Education Reform

[tarzan-bridge]

What does your Dad term as "illiterate and innumerate?"

They couldn't read a newspaper or work out their wages?

What do you define as Illiterate and innumerate and where are your facts that there was zero illiteracy. Was this when you lived in the kailyard and went to University with a bag of oats and a bottle of ale?

It seems all you can do is cut and paste and give abuse to anyone who doesn't agree with you.
You may think you're an intellectual giant but you come across as childishly pompous.

[tarzan-bridge]

What does your Dad term as "illiterate and innumerate?"

They couldn't read a newspaper or work out their wages?

What do you define as Illiterate and innumerate and where are your facts that there was zero illiteracy. Was this when you lived in the kailyard and went to University with a bag of oats and a bottle of ale?

I use the same definition as these authorities do, and funny enough Scotland is STILL classed as a country, up to 2005 anyway, with, to all intents and purposes, zero illiteracy, (ok 1%).
You don't need a degree to be literate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Scotland
>Literacy:
[size=9]definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 99%[/size]
male: 99%
female: 99% (2005 est)
Nationality noun
Scot(s)
adjective
Scottish, Scots<

[potatojunkie]

What does your Dad term as "illiterate and innumerate?"

They couldn't read a newspaper or work out their wages?

He certainly worked with several people who couldn't read a newspaper. Whether or not they could work out their own wages, I'm not sure.

[Dexter St. Clair]

I use the same definition as these authorities do, and funny enough Scotland is STILL classed as a country, up to 2005 anyway, with, to all intents and purposes, zero illiteracy, (ok 1%).
You don't need a degree to be literate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Scotland
>Literacy:
[size=9]definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 99%[/size]

I would deem somebody to be innumerate if they can't tell 1% is not zero to any intents or purposes but particularly when you twist and article in Wikepedia to your own ends.

You may also benefit from some of the tutorials in cutting and pasting and note we were discussing the glory days of when you were at school. When "everybody" left the primary with the ability to read and write. Or should I say your primary school where you had access to everyone's reports and with precocity only available to couthy Scots such as yourself you can pronounce there was zero illiteracy in the whole of Scotland. What was the motto on your Blazer "Wha's like us. Damn few and they're a' deid"

In 1975 On The Move appeared on BBC TV prompting thousands of adults to get in touch for help with reading and writing. Glasgow Corporation and other councils set up programmes to cope with requests from adults of all ages supposedly educated in the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties. Are you saying they had forgotten how to read? Or would you care to revise your claim?

Seeing as you can read (but possibly not understand what words mean) I did recommend the whole of the pamphlet "Born to fail" which covers failings in educations systems and certainly covers literacy and numeracy. You may be able to find it in a library and it does cover some of the period we are discussing.

You may then conclude that were children who left school in Scotland not able to read and write.

Edited for typing errors and Scots educated in the perfect school.

[tarzan-bridge]

I don't have a tape of any 1975 programs and I don't intend to have a house full of mouldering 1970's pseudo-radical pamphlets with fleas jumping out of them either.

Only a child would expect 100%, once you have allowed for dyslexia, immigration and people with learning difficulties, statisticians would take 1% illiteracy as meaning a literate population to all intents and purposes.

Is it Scots people you have the problem with? You don't seem to like us.
I will assume from your remarks that you come from a different tradition and are just trying to badmouth Scots education to your own level.
Speaking of that, Mr Social-worker or whatever, seeing as you are giving out advice, you could do with running a spell check before you post.

[Josef]

As a slight diversion, I think that in my time at school I was the subject of two (what I think were) educational experiments.

Primary - teaching children to read phonetically. This, I believe, worked brilliantly for the kids who would probably have been the first to learn anyway and was catastrophic for the ones who would have been slowest.

Secondary - IQ grading. In the last year at primary school, we were given an IQ test (the results of which we were told would never be revealed). Classes in the first year at secondary were graded according to the results of this test, and this resulted in quite a number of 'apparently tough' kids showing up in the top classes. As a general rule, most of these kids gradually sank down through the classes in subsequent years, primarily (in my opinion) because they could not be seen to be 'swots' in their non-school environment.

I believe several of them went on to become academically successful, but only after leaving school and going to night classes then University.

[Dugald]

You say Josef:

As a slight diversion, I think that in my time at school I was the subject of two (what I think were) educational experiments.

Primary - teaching children to read phonetically. This, I believe, worked brilliantly for the kids who would probably have been the first to learn anyway and was catastrophic for the ones who would have been slowest.

I'm curious Josef, as to how you, as a primary pupil and a participant, became aware of two results of the experiments.

Secondary - IQ grading. In the last year at primary school, we were given an IQ test (the results of which we were told would never be
revealed).


I hope the results of this experiment were never implemented. I can see IQ tests being used for pupils who have been diagnosed with some learning abnormality, but I'd object strongly to such tests ever being used as a general means of streaming children coming out of the primary level in school. I believe examinations of the "Scottish High School Qualification " type, serve very well towards proper placement in high school.

I would hope further, that a teacher would be quite capable of recognizing those 'apparently tough' kids who no doubt had above average IQ levels, without subjecting them to an IQ test.

By the way Josef, I don't think your topic is a "slight diversion"...I think it's right on topic!

[Josef]

By the way Josef, I don't think your topic is a "slight diversion"...I think it's right on topic!

I was thinking of it being a diversion from the mild skirmish preceding it rather than from the topic .

The results of the phonetic teaching I found out later. I'm quoting from a conversation I had a good couple of decades ago, but I think I have remembered it correctly.

