ThunderDragon Blog

Soon there’s going to be no time left in schools for actual education, as ministers are to announce this week that every child is to have “five hours of cultural learning and activity every week” during the school day. Add this to be extra PE time schools are also supposed to give, and the amount of time for actual teaching and learning will suffer massively from the lack of time they actually get.

Even though school tables keep showing better results, and the annual increase in GCSE and A-level results, Britain is dropping in comparison with other countries:

This decline can at least partly be put down to just the “tyranny of the testing regime” which has sprouted massively during the last decade. Tests and targets don’t foster good teaching or a good education system. So even with billions of pounds being thrown at the problem, bugger all has really been achieved by it - and in fact the opposite in comparison with other countries.

What this latest education gimmick that Labour will introduce shows that they don’t really care about actual education and learning - which is the real point of school - but about making change for changes sake. Children don’t need five hours of “cultural learning and activity” every week, but they do need more actual education and teaching. And it is just this lack of teaching that gives them their arguments for educational conscription.

Source: The Guardian, The Times, BBC, The Telegraph

The government wants to indoctrinate children as young as five on the “dangers” of alcohol.

Why do children as young as five need to be taught about alcohol at all? They won’t have drank more than a sip, if any, at that age. What is the point of teaching them about it? There is none. The only intention possible is to indoctrinate these children into considering that alcohol is bad. Also, are these “safe drinking levels” that these kids are going to be indoctrinated on going to be real levels or just guesses?

We all consider indoctrination to be bad, right? So how could this be deemed acceptable at all! I have no problem with teaching children that alcohol can be bad, but it must be a balanced picture, including alcohol’s position in society, and health benefits in small amounts.

Instead of telling them that alcohol is bad, tell secondary school children what constant abuse of alcohol can do to your body. Getting drunk isn’t in itself a bad thing - but doing it every day is, and that is what they should be told - the truth, not a convenient lie.

Source: The Telegraph

Says - rather surprisingly - the head of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. And Tom Mullarky is absolutely right. Especially with this line:

Humans learn through pain. If it hurts, you soon learn not to do it again. Those who are wrapped in cotton wool as children have no idea about looking after themselves, and have less understanding of the real world and how dangerous it can be.

Children are reckless because they haven’t learn about pain and how they can hurt themselves. If they get the chance to hurt themselves, they learn through their experiences, by doing. They learn that it hurts if they fall of their bike, for example. They learn how to look after themselves.

If we wrap children in cotton wool and bubble wrap, they - and we - suffer in the long term. Like Tom Mullarky, I think that it is a “positive necessity” that children have the chance to play and hurt themselves.

For further reading on Health and Safety, try reading the posts from Wardman Wire’s Health and Safety Month.

Source: The Telegraph

In addition to my diatribe yesterday on educational conscription, something has just occured to me - this law will apply only in England. Only English children will have to stay in school until 18. Only English children will be deprived of their liberties and their freedom.

As such, when this law comes before Parliament, not one MP for a Scottish or Welsh constituency had better vote. This does not apply in their constsituencies, so I do not want to see them force two years of extra schooling onto English children but not those in Scotland and Wales.

That they even could do it illustrates the issues with our current devolution system.

Cross-posted at Educational Conscription.

Regular readers will know that I don’t normally swear [mainly because I just could never match the peerless swearblogging of Devil's Kitchen or Mr Eugenides as you can see here], but this warrants a good number of swear words.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. What is it with this stupid fucking government that makes them think that making delinquents stay in school for two years longer will actually help them in any way? I mean, the kids who leave school at sixteen tend to be the same little shits who hold everyone else back by mucking around in class. They’re the non-academically gifted kids who just don’t want to stay in school for longer, but want to go and do something useful to them and their future.

This idea is a fucking stupid one, thought up by a bunch of statist cunts who think two more years of compulsory schooling will make up for their failings in their last eleven. Bollocks will it. All it will do is hold back those who do want to work, as the twats who piss around in class will still be there disrupting everyone else. When those bastards left after GCSEs, school became far better as those who were left had chosen to do so, and so put in more work and pissed around in class less.

Frankly, there are no benefits to making kids stay in school until they are eighteen. At all. All it will do is cause mass truancy, and then criminalise those truants for having the gall to decide what is best for them!

But ah you say, “under the plans pupils would not have to continue with academic lessons but would be required to receive training.” But who the fuck going to provide this training? What is it going to be in? What purpose is it to have? How are you going to make them attend? The practical problems in this are fucking immense - and I certainly wouldn’t trust any government - and certainly not this bunch of cunts - to implement such a scheme with any real thought to the practical considerations.

Apprenticeships and training for school-leavers already exist. Companies take on apprentices and train them up already. The difference is that the apprentices they have have chosen - at least to a far greater degree - to go into this trade. Thus, those who want to stay in school already can and do - after all, it’s free unlike university. And those who want to get into a trade can and do so as well. And the ones who don’t will just be a distraction to those in school and just lower the educational standard on the country or just be useless little shits if forced into an apprenticeship.

