Grade snobbery

As I suspected snobbery has worked its way into this year’s grading system.

See this tweet from Emily Pettite.

Keir Starmer has waded in to say: “Something has obviously gone horribly wrong with this year’s exam results.

Nearly 40% of young people have had their grades marked down and that’s thousands of young people whose opportunities could have been dashed.” 

Just because a school has performed badly in the past doesn’t mean it will always do so and students can beat the odds.

Democracy and education

People often give up on democracy when something catostrophic happens, or a terrible leader is elected.

However, the value of democracy is that it is bound to it's time.

If it is sufficiently flexible and foresighted it can withstand the test of time and create a legacy so great as to lift further generations to the skies.

The reason I am writing this now is some of my country seem to have forgotten the wars of the past, the lessons learnt and the growth still needed.

Heed your lessons

The reason for this is that in order for a democratic society to succeed it needs to develop and learn.

In order for a democracy to learn all of its people need to learn with it.

If you leave too many people behind your democracy will be a farce.

You create a democratic deficit in terms of wealth and education.

Higher deficits in terms of privilege, wealth and education; or indeed to unequal a journey can lead to grave democratic outcomes that hurt the many that go to the polls.

Happy Neighbours

Watching the UKIP debate is beyond unsettling to me.

If you're feeling similar, here's a story for you.

I was lucky enough to have a back garden when I was a kid.

There was another kid in the back garden next to me, her family was Sri Lankan.

We got on.

Only neither of us could see over the fence.

We discovered that if she climbed up on the stone work on her side of the fence and if I climbed up the metal frame of our swing we could see each others faces.

So we would talk in this precarious manner and occasionally get to the point where we felt we should enter one or others house.

My memories included playing Pontoon and her mainly winning, often while listening to American country music.

As far as I'm aware Dolly Parton has no real link to either Sri Lankan or British culture, we both liked it.

We also both talked about Monica Seles while playing tennis when Wimbledon was on, she's not British either.

We didn't see that much of each other later in life, because she went to a private school and I went to a state one.

This seemed to involve people doing things like advancing her classes, not something that was done in my school.

We lost touch a bit and I went on to study elements of international politics, including the conflict in Sri Lanka knowing her and a Sri Lankan guy that I had met at school made me more interested, ignorant as fuck most likely, but interested.

I found myself very ill after leaving uni and I clearly remember on one of these occasions her coming over to visit me, with Christmas cake, only not the kind that my Gran and mum made, way more squishy and amazing (sorry Mum, my Mum does make lovely cakes).

Seeing a familiar face at such a difficult time meant a lot to me.

She's really successful now and so I get to see her even less, but she enriched my life, she did not detract from it Mr Farage.

Unwittingly she made me more engaged in a debate about conflict resolution, she may never have put pounds into my pocket but my exchanges with her were happy ones, they made my life better.

Being confronted with another culture does not destroy it, just means that we have something to share.

She was my neighbour, France and Europe are ours.

Could we bother to climb up on the swing rather than throwing rocks at the bloody fence.

American sarcasm

An awesome friend of mine passed this link my way:

Filibuster over Drones

I haven't laughed this much in a while.

I will be watching more of The Daily Show from this point on.

Education is the key

I think about education a lot.

And I encountered this online.

What Michael Gove is doing at the moment is ruining our education system.

Where have all the creative brains gone?

The ones that are going to inspire the next generation.

Because it's always the next generation coming that counts.

How inspirational are they going to be if they've been tested to death?

John Stuart Mill had a break down in his early years because of intensive schooling.

He went on to write On Liberty, maybe we should be focusing on the liberty of our young people.

In praise of thought

I was reading University challenge by Jonathan Derbyshire.

It brought me back to a question that had long exercised me in the past (he makes some very eloquent points).

How do we look at the value of a University education?

 It is often couched in monetary terms.

And increasingly when I look at how long it has taken me to pay back my loan, and I'm still not quite there yet, I find it hard not to look at it in these terms also.

