School isn’t for everyone

Verity

I'd enjoy occasonally reading a comment from a British official who hadn't adopted American terminology because he thinks it sounds hip.

Lord Adonis, "Dropping out" is an American term and is usually applied to people who start college and then never finish their degree. Adoption of usage you don't understand is the worst kind of class based elitism.

Sean Martin, in the US, the word "kids" is for informal usage only. Americans are rather formal people and they refer to children as "children" and young people as "young people" in more formal context. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and all the other riff raff in the British government routinely use "kids" - I suppose in the belief that it sounds rather knowing and American. I challenge you to find one reference to "kids" in anything George Bush has ever said. Or any state governor. In the broadcast world, it's the language of talk-show hosts, not elected officials.

I find this toe-curling desire to sound American, and then getting it wrong, rather chilling.

That said, I agree with Sean Martin's conclusions. Plenty of successful people, including owners of businesses and successful people who work with their hands are smart enough to be coining fortunes, and smart enough to have recognised that they didn't need to waste their young years in university.

J H Holloway

Ah, yes. But if anyone is going to provide post-16 'apprenticeships' it'll be Gordon's super-state, all-embracing, government.
What do you think the new vocational/academic diplomas are all about?

Nicholas

Labour wants to preserve a useful pool of socialist ideology and support generated by many vocational subjects at university level. Many of their recent proposals focus on further brainwashing of the young and in securing an expanding - or at least less diminishing - socialist electorate. It is no coincidence that a higher proportion of 18-24 year olds support Labour - they have been subject to the full force of socialist propaganda imposed on them by left-wing teachers and university lecturers.

Adonis' argument exposes Labour aspirations to politicise education rather to engage in a poltical debate about education. The accusation of "class based elitism" is designed to instantly discredit any dissenting right wing opinion and stifle debate to provide for the unimpeded passage of further national socialist ideology.

Socialists use these "coded" soundbites to elicit instant positive or negative (as appropriate) media response, which in turn is used to manipulate public opinion. They have used this kind of manipulation for years to undermine opposition to their ideas or to provide support. In securing power it has been a successful strategy. It is less sustainable when used from the position of government, as most socialist regimes have discovered. Then it is more a question of 'when' they will be found out than a question of 'if'.

A Pay

Absolutely. This is another example of the homogenised society that Nu Labour is trying to construct. People are different. Some in my school were clearly suited to further and higher education. Others, including me, were not. I left at 16 years, without any meaningful qualifications. I would describe myself then as 'educationally immature'. No amount of forced further education would have made the difference.

What makes the difference is self-drive, determination, and opportunity. Notwithstanding my 'early' departure from the education system, I now have a successful career in law. Compulsory education until at least 18 years would have put me off learning for life.

Recognise the fact that we are all different, provide the facilities and the tools to deal with that fact, and perhaps, just perhaps, we will have an education system that doesn't routinely fail one in four pupils.

Steve Garner

A top post Sean. I'd like to see the Tories argue strongly for this point of view. Having loads of 16-18 year olds hanging around in schools when they do not want to be there will be disastrous for everybody concerned.

Realist

The world is changing. You cannot get by with a cheeky grin and cockney determism. Kids need basic skills and let's be hoest, that's pretty much all GCSES provides.

Keith

If the government wants children to stay in school instead of leaving at 16, then the answer's simple..... raise the leaving age.

Tiberius

This concept of all kids needing to stay on at school after 16 is just another example of the destructive tendency which Mark Steyn calls "deferred adulthood".

I agree entirely with Sean's penultimate paragraph.

JCX

Verity:

"And one thing we want during this war on terror is for people to feel like their life's moving on, that they're able to make a living and send their kids to college and put more money on the table."

--George W. Bush, interview on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Jan. 16, 2007

bill

People were phoning in to a BBC prog today asserting that exams should be avoided. The usual morons. Intelliegence/academic success is the best predictor of success on the job. No doubt these twerps would prefer to be operated on by a surgeon who'd sat no exams but just learnt on the job. Everyone needs testing.

mac

Ah, yes, 'Education, education, education', that assured path to the broad sunlit utopia of 'equality'. One in two to go to university, and everyone in formal education until 18. Change anything and everything to ensure that all shall have prizes. Lubricate this prescription with tax money amassed by the party's (now much less than) fiscal colossus and, hey presto, job done. A decade later and the prescription demonstrably isn't working, despite the invention of so many ersatz 'universities' and the inescapable culture of teaching to meet targets in order to sustain the constant rise in exam grades to prove the policy is right. Even with the wheels off, the policy can't be defective, of course, so enter stage left Balls and stooges to castigate the usual culprits - the demon 'rich', grammar schools, middle class parents.

Augustus

Is Adonis really trying to close the gap between the academic and unskilled youngsters of tomorrow, or is he simply trying to find an excuse for reducing the unemployment figures? One wonders.

