It's Your Time You're Wasting by Frank Chalk

[Emil Miller]

I think you exaggerate how bad things are to an extent. I went to a public school that was ranked 26th out of 27 English language schools in Montreal, the only one behind us was the one servicing the Mohawk reserve. I managed to receive a reasonable quality education and attend the top ranked life science university in Canada, and a top 20 internationally.

There is a problem with the idea of getting rid of the "egalitarian" principles, which is can we really trust the ability of the system to accurately predict the ability of students? The difficulty with tailoring education to the needs of individual students is, like stlukes said, the issue of cost. The likely end result is that the system will just reinforce social inequalities and funnel privileges towards children already coming from better environments, because that would be the most cost effective use of funds.

One thing we should probably consider is why Canada and Australia, which are culturally very similar to the US and UK, rank so much higher in international performance. We have a comprehensive school system, and teacher's unions, so why do we not have the same systemic education problems?

Well tell it to Frank Chalk, he's the guy with the direct experience of the problem which has been consistently highlighted in the UK media for many years. I've no doubt that some UK comprehensive schools function well enough under the comprehensive system but the fact that there are many that don't shows that it is no panacea. Whether Australia or Canada find the system congenial has no correlation in UK terms where the density of population and cultural mix is far greater than either. This has much to do with immigration policies pursued by British politicians that have had a noticeably greater effect on the UK than that of many other countries.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I love it. StLukes makes a wonderfully sensical, coherent argument, and this is Emil's recap: Conservatives GOOD, Liberals BAD.

[Seasider]

As for doctrinaire politicians here's the well-known infamous quote from Anthony Crosland, then Secretary of State for Education. You may choose to believe Roy Hattersley's denial but I wouldn't.

In her biography published in 1982, Susan Crosland claimed her husband had told her "If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to destroy every ****ing grammar school in England. And Wales and Northern Ireland", although close associates such as Roy Hattersley have doubted that the quotation is genuine. The outcome has been a source of controversy ever since.

I'm afraid I don't regard hearsay, and second-hand hearsay at that, as having any place in a serious argument.

Inner city schools have all kinds of reasons for failure. Like all Comprehensives they are neighbourhood schools and conditions will reflect that. Neighbourhoods marked by poverty, urban decay, crime, unemployment, lack of aspiration etc will import these conditions into schools. And teachers, however good they are cannot be a panacea for all ills.
This Government is edging towards the opinion that the problem may be solved not by any improvement in social conditions but by Discipline and Latin!!! Academies?? Watch this space!

[stlukesguild]

I think you exaggerate how bad things are to an extent. I went to a public school that was ranked 26th out of 27 English language schools in Montreal, the only one behind us was the one servicing the Mohawk reserve. I managed to receive a reasonable quality education and attend the top ranked life science university in Canada, and a top 20 internationally.

I cannot speak for Neely, but I will state that there is no need for exaggeration in my instance... and as bad as these conditions may be, I have heard from teachers at other schools in the same district... or other large urban districts... where the conditions were even worse.

I should not that I do not expect that the conditions I or Neely speak of are commonplace in public schools across the nation. My own personal experience of public schools in a middle-class suburban district was quite different. The conditions for learning at this school... and I would surmise at a majority of the public schools in the middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods is quite good. The scoring of the American Schools is being dragged down predominantly by the poor urban and rural schools.

Pip raises a good question of why there is this disparity in scores between US and UK schools on one hand and Canadian schools on the other hand, considering that the demographics are largely equal. I will not attempt to speak to the British schools, knowing nothing of them or the demographics first hand. I will, however, look at the issue from the US perspective. According to available numbers the Canadian minority population (16.2%) consists of aboriginal or First Nations (3.8%), Asian (7.9%), Black (2.5%) and a remaining mixed minority population of (1.9%). By way of contrast the US minority population consists of a minority population of 36.3%. Of these the largest groups are Hispanic (16.3%), Black/African-American (12.6%), and Asian (4.8%).

