Can everyone be an academic success?

[bigTillyMint]

Anyone see this article www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article4837136.ece in the Sunday Times?

I so agree with it, and I love the final paragraph.

Haven't read the whole article but I would say that no everyone can't be an acedemic success. And nor should they be.

DH can still remember his first day of school and thinking 'why do I have to go? I'm quite happy playing in the garden!' and he never got into it since! He just didn't like school.

When he left at 16 (with some reasonable GCSE's but nothing C or above as I recall) he got a job, got relevant qualifications on day release at college, joined the Navy at 21 and excelled in everything they threw at him for 4 years (including improving maths and english skills), and has now left the Navy and got a sales job which again he has excelled at.

He just didn't 'do' school. If he'd had to stay until 18 like they will do now it would have just been a complete waste of another 2 years.

I on the other hand got good GCSE's, A levels and a degree but have never known what I wanted to do (still don't!) plodded on through the job's I've had but never really got anywhere and am now quite happy being a SAHM for a few years.

I think it's horses for courses, but people can be very sucessful without doing well at school.

Great article.

This government has done untold damage to a whole generation of children as they attempt to force the lie that we are all the same and can achieve the same.

My hairdresser has a son who recently sat GCSEs. She is incredibly worried about him as, although he is hard working, he is not academic, but the system completely discriminates against him expecting him to go to college and sit more exams. She feels it's either that or the scrap heap, when he is a good boy and has lots of potential, just not in an academic context. How utterly unfair.

If only the politicians would wake up and see what everyone else can.

Absolutely agree that it is a fallacy that all children are or can be accademically equal. Unfortunately we have engineered a system where we value only one kind of success and therefore the Government is now obliged to pretend that it is attainable by everyone. The Government needs to lead in redefining what we understand by children being successful to allow for children with a variety of talents and abilities to be valued by society.

I think the drive to make university degrees accessible to all has done nothing but de-value degrees in themselves and left a generation of children with a mountain of debts as they start their adult lives.

Similar with the string of As and A*s that so many children seem to achieve these days (not the debt part, the de-valuing part). If so many people seem able to achive this, then the achievement itself doesn't actually mean much.

Agree totally scarletlilybug. It makes me so angry when I see how devalued academic qualifications, both school and university level, have been turned into meaningless pieces of paper.

Our education system is crumbling due to this politically correct claptrap.

Have you guys READ the article?

It's bordering on fascist.

The premise of the article is "There are both genetic and moral reasons that children of the professional classes come out on top." (my emphasis)

That's not the same thing as saying 'some kids are more inclined to academia than others'.

It goes on to assert "Let?s start with the simple truth that many children are just not gifted enough to learn to do academic tasks at more than a rudimentary level" then goes on to expand the idea that some kids are fundamentally incapable of grasping mathematical syntax or doing a somersault. Breathtakingly disingenuous.

Me, for example. Tone deaf family. Never any music on in the house. No sense of rhythm. However, got involved with recorder group in school, and ended up with grade 5 flute. I'm still not musical, but I have been adequately taught the basic skills of music.

GCSEs aren't high powered theoretical qualifications. They are in essence basic skills, which take time to learn but are fundamentally accessible to all. Certainly in private schools you'll see 'a very high proportion of 5 A-C - and these schools have stupid people too.

This article 'writes off' the children of whole sections of our society, and implies they are not good nough for education and the comfortable white collar lifestyle that it breeds, It is a disgusting piece of prejudice

Written by Charles (The Bell Curve) Murray Kif. So not altogether surprising.

I think that children live up to our expectations and that we should expect the best from them.
The curriculum isn't rocket science and we should expect them all to at least attain a reasonable level of education before they are sent out into the world. It is the least every child deserves from society.

Have you heard genetically girls are better at cleaning. Lets send girls to housekeeping college so we don't give them unattractive wrinkles from struggling with reading long words.

Oh, and black men run really fast, but always get into trouble. We should just enroll them all in the army aged 12. After all, there are both genetic and moral reasons why they'd do better on that path.

But my kids are going to get GCSEs and perhaps a couple of A levels. It's inevitable, since they have my professional genes. Of course you see that it's their birthright to have a nice office job with a private pension and the chance to meet other professional people to procreate more lovely professional children.

