Things that make you question our future

A Liniment's Evil Work

A Livelier Twin Monks
Yeah, yeah - everyone has complained about younger generations since the beginning of time, and maybe these are all just cherry-picked examples, but I still can't help but wonder.

 

okzharp

Well-known member
I remember reading about a Breitbart 'simplification' project before Trump's election - the mission was to return societal organisation to the 19th century UK model, which was held up as some kind of 'peak'. Knowing stuff doesn't make people happy. Better for people to live in blissful ignorance of the machinations of power and statecraft, distracted by labour and dreams of leisure.

UK people like Gove, Raab, Truss, Faridge appear to be aligned with this idea. Gove did his university dissertation on 19th century sociopolitics, as education secretary he reintroduced loads of Victorian lit to the GCSE curriculum and promoted a 19th century focus in the history curriculum.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I remember reading about a Breitbart 'simplification' project before Trump's election - the mission was to return societal organisation to the 19th century UK model, which was held up as some kind of 'peak'. Knowing stuff doesn't make people happy. Better for people to live in blissful ignorance of the machinations of power and statecraft, distracted by labour and dreams of leisure.

UK people like Gove, Raab, Truss, Faridge appear to be aligned with this idea. Gove did his university dissertation on 19th century sociopolitics, as education secretary he reintroduced loads of Victorian lit to the GCSE curriculum and promoted a 19th century focus in the history curriculum.
And Iain Duncan Smith would have reintroduced workhouses in a flash if he could have got away with it.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Isn't some of the most celebrated Victorian literature - Dickens, Arthur Morrison - powerful and affecting precisely because it's an unflinching description of just how utterly fucking dreadful life was for most people in those days?
 

okzharp

Well-known member
Isn't some of the most celebrated Victorian literature - Dickens, Arthur Morrison - powerful and affecting precisely because it's an unflinching description of just how utterly fucking dreadful life was for most people in those days?

Yes. Exactly.

But it's the same with history education. Kids in the UK learn about WW1/2 in year 7, year 9, year 10/11 and again in year 12. Often, they what they learn in Year 9 subtly contradicts what they learned in Year 7, etc. The result is probably some kind of desensitisation to the absurdity of history vs contemporaneity.

Dickens obviously addresses the complexities and issues of 19th century society. Meanwhile Thomas Malthus - a kind of 19th century Enoch Powell/Nigel Faridge - promotes sensible, pragmatic, conservative values-led thinking on overcrowding and population control and fairness and wealth distribution and education etc. Can a society that produced a work of such powerful and affecting beauty be so bad?
 

sufi

lala
Yeah, yeah - everyone has complained about younger generations since the beginning of time, and maybe these are all just cherry-picked examples, but I still can't help but wonder.


if they are saying that the 7th grade kids are stuck in 4th grade, isnt that when covid kicked them all out of school?
i dunno how that played out in US, but shutting schools for long periods was extra-drastic for primary age kids
 

sufi

lala
oh sorry i see they do acknowledge covid but then just skip on and blame screentime
i like the way they just chuck skibidee toilet in the mix without any context
 

A Liniment's Evil Work

A Livelier Twin Monks
I don't think covid would explain things like the one teacher saying that there are people in 7th or 8th grade that are still on a second grade level, or that the 7th grade teacher has students that are as low as 1st grade level, or that her 5th graders with significant disabilities could write better than her 7th graders can now.
Maybe she's totally lying, but they can't even tell her what a 3 minute video was about even with additional help from her.
Then there was that ballet teacher that said that those recalcitrant 5 year olds that now come to her class are requesting Pound Town - I mean, WTF - If they're not getting that song from screen time, then they're getting it from where?
 

sufi

lala
I don't think covid would explain things like the one teacher saying that there are people in 7th or 8th grade that are still on a second grade level, or that the 7th grade teacher has students that are as low as 1st grade level, or that her 5th graders with significant disabilities could write better than her 7th graders can now.
Maybe she's totally lying, but they can't even tell her what a 3 minute video was about even with additional help from her.
Then there was that ballet teacher that said that those recalcitrant 5 year olds that now come to her class are requesting Pound Town - I mean, WTF - If they're not getting that song from screen time, then they're getting it from where?
What age are those grades? idk us system
 

chava

Well-known member
I'd blamed covid restrictions as well, but it seems it is not that really. Swedish non-lockdown kids are slipping behind, and the asian kids (suffering from pretty rough lockdowns) do well as always in the latest PISA results. UK does surprisingly(!) well, however
 
Top