The Asian population, which makes up Canada's largest minority group, has historically been very supportive of education and very solid in terms of family structure. The Black population in the United States has had a long adversarial relationship with education, owing, no doubt, much to slavery and racism... but also to poverty and the failure of the Black American families. In many of the poor Black communities single-family homes... usually headed by a woman... are the reality in 90%+ of the instances. The Hispanic population as a whole has been no less successful in supporting education of their children in the US.

Much of this ties over to poverty. The Black and Hispanic communities are continually ranked among the poorest in the US. The US poverty rate as a whole is over 15%. The Canadian poverty rate lies somewhere between a a little under 5% (according to Conservative polls) and a little over 10% (according to liberal polls). If we estimate that the reality lies somewhere in between and split the difference we find that the US poverty rate stands at double that of Canada.

If we look at Norway we find a rather homogeneous culture. The largest non-European minority is that of Pakistanis who account for a mere .7% of the population. This homogeneous character carries over into language and religion as well. Looking at poverty, the percentage of Norwegians living at or below the poverty rate is estimated at 4.3%.

One can certainly use such data to help explain the disparity between school scores in the US, Canada, and Norway when we recognize that poverty is one of the largest indicators for academic success and that the populations most susceptible to poverty in the US are the Black and Hispanic populations who both have a long history of distrust and lack of support for public education.

Of course there are undoubtedly other factors as well, including the homogeneity of the culture as a whole, the structure of the school systems, the Federal support (or lack thereof) for national standards for both students and the education of teachers, the degree of respect for education and educators, etc...

The great problem now faced by public education as a whole in the US is that the notion once almost universally held that all children should be given an equal access to the quality education needed to succeed in our society is challenged by those of conservative views such as MortalTerror who are willing to throw the majority of the urban and poor rural student population into the trash heap because the education of these students has become "too expensive". If public education were eliminated in the US tomorrow and replaced by for-profit private schools the quality of education in most middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods would not change much. In the rural schools and urban schools where the costs of education are far greater due to increases in violence and need for security, increases in needs for special services to deal with large populations of developmental, emotional, behavioral, and physical handicaps (directly tied to poverty), increases in needs for psychological services to deal with increased abuse (sexual, physical, emotional, alcohol/drugs), etc... the quality of education would decline drastically... as can be seen in the scores of private charter schools which have opened in urban neighborhoods. The results will be a further level of locking children into the economic state that they were born in, and an increase in the divide between the rich and the poor... something that is already carrying over into the colleges and universities in the US.

If we, as a society, are to decide that it is OK to write off large portions of the population figuring that the strongest will survive, no matter what the conditions are, and the rest simply aren't worth the cost, we should consider the long-term economic ramifications of such a policy. The continued education of the poor urban and rural populations is indeed expensive, and a great many students within these schools continue to fail in spite of the best efforts of teachers, parents, administrators, and other forms of intervention. What, however, will be the cost of supporting the whole of this population on Welfare and Food Stamps, and subsidized housing, and free health-care (to say nothing of prison) if we write the population as a whole off assuring that they will largely be unemployable in today's economy? This was a possibility 50 years ago when the student who couldn't read beyond a 4th grade level dropped out in the 8th grade and yet was assured of a good job working in the booming American industrial market. This is no longer the reality... and if we recognize that we now live in an global market where we need to be able to increasingly be able to compete with the "hungry" and driven populations of China, India, South America, Korea, etc... then we need to take the education of the entire population seriously and stop all the political games.

[OrphanPip]

Whether Australia or Canada find the system congenial has no correlation in UK terms where the density of population and cultural mix is far greater than either. This has much to do with immigration policies pursued by British politicians that have had a noticeably greater effect on the UK than that of many other countries.

While there is certainly a greater population density in the UK (although most of Canada's population is packed in large urban centres, like the US), Canada is actually more ethnically diverse than the UK, and it also has the highest immigration rate, per capita, in the developed world. Of course, we don't have the history of slavery or problems with illegal immigration like the US, which is very likely the most diverse population in the West.

