JK Rowling TERFing her legacy into the bin

[Buelligan]

I always steal his books and leave them under hedges.

[mr. logic]

Also, schools aren't pointless are they? To be honest

[idunnosomename]

Also, schools aren't pointless are they? To be honest

not really the place to discuss it but I think there shouldn't be any exams. so much of secondary school is so joyless. making kids loathe shakespeare and science rather than helping them enjoy it. so odd dreary, who makes books about history and science and other school topics, seems to think of abolish rather than reform the curriculum

[jamiefairlie]

not really the place to discuss it but I think there shouldn't be any exams. so much of secondary school is so joyless. making kids loathe shakespeare and science rather than helping them enjoy it. so odd dreary, who makes books about history and science and other school topics, seems to think of abolish rather than reform the curriculum

Agreed, no school exams but entry exams for further education institutions would make more sense.

[TrenterPercenter]

Agreed, no school exams but entry exams for further education institutions would make more sense.

Hmmm but this is a big part of the problem and can be gamed by people with money.  No so much a problem if we had cradle to grave education system like the one Corbyn was proposing but we don't.

[Paul Calf]

Agreed, no school exams but entry exams for further education institutions would make more sense.

And then schooling becomes a process of coaching people to pass the entry exams for HE, or excluding the pupils who aren't considered capable.

[Paul Calf]

I'm not saying that reducing dependence on grades is a bad thing, but it's not a magic bullet.

My experience of continuous assessnent is that it's worse: everything you do counts towards your grades, so instead of a big-bang assessment period, the constant stress of assessment is always there.

Hmmm but this is a big part of the problem and can be gamed by people with money.  No so much a problem if we had cradle to grave education system like the one Corbyn was proposing but we don't.

This is basically what I'm saying. And Trenter has already said it.

Well, this has been a valuable use of everyone's time hasn't it ;)

[Twit 2]

EDIT GLITCH CUNT

[TrenterPercenter]

Glitch fix.

[Jollity]

I don't know where else to put this, but the LGB Alliance have made a "toe curlingly embarrassing" sea shanty.

No, I haven't listened to it, and you can't make me.

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

it's not quite you've turned off replies but i'll take it

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

and of course the arsehole who wrote it did an interview with Glinner

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

69 nice

[dissolute ocelot]

I don't know where else to put this, but the LGB Alliance have made a "toe curlingly embarrassing" sea shanty.

No, I haven't listened to it, and you can't make me.

Fuuuck!

The video was produced by a YouTuber called mrmenno, who describes himself on YouTube as a "songwriter, filmmaker, performer". His other works include a parody of Little Eva's 1962 song "Loco-motion" which is critical of the use of puberty blockers for trans children. In another song, mrmenno satirises Sam Smith's coming out as non-binary to the Grease song "Sandra Dee".

Sounds like a modern-day Phil Spector.

[Mister Six]

And then schooling becomes a process of coaching people to pass the entry exams for HE, or excluding the pupils who aren't considered capable.

That's basically what it is already.

[jamiefairlie]

Education should be assessment free and provided to every citizen (for Free) up to a certain age.

Certification of academic achievement, something I think still has value, should be a separate activity and needs assessment.

I think the transition from school to university is an acceptable place to introduce assessment and therefore needs to be filtered somehow,  by entrance exams or some other method. Regardless, if certification is available then assessment needs to happen at some point.

[Mister Six]

The counter-argument there is that you need to teach kids how to be assessed, otherwise they're travelling through this nebulous learning phase and all of a sudden they have to be able to articulate their knowledge in a written or oral form to suit a marking criteria in (presumably) a set time limit, and without some preparation that's going to be a total cunt to get your head around.

That could be taught as an extracurricular activity, but then you're running into problems of rich kids getting private tuition to learn how to play the system and poor kids having to do without, and probably not even feeling like taking the exam is within their abilities, much less passing it.

Not saying the present system is at all good, but if some form of assessment is involved for secondary education, learning how to undergo assessment should be a strong part of primary education, though ideally without draining all the joy out of learning.

[touchingcloth]

My friend's sister's kids are in some school in France where there is no curriculum whatsoever and the kids don't have to learn anything if they don't want to, and are only taught what they choose to be taught about.

They must be little idiots, but god damn I'd've loved that.