 The promised 'graduate' pay packet hasn't exactly materialised, or at least my expectation of what this would give me in material terms is quite negligible and fleeting.

Epiphany

But over this last year I have realised something else.

Despite time spent protesting I have never thrown any rocks, though the rage building up inside is significant.

 I have not burnt any books or magazines, despite inwardly and occasionally outwardly crying at some of their content (and I do mean that).

I have not plundered shops.

I do not feel that I am a paragon of Ghandi like peace either, or much of a saint.

I feel sometimes less educated now than I was before I started.  

Do you want what I've got?

But somewhere along the way, at school, at university I built up a value system and the capacity for reasoned and independent thought.

And by and large that independent thought has led me in some positive directions, not always, but often.

I try to, though I don't always succeed, measure my opinions of a person more slowly.

And I feel that prejudice will always be with us and in some ways I'm not entirely sure that is a bad thing.

If people didn't keep calling me English, when I identify as British (my family stretch around the British isles) it wouldn't have given me a pride in the elements of my culture that derive from welsh lilts and Scottish poetry.

If I wasn't assured that girls couldn't do this, that or the other I wouldn't have been so keen to prove them wrong.

Hell if I hadn't been overlooked and marked as stupid so many times...

Would I have ever tried this damn hard to impress you all?  

Hidden blood

Admittedly then I might have let up a bit and not worked myself into exhaustion time and time over.

But all those pieces of paper with high marks and those precious two degrees with a 2.1 and a merit.

I earned those and hopefully I earned something so much more than money along the way.

I earned respect.

I may have lost some too, it happens.

But I've finally got enough self respect to say.

P*** off if you don't value me.

I value me.

I'm not killing my soul anymore unless you give me a DAMN GOOD REASON.  

Unfortunately, my opinion

By the way, this blog earns me no profit, I'm not using the ad sense thing.

Hence why I reckon it's pants, I'm not getting paid diddly squat for it.

And that there readers is an unedited rant.

Something you'll be getting a lot more of if you don't pay for content.

I'm tired, I should have gone to bed ages ago, so I guess there's that blood again.

Do you want to value me or just put me to sleep again?

THE LAW CANNOT CHANGE MENS HEARTS IT CAN ONLY RESTRAIN THE HEARTLESS.

I know who said that, therefore, he still lives.

Isn't that precious?

Oh well.

LOVE BOOKS.

2012 bibliography in order of preference (aside from papers, magazines, job adverts(!) etc):

Persepolis so tender, so true

The Help inspirational, beautifully woven and elucidating

The Princess Bride there are so many reasons why this book is lovely

Small Island (near the end, not there yet)

Some Sartre, surprisingly like Husserl hence it being lower and me not reading all of it

The Alchemist so sweet, but too sweet

Just started Pure looks like it's going to upset me, so I'm only three chapters in

One about life in New York, honestly it was upsetting me so much I've misplaced it and forgotten the title.

(I'll get back to it, I'm stubborn like that)

The minds of the future: the tuition debate

The vote was cast over the value of putting through young people through university.

Verdict.

Well, it's real expensive you see, and so we can't afford it, but you, with no voting rights and possibly no jobs, you can.

27,000 for tuition sound fair, aside from your living expenses, of course?

You can start paying back the 27,000 when you're earning over, say, 21,000.

Never mind if you haven't got houses yet, houses are overrated.

The hypocrisy of power

I mean some of us we have to have two, but you lot, you don't need one.

Oh, did I mention that on top of all this you'll be paying for our wages.

And, most of us didn't have to pay anything.

But times have changed now, we're important and that.

We have to do what's best for the country.

Because borders are more important than young hope and aspiration.

What do I think of all this?


Well I've written to my MP, now I'm going to write to every Lord I can find the name of to ask, politely, if they could ask the V.I.MPs if they could re-think this.

And for the record I haven't thrown a rock at anything yet, but I'm getting painfully tempted.

Better get back to reading those Ghandi books that I was introduced to while I was studying.