Issues of ethnicity do tie into problems of systemic poverty, but blaming the immigrants doesn't seem like an adequate explanation, just like blaming the system doesn't seem to work quite well when the same basic aspects of the system work in other places. The focus should be on pragmatic examination of ways to improve performance and help deal with the systemic problems that make the system work in one place and not in another.

In Quebec, the public system snaps the poor kids up quickly, they get integrated into the national daycare program from as early as 3, where there is the beginnings of an education program. A big problem with systemic poverty is that a great deal of a child's cognitive development happens way before they ever end up in a classroom with a teacher. There's so much more at play than any ideological bogeyman of "liberalism" in the schools.

[cafolini]

I think you exaggerate how bad things are to an extent. I went to a public school that was ranked 26th out of 27 English language schools in Montreal, the only one behind us was the one servicing the Mohawk reserve. I managed to receive a reasonable quality education and attend the top ranked life science university in Canada, and a top 20 internationally.

I cannot speak for Neely, but I will state that there is no need for exaggeration in my instance... and as bad as these conditions may be, I have heard from teachers at other schools in the same district... or other large urban districts... where the conditions were even worse.

I should not that I do not expect that the conditions I or Neely speak of are commonplace in public schools across the nation. My own personal experience of public schools in a middle-class suburban district was quite different. The conditions for learning at this school... and I would surmise at a majority of the public schools in the middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods is quite good. The scoring of the American Schools is being dragged down predominantly by the poor urban and rural schools.

Pip raises a good question of why there is this disparity in scores between US and UK schools on one hand and Canadian schools on the other hand, considering that the demographics are largely equal. I will not attempt to speak to the British schools, knowing nothing of them or the demographics first hand. I will, however, look at the issue from the US perspective. According to available numbers the Canadian minority population (16.2%) consists of aboriginal or First Nations (3.8%), Asian (7.9%), Black (2.5%) and a remaining mixed minority population of (1.9%). By way of contrast the US minority population consists of a minority population of 36.3%. Of these the largest groups are Hispanic (16.3%), Black/African-American (12.6%), and Asian (4.8%).

The Asian population, which makes up Canada's largest minority group, has historically been very supportive of education and very solid in terms of family structure. The Black population in the United States has had a long adversarial relationship with education, owing, no doubt, much to slavery and racism... but also to poverty and the failure of the Black American families. In many of the poor Black communities single-family homes... usually headed by a woman... are the reality in 90%+ of the instances. The Hispanic population as a whole has been no less successful in supporting education of their children in the US.

Much of this ties over to poverty. The Black and Hispanic communities are continually ranked among the poorest in the US. The US poverty rate as a whole is over 15%. The Canadian poverty rate lies somewhere between a a little under 5% (according to Conservative polls) and a little over 10% (according to liberal polls). If we estimate that the reality lies somewhere in between and split the difference we find that the US poverty rate stands at double that of Canada.

If we look at Norway we find a rather homogeneous culture. The largest non-European minority is that of Pakistanis who account for a mere .7% of the population. This homogeneous character carries over into language and religion as well. Looking at poverty, the percentage of Norwegians living at or below the poverty rate is estimated at 4.3%.

One can certainly use such data to help explain the disparity between school scores in the US, Canada, and Norway when we recognize that poverty is one of the largest indicators for academic success and that the populations most susceptible to poverty in the US are the Black and Hispanic populations who both have a long history of distrust and lack of support for public education.

Of course there are undoubtedly other factors as well, including the homogeneity of the culture as a whole, the structure of the school systems, the Federal support (or lack thereof) for national standards for both students and the education of teachers, the degree of respect for education and educators, etc...

