High standards

[Billy the kid]

One of the ways I waste time is looking at the lives of people who write textbooks. Normally you have to be clever and well organised to write a textbook and I am quite interested to find out what kind of lives these people have led. Most of these textbook writers are or were teachers and you can find out about them on sites where former pupils of a particular school share their memories and arrange reunions.

I was looking at the Lawnswood High School site yesterday. Until yesterday I'd never heard of it - I'm not from Leeds - but I found it very interesting. When you start looking at these sites you soon realise that the educational standards in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s were very high. The teachers pushed their students and the students were grateful for their teacher's efforts. What I find sad is that many of these female teachers never had children. When the brightest are having fewer children than the less intelligent then the consequences are quite frightening. Perhaps today's lower standards are something to do with this. Some of you will say educational standards are not lower today, but all you have to do is compare some 1950s O'level papers with recent ones.

Another thing about these female teachers who never married is that they often ended up living with or near one another. Cynics today would draw the wrong conclusion from that. My wife knows many old teachers and she says intelligent people like that just like the companionship of like minded intelligent people. These old teachers often live into their 90s because they keep their minds alive and they don't have the health problems which are sometimes caused by having children.

This is the site I was looking at :

http://www.lawnswoodhighschool.com/lhs/ ... sTest.html

[Deleted User 728]

I think there's one clear, fundamental reason why education standards are lower these days and that's because just about any old college can earn the status of "University".

Back in the day there were proper apprenticeships, City & Guilds, O and A levels, tech colleges, polytechnics and academic universities. To study at one of the latter you needed high grades in 3 or more subjects at A-level and it was bloody difficult to get a "C" or above, mainly because the band for C-grade was only about 5% and to get an A or a B you needed to be in the top 20% of people taking the exam.
Extrapolate that across three subjects and you're talking about the top 5-10% of the country being able to attend university.
In those days, a degree meant something. It meant you could apply yourself for more than three years (getting there was hard enough, remember) and then continue to work as you "read" for your subject.
At the end of it, you rightly stood out from the crowd and went in at a higher level than someone who'd spent three or four years working their way up in industry, whatever field they were in.

Now, degrees are easy to come by and it's more like 45% of the population going on to further and higher education, diluting the entire system from the top down.

I worked at two universities, one a red brick "proper" one and the other a converted Poly.
Both had their merits and I actually like the idea of a tiered system - especially with more technical "hands on" subjects like mechanics or hairdressing.
There was nothing wrong with it ... but like so many things changed by the "liberal lefties" - and I speak as a left-wing liberal !! - once we started going soft on kids in one way we had to take it across the board.

No smacking - no competitive sport - no competitive grades - lowering of standards in everything.


Thus endeth the lesson.

[mapperleywhite]

I think there's one clear, fundamental reason why education standards are lower these days and that's because just about any old college can earn the status of "University".

Back in the day there were proper apprenticeships, City & Guilds, O and A levels, tech colleges, polytechnics and academic universities. To study at one of the latter you needed high grades in 3 or more subjects at A-level and it was bloody difficult to get a "C" or above, mainly because the band for C-grade was only about 5% and to get an A or a B you needed to be in the top 20% of people taking the exam.
Extrapolate that across three subjects and you're talking about the top 5-10% of the country being able to attend university.
In those days, a degree meant something. It meant you could apply yourself for more than three years (getting there was hard enough, remember) and then continue to work as you "read" for your subject.
At the end of it, you rightly stood out from the crowd and went in at a higher level than someone who'd spent three or four years working their way up in industry, whatever field they were in.

Now, degrees are easy to come by and it's more like 45% of the population going on to further and higher education, diluting the entire system from the top down.

I worked at two universities, one a red brick "proper" one and the other a converted Poly.
Both had their merits and I actually like the idea of a tiered system - especially with more technical "hands on" subjects like mechanics or hairdressing.
There was nothing wrong with it ... but like so many things changed by the "liberal lefties" - and I speak as a left-wing liberal !! - once we started going soft on kids in one way we had to take it across the board.

No smacking - no competitive sport - no competitive grades - lowering of standards in everything.


Thus endeth the lesson.

Rigger - my kids (now in their late 20's) experienced the American education system when we lived in Houston during the 90's. For me the emphasis was always on boosting their self esteem rather than real time education and learning. I think we're seeing some of this in our education system now. What next?

[Deleted User 728]

Presumably lots of fat kids and an obsession with material things.

Oh .. my bad .. it's happened already

[Billy the kid]

I think the problem starts long before university Rigger. In my day most schools were just about OK. The teachers did their best for you, but unless you were in a grammar school they didn't expect much from their students. As long as the kids could read and write that was enough. In my school there were kids in the fourth year who couldn't read properly.

Grammar schools on the other hand demanded high standards from their students. I can remember chatting to a grammar school boy of my age and he laughed when I told him what we were doing in the various subjects. He was way ahead. Everything about his school was better. They even had a much better soccer team. One of the boys in my time went on to have a good career in the old first division.

They brought in comprehensive schools to even things, but it has not worked out. Perhaps the less able children have a slightly better chance, but the chances for the brighter ones have been knocked on the head. The dedicated teachers, like the ones you can read about on the site above, did not want to teach the less able students. The job became too hard for them. Did the politicians think the kids who couldn't learn to read in Secondary Modern schools would be taking A levels and studying Latin in comprehensives? Instead of creating comprehensive schools they should have turned the Secondary Moderns into Trade Schools where you could learn a skill.

Another thing they could have improved was the grammar school entrance test. I think the 11+ had quite a big error rate. I've known many secondary modern boys who had higher IQs than some of the grammar school boys I've worked with.