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[Politics] White working class failure



Feb 23, 2009
23,088
Brighton factually.....
50% Tory ****-up, 50% New Labour ****-up.

Which is the case in everything they both touch.

I am white working class and was a failure in the education system at a former grammar school that still had the same teachers.
The reason, we moved up north and i hated it, i could just not be bothered, the teachers hated the fact it had only just changed from being a grammar school and hated the working class kids now coming in, you could see the lack of enthusiasm they had for us, and some told me face to face they hated soft southern pansies like me.

I gave them hell, sometimes it is the school and environment.
 




El Presidente

The ONLY Gay in Brighton
Helpful Moderator
Jul 5, 2003
39,715
Pattknull med Haksprut
The additional money that was invested in education, started by the Blair government, tended to go into inner city areas where there was a greater range of ethnic backgrounds. The investment worked and has helped many young people to be educated out of poverty and given greater opportunities.

This has meant that many areas which are mainly white working class, especially in smaller towns and country areas, have been left behind because they were not in the target areas at the time. The good news is that investing in education works, regardless of ethnicity or poverty.

The bad news is that neither the present government nor the opposition appear to want to extend the successful policies to these other geographical areas, which is disappointing. It is also a challenge in some families for whom education is not a priority and kids growing up in households which are multi generational of not seeing the benefits are difficult to break out of the cycle, regardless of race.
 


zefarelly

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Jul 7, 2003
21,858
Sussex, by the sea
education, alongside the NHS will be fully privatised soon. the underclass will be irrelevant as long as they're sweeping up shit for peanuts and keep quiet while they're doing it. Another generation or two and the peasants won't know what revolt means let alone how to do it.
 


Stato

Well-known member
Dec 21, 2011
6,607
IMO Two HUGE mistakes in recent years:

John Major - turning the Polys into Unis - and Blair pushing the target of 50% of kids to go to University.

The intent of both of these policies was fine. As usual, the execution, the funding and absence of a coherent plan for all, rather than a single attention grabbing policy was the problem. By all means call polys universities, by the time it happened most of their curriculum offers did not differ widely from the red bricks', by all means aim for 50% of the population to study at higher education level. What was forgotten was that polytechnics had been introduced partly to teach practical subjects to higher education level, but had moved away from this in pursuit of student numbers. Nothing had filled the gap and with apprenticeships also on the wane, the gap was getting bigger.

Higher Education is a valuable experience whatever you end up doing for a living as it promotes the importance of consideration. Whether you spend your time considering the lily, or considering whether there may be ways of engineering a more effective machine tool, if it is done correctly, it teaches you to stop, and think about a task or idea from a number of different angles and this skill can be applied to different situations that you may face in your personal or professional life. Undervaluing theoretical thinking is a little considered issue for business, for politics and for individuals. Learning to consider the motivations of others, the impact of your likely actions and the possible results would allow us all to make choices that may be better for us and for the people around us. We are all inclined to make instinctual decisions and to rationalise these with bias. Encouraging as many members of society as possible to take the opportunity to understand this and to reflect on and challenge their own gut instinct could have huge impacts upon mental health, equality of opportunity and general happiness, as well as making us more effective workers. Education should be a very useful tool in trying to achieve this, but it needs to be adapted to allow more time for the consideration of how we learn, why we learn and what this can do for the individual, rather than leaving this area to a select group of philosophy, psychology and education students and concentrating solely on subject area for others.
 






El Presidente

The ONLY Gay in Brighton
Helpful Moderator
Jul 5, 2003
39,715
Pattknull med Haksprut
The intent of both of these policies was fine. As usual, the execution, the funding and absence of a coherent plan for all, rather than a single attention grabbing policy was the problem. By all means call polys universities, by the time it happened most of their curriculum offers did not differ widely from the red bricks', by all means aim for 50% of the population to study at higher education level. What was forgotten was that polytechnics had been introduced partly to teach practical subjects to higher education level, but had moved away from this in pursuit of student numbers. Nothing had filled the gap and with apprenticeships also on the wane, the gap was getting bigger.

Higher Education is a valuable experience whatever you end up doing for a living as it promotes the importance of consideration. Whether you spend your time considering the lily, or considering whether there may be ways of engineering a more effective machine tool, if it is done correctly, it teaches you to stop, and think about a task or idea from a number of different angles and this skill can be applied to different situations that you may face in your personal or professional life. Undervaluing theoretical thinking is a little considered issue for business, for politics and for individuals. Learning to consider the motivations of others, the impact of your likely actions and the possible results would allow us all to make choices that may be better for us and for the people around us. We are all inclined to make instinctual decisions and to rationalise these with bias. Encouraging as many members of society as possible to take the opportunity to understand this and to reflect on and challenge their own gut instinct could have huge impacts upon mental health, equality of opportunity and general happiness, as well as making us more effective workers. Education should be a very useful tool in trying to achieve this, but it needs to be adapted to allow more time for the consideration of how we learn, why we learn and what this can do for the individual, rather than leaving this area to a select group of philosophy, psychology and education students and concentrating solely on subject area for others.