The great problem now faced by public education as a whole in the US is that the notion once almost universally held that all children should be given an equal access to the quality education needed to succeed in our society is challenged by those of conservative views such as MortalTerror who are willing to throw the majority of the urban and poor rural student population into the trash heap because the education of these students has become "too expensive". If public education were eliminated in the US tomorrow and replaced by for-profit private schools the quality of education in most middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods would not change much. In the rural schools and urban schools where the costs of education are far greater due to increases in violence and need for security, increases in needs for special services to deal with large populations of developmental, emotional, behavioral, and physical handicaps (directly tied to poverty), increases in needs for psychological services to deal with increased abuse (sexual, physical, emotional, alcohol/drugs), etc... the quality of education would decline drastically... as can be seen in the scores of private charter schools which have opened in urban neighborhoods. The results will be a further level of locking children into the economic state that they were born in, and an increase in the divide between the rich and the poor... something that is already carrying over into the colleges and universities in the US.

If we, as a society, are to decide that it is OK to write off large portions of the population figuring that the strongest will survive, no matter what the conditions are, and the rest simply aren't worth the cost, we should consider the long-term economic ramifications of such a policy. The continued education of the poor urban and rural populations is indeed expensive, and a great many students within these schools continue to fail in spite of the best efforts of teachers, parents, administrators, and other forms of intervention. What, however, will be the cost of supporting the whole of this population on Welfare and Food Stamps, and subsidized housing, and free health-care (to say nothing of prison) if we write the population as a whole off assuring that they will largely be unemployable in today's economy? This was a possibility 50 years ago when the student who couldn't read beyond a 4th grade level dropped out in the 8th grade and yet was assured of a good job working in the booming American industrial market. This is no longer the reality... and if we recognize that we now live in an global market where we need to be able to increasingly be able to compete with the "hungry" and driven populations of China, India, South America, Korea, etc... then we need to take the education of the entire population seriously and stop all the political games.

Frankly, I don't think you understand the American system and the richness of the human resources we have here. And what is poverty measured by? When an American tells you poverty is 15%, it is measured by what we consider poverty level, not by any international standard, which in the first place does not occur beyond the propaganda machine. The poorest hispanic in America has an effective standard of life 7 to 10 times better than in any Spanish country. The poorest black has a standard tens of times better than in any African nation. It's not for nothing that the petitions for resident visas to come to America are hundreds of times higher than for the rest of the world. And it will continue to be so.

[qimissung]

[QUOTE=Vonny;1085488]Qimi, I think the confusion is that what you and I call Liberal and Conservative is different from what they call liberal and conservative. All the time I fall into this, where I am conservative, however I'm not Conservative. I'm also not Liberal.

In our country everything is so controlled by the C & L that many aren't able to think outside the box anymore.
QUOTE]

Thanks, Vonny, to you and Stlukes for clearing up the conservative/liberal question. I think we do the whole question of how to deal with our schools and particularly our low-performing schools a disservice when we divide the issues and solutions into liberal or conservative camps. For one thing you've immediately decided that some things will work on not based solely on whoever thought them up, which is ridiculous in itself. Secondly, when we do that we demonize whole portions of humanity who have committed the sin of not thinking as we do, which is also ridiculous.

I'm afraid, Emil, much as we might want to bring back the good old days of caning recalcitrant students, that those days are gone for good. There are things that can be done that would be effective, if only....we'd be practical and ask questions:

Is it truly supportive?

Does it really help?

Is this really working?

The qualifiers are really necessary, I think.

I just started reading "Freakonomics" by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (I realize I'm probably the last person in the Northern Hemisphere to do so, but there it is) and I skipped ahead to the chapter titled "What Makes a Perfect Parent" and found this:

"...school choice barely mattered at all.It is true that the Chicago students who entered the school choice lottery were more likely to graduate than the students who didn't-which seems to suggest that school choice does make a difference. But that's an illusion. The proof is in this comparison: the students who won the lottery and went to a "better" school did no better than equivalent students who lost the lottery and were left behind."

What did seem to help a significant portion of the students it goes on to say, was having a technical school or career academy, something I have long wished for at our school, which has systematically been doing away with these classes for the last ten years. I wondered if in wishing for this I was shortchanging our students, but I still feel that such programs would help, provided it is the students choice to go into them. In the United States they could still go on to get a higher education if they wanted too later.