When it comes down to it, not everyone can do a skilled job anyway. It simply isn’t possible. Someone needs to clean the streets and the toilets, stock the supermarket shelves, and wait tables, etc. after all. Every single job has to be done by someone. The best way to get 16-18 year-olds to get off their fat lazy arses and either get a job or stay in school is to cut their dole. Say they can only get half or even not a single fucking penny until they are 18.

Conscripting 16-18 year-olds into longer educational is a seriously fucking stupid idea. Instead of pumping money into educating them when they don’t want to learn anything, put it into adult education for when they have decided that they’re fed up of doing a shit job and do want to learn. When it comes down to it, you can’t physically make every 16-18 year-old stay in school. it’s not possible, and is just absurd to even suggest, yet alone include in the Queen’s Speech!

So, Blinky Balls and Cyclops Brown, and the other authoritarian statist cunts in the government - fuck off. Just fuck right off.

For more on this subject, visit the group blog Educational Conscription.

Anti cyber-bullying campaign:

How can you stop cyber-bullying? You can’t. It is no more possible than stopping the other kind of bullying. And all that the government has done is pass the buck to schools. What can they do?! This isn’t something that is happening in an arena which schools can control. It is on the internet - governments can’t control the internet, and schools certainly can’t.

Just passing the buck on this issue straight to schools and teachers is idiotic and a waste of time. They can’t stop verbal or physical bullying - and that happens within the school grounds! Teachers don’t have the authority to control the actions of their school kids outside of the classroom, and it is precisely this kind of authority interference which makes bullying worse.

We can’t stop cyber-bullying or any other kind, but neither does that mean we shouldn’t try. The adverts are a good idea, and a way to actually bring to mind the effects that it can have on those who are subjected to it. And there isn’t really much else that they can do other than give advice to those affected.

The cyberbullying campaign website is here.

Source: BBC, The Times

Lunatics running the asylum? No, even more absurd - school children writing their own tests.

What the hell? Let’s read that again: “Pupils should mark their own classwork and decide what their school tests should cover”. What? Why?

This is quite possibly the most stupid thing I have ever read. Have they actually thought it through? Obviously not.

Our education system is in enough trouble as it is right now, which the dumbing down of GCSEs and A-levels to extent where more a than a quarter of A-levels are As, and nearly one in five GCSE grades are A or A*. SO this idea really isn’t going to improve confidence in the education system at all. In fact, if it ever comes into practice we might as well just give everyone an A and get it over with.

Can the idiots who devised this even remember being at school or even in education at all? Have they completely forgotten the simple fact that all school children will do anything not to work - or at least work hard. If it is the pupils themselves who pick the exam questions, A-level maths will consist of questions on the level of 2 + 2 = ?.

The QCA report said that:

That ignores the very simple fact I mentioned above - school children don’t want to work. I always found this sort of “self-assessment” of work as pointless and certainly not constructive. It doesn’t help to pretty much waste time going through old work - it is far more useful to get it marked and appropriate feedback written on it. The teacher then knows what areas need work. But trying to “engage learners with the quality of their work” like this is never going to work. Ever.

The dumbing down of education needs to stop and be reversed - this is going in very much the wrong direction. It truly does take us to within one step of rubber-stamping all exam papers with an A.

Source: The Telegraph

Children don’t get enough exercise.

I can’t say that I am overly surprised at this. Playing outside has become a luxury denied to many children through fears of accident, crime or of paedophiles. Computer games have replaced riding your bike, playing football, “It”, and the like. And parents even drive their kids to school every day.

But I am shocked that the study revealed that “children averaged just 17 minutes of moderate exercise, and two minutes of “vigorous” exercise a day.” How is it so low? Do they do nothing with themselves all day? Kids are supposed to be active, not couch potatoes. Being a kid is the only time you get to run around all day, and they should make the most of it.

When I was eleven, we’d play outside all the time we could, pretty much just coming in for meals and sleep during the summer. Whilst we weren’t “active” all that time, we were for much of it. If something is not done, this generation of kids will grow up fat, lazy, and mollycoddled. Parents need to learn to relax their grip around their children and their activities, and kids need to be encouraged to get outside and play! Go ride your bike, play football, etc. Don’t just sit inside and play on your computer.

Sources: The Telegraph, BBC

Gender is not the real classroom divide, claims Equal Opportunities Commission:

In fact, they say that instead of helping to narrow to gap

So, predictably, it’s class [and race] that is the source of all inequality:

Except, really, it’s not because of their class or race that certain kids fall behind, it is either because they are not as intelligent as others or because they don’t put the work in.

Class, race, and gender are not the real classroom divides. Ability and application are. This may be reflected along gender, race, and class lines, because they don’t exist because of them. They are a symptom, not a cause. Instead of trying to focus on one group, however defined, it would be far better to encourage all school children to work harder, and to encourage their parents to encourage them as well.

General ability and the extent to which that is applied to school work are the divides within the classroom. Nothing else causes them, but they can be seen as areas where extra work needs to be done in order for them to reach their potential. It’s not because they are working class, male, or black that are low in the class, but because they either don’t have the ability and/or aren’t applying it.

Source: The Times