Exactly, at Uni I try to teach students how to think, analyse, take things apart and put them back together again, add value, walk in someone else's shoes when addressing a problem and so on. The subject matter (classic adult French movies of the 1970's) is an irrelevance as you can get that from Google.
 


zefarelly

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Jul 7, 2003
21,858
Sussex, by the sea
Exactly, at Uni I try to teach students how to think, analyse, take things apart and put them back together again, add value, walk in someone else's shoes when addressing a problem and so on. The subject matter (classic adult French movies of the 1970's) is an irrelevance as you can get that from Google.

A good friend, and ex band mate is a Boffin at Manchester, he sent me a question he posed . .had me thinking for three days.

No wonder all my mates smoked so much dope when they were at Uni :laugh:
 


Jan 30, 2008
31,981
This comes as no surprise to me:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-57558746

White working class have been at the bottom of the achievement pile for many years. Especially boys.

I'm old enought to remember growing up when it was expected that I 'know my place'. Getting into grammar school was life or death. I was lucky. At university I was the only person I knew there on a grant of any sort (I was on a full grant). I have one old mate from uni days (who is the son of a diplomat, but, like me a bit peculiar). The rest of them were alien. I somehow got a PhD place in Canada and nobody could understand my regional (Brighton) accent, so I had to learn to speek queen's English just to get by. But Canada is relatively classless and it was only 4 years away from the UK that 'saved me' (from never forgetting 'my place'). When I came back to the UK I was able to stare down middle class arrogance (from the young medics doing their MD training). I managed to blag a lectureship and my career has been quite good. But boy do I get abreactions from some of the middle classes. Fear is the main abreaction :lolol:. My football and music...my 'attitude' rub them up the wrong way. A lot of it is just me but the class 'press' has always been there.

I feel that things are manyfold better now than in the 70s, but today's data speak for themselves. I'd be very happy indeed to see some positive intervention. When I was a kid I knew kids who passed the 11 plus but were sent by their parents to the secondary modern school because 'that sort of thing isn't for us'. Shocking. In fact my first wife was one. Things are better, but having large swathes of the population struggling and feeling neglected while being told they are 'lucky' is the root cause of all sorts of our recent and current problems, I suspect.

Others care to share their experience?

I'm just enjoying my white privileges of being brought up on a council estate and and enjoying comprehensive education H
Regards
DF
 




D

Deleted member 2719

Guest
I'm just enjoying my white privileges of being brought up on a council estate and and enjoying comprehensive education H
Regards
DF
Strangely this thread has not gone into the pit............................can't think why???

Any ideas???
 
















Harry Wilson's tackle

Harry Wilson's Tackle
NSC Patron
Oct 8, 2003
50,399
Faversham
I see the right wing multiply-banned 'dimmer twins' are on the thread now in an attempt to drag it into the gutter. Who knew? :shrug:
 




Harry Wilson's tackle

Harry Wilson's Tackle
NSC Patron
Oct 8, 2003
50,399
Faversham
Me too, I thought it was the positive results on my physique after my Pilates classes:dunce:


My parents ( split up when I was 6) bothlectured me when I left school, they'd both wanted me to go to Uni . . .My mum didn't finish her fine art degree @ St MArtins and my Dad got offered a god job after his A levels. I got the 'don't blame me if you regret it when you're 24' . . . . fortunately I didn't, and still don't, although I'm aware a few doors remain closed as a consequence of not having a piece of paper with degree written on it.

The opportunity was readily available for more of us in the 80's and 90's. Its not the case now, there must be many smart kids who just can't afford to consider it ?

The thing about student loans is that the student never gets to pay them back unless they earn well. Not a lot of people understand this.

I remember in the 90s banks were enticing customers with mortgages to invest in high interest accounts. It dawned on me one time that rather than earning 5% interest on my savings it would be better to pay off the mortgage that was charging me 9% (these numbers are representative). I put this to the bank person who was trying to flog me the savings plan and she said, 'put like that you're right'. I was a trusting fool up till then. I think the laws have changed so you can't be mugged like this anymore.

My point is that widely held beliefs are not always correct :shrug:

Oh, Hungaria have scored!
 








Aug 13, 2020
1,482
Darlington
The thing about student loans is that the student never gets to pay them back unless they earn well. Not a lot of people understand this.

I remember in the 90s banks were enticing customers with mortgages to invest in high interest accounts. It dawned on me one time that rather than earning 5% interest on my savings it would be better to pay off the mortgage that was charging me 9% (these numbers are representative). I put this to the bank person who was trying to flog me the savings plan and she said, 'put like that you're right'. I was a trusting fool up till then. I think the laws have changed so you can't be mugged like this anymore.

My point is that widely held beliefs are not always correct :shrug:

I was in the last year under the old £3000 a year system. In the first part of my career (I may still be in it, not sure) I pay more per month than people on the current system.

While I'm here, when I was in the last year of my GCSEs, the head of English walked into the class and announced "We're mixing up the classes. Everybody who's definitely getting a C, or who definitely won't be getting a C, will go in one class. Everybody who's borderline will be in a class with me." We spent the rest of the year listening to a supply teacher tell us about his holidays.

It was only when I went to university that I realised that pretty much anybody could have got straight As in their GCSEs if they were actually trying. I'm pretty sure most of the people in the top maths set at my school were on the foundation paper, so couldn't get more than a C even if they got 100% (the time I sat a foundation paper without realising or anybody telling me is neither here nor there).
 


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