On 2008-07-25 16:46:38 +0100, stuart noble said:

Andy Hall wrote:
On 2008-07-25 12:37:23 +0100, stuart noble said:

Andy Hall wrote:
On 2008-07-25 09:41:44 +0100, stuart noble said:

Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
stuart noble writes:
IME bright kids will sail through their A levels, whatever system they're in.

I thought all kids sailed through their A levels nowadays?


No point in private education on academic grounds then.

Depends on how many A levels and also the impact with university
entrance grades (they adjust accordngly), plus of course choice of
universities and the possibility of scholarships and bursaries.

Secondly, education is not about imparting information in order to pass
exams. That's training and is for monkeys. Education is about
discovering how to go about learning - finding, sifting and
assimilating appropriate information for the tasks at hand. By virtue
of the different ethic and much better teacher pupil ratio, this most
important aspect of education can be facilitated in the independent
sector. The state is unable to do this because it wants to treat
everybody in the same way regardless of suitability.




Separating children at primary school age is truly wicked, and is more
about their ambitious parents than the welfare of the child.

They aren't separated. In fact, when my children moved to private
school, they ended up with a far wider circle of friends in terms of
different cultures, abilities and geographies than ever they had at the
local state school. The latter was very inward looking to the "local
community" with its limited vision of the world.

They're separated from the kids round the corner who don't happen to
have as much money.

Actually there were numerous children whose parents were not well off
and who received part or full bursaries at the school attended by my
children. Secondly, there were parents who impoverished themselves
in various ways because they put the welfare of their children and
payment of fees as a higher priority than spending money on themselves
or their house. I think that it's spectacularly wicked that they
should have to do this out of taxed income in addition to paying for a
state system that has failed their children.

I suppose "local community" smacks of society, or some other deviant notion.

My children had and still have a number of friends locally as well as
those from farther afield who they met in school. The local friends
had no issue with their going to a different school since there are
several state and independent schools in the area anyway. None of
the children, regardless of school, had the hang ups that you seem to
imply. So rather than having a circle that was limited to the
narrowness of friends around the corner, they had and have that plus
others with parents ranging from artists to farmers, transport workers
to university professors and diplomats to well known pop stars.
Interestingly, they still communicate with them by email and meeting
several years later. The separation comes from the notion of
limiting the scope and having the limited horizons of the local
environment.

The deviant notion is that of the public sector organisers of education
who would seek to limit the scope to grow of the children and that of
those who believe that this is the right thing to do for the benefit of
"society". None of this.

Curiously, some people still seem to be unable to differentiate between
situation A being different to situation B vs. situation A being
perceived to be better than situation B. Sadly, this muddled thinking
permeates all through the state education system to the point where it
is dumbed down in an attempt to make A = B in all respects. The
National Curriculum is one of the worst examples of that. A=B will
never be achieved and should never be achieved and is highly
deleterious to the children themselves and in the medium to long term
the ability of our country to compete on the world stage.