Chris Woodhead= Cnut

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droid

Guest
Slothrop said:
What percentage of working class people in the UK does that apply to, though.

The idea that class is perpetuated purely by economic exclusion and divided along lines of income seems like a fairly dramatic oversimplification these days...
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Yeah sure, its an extreme example to illustrate a point. There are thousands of different ways that social, economic and cultural factors influence 'success' as well as pure luck and chance of course.

Intelligence (whatever that is) is just one factor. The idea that higher social/economic status is a prime indicator of genetic superiority is something that has been trotted out for millenia, and is, in my eyes, unprovable and dangerous bollocks.
 
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droid

Guest
mixed_biscuits said:
Do you mean that the purported meritocracy doesn't actually reward those of more merit or that there are no intrinsic differences in merit and so a meritocracy can never apply?
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That the meritocracy does not exist. That 'merit' (a totally nebulous term) is only one of many factors which influence success, that the idea of the 'meritocracy as actuality' is used by elites to justify their own positions and ignores widescale structural inequalities perpetutated by those elites.
 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
IdleRich said:
I think that the point is that it's due to the parents rather than the child - a child that has parents that have a lot of books is likely to be at an advantage relative to other children as it is clear that they have parents who both value learning and are wealthy enough to purchase books. It's then hard to say that the children have inherited intelligence, it may just be that they are in a favourable environment.
That's not to say that intelligence may not have a genetic element.
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The problem with the idea that intelligence is only genetic is that, while it's partially true (everything is ultimately genetic at a reductionist level), this belief doesn't account for the fact that phenotypes (that is, genetic traits) often will not or cannot express themselves without certain environmental cues. So an impoverished child with an unstable home life who ends up with ADD and can't graduate from high school is not necessarily genetically less intelligent. But what's certain is that his/her environment was not conducive to expressing the phenotypes that amount to intelligence--it was actually counter-counducive to this.

So there's no possible way to tell who has more intelligent "genes" than others, since there's no way to isolate environmental factors and then test genes for "intelligence", which is an epiphenomenon anyway and can't be easily algorithmically tested. In humans, anyway. Maybe someone could do it with apes or monkeys, but then it wouldn't be a very good experimental model, isolating them from their environment, either.
 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
john eden said:
Quite clearly working class people do get admitted to Oxbridge. I happen to know one very well - she felt very out of place there, though. Must have been her chromosomes.
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I got a scholarship for undergrad for a school that cost more for just one year than my parents were making as salary at the time. When I got there, I was mildly shocked to learn that almost nobody there was on financial aid, and nearly everyone's parents paid out of pocket for tuition and fees. (There were some black kids for diversity's sake of course--African princes...)

I hated it. I had to do really stupid things just to afford to stay there. I shouldn't have bothered. I hated the vast majority of those people, all so "caring" and leftist--except they had no fucking clue how most of the world lives. None whatsoever. They were most of them raging narcissists with received notions from mommy and daddy what they should believe and how they should denounce their privilege.

Fuck those idiots.
 
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don_quixote

Trent End
not read it yet, but this is the topic i have waited my whole life for. he is the biggest dickhead imaginable. i have seizures whenever he is on the radio. I HATE HIM SO FUCKING MUCH. i want him to rot.
 
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don_quixote

Trent End
mixed_biscuits said:
It also seemed to be the case at Oxbridge that students very often had siblings also at the university. I doubt that this is solely the product of insider knowledge or particularly crazed familial work ethics (especially as so many of them were lazy cnuts).
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and how many of them went to state schools? give me a fucking break. you know they all went to exclusive public schools with oxbridge 'heritage'.
 