It's disingenuous to pretend that the children of the professional classes don't tend to do better, academically, at school. Tend to. Not always true, of course.

The government's justification for ploughing so much money into providing free nursery education for 3-year-olds is to try to address the differences in development and attainment that already exists between children of higher and lower social classes at a pre-school age.

I read this article yesterday and agreed with it in the main. I think the need for all children to be seen to succeed has led to a lowering of educational standards, overall.

Why not accept that all children are different and that their talents and interests are different? I think it's a shame that, on the wholea, practical skills are not as valued as academic ones. But surely there has to be a better way of addressing this than to make it easier to gain academic qualifications so that they become less valuable in themselves.

your last paragraph is a different argument entirely from what was discussed in the article.

My two points of contention with what was actually said in the article:

1. Obviously you can draw statistical correlations between certain societal groups and certain features/achievements/preponderance. However, using this as a way to set your expectations - and by extension as a way in which you distribute funding and support - is discrimination at best and fascism at worst. That's what I was trying to illustrate with my facetious post of 14:23 .

It was the same argument that denied women university education, and the same argument that forcibly sterilised disabled people in nazi germany. It's an argument of statistical likelihoods rather than individuals.

2. A non-SN child failing to receive GCSE passes in maths or leaving school without reading is a failure of the education system. It is not because these people have deficient brains that can't read words more than one syllable.

I think it's a revolting article, obsessed with genetics/class and IQ as determining potential. The author himself admits that "At best we can move children from far below average intellectually to somewhat less below average.". I see that as a perfectly worthy goal for an education system.

First read the article yesterday. Having seen some of the comments posted today, I had to go back and re-read and see whetehr I'd missed something.

I still agree with the argument presented, as I understood it. Some children will struggle academically and certain academic tasks will remain beyond the bounds of some children's capabilities. Instead of having a culture where the bar is constantly being lowered so that everyone can "succeed", why not recognise and accept that fact?

"At best we can move children from far below average intellectually to somewhat less below average.". Exactly. So why pretend that such children are capable of achieving a degree without lowering the standard required to achieve a degree (for example). In fact, why not develop a system whereby practical and vocational skills are seen as worthwhile in their own right?

I didn't see the author argumenting that less academically gifted chidren were not worthy of an education, but simply that different levels of academic ability were a fact and that not everyone can excel.

JMO.

the word 'degree' doesn't appear in the article in the context of post-school study.

the article says it was triggered by Andrew Adonis, the schools minister's 'breathtaking' assertion: ?There is no genetic or moral reason why the whole of society should not succeed to the degree that the children of the professional classes do today, virtually all getting five or more good GCSEs and staying on in education beyond 16.?

I agree that degrees aren't for everyone. However - by definition ( 'general certificate of secondary education' ) GCSEs are. And education past 16 - whether A level, or apprenticeship or a GNVQ or a professional qualification - will generally vastly improve your lifetime earning, life expectancy and life satisfaction.

Ah! Charles Murray!

sounds interesting but his previous work on the Bell Curve rules him out of being taken seriously.

"Hernstein and Murray... claim that average differences in intelligence between racial groups are real and salient (and also largely innate and immutable), and they also insist that such group disparities carry no implication for the judgement of individuals." SJ Gould : The Mismeasure of Man.

Replace 'racial' with 'class' and you pretty much get the thesis of the Times column.

This bit I like and agree with,

"it requires us to adopt an attainable goal: to take advantage of the abilities that children possess, whatever they may be, and bring children to adulthood having discovered things they enjoy doing and having learnt how to do them well."

but in practise I suspect it would change to:

"we need to encourage the lower orders to do their best in the jobs we decide are suited for them while ensuring our kids get the well-paid professional desk jobs"

This bit also annoyed me.

"When mathematics moves to the abstractions of algebra and the logic of geometry, large numbers fall by the wayside ? they are not clever enough in logical-mathematical ability to keep up."

Okay, so we have logical-mathematical ability. I assume you're positing multiple intelligences on which a child's performance may vary?

"IQ, which is nearly coincident with academic ability as I defined it, has been proved to be around 40%-60% heritable."

Two things here: Firstly, the multiple intelligence idea seems to have been replaced with the monolithic IQ measure . Secondly, so what if it's heritable? Heritable does not mean unchangeable!