Positive Discrimination, Private Schools, Coronavirus and Schools, Social Media
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| Merit Francesco Guardi (1712-1793) Photo Credit: Walker Art Gallery [CC BY-NC] |
...Russell Group universities are also under pressure to further diversify their intake, and last year Oxford University announced that for the first time in 900 years it would accept "disadvantaged" students on the basis of lower grades. Post-George Floyd, American affirmative action - in Brit-speak, "positive discrimination", a contradiction in terms - grows ever more popular in Britain, not only in university admissions but also in employment. Recall this summer's promise to ensure 20 per cent of the BBC workforce is minority disabled, or "disadvantaged" (as in Oxford's case, broadly a synonym for non-white).
...They're quotas. By citing a specific numerical proportion, the BBC also commits to using racial quotas.
Painfully, this cackhanded attempt to get two wrongs to make a right perpetuates the very prejudice whose effects it feigns to ameliorate. For decades, black and Latino professionals in the US have had to live under a shadow of doubt...Folks privately wonder, "Did you get a leg-up? Did you really qualify for graduate school, or were more gifted students passed over for you just so a certain educational institution could feel good about itself...Affirmative action fosters the tacit assumption that non-white lawyers, doctors, professors and bankers were bootstrapped by their skin colour. Ugly stuff.
...To advantage one group is to disadvantage another. Not only do lower and unevenly applied standards compromise organisational integrity, but they engender bitterness and resentment in the groups who lose out. No other modern American policy has soured race relations more.
The US Supreme Court chief justice, John Roberts, put it plainly: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." It's philosophically nonsensical to stamp out racial bias by institutionalising racial bias.
...Meritocracy is like democracy: whatever its problems, it sure beats the alternatives. Install this policy at your peril. You will never get rid of it.
(Lionel Shriver, The Times, 2020)
For me there is much sense in this article. Race should not play any part in university admissions or employment. There should be no quotas. What there should be is a determination to choose on merit. As the judge said: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
Private Schools
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| The Incorrigible John Burr (1831-1893) Photo Credit: Manchester Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND] |
Like much of middle-class Britain, I have anguished all my adult life about whether such a spend represents madness, or the most honourable investment we can make in our offspring's future. Only silly people deny that the system perpetuates class division. I see now, as I did not when I sent two sons to Eton, that the sense of entitlement inculcated by that brilliant institution harms British society, not only through its prime ministers.
...Many schools cite rising costs to justify higher fees: this year they face an increase in contributions to staff pensions. In truth, however, educational inflation is strongly driven by almost deranged competition to build theatres, arts centres, technology blocks.
Most parents, not to mention grandparents, would prefer to pay reduced fees for less ambitious facilities. That option, however, is seldom on offer. Parents are relentlessly harried to pay more to get more.
This is acceptable even welcome, to the very rich. But the squeeze grows relentlessly tighter on those who lack an offshore trust, do not have roubles or yuan to launder, who merely want some affordable education.
Jeremy Corbyn's call to guillotine private schools seemed pernicious. Yet nothing would do more to drag this country into the 21st century than improvement in state education.
...Grammar school opportunities are available only to a tiny minority with the right postcode as well as brains. The same can be said of good comprehensives and academies. For the rest, few middle class parents living in inner cities wish to expose their delicately nurtured little Georges and Charlottes to classroom jungles, if they can contrive to pay what might justly be characterised as protection money for a private alternative.
...It would be a denial of freedom to prevent people from choosing to spend their money in this way. (Private Education) There must come a moment in British politics, however, when some government has the courage and commitment to launch a crusade to raise school standards. This is the assured way to cause most of their private counterparts to die a natural death.
For now, however, the self-imposed middle-class martyrdom goes on: autumn fee cheques will have to clear any day now...
(Max Hastings, The Times, 2020)
Could not private schools become centres of excellence in an individual area - Maths, English, Science, Art, Music, Sport, Technology etc? Entrance would be determined by potential in that area and not by background or ability to pay. Fees would be means tested on a sliding scale. Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, for example, is a mainstream, independently funded junior and senior school. Admission is by audition. Parents who earn less than £20,000 a year pay £600 towards boarding fees and education. Parents who earn more than £196,000 pay the full fees. Everyone in between has to contribute on a sliding scale.
Letters on the subject
...A successful pupil is a child who enjoys good mental and physical health, who eats well, sleeps safely, has a place to work, who is supported beyond the school gates and has stability and consistent care - love - in their lives. And, of course, goes to a well-resourced school where most pupils come to class happy, healthy and wanting to learn. That means spending more, and joining up spending on education with spending on health and social care, after-school care, secure and safe accommodation and access to affordable, healthy food, wherever the postcode.
I have no doubt that Hastings means well, but, please, save us from this muddle-headed hand-wringing, and instead focus imaginatively and courageously on those whose life chances won't be affected one iota by tinkering with the affordability of our politicians' alma maters.
(Adam Pettitt, Head, Highgate School, The Times, 2020)
*...(Max Hastings) solution of "a crusade to raise state school standards" so that "most of their private counterparts die a natural death" is probably unrealistic. More feasible would be a systematic attempt, through a mixture of means-tested bursaries and state-subsidised places, to change the social composition of the private schools themselves, so that they no longer entrench privilege and block social mobility as much as they do now.