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don_quixote

Trent End
sorry that was a bit of a knee jerk reaction. i knew people at cambridge who were very clever and not from 'those' schools and my best friends brother was just as intelligent as anyone at oxbridge but hey. my sisters are just as clever as me, just in different areas. thing is, we all had parents who went to uni. it was expected that we were going to go to uni.

going back to the article though:
In his latest book, The Desolation of Learning, which is published next week, he tracks A-level and GCSE exam questions from 1929 to today and argues that standards now are much lower.
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BIG CLAP

any fucker can do that.

but judging education on it's exam output rather than it's overall effect is so blinkered it barely justifies comment.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
don_quixote said:
and how many of them went to state schools? give me a fucking break. you know they all went to exclusive public schools with oxbridge 'heritage'.
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OK, you admit that was a knee-jerk, but still - there are in fact a number of UK universities with a private/state intake ratio higher than either Oxford or Cambridge. Which goes to show it's not impossible to find an identifiable group of young people who are both posher and less intelligent than a typical year of Oxbridge undergrads. :)
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
droid said:
That the meritocracy does not exist. That 'merit' (a totally nebulous term) is only one of many factors which influence success, that the idea of the 'meritocracy as actuality' is used by elites to justify their own positions and ignores widescale structural inequalities perpetutated by those elites.
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bang on. there are many factors which determine success, not the least of which is pure dumb luck.

for all our "classless society" bit there is actually relatively little class mobility here. I don't know for a fact but I suspect this is also largely true in Britain.

I don't know who Chris Woodhead is, but the argument being made in this thread strikes me as about one step up from saying poor people are poor cos they don't work hard enough. only in this case it's cos they're not smart enough.
 
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don_quixote

Trent End
Mr. Tea said:
OK, you admit that was a knee-jerk, but still - there are in fact a number of UK universities with a private/state intake ratio higher than either Oxford or Cambridge. Which goes to show it's not impossible to find an identifiable group of young people who are both posher and less intelligent than a typical year of Oxbridge undergrads. :)
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http://www.suttontrust.com/reports/UniversityAdmissions.pdf

Oxbridge admissions
 100 elite schools – making up under 3% of 3,700 schools with sixth forms and sixth form
colleges in the UK – accounted for a third of admissions to Oxbridge during the last five years.
 At the 30 schools with the highest admissions rates to Oxbridge, one quarter of university
entrants from the schools went to Cambridge and Oxford universities during the five years.
 The schools with the highest admissions rates are highly socially selective. The 30 schools are
composed of 29 independent schools and one grammar. The 100 schools with the highest
admission rates to Oxbridge are composed of 78 independent schools, 21 grammar schools, and
one comprehensive.
 Overall, the top 200 schools and colleges made up 48% of admissions to Oxbridge during the
five years, with 10 per cent of their university entrants going to the two universities. The other
3,500 schools and colleges accounted for the remaining 52% of admissions, with one per cent
of their university entrants going to Oxbridge during the period.
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http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/pdfs/loweststateschoolintake.pdf

i know what you're thinking, but it isn't true. oxbridge is still an old boys club. no doubt about it.
 
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don_quixote

Trent End
and look, i still remember being there in my first week absolutely mystified when people asked me what school i went to. i was all, you're from tunbridge fucking wells, how the hell do you know the schools in leicester? of course they didn't, they just assumed i went to uppingham. or loughborough endowed schools. or whatever other blazer brigades there were around us.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
droid said:
Intelligence (whatever that is) is just one factor. The idea that higher social/economic status is a prime indicator of genetic superiority is something that has been trotted out for millenia, and is, in my eyes, unprovable and dangerous bollocks.
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I'm only halfway through reading the thread, but true dat.

Some reactionary arsehole trots out a similar line every couple of years in fact.

It's often related to race, as well.
 
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crackerjack

Well-known member
I assumed from the title that this was a revival of an old thread.

But I guess dissensus wasn't around back when Woodhead, as Chief Inspector of Schools, was saying how "experiential and educative" it was for teachers to shag their pupils.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
don_quixote said:
http://www.suttontrust.com/reports/UniversityAdmissions.pdf



http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/pdfs/loweststateschoolintake.pdf

i know what you're thinking, but it isn't true. oxbridge is still an old boys club. no doubt about it.
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I wasn't saying it wasn't, I just thought there were some unis with lower state-school admissions rates than Oxford or Cambridge - though a quick google tells me this isn't actually the case. I could have sworn things were (slightly) different ten years ago or so when I was making my UCAS applications but maybe things have gone backwards since then? I dunno, I was probably just assuming St. Andrew's was Posho Central because Prince Wills went there. ;)
 
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