Unfortunately, in Texas at any rate, we are striving to have one hundred per cent of our students go to college. Against their will, usually. Honoring what these young adults want is never encouraged. They are simply enrolled in classes and handed a schedule. If they passed the state-mandated test they may find themselves in AP classes from which they cannot withdraw unless they bring their parent or guardian to see the counselor.

In high schools, also, the principal is paid according to the number of students enrolled. For a long time that meant that we took any kid, even those not any longer welcome in other districts.

And as far as teachers mollycoddleing the students, it seemed to me that it was the administrators who did not back up the teachers that often caused the problems. The other day I had a student who wanted to leave the room. I told her no; she walked out anyway. I was furious and planning to write a referral. She came back and pretty much demanded re-entry. Finally the assitant principal came and explained the situation to me. All that trouble could have been saved if he'd only bothered to write me a note or her a pass.

Yesterday the same student told me again that her doctor told her she shouldn't carry a notebook for health reasons. I told her I would have to see a note from her doctor before I would accept that. Then she told me she had to leave early again. I told her that the asst. principal had told me that that was in effect only through last week. Guess what? She walked out again.

Of course I went back to the assistant principal. He told her what he told me and said he hoped I would write a referral. It was such a relief. The last principal we had took the students side over the teachers.

[stlukesguild]

Frankly, I don't think you understand the American system and the richness of the human resources we have here. And what is poverty measured by? When an American tells you poverty is 15%, it is measured by what we consider poverty level, not by any international standard, which in the first place does not occur beyond the propaganda machine. The poorest hispanic in America has an effective standard of life 7 to 10 times better than in any Spanish country. The poorest black has a standard tens of times better than in any African nation. It's not for nothing that the petitions for resident visas to come to America are hundreds of times higher than for the rest of the world. And it will continue to be so.

And your grasp of the reality of American poverty is based on what? How many years of first hand experience in the poor neighborhoods of urban America? Or perhaps a couple years of college that have led you to think you are an expert in everything?

Yes the standard of living of the average American living beneath the poverty level is undoubtedly far greater than that of the child living on the streets in the Sao Paolo or a great majority in war-torn Somalia so we should just tell that to the America child who relies upon the free lunch programs at his public schools for the only meals he will have this week because it's the end of the month and Mom is out of money until the first of the month and her Welfare and Food Stamps arrive. The fact that he or she has to walk past drug-dealers, crack heads, whores, gang-bangers, and boarded up houses to a decapitated school built in 1903 with one bathroom in the basement, inadequate heating, and no air-conditioning in the summer months is OK because... hell it could be worse. he or she could be living in Afghanistan.

[Vonny]

In Quebec, the public system snaps the poor kids up quickly, they get integrated into the national daycare program from as early as 3, where there is the beginnings of an education program. A big problem with systemic poverty is that a great deal of a child's cognitive development happens way before they ever end up in a classroom with a teacher. There's so much more at play than any ideological bogeyman of "liberalism" in the schools.

I think this is it, right here: The battle is won or lost LONG before the child begins first grade.

And Qimissung, I'm not in on the conservative/liberal debate. Are Emil and Stlukes on opposite side of that? Because both of them make sense to me. I can even see Mortalterror's point, homeschool if you can.

Qimissung, who is paying for all of those kids to go to college who don't want to go? Are they forced to take out loans? And then there are not many jobs anymore for people who do graduate from college. You certainly don't want to major in Education!

[Seasider]

Reading all the posts on this thread encouraged me to go back to the book which I had downloaded earlier this year.

I was reminded that Frank Chalk claims to be a Supply Teacher...one who substitutes in cases of staff absence.

I have held both permanent positions and done supply work and it was my experience that however much the teacher disliked the latter, this was exceeded by how much pupils disliked having constant changes of teachers.

When I was training I was made aware of the necessity of forming a relationship with your pupils and being consistent in what you expected and and what you rejected. Pupils preferred certainties of routine and rules and reacted badly to arbitrary changes, which might only be in operation for a day, or even a lesson.

