We don need no educashun....?

[Enoch Mort]

Re: We don need no educashun....?

A balancing thought I'd add is that I have personal experience of missing important fundamentals of learning. I went to a Grammar School in 1957. It was a good school which produced among others a British Prime Minister. After six weeks, we sat an exam to grade us. I was stuck at home with Asian 'flu for five of those weeks and was graded as a 'D' pupil. At the end of the year, I was in the top ten of the entire year of 150. I started the next term in a class that studied Latin. As a 'D' pupil I hadn't been taught Latin; the top classes had. I NEVER got to grips with the language and only passed 'O' level GCE because I learnt 600 lines of Virgil English translation by heart.

Not Virgil's Aeneid Book 5 by any chance ?

[Cyclops]

Re: We don need no educashun....?

By the way Cyclops, both my parents were born in the first decade of the last century and they finished school at 12, not 14.

It happened. Dad finished school before his 14th birthday. There's a note in the school logbook "25 July 1918. Sam xxxxxxxxx has been granted three months leave of absence from school from July 24.’ Probably to help with the harvest - or shoot some rabbits.
Mum, on the other hand went to a High School.

I've often thought it would be a great series of magazine/TV articles/shows to contrast the lives of two sets of grandparents. My paternal grandmother was the illegitimate daughter of a woman who had at least four children out of wedlock. Her husband started school when he was seven and he was a ploughboy, aged 12. His brother was a ploughboy, aged 8. On my maternal side, my grandparents met at Southampton University and my great aunts were married to knights of the realm and someone decorated with an OBE.

Needless to say, I'm really mixed up. If I'm threatened, I'm torn between diplomacy and stabbing the offender with a pitchfork.

[Cyclops]

Re: We don need no educashun....?

Not Virgil's Aeneid Book 5 by any chance ?

All I remember is Charon, the boatman on the River Styx.
Now Julius Caesar, I could cope with.
The only benefit I've had from this is when using Latin botanical names.
I gave up Latin when the master conjugated the Latin word for Republic. Those who know me, and can conjugate that word, will get the joke (on me)

[Enoch Mort]

Re: We don need no educashun....?

All I remember is Charon, the boatman on the River Styx.
Now Julius Caesar, I could cope with.
The only benefit I've had from this is when using Latin botanical names.
I gave up Latin when the master conjugated the Latin word for Republic. Those who know me, and can conjugate that word, will get the joke (on me)

Charon crops up in book 6 of the Aeneid. I did Caesar's De Bello Gallico as well. I think you mean declined, verbs are conjugated. I can still remember how to decline Res Publica as so much learning by rote was involved in Latin that it is drilled into my skull even after all these years.

[Cyclops]

Re: We don need no educashun....?

Charon crops up in book 6 of the Aeneid. I did Caesar's De Bello Gallico as well. I think you mean declined, verbs are conjugated. I can still remember how to decline Res Publica as so much learning by rote was involved in Latin that it is drilled into my skull even after all these years.

It was the third person singular bit that brought a smirk to the master's face, and a titter from the lads when he told me to stand and decline res publica....

[light up the darkness]

Re: We don need no educashun....?

Presumably, if you believe that, you also believe that people who get an education, work hard all their lives to better themselves and manage to put savings aside as well, should have all their money taken off them by the state and given to people who leave school early, sit around all day doing bog all and sponge off the rest of the population by claiming every benefit going under the sun. God help us all.

You managed to spin that in an untended direction.

There are many functions of education. The question for me is this. Are schools as they are currently formatted (that is with a subject based curriculum which is largely arbitrary outside of reading, writing and arithmetic) the best way of addressing the the things which society values which include;
* Transmission of Culture. Education instills and transmits social norms values and beliefs into the next generation.
* Social integration.
* Career Selection.
* Techniques of Learning Skills.
* Socialization.
* Rational Thinking.
* Adjustment in Society.

[goats]

Re: We don need no educashun....?

Kids are going back to school for the sake of their education and mental health and a raft of other reasons.

I'm not challenging this, but I would like to comment on the rationale of this policy.

Not so long ago, generations of kids in the UK had little or no education. Schools/universities were for the privileged. Kids were sent out to work on farms and in factories at a young age, unable to read and write. Even when there was a concerted drive to educate, which spawned the Education Act of 1870, education for the majority ended at fourteen.

Are we to assume that for centuries folk were messed up for the rest of their lives because of being uneducated?

A balancing thought I'd add is that I have personal experience of missing important fundamentals of learning. I went to a Grammar School in 1957. It was a good school which produced among others a British Prime Minister. After six weeks, we sat an exam to grade us. I was stuck at home with Asian 'flu for five of those weeks and was graded as a 'D' pupil. At the end of the year, I was in the top ten of the entire year of 150. I started the next term in a class that studied Latin. As a 'D' pupil I hadn't been taught Latin; the top classes had. I NEVER got to grips with the language and only passed 'O' level GCE because I learnt 600 lines of Virgil English translation by heart.

So I know that missing out on the basics of education is very damaging. That has been my experience.

I've always thought that education is not just about teaching subjects, but also prepares us for the big wide world. So, how concerned should we be that the education of kids has been interrupted for about a year?

(I have little doubt that this thread will have few replies and will quickly slip off the first page - like most of my threads. Don't really care. It helps to put my rambling thoughts in some semblance of order. )

Life has changed a bit since kids were sent to farm or down the mines in 1840....lots are suffering at the moment and unfortunately trying to take their own lives.

[Heisenberg]

Re: We don need no educashun....?

You managed to spin that in an untended direction.

There are many functions of education. The question for me is this. Are schools as they are currently formatted (that is with a subject based curriculum which is largely arbitrary outside of reading, writing and arithmetic) the best way of addressing the the things which society values which include;
* Transmission of Culture. Education instills and transmits social norms values and beliefs into the next generation.
* Social integration.
* Career Selection.
* Techniques of Learning Skills.
* Socialization.
* Rational Thinking.
* Adjustment in Society.

Here's a video that was sent to me recently that I found really interesting in regards to how we educate children.

https://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U

[Tuerto]

Re: We don need no educashun....?

Here's a video that was sent to me recently that I found really interesting in regards to how we educate children.

https://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U

That was Ace! Just sent it to my mother as evidence as to why i was kicked out of school at fifteen

[Heisenberg]

Re: We don need no educashun....?

That was Ace! Just sent it to my mother as evidence as to why i was kicked out of school at fifteen

[jon1959]

Re: We don need no educashun....?

Here's a video that was sent to me recently that I found really interesting in regards to how we educate children.

https://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U

Very good.

[Taunton Blue Genie]

Re: We don need no educashun....?

That's because modern degrees from a "University" which used to be a polytechnic or a 24 hour petrol garage aren't really worth an 'O' level. Our degrees used to be more highly regarded than American ones, but that's reversed now.
Blair wanted everyone to be able to get a degree, (???). Well now they can but the degree they get is meaningless.

It's a characteristic of a number of advanced countries that have increasingly sent higher numbers of students to university in recent decades.

[splott parker]

Re: We don need no educashun....?

It's a characteristic of a number of advanced countries that have increasingly sent higher numbers of students to university in recent decades.

I think the western world will eventually be overrun with sports scientists.

[Taunton Blue Genie]

Re: We don need no educashun....?

I think the western world will eventually be overrun with sports scientists.

At least they should be fit enough to overrun.

[Cleve van Leef]

Re: We don need no educashun....?

Christ, when I left school you could be as thick as s**t and still get a job, slightly intelligent - white collar, thick - blue collar. Everybody could get a job.