Advantages of children coming to GSs from private primaries

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Snowdrops
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Post by Snowdrops »

I don't read it as 'Poor people are stupid' or even that 'Intelligence provides a route out of poverty.'

I do, however, read it as 'Poor people are often not as well EDUCATED' and 'EDUCATION provides a route out of poverty.'

I was just an average kid at school and we moved around a lot. I know there are big gaps in my education. I know I could certainly have had a better education.

I know for a fact that I am not unintelligent. Indeed I think I am equally as intelligent as a lot of very well educated people - it's just that they have sat and studied subjects which I haven't - it doesn't make me any less intelligent though does it?
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hermanmunster
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Post by hermanmunster »

agreed snowdrops,

what is required is INTELLIGENCE + EDUCATION,
if one part of the sum is missing then it doesn;t work. I remember a friend going to parents evening at her son's prep school to be told -

"well Mrs X, one really can't a silk purse out of a sow's ear.."

(for intelligence , also read nous or business brain or whatever).
Chelmsford mum
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Post by Chelmsford mum »

Hermanmunster said:-

[quote what is required is INTELLIGENCE + EDUCATION,
if one part of the sum is missing then it doesn;t work]

I suppose that is what I have been trying to say albeit obviously not very clearly.Poorer people are as likely as anyone to have the first part of the sum but not the second.It is wrong to assume they have neither.
mike1880
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Post by mike1880 »

I was going to quibble with the intelligence + education formula but realised that it describes my own family history extremely well. The pivotal factor in our case was probably the 1918 education act.

Mike
hermanmunster
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Post by hermanmunster »

Hi Mike

I agree that the statement looks a little bold but when many of think about it, it absolutely descrbes us.
I admit lack of knowledge about the 1918 act and have looked it up and realise that it must have had a huge influence - amazing to think it was only 90 years ago. the reason I mentioned the '44 act was that it had such an influence on my family - parents being educated before 44 and hence not getting the full opportunity (until night school etc etc ) - but thinking about it they would never have beenb able to extend their education while working if they haven't benefitted from the '18 act.
mike1880
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Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2008 10:51 pm

Post by mike1880 »

I didn't know about the 1918 act either until last night when I started thinking about the intelligence + education question and wondered what made the difference to my parents' education compared to my grandparents'. My father would have entered secondary education in '42; if he'd followed his father's pre-1918 path he wouldn't have got that far. The 1944 act might get the credit for taking him on to university though, and is presumably what took my mother to grammar school in '45.

Mike
Sassie'sDad
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Post by Sassie'sDad »

I simply don't understand the preoccupation with 'fairness' ... an emotional value is being applied to a strictly rational market ... one made much harder than it might be by an ideological contempt for selective education. I hear parents (often those who push hardest to get their offspring into GS) saying they don't really approve of selective education, but their scruples don't tend to send their offspring to Comprehensives!

Sorry, this posting comes as the result of very late in the day reading of earlier posts.

I'd like to throw into the pool another fairly large stone. My step family, pretty much to a man well educated liberal lefties, were amongst the founding members of the Fabian movement. Those characters I knew (and liked) as a teenager all commented they had pushed to get education for all. They also commented that 'they hadn't wanted the world to turn out like this'!
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