I went back into Supply Teaching for 18 months after 20 years in Higher Ed and I could not believe how hard and stressful it was when compared with my earlier experiences.

What struck me was the fact that the class did not like having to get used to someone else just for a couple of days, and demonstrated this by hostility and often rudeness.

My discomfiture was not helped by some established teachers speculating on why I was having difficulties with Class X or Y, while he/she found them no trouble at all!

Of course this one aspect does not explain or excuse bad behaviour. The reasons for much of it have been cogently argued by previous posters. But I think it is disingenuous of Chalk to lay the blame solely on the pupils.

And apart from that a book about quiet, well behaved, hard working pupils and happy fulfilled teachers would never have achieved the sales of the two books he has written,which may have enabled him to leave the classroom behind.

[cafolini]

Frankly, I don't think you understand the American system and the richness of the human resources we have here. And what is poverty measured by? When an American tells you poverty is 15%, it is measured by what we consider poverty level, not by any international standard, which in the first place does not occur beyond the propaganda machine. The poorest hispanic in America has an effective standard of life 7 to 10 times better than in any Spanish country. The poorest black has a standard tens of times better than in any African nation. It's not for nothing that the petitions for resident visas to come to America are hundreds of times higher than for the rest of the world. And it will continue to be so.

And your grasp of the reality of American poverty is based on what? How many years of first hand experience in the poor neighborhoods of urban America? Or perhaps a couple years of college that have led you to think you are an expert in everything?

Yes the standard of living of the average American living beneath the poverty level is undoubtedly far greater than that of the child living on the streets in the Sao Paolo or a great majority in war-torn Somalia so we should just tell that to the America child who relies upon the free lunch programs at his public schools for the only meals he will have this week because it's the end of the month and Mom is out of money until the first of the month and her Welfare and Food Stamps arrive. The fact that he or she has to walk past drug-dealers, crack heads, whores, gang-bangers, and boarded up houses to a decapitated school built in 1903 with one bathroom in the basement, inadequate heating, and no air-conditioning in the summer months is OK because... hell it could be worse. he or she could be living in Afghanistan.

There are disagreements of all kinds in America regarding poverty level and how to establish canons. The point is that this idea of international standards is false. There are none other than the ones established by propaganda machines and do not and cannot occur.
Considering the amount of services and the assistance the poor people get in the actual three-dimensional experience of America, makes them many times richer than in most countries in the world.
Of course we have a lot of mongers that think otherwise. But that has always been the case in America while in the reality of everyday experience we have overcome the warnings for catastrophe with actual progress in all spheres. And people ask: "What are you talking about? Even your own Americans tell you that you are in crisis, in deep trouble."
This is true. Complete freedom of speech in America (and we want to keep it that way and we will) causes a certain havoc in the media which has no actual empirical foundation. It has always been that way and will continue to be so. Our resources are so far ahead of the times that the rest of the world cannot understand their outreaching capabilities. And the meaning of money is being redefined constantly. Behind the scene of the mongers from the GOP (and many are not mongers) our so-called CRISIS is a Pistachio Parfait. Have fun. A salute from the land of the free and the home of the brave.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Reading all the posts on this thread encouraged me to go back to the book which I had downloaded earlier this year.

I was reminded that Frank Chalk claims to be a Supply Teacher...one who substitutes in cases of staff absence.

I have held both permanent positions and done supply work and it was my experience that however much the teacher disliked the latter, this was exceeded by how much pupils disliked having constant changes of teachers.

When I was training I was made aware of the necessity of forming a relationship with your pupils and being consistent in what you expected and and what you rejected. Pupils preferred certainties of routine and rules and reacted badly to arbitrary changes, which might only be in operation for a day, or even a lesson.

I went back into Supply Teaching for 18 months after 20 years in Higher Ed and I could not believe how hard and stressful it was when compared with my earlier experiences.