Are your objections to streaming per se or just to using this particular method?

[Schiehallion]

The contents of your last post Dexter, are absolutely stunning... what a shocker!

Are you seriously saying you are shocked at a 1973 report which states that families in the low-skilled or unskilled bracket tend to live in poorer housing with low levels of income, poor diets, poor health and poor educational achievement and that a higher proportion live in Scotland?

I'll do a wee bit of Derren Brown magic here. Look into the eyes, into the eyes, not around the eyes, into the eyes. Right - without having seen the pamphlet I'll predict there was also a higher proportion living in the north of England compared to the south.

[Schiehallion]

I know I'm going to get it in the neck for this, but in defence of the belt can I just say that in the classrooms of the sixties and seventies there was no finer entertainment than seeing your best mate getting six good flesh-splatting thwhackers; especially if it was you that had set him up.

Spot on Maco - a total hoot of the highest order.

A lassie pulled my chair away as I sat down and I banged my neck off the chair. So I grassed her and she got the belt. I'll tell you what, once the tears subsided, she never pulled a seat away again!

[Dugald]

Thanks for the explanation Josef. You ask:

Are your objections to streaming per se or just to using this particular method?

I was referring only to the IQ method of 'streaming'. This word 'streaming' conjures all sorts of fearful thoughts, but in essence it is simply the process of sending students where, in the eyes of those trained in pedagogy, the remainder of their public school education will be most beneficial to them. Any such 'streaming' must never be allowed to deprive the student of the right to pursue a meaningful personal plan for education; but, as was pointed out by, I think, PJ earlier, most students when moving from primary to high school have little idea as to what it is they wish to do, and this is the reason for making use of those trained in pedagogy. I'm saying really, that I don't have objections to 'streaming' per se. I feel the Scottish "Qualli" fills the bill here.

[Dexter St. Clair]

The results of the phonetic teaching I found out later. I'm quoting from a conversation I had a good couple of decades ago, but I think I have remembered it correctly.

It's swings and roundabouts. Proportionally if you chose phonetics it produces the same results as rote learning with flash cards. Neither method suits all children. Here's somebody with something to say about it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/A14075688

No method or combination thereof leads to zero illiteracy.

[Dugald]

The contents of your last post Dexter, are absolutely stunning... what a shocker!

Are you seriously saying you are shocked at a 1973 report which states that families in the low-skilled or unskilled bracket tend to live in poorer housing with low levels of income, poor diets, poor health and poor educational achievement and that a higher proportion live in Scotland?

Yes, I was Schiehallion. I was particularly upset by Dexter's article's mention that while 11% of the UK's children lived in Scotland 19% of the disadvantaged children were to be found in Scotland. Geez, it still bugs me! Hey, I'm British, but I don't like to see Scotland disadvantaged. I didn't ever think they were, nor ever felt that they were; hence, Dexter's post stunned me! I hope no such situation exists today. By the way, the 1970's was just yesterday to me.

Naw Schiehallion, your mention of the families in the low-skilled or unskilled bracket tending to live in poorer housing with low levels of income, poor diets, poor health and poor educational achievement, doesn't shock me at all. I'm from Govan and know quite a bit about that. I know also that it was just the same thoughout the UK. I'm not too sure what you mean by "there was also a higher proportion living in the north of England compared to the south.". Maybe we could just stuff "UK" in place of "England" and that would bring it into line with that with which i found myself at odds in the first place.

[Dexter St. Clair]

Every so often a book lands on my desk that I wish I had written myself. State Schools Since the 1950s: the Good News, is the latest. It makes a simple case, based on evidence rather than the usual lazy prejudice that informs so much of the debate about education: schools have improved over the last half century, and the 1950s were not a "golden age" subsequently destroyed by social engineers.

read the rest here

http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/comment/story/0,,2209779,00.html


and the book is

· State Schools Since the 1950s: the Good News, by Adrian Elliott, published by Trentham Books

and it is about schools in England and Wales

[tedmaul]

Every so often a book lands on my desk that I wish I had written myself. State Schools Since the 1950s: the Good News, is the latest. It makes a simple case, based on evidence rather than the usual lazy prejudice that informs so much of the debate about education: schools have improved over the last half century, and the 1950s were not a "golden age" subsequently destroyed by social engineers.

read the rest here

http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/comment/story/0,,2209779,00.html


and the book is

· State Schools Since the 1950s: the Good News, by Adrian Elliott, published by Trentham Books

and it is about schools in England and Wales

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6949084.stm

"Figures from the exam boards showed 25.3% of entries were graded A, up from 24.1% last year.

The national pass rate rose for the 25th year in a row, with 96.9% of exams being marked A to E, up from 96.6% last year."

Who knows. Maybe it's all those L.Casei Immunitas yoghurt drinks that kids have nowadays that's made them so much smarter.

I've no doubt the Guardian is delighted with the debasement of the education system - no-one hates the working class quite like a socialist, after all - but that doesn't mean the rest of us have to swallow their twaddle that a public good is being done in having exams that almost no-one fails.

In order to shove more people into university - even if they may not be suited - the system was tweaked so that all must have prizes. Unfortunately, many leave with their flimsy chimera of an education only to discover that their employment prospects are no better than if they'd simply left school rather than attend polyuniversity. The debasement of the education system has left them and prospective employers without any reliable measure of their skills or intelligence. This is a public good, apparently.

The real people to ask - other than smug headmasters with a vested interest in portraying themselves and their work in the best possible light - is the first year tutors at the major universities. I'll wager they'll have a different story.