Facebook comments about education

"The wayward kids Joe shouldn't be anywhere near kids who want to learn. I don't believe in mixed ability groups and kids of a certain level are best with those at the same level just like musicians tend to play with those at a similar level. The whole idea that kids can be educated to the same level is wrong : differences innate and acquired exist . Miles was born doing maths and has great innate skills which I remind him sometimes are a lot to do with what he was born with and nothing to do with his efforts. He doesn't have to try to hard although he is moving it now . That said approaches are important . I could have helped him with some of his A Level work but he sorted it out for himself and the bit I couldn't get I could have got one of the many ex Uni Maths Tutors that live in Teesdale to help but through not getting help he has acquired an iron determination to get better at whatever he is doing . Same with Clifford .

"This educational thing is a red herring Joe put about by all governments masking the fact that housing and the environment are the problems to crack, and governments can do little about that for party political reasons and then privately educated kids who I knew in the 1980s at York Uni can do what they want to do rather than Degree work they didn't like but not be financially penalized for it . There will always be a better house and location but there doesn't h ave to be a worse one : they can all be good. In other words we can build great housing for everyone cheaply if the will was there , it isn't, for negative equity reasons that would bring down any government very swiftly, that would make the current economic problems look small, but we will never get Mr Thick like me much smarter than I am and Mr Bright like Miles much dumber : there will always be a gap!"

"Just out of interest putting more money into education can result in kids just getting experiences forced upon them. That why Miles and Clifford were withdrawn from any pretty useless educational experiences in Primary and Secondary Schools. The National Curriculum was called the Entitlement Curriculum but people great and small who thought and still do think that is a good thing can't accept that it is a great injustice to a child to make them have educational experiences they are entitled to that are totally useless for them! Challenging stuff!

Lots of New Labour kids got the entitlement to University but that is now dropping off because there are not enough graduate jobs and never will be and the student loan scheme makes Degree Education for and increasing amount of kids just not worth it . Yet another discriminatory market created by party politicians because the really bright kids will always get the jobs because the employers do ability and aptitude tests rightly of wrongly and those kids always do better innately or because of practice . I don't like this situation Joe but no party politician is doing anything to change it which involves equalizing every other bit of society namely housing and the environment rather than educational outcomes of which it is impossible to equalize . Pushing teachers around and bamboozling the electorate with education dreams has been going on for the last 100 years. It will stop because housing and environment will become more important to people when enough of them realise that housing and great places to live are more important and directly plug into education. You can have the shiniest and newest school on the planet and there is one called the Education Village in Darlington , New Labour build , but the housing and environment that most of the kids attending that school come from vastly negate anything the underfunded under all governments school can do !"

"Yes you're right and Richmond Comprehensive School never was one it contained the Grammar School within it which was no bad thing . The Headteacher , Mr Dutton stated this right from the beginning and he was the old Grammar School Head . A good man by the way and he has always said hello to me over the years. Any kid in the mid 70s could get into the top sets and be alongside the ex Grammar School kids which is how it should be but it was still the case that kids from the worse housing and environments mostly didn't get into those top sets. This elites thing though Joe . One of the great things I like about Miles and Clifford was that when they were in Longfield School part time they knew kids from all different levels and I put this down to skateboarding which is a great leveler. They always likes the lads who like them like to have a laugh but there is mutual deference to ability or the lack of it . I'm the same by the way and what I like about the Butterknowle musicians is that they quite correctly recognize and appreciate musicians much better than them , thats respect after all, but they don't give a hoot about it ! Thats the sort of society I'd like to live in : recognise and respect differences of ability but it doesn't matter to much socially." 

"The Haughton Education Villlage School that was built about 8 years ago was a brilliant effort from the Government at the time : New Labour and it would have been the same under any Government . But the day after it was opened a load of disaffected local kids went and vandalised chunks of it . Housing and environment have to be good as well Joe . The Teacher Training Placement I did there a few months back was a real eye opener . About a quarter of the kids demonstrably couldn't care less about education and seemed to think that the state will look after them . I thought " Don't they realise that under any government in ten years time there won't be a dole it will just be food stamps"" 

"In Richmond School in the 1970s I was always in the bottom sets . The school put that down to having so much time out of school getting operations on my arm , until I was 14, but there was more to it than that : my parents never valued education , typical white working class and I shared a bedroom with my brother until I left for college at 18. The telly was on a lot in the evening downstairs so it was impossible to do homework . Millions of kids still suffer those environments and parents who don't value education who themselves have suffered poor housing an environments for years . They have no chance whatsoever and according to a person I know who runs a social care company on Teeside when these kids work for her they struggle to fulfill even the most basic requirements of the job . None of this has anything to do with the education system at all." 

"The economy is not as bad as people think . There is a lot of demand just not being realised because people won't spend . Good for them and its about time to. Greenoids never really understood and still don't want to see , what would happen if people spent and consumed less and maybe now they do . Trying to say that moving the UK to Green Energy would also result in economic growth in the old sense ie it can replace consumer spending growth is just plain wrong. Once a wind turbine is up its only economic potential other than energy production and maintenance is tourism and people are not going to go and gawp at power stations no matter how they are dressed up! I don't think they are ever going to spend , like they did , ever again. The politicians are going to have to design a better economic system based on less consumer spending and they are being confronted by that. The problem is fundamentally spiritual in other words."