What struck me was the fact that the class did not like having to get used to someone else just for a couple of days, and demonstrated this by hostility and often rudeness.

My discomfiture was not helped by some established teachers speculating on why I was having difficulties with Class X or Y, while he/she found them no trouble at all!

Of course this one aspect does not explain or excuse bad behaviour. The reasons for much of it have been cogently argued by previous posters. But I think it is disingenuous of Chalk to lay the blame solely on the pupils.

And apart from that a book about quiet, well behaved, hard working pupils and happy fulfilled teachers would never have achieved the sales of the two books he has written,which may have enabled him to leave the classroom behind.

It is a fair point. Certainly it is harder doing supply work and covering absent teachers, it brings out the worse in students as they see it as a ‘free lesson’ and think that they can get away with things they otherwise wouldn’t. I did this for five years myself. However, the sort of behaviour he describes is not exaggerated and even very experienced teachers have lessons like he describes in this book all the time. Last week I was working with one of these and we had to get rid of 5 students from a class of 17 just to function somewhat ‘normally’. So it’s not just supply who get the brunt end of it all the time, just perhaps more often.

Chalk doesn’t lay the blame solely on the pupils, perhaps I’ve mainly focused on that, but he doesn’t do that. In his books he points to other factors including the lack of support from above, social and economic circumstances, poor teaching, the comprehensive system, the hippy buzz methods and so on, so he definitely doesn’t lay the blame solely at their door, though there is never any excuse for poor behaviour as you say.

A salute from the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Oh dear! The Queen says ‘Hello’.

[cafolini]

Oh dear! The Queen says ‘Hello’.

The Queen is eternal gossip in the UK. Most likely it is Thatcher from Faulklands. You entreprenourial weasels can sell the house of lords to Australia. I know you hate being small brothers, but look at the price of the English pound. We are doing a good job. Aren't we? And didn't we pay attention when you closed Gaddafi's embassy? Euro for Europeans and Catholics with Big Imaginary Bang in the shores of the Cam. Don't abandon Newton, please. We honor you. Be good.

[Emil Miller]

I'm afraid I don't regard hearsay, and second-hand hearsay at that, as having any place in a serious argument.

Inner city schools have all kinds of reasons for failure. Like all Comprehensives they are neighbourhood schools and conditions will reflect that. Neighbourhoods marked by poverty, urban decay, crime, unemployment, lack of aspiration etc will import these conditions into schools. And teachers, however good they are cannot be a panacea for all ills.
This Government is edging towards the opinion that the problem may be solved not by any improvement in social conditions but by Discipline and Latin!!! Academies?? Watch this space!

Before WW11, neighbourhoods were marked by poverty, urban decay and unemployment to a greater degree than today -I won't say lack of aspiration because it's not a thing that can be meaningfully measured and punitive sentencing tended top keep crime relatively low- and yet I have a photograph taken in 1939 showing the class of an inner city school. The pupils are all sitting behind desks with a well-dressed teacher standing at the back. There is no sign of hooliganism and the boys, all from working class families who were living through hard times according to the man who originally owned the photo, look relatively relaxed. Post-war improvements in social conditions don't seem to have had the effect that you claim for them, so perhaps the opinion that the government is edging towards is correct.
And now abideth discipline, Latin, academies; but the greatest of these is discipline.

[Seasider]

One piece of hearsay and one photograph...not much of a case.

In 1939 the School leaving Age was 14 so the age group which most people find the most troublesome were not in school but at work if they could get it.

The Thirties is a decade supposedly dominated by poverty, social deprivation and so on, but in fact there were many areas outside the older industrial conurbations where new industries were springing up and unemployment was not the norm...the motor industry in Luton, Bedford and Oxford were examples of this as was the construction industry. The Thirties was also a great period of house building, the development of the suburbs and road building did provide employment for working class boys. and for girls there was still the opportunity of domestic service.

So the profile of the school population in the Thirties is very different to that which exists today. So comparisons of behaviour and attainment then and now are not comparing like with like.