I would love to...I am a compulsive reader trying to improve my English... Surely It will be better that all the trashy tabloids I read to keep the News threads going

I collected one called 'Mind Alive' , still got it somewhere, I rarely throw things away.

I think there are actually quite a lot of intelligent people like Jon around (I went to school and college with a few). I think some tend to hide their light under a bushell for fear of being labelled as geeks or even worse 'Trekkies' or Star Wars fans.

ps. more grammar schools were closed during Margaret Thatcher's stint as education secretary than at any other time. I still haven't forgiven her for making me an unemployed milk monitor.

Well, it's literate, but I don't think you'd call it literature. It's on an erotica website ... search for my name (John Michaels) and the title: "Scratch My Itch" - and don't say I didn't warn you!

We've still got the grammar school system in Northern Ireland and I can assure you someone like Jon would be picked on without mercy in one of them.

Don't be nostalgic for the system. It's archaic and doesn't work - it just produces a two-teir education system that anyone on the wrong side of, finds very difficult to break free from.

I went to Grammar School in 1955. In my year, only 12% of girls got into Grammar School. That means that 88% went to Secondary Modern. Of the 12%, only the A class, 4% of us, were taught properly. The others, still part of the top 12%, were left to rot, and advised to take careers as florists, shop assistants, and typists. In the top 4%, only a handful went on to higher education, most of them to Teacher Training College. I went to Uni, when only 1% of women were allowed, by the system, to get in.
I hated school. It was nasty, divisive, anti-creativity and bleeding boring, especially Latin which I took at A level so I could do a degree in English. I never used it and forgot every single word of the dead language.
I rejoice in the fact the almost 50% of women now go on into higher ed, and aren't force-fed into teaching, nursing and the civil service.
Grammar schools - crapola! What about the fine minds forced into second-class education in Secondary Moderns?
Hey, mate, would you have got into a Grammar School? Are you top 12%? And, once there, would you have been one of the A Class? Would you have been given joy and excitement - because I sure as hell never got it.
As a single parent, and one fiercely opposed to fee-paying, selective and single sex education, I sent my lad to the local inner city Comp, which, in my neck of the woods is 80% Asian. He got into Oxford at 17, and got a Double First, and enjoyed every minute of his education.
Grammar Schools are rubbish. They should be razed to the ground, along with all Public Schools. They are a part of a seedy and prejudiced past.

I also went to Grammar School in the 1950s – 1959 in my case. And I agree with quite a lot of what you say. Those who passed 11-plus were, supposedly, the cream. Yet, from our lofty position in the top stream, we tended to think of those in the bottom two streams as dunces. Not entirely our fault, though. That’s the way the staff treated them, and that’s how they saw themselves. As you say, those who weren’t fast-tracked by the system tended to be rejected, when they could have been stars in a Secondary Modern or a modern Comprehensive.

However, I don’t think things were quite as bad as you make out then, nor do I agree that they’re great now. There were a lot of flaws in the system, but the underlying idea of rewarding merit rather than wealth was a good one, and to an extent it worked. My family couldn’t afford to support me through Sixth-form, but by taking a couple of part-time jobs I brought in enough cash to fill the gap. The tax system helped – parents received a tax-free allowance for every child in full-time education up to age 21. These days, family credit (or whatever they call it now) stops at 16. The university grant, plus some holiday earnings, meant that I left university debt-free. These days, grants are almost non-existent, and as far as I’m aware the student loan doesn’t cover full living/study/travel expenses. A friend of mine is struggling to give his son £5000 per year; the son is also taking up his full quota of loan, and still sinking. Maybe he’s a bad money manager, but I don’t think so. Things really do look harder for youngsters and their parents nowadays. In the long-term I feel we’re heading back to that unpleasant past where the only way to get a good education was to pay for it.

it is isnt it

All people around me will finish university in their thirties. OK its PG, but still, a normal degree wont get you anywhere today in academia.

Anyway, Jon is great, as talking about blushers is boring

Nevertheless the intelligent change the world maybe get fewer shags , but at least one aint has 9 kids to support on an inferior salary

thats me being sarcastic of course

And yes I do like those smilies

I agree that dropping the student grant was a bad way to go, but expanding University education costs a lot of money, and has to be paid for.
One way of looking at funding a child through Uni is this - parents are going to have to get their heads round a higher cut-off age for financial responsibility for their children. If your friend is paying out £5,000 per annum, I would suggest that that's less than the financial burden of looking after a 14-year-old living at home and going to school.
<are we going off-topic here? who cares! it's a good discussion! >

My point was that a lot of people don't have a spare £5,000. And if there are two children, close together in age ... another friend's daughter has decided not to go to university, because she can see that her big sister is costing her parents more than they can afford, and trying to fund her would break them.