[jamiefairlie]

People with more resources (money, time, power) are always going to game any system that we could come up with. What I'd like to do is separate out learning from certification. The certification bit will always be gameable and unfair.

[touchingcloth]

People with more resources (money, time, power) are always going to game any system that we could come up with. What I'd like to do is separate out learning from certification. The certification bit will always be gameable and unfair.

It's one of the many, many arguments in favour of UBI. If education and leisure aren't luxuries that need to be prioritised against putting food on the table then rich people gaming the system becomes less of an issue.

[Buelligan]

My friend's sister's kids are in some school in France where there is no curriculum whatsoever and the kids don't have to learn anything if they don't want to, and are only taught what they choose to be taught about.

They must be little idiots, but god damn I'd've loved that.

I know some people who've done home schooling on their kids (in France) like that.  Both kids utterly fucked.  A pair of pointless imbeciles.  Going to school fucked me.  I'm pretty sure you can't win at this game.

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

Matt Hancock is mounting a power grab on the NHS, using the cover of the pandemic

The Times referred to this as 'putting politicians back in the driver seat [of the NHS]'.

To me this bodes AWFULLY FUCKING BADLY for the future of trans healthcare. Sure JK is pleased

[touchingcloth]

I know some people who've done home schooling on their kids (in France) like that.  Both kids utterly fucked.  A pair of pointless imbeciles.  Going to school fucked me.  I'm pretty sure you can't win at this game.

What I'm hearing you say is "if I didn't fuck those kids, someone else would have". It's a bold stance, and I hope the judge agrees with you. 

[Endicott]

I know some people who've done home schooling on their kids (in France) like that.  Both kids utterly fucked.  A pair of pointless imbeciles.  Going to school fucked me.  I'm pretty sure you can't win at this game.

I'd say that schooling needs to have better trained and better paid teachers, and even more important, a much better teacher to pupil ratio, so that it can cater for the different actual needs of children. The whole structure doesn't work because it's mostly a one size fits all system. It forces kids to conform to it, rather that helping them to develop themselves.

[Buelligan]

I completely agree.  I think we (a lot of people) still think about education without really considering what is point?  And, of course, not all governments always believe that the ideal for a population is to be able to problem-solve, evaluate information and think independently.  Or even to have access to facts.

I was lucky because I had a lovely librarian in my life and a grandfather with a lot of books.

[Zetetic]

Matt Hancock is mounting a power grab on the NHS, using the cover of the pandemic

The Times referred to this as 'putting politicians back in the driver seat [of the NHS]'.

To me this bodes AWFULLY FUCKING BADLY for the future of trans healthcare. Sure JK is pleased

Thread on these here: https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,85011.msg4459775.html#msg4459775

[Zetetic]

Edit glitch oh well.

[Zetetic]

On schooling, I suppose you'd need to start by actually trying to work out what:
1. You're trying to achieve with schooling.
2. You're trying to achieve with certifying an individual's attainment.
3. You're trying to achieve with assessment/measurement for other purposes.

[Twit 2]

In my experience, very few people in the sector actually consider these things, least of all sec of state, dfe, ofsted, academy bosses etc, basically anyone with an interest in young people coming 2nd to the perpetual web of corporate bureaucracy they feed off.

[Retinend]

Fortunately I always preferred Horrible Histories, which is very hard-left.

edit: Terry Deary's Wikipedia page makes him seem like a bit of a rich arsehole who thinks libraries should be banned as he ought to earn £180,000 for his books. He should've read the stuff he wrote a bit more closely.

That's hilarious. On the one hand public libraries have "had their day", but on the other hand he's enormously out of pocket due to "entitled" public library users (i.e. poor parents who want to encourage reading in their homes without needing to purchase their own library in order to do it).

Unlike you, I'm not a big fan of Horrible Histories.

I have a massive appreciation for this website for e-publishing history books which were written for children some 100 years ago. Here's an example chapter of such a book: "The Normans Conquer England" edit: you might need to click this link two separate times in order to open the page: it's a quirk of the website.

They were serious enough that an adult could also read them in order to get the facts of history woven into a coherent narrative. Deary's books, however, focus only on what is scandalous and ugly in history; disconnect the "story" in "history" by using a magazine-like structure; encourage us to look down on people from the past as dirty, psychopathic or stupid. If this is "left" then count me out.