Middle-Class Teenagers Made 'Whipping Boys' (UK)

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 7-31-2007 | Graeme Paton

[blam]

Middle-class teenagers made 'whipping boys'

By Graeme Paton, Education Correspondent
Last Updated: 10:33pm BST 31/07/2007

Middle-class teenagers are being turned into "whipping boys" as ministers discriminate against them in favour of students from poor homes, teachers warned.

Education is being "dumbed down" as universities turn their attention towards easy subjects like surfing studies, beauty therapy and knitwear to attract more working-class students, it is claimed.

In a fierce attack, the Professional Association of Teachers called for the Government to halt its drive towards so-called "social engineering".

The comments come amid controversy over policies designed to increase the number of university students from state schools and deprived backgrounds.

Ministers want to see half of all school-leavers studying beyond the age of 18 and have given dons tough targets to attract "hard to reach" students.

But Peter Morris, chairman of the PAT in Wales, accused ministers of "creating barriers in education based on social class".

Addressing the union's annual conference in Harrogate, he said: "I am angry because this Government has interfered with my children and their children's chances of getting a good education in this country.

"They have changed the ways that examinations are assessed, and clearly this has had a 'dumbing down' effect on the academic standards, in order to get more pupils to achieve."

Under new rules, teenagers applying for university will be asked to say whether their parents have degrees in an attempt to attract more students from poor homes. But Mr Morris insisted it amounted to discrimination against middle-class pupils.

"This political interfering with university applications clearly is designed to reduce the chances of hard-working applicants getting places," he said.

"How can any academic institution make a selection of candidates for university courses based on the perceived social class of the parents?

"The middle classes are becoming the new whipping boys for 'New Labour'."

Criticising the Government's education record, Mr Morris, a retired teacher from Swansea, said exams had gone from being academically rigorous to posing "woolly, touchy-feely" questions with little intellectual merit to act as a leg-up to the working classes.

Courses such as physics, chemistry and maths have been replaced with "non-academic" degrees such as "surfing, beauty therapy, knitwear, circus skills, pig enterprise management, death studies, air guitar, David Beckham studies and wine studies", he said.

The comments come just days after universities were accused of cashing in on soft courses by plugging degrees in subjects such as complementary medicine.

It was disclosed that applications for complementary medicine are up more than 31 per cent this year, while there has been a 19 per cent fall in applications to study anatomy, physiology and pathology.

Speaking at the PAT conference, Nardia Foster, a psychology teacher from Enfield, north London, said that Labour had created a more "fractured, divided, selfish society".

"There is a lack of consistency, stability, moral integrity and fairness in our society," she said.

"To dumb down declares to the whole world 'British children are stupid'."

Geraldine Everett, PAT chairman, said universities should not set "quotas" for admissions.

"It is wrong to manufacture reasons to put one group forward ahead of another," she said.

"It is an invasion of privacy to take account of parental background. Places should go on merit – not your parents' education."

Last month it emerged that leading institutions were actually taking fewer students from deprived areas - despite the Government's drive to redress their middle-class bias.

Teenagers from wealthier families and private schools increased their hold on places at half of the 20 most sought-after universities, according to official figures.

A spokesman for the newly-formed Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "We are ensuring every child has the best possible start in life and the opportunity to succeed - nobody can argue with that.

"New ways of raising standards in schools, such as progression and personalisation, will ensure that all pupils get the education they deserve to reach their full potential. And it is only right that we are also ensuring the opportunity of higher education is accessible to everyone who desires it."

[cjohnson1]

Talk about becomming Americanized....

[RKV]

Higher education is not for everyone. It takes brains and effort to succeed at elite schools (and to a lesser extent money). This is the bell curve in action. We deny reality at our own cost. There is plenty of room in the world for people with trades and skills, not just academic credentials. Here in the US, you USED to be able to get vocational training in high school. Personally, I learned how to weld, work sheet metal, survey, drive heavy equipment and work with wood, and still managed to finish college prep and get into the University of California. Those skills allowed me to work in the oil fields and help my widowed mother pay for my college expenses. We need more vocational education in a big way. There are two problems with this. These programs aren’t cheap, and you have to hire qualified instructors (usually conservative men). The educrats have a hard time with those kind of employees. The money would have to come from other, less economically useful, but politically correct programs.

[in hoc signo vinces]

Reminds me of that movie Accepted. “You better have hobo stab insurance!”

[Sloth]

In a fierce attack, the Professional Association of Teachers called for the Government to halt its drive towards so-called "social engineering".

Holy crap. Can we trade our teachers' association for theirs?

[ishabibble]

Good post. My late father-in-law was a wood shop teacher. In the 60’s and 70’s, his students learned until they could build a Grandfather clock. By the time he retired, his students were making tomato sticks. It wasn’t him or his idea, it was the NEA curriculum people who said that disparaging a student for idiocy was cruel. It was the truth, of course, but verboten in the New Age schools.

[CheyennePress]

>>>Talk about becomming Americanized....<<<

Exactly. We’ve been doing this for ages. One of the first things I’d do given the authority in government would be to rip all of the federal funding behind sociology, gender studies, and the like and to turn it into engineering scholarships. It’s about time our nation began focusing on its future instead of non-productive social dissection.

The US is producting about 60,000 engineers per year. Germany—a nation with maybe 30% of the people—is producing 80,000. Engineers drive our nation’s industry and innovation forward.

I’m not sure how our nation is supposed to continue to compete with our lousy and misdirected education system. And I say this as a literature and art history major who went into graduate education in the sciences.

[cinives]

Exactly right. I am also not convinced that it is in our interests as a society to keep our kids infanticized until age 22 or 24 or beyond so they can “get more education”. It seems to me that working in the real world is a tremendous education all by itself.

I know kids who graduate from college who have never held a job, and don’t really want to go look for one at age 22 as long as mom and dad will provide the funds for a graduate degree.

[BlazingArizona]

Middle-Class Teenagers Made 'Whipping Boys' (UK)

So conditions haven't changed at British boarding schools in all these years since I defected to the West?