Puncheon

A Pay I entirely agree with your post. I left school at 15 for exactly the same reasons as you - I just wasn't ready for education. A few years later I matured and read for a 2:1 in classics at Cambridge. The key is to keep the door of opportunity open (as Cambridge did for me), not lock the unwilling in. But try telling that to Ed Balls and his autocratic, bossy friends. We are all different, but trendy-lefties just don't seem to get this at all.

dilys

Verity said -"Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and all the other riff raff in the British government routinely use "kids" - I suppose in the belief that it sounds rather knowing and American."

I don't believe that Blair and Brown are trying to sound American. Kid for child is English and been in common use since the late '40's, to my certain knowledge, in Southern England and a lot longer than that in the Black Country.

Paul B

Absolutely- I would in fact go the other way and let children leave school at an earlier age, say 15 or 14, if they so want, with certain safeguards in place. Why force (press gang) these children to attend school when they plainly do not wish to attend. Many will just truant. Others if they do attend lessons will be resentful and troublesome and consequently will have an adverse affect on those children wishing to attend school and learn.

Teacher’s time will be spent with dealing with discipline issues and doubtless numerous form filling of various kinds (in triplicate). Other agencies will become involved, perhaps even the police. Much time and taxpayers money will be consequently wasted. The parents of those press ganged may even be prosecuted, farcical. Road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Puncheon

PS - The real reason that lefty politicians like to raise the school leaving age is to reduce youth unemployment figures. They are supported in this by the Unions, whose real aim is to protect existing employees at the expense of potential employees. This is why union dominated lefty governments always increase real unemployment.

Verity

JCX - Well, I stand corrected. I have never heard President Bush or any governor or even a senator use the term before. I would have noticed, because I've always thought it creepy when British elected officials use it.

Fergus Pickering

But it doesn't matter what Adonis says. Or Balls. Or any of them. Because they're OUT OUT OUT. Doesn't it feel good to say that? There are too many exams. Too many universities. DOWN WITH SKOOL!

Anon 2

My old Dad maintained that a kid is a baby goat, or similar. But then, he wasn't a politician and he deplored American speech!

More 'on topic': Yes, Nicholas @ 2:18. Thank you for that posting. I've seen the dynamic you describe at work in both the UK and the US. At a public level, it moves on to infuse every profession and 'vocation'.

At a personal level: Sometimes the departmental hegemony (not always the discipline itself) forces students to apply theory/philosophy to argument, and to use the 'appropriate' jargon. In those places, even opening a Biblical source in public elicits strange looks from the hangers-on! The really self-righteous stick their noses in the intellectual air and declare "I am a Marxist, ...." And the mutterings drift back - "Brave, isn't it? Reading that in here?" {e.g. of "That": commentary on King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon Psalms}.

Ergo - When communists control education: look to academic freedom, and to the results tables!!!

Sam

I don't know how many people can - accidentally or deliberately - miss the point. CHILDREN WILL NOT HAVE TO STAY IN SCHOOL AFTER 16. What they *will* have to do is some form of further education in college etc, or an apprenticeship, or some form of work with formal training. This is because, quite simply, children who do leave school at 16, especially (as most do) with few or no qualifications, are "failures" in the sense that they will really struggle in a modern labour market. Why don't we let children leave school at 12? Because we recognise that their and society's need for them to be educated outweighs their freedom. As societies skill up, so do the required qualifications, and thus the leaving age for education (not school) rises to 18.

albert hall

What is wrong with skills learning? Why do we need to import plumbers, carpenters, sparkes, bricklayers,mechanics, plasterers, waiters, cooks, etc., when we have enough excellent young people here in this country who could be given the training by way of professionally-run vocational colleges. Motivated tradespeople can earn much more money than an arty-farty degree graduate. See what is paid to such people in Australia, USA and elsewhere overseas. I was a duffer at school but took up a trade, worked hard, saved my money, have a very nice lifestyle in my retirement and did not have to send a large wedge of my earning back the Government for my training. What is wrong with getting your hands dirty. Where there's muck, there's money.

kuru

I'm seventeen, and in my sixth year doing my scottish highers. I am perfectly capable of being a straight A student, but I find greater satisfaction in playing bass guitar, bellydancing and meeting new people. Of course money's important- it buys food, candles and a roof over your head. My worst nightmare would be working in a cubicle, or an office. I have already been offered jobs for certain creative businesses and even Greenpeace. Anyway, school was born out of the industrialist pigs who exploited people. I think for myself, and we have such a **** government, I don't think we're making any social progress... for all that are reading this remember your family values and life experience come first. People who earn a lot of money (which is what educations really all about- capitalism) don't get the satisfaction of 'earning' what they get through struggling and hard work. The only reason we're fairly well of as a country is because we stamped on other countries through imperialism. Rant over!