(David Kynaston, Co-author, Engines of Privilege: Britain's Private School Problem, The Times)
*Sir, Not all boarding school fees are £35,000 a year. Fees at more than 30 excellent state boarding schools in England are about £12,000 a year. And many boarding parents use flexi or weekly boarding to suit their family needs and save on costs. Demand from international students remain high as they recognise that the UK's 500+ boarding schools are among the best in the world.
(Robin Fletcher, CEO, Boarding Schools' Association, The Times)
*Sir, Max Hastings is probably right that minor public schools will go to the wall. But that will leave the major public schools as a monopoly. There are easily enough professionals in the UK on seven-figure salaries to fill them but it will result in a further polarisation of society with a super-elite commanding all the top jobs.
(Charles Pugh, London SW10, The Times)
Coronavirus and Schools
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| The Plague of His Village John Robertson Reid (1851-1926) Photo Credit: Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery [CC BY] |
...The disclosure by Berlin city education authorities that hundreds of pupils and teachers have had to be quarantined has underlined once more how little is known about the risk of infection in school settings, despite the insistence of governments and experts - including in the UK - that reopening schools is safe, given the right precautions.
Berlin's experience echoes those of some US states, including Georgia, and in Israel, which have recorded clusters tied to schools. According to reports in Berlin, all age groups have been affected.
Berlin was one of the first places in Germany to reopen its schools after the summer holidays. Children are obliged to wear masks in the hallways, during breaks and when they enter the classroom, but can take the masks off once sitting in their places. Some critics say the measures in Berlin are too relaxed and that pupils and teachers should wear masks during lessons too.
...France, meanwhile, has marked another large jump in new cases, by far the highest increase since the end of the lockdown in May, leading authorities to order that schoolchildren above the age of 11 wear masks when they return to school in just over a week.
(Peter Beaumont, Kim Willsher, The Guardian, 2020)
Surely the World Health Organisation's recommendations should have been followed by the UK? Greece followed them very closely and hasn't it had a much better 'Covid' than the UK?
*Anxious parents are taking children out of school to home educate them as widespread misinformation on social media fuels fears over the risks of Covid, the head of Ofsted has said.
... The chief inspector of schools in England, Amanda Spielman, said in a pilot study of 130 schools last month, one third reported unusually high numbers of pupils being taken off roll to be home schooled... primary and secondary schools who took part in the pilot study told Ofsted inspectors that misinformation on social media was presenting a real problem for head teachers.
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| The Gossips Pierre M. Beyle (1838-1902) Photo Credit: York Museums Trust [ Public Domain] |
"A lot of parents have absorbed a lot of misinformation that's making them more anxious than they need to be," said Spielman. Some of the head teachers told us they are having to explain and re-explain the real situation to parents."
..."my concern would be people who are driven by fear, who have perhaps lost confidence in the school's ability to keep children safe or who have become genuinely so anxious for their children...It's an anxious time for many adults, I completely understand. Yet the great art of being responsible adults is making sure we don't transfer our anxiety to children.
... Commenting on the rise in home education, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said:
"Most children are better off at school. It is understandable that in this time of anxiety, some parents may be worried about the health implications of coronavirus, and this concern may be exacerbated by misinformation."
(Sally Weale, The Guardian, 2020)
Anxious or concerned about the safety of your child at school? Then contact the school directly. Do not rely on social media where misinformation is rife.
Meanwhile at universities all over the country.
*University students forced to quarantine in halls around the country due to coronavirus outbreaks, have spoken about their anger and frustration.
"Coronavirus quarantine means we're unable to attend face-to-face lectures and are forced instead to spend our lives sleeping, eating pot noodles, wearing the same clothes for a week and playing video games.
"Whereas in normal times we'd be still too hungover from freshers' week parties to attend any lectures, instead spending our first weeks at Uni sleeping, eating pot noodles, wearing the same clothes for a week and playing video games.
It's SO unfair."
(Pete Noodle, Private Eye, No 1532)
Social Media
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| Jael and Sisera Jan de Bray (c.1627-1697) Photo Credit: York Museums Trust [Public Domain] |
... For the second time this year, my social feeds and some private conversations were filled with people I know and like rejoicing that a politician they hate had caught Covid-19.
As with Boris Johnson in April some were even wishing death upon President Donald Trump. What is the matter with them?
... This hatred is visceral for many liberals. Most have not met either of the men involved, so it cannot be truly personal. This also applied to the only comparable period of my lifetime: when wishing ill upon Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher was also the norm.
Yet many of these liberals are otherwise compassionate and humane towards those they both know and do not. Indeed, many self-define themselves as such, priding themselves on "going high"; voting for a kinder society.
... The appalling treatment and misrepresentation of Hillary Clinton looks set to be repeated in the face of Trump's poor poll numbers. We were rightly horrified by him mocking Mrs Clinton for contracting pneumonia. So how can we rejoice over the President's illness?
Of course, Liberals do not have a monopoly on hatred. Look at the treatment of Jeremy Corbyn, Neil Kinnock and Michael Foot here, or Mrs Clinton, Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter in the US/
However, they really do have to take a long, hard look at themselves if they claim to abhor the culture and mental health implications of calling people ugly, fat, stupid or deserving of death - except, apparently, if they are politicians they despise.
(Stefano Hatfield, The i, 2020)
Disagreeing, criticising or opposing someone's political beliefs is part and parcel of the political process. Delighting in the sickness of a particular individual or wishing him/her dead is repugnant, disgraceful and abhorrent.
This is exacerbated by the failure of social media companies to fully address the issues of misinformation and hate speech.
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