon juice). best school that i ever had the honour of attending was a non-fee paying school for girls in camden (some of you will know it immediately!). brilliant school, very laid back environment). i regretted having wasted my time at public school as it was too late to start learning 'ancient greek'.

Tispity - Camden School for Girls is hardly a 'bog standard comp' is it? If all state schools were of that calibre and all children had your educational opportunities - well, I wouldn't have started this thread for start!!!!!

Didn't they teach capital letters though? Or is that the state school effect? I wonder if I could take posters passages on mumsnet without any other details and tell which went to a good private school and which went to a state school simply by how they write?

Xenia - is it your intention to imply that private schools explicitly teach their pupils to patronise and condescend towards (ex) state school pupils?

I'm so glad I did the bulk of my education in neither a state nor a private school!

Xenia, your last post contained a number of grammatical errors. I suggest you correct it immediately or everyone will assume you went to a sink comprehensive.

Bonsoir - Please tell me you had a governess and tutors for music, drawing and latin!!

Not at all! I went to a school outside the UK that my parents did not have to pay for and that was not state-funded - a European School, funded by the EU Member States for the children of employees of the EU institutions. A lot more modern and progressive that governesses and tutors!

xenia - actually, i learnt all that a lot earlier on but this is how i have explicitly chosen to 'write' on the internet (btw was an A+ in English pretty consistently so i am hardly going to take offence). i am surprised that you have not come across it in the City; i picked it up from the partners when i was a trainee at a (top) firm. it is quite liberating; you should try it!

are you telling me that your older children do not generate pages full of appalling text/MTV speak when communicating with their friends online? or maybe they would not dare show it to you - or perhaps you know of a 'latin alternative'? i suppose there would be room for overlap though - cave canem, coitus interruptus...

I just offends me to see it and people make judgments about others based on seeing the absence of capital letters but as long as people are aware it has that impact then they are free to write as they choose. Just as plenty of working class people made good who earn a fortune wouldn't rather die than alter their very strong Scouse accent and others let it die a death. I don't date men who write to me without capital letters.... lucky them to suffer such a narrow escape. I'm sure there are lots of things about me that irritate people too.

Interestingly teenagers almost need two languages - that with their friends and that which they speak and need to learn the rules for that as well as the rules for what you might put in an email to a friend and what to a colleague.

xenia - i would add that you are completely deluded and anally retentive. my brother's dd attends a school which was voted as being one of the top ten schools IN THE WORLD by one of the broadsheets; at age 12, her spelling and grammar are awful (almost as bad as yours) and she is far from being at the bottom of her year group.
i rejected NLCS (twice, infact) and chose Camden School for the precise reasons oulined by many of the other posters. Go figure...

sorry if it offends you but i was under the impression that i was writing on an internet forum; not applying for a job. you don't seem to understand that i choose to write in this way; having already learnt the correct way. Scousers did not start off speaking the Queen's English as far as i am aware. i also understand that it is socially acceptable to switch between two sets of rules for informal and formal communication for people of my age (early 30s) as well as teenagers.

well well well..

though i was pleased to receive an email with a smiley in it (especially when theemail I'd sent out had threatened legal action..) I usually have to pull back from adding emoticons to work emails...

suprised to see this thread still chugging along.

"i am surprised that you have not come across it in the City; i picked it up from the partners when i was a trainee at a (top) firm"
i have just remembered, he was an Old Etonian so hardly educated at a sink-estate comp. Perhaps you would like to take it up with him?

Xenia, once again you have made grammatical errors in your last post. You final sentence is appalling. Please correct it and show us that you do know how to write well.

fanks, innit

Xenia - You are making me think of pots and kettles.

Yes, Xenia - why do you lay yourself open for criticism by commenting on the accuracy or lack of accuracy of others when your writing is so woefully inaccurate?

I just don't like people not using capital letters. I'm perfectly happy for people to criticise me. I'm riven with faults like everyone and I've never said I write well. People can write how they like and there will be people like I am who make judgments based on the lack of capital letters. There will be others who think I'm very poor because I like driving an old car and I love that inverse snobbery and hiding my lights under a bushel etc. People make choices in various contexts as to how they present themselves. Thankfully so far this Government has not yet made clones of us all although they are trying pretty hard with new laws to achieve that.

I don't like smileys either. What was the thread about? Poor teaching in some comprehensives. The state doesn't provide very much with any competence so it's not surprising if state provided schools are not as good as the private sector. Apparently 50% of parents would choose private schools if they could afford it. Surely that speaks for itself.

Yawn - is this still going?

Xenia - if you come to my state school for a few days, we'll gladly teach you how to write more accurately. In fact, perhaps my 'sink' Year 11s could do it? Grrrrr.

Xenia - Actually, I might choose Camden School for Girls for my dd if I could afford it! It's so heavily over-subscribed that to guarantee a place you need to live very close to the school, where house prices are well above most people's budgets.

CSG was founded by Francis Mary Buss (who also founded NLC). It might not have a lake or other top private school trappings, but it appears to have a great ethos and very high standards.

So back to the OP - comprehensive education seems so uneven in this country. Why is it that tispity and the current CSG pupils learn Latin and the classics, while the children Gobsmacked observed aren't even being taught basic English grammar?

If there isn't a problem with the teaching of English in state schools, why do so many undergraduates arrive at university and struggle with their written English?

But we could start a whole new thread I think on the actual value of spending lots of time teaching classics. I, like the OP, was educated in Italy and spent half of my time at high school studying Latin, Ancient Greek, reading all the classics, Roman history, you name it. Although I think I had a very traditional and valuable education, as a teenager I WAS BORED STIFF and despite coming from an upper middle class family, I wished I learnt something useful and contemporary. Something I could actually relate to. Maybe we've gone to the other extreme, but I much much rather my children learnt ICT, languages and art than spend hours pouring over the classics and being as bored as I was - (suddenly yawns profusely and cringes at the thought of her school years).

ICT is rubbish though. My Yr 10 dd1 spent an hour 'learning' how to send an email last week - bonkers.

But, MillyR, since Xenia tells us that 50% of undergraduates at good universities come from private schools, then it can't be solely a state school problem, can it?