Attack of the Drone Clones
Anyway, back on topic. The problem with today’s culture is that it sends children the wrong message. ‘Cool’ is wearing the right clothes, with the right hairstyle, listening to the right records, going to the right events, getting legless. But that’s not the whole story. If someone does all those things but is able to quote Shakespeare, discuss the physics of the Northern Lights among many other subjects, and fix or invent things, and is happy with his own company, he’s uncool. Knowledgeable is uncool. Useful is uncool.

Remember the phrase ‘the idle rich’? The ones with family money, who didn’t do anything, didn’t know anything beyond small-talk and gossip, and were proud of the fact? Somehow, this attitude has pervaded the media, and television in particular. My theory is that the Hooray Henries and Henriettas moved into television a few decades ago, propelled by family money and connections, and have infected the whole industry. This can’t be good. Society can afford a few drones, but, probably unwittingly, they are turning a large slice of the population into copies of themselves, without the money to back it up. I was hoping to retire, but I’m going to have to keep working, to support the new ‘idle poor’.

Mmmm.................interesting

For my sins I watched Pop Idol last night for the first, and probably the last, time

Thousands of the "idle poor" aiming for the apogee of their social ambition - to be a butterfly for a few months

Well, fair enough. The fact is that most of the " idle poor" will grow up, get married, and man the factories and offices of Britain for 40 years before retiring. The odd one will get a frivolous but well paid job on the telly, but the vast majority won't

Let them have their few years of fun before life kicks in !!

I somehow managed to miss this excellent post until today. Although I enjoyed reading John Michaels's post and I sympathize with the essence of it, I have some words of encouragement for those of you who despair of 'the youth of today'.

My 13-year-old daughter is very intelligent, does really well at school, and reads books for pleasure, but she also reads teen magazines and is at least as interested in fashion, pop stars, and teen movies as any other 13-year-old girl. My point is that it is not essential to belong to one extreme or the other, to be either geek or airhead. Most people are somewhere in between. That's the way it was when I was young, and that's the way it is now.

Nil desperandum, innit?
Last edited by lulu g : 10-08-2003 at 17:37

It's great that your daughter is so well-balanced. However, I think what has been made clear in this thread is that to be cool you have to feign ignorance or lack of interest in anything at all taxing, such as Shakespeare. [- Pic in today's Sunday People - Jon "the geek" reading (Shakespeare)in the bath].
While your daughter happily enjoys her studies, reading etc and also fashion and pop at the moment, I hope that as she gets older she doesn't find it necessary to hide her interest in the finer things because of peer pressure.

Shakespeare and The Sunday People are not natural bedfellows though, are they? I do see your point, but I still think there is a middle way, and I am encouraged by the fact that so many BB viewers, who might typically be expected to be Club 18-30 types, took to Jon, and even to Cameron, neither of whom fit that stereotype.

Only just found your message John, sorry.
With reference to what has been said above, I wondered if anyone has been watching "that'll teach them" on C4 on Tuesdays. Ample enough evidence for the lower standards of today, that I need not attempt to extol the virtues of the education system of the past.
I went to single sex grammar school in the 1970s although the ethos was very much of the 50s. I hated it, although I did come out with the required exam successes, my personal development was not addressed in any way, and I feel, as a partial consequence of this, that I have dismally failed in adult life to live up to the potential that my results might be thought to presage.
My daughter is not yet old enough for me to be able to judge adequately whether schools nowadays really do promote the self confidence in which I am so lacking, but early indications seem to suggest that something is going right, either in her schooling, or my parenting and she seems not only to be doing well, but also seems assertive enough to not need or want to belong to any particular clique and is able to speak up for herself. I suppose my conclusions are that the past was definitely better, in academic terms, but that todays school leavers have a lot more confidence, which is, in many careers far more important in "getting on" than any proofs of academic success. If it were possible to find some way to combine the study with the assertiveness we could perhaps improve things immeasurably. Unfortunately however, it seems the arrogance of ignorance will not allow the two disciplines to run in tandem