Grammar Schools -- Classic or Dud?

Dud

can someone explain the difference? voted classic anyway, just for balance.

you did an exam at the age of 11 and on that basis went either to a grammar school and got a good shot at university (this was before the boom in universities), or to a secondary modern or a technical college.

labour abandoned it in the 64-70 session, and the tories followed suit, but a handful still exist.

Beeb has the answers

Only one "t" in "benefited"; is banriquit Lee McQueen?

He obv. never went to grammar shcool

It's a DAMNING INDICTMENT (another expression never actually used in real life; cf. tryst, bedded, madcap...).

Can we go back to the old way of politics urgent and key, viz. Labour socialists, Tories Nazis plz, you knew where you were, all fields and space hoppers etc.

fairly dud then.

It's a PERFECT STORM of a poll

Can we go back to the old way of politics urgent and key, viz. Labour socialists, Tories Nazis plz, you knew where you were, all fields and space hoppers etc.

-- Dingbod Kesterson, Monday, June 16, 2008 2:08 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

this is WHY it's a perfect storm, coz the Good Labour Government of 1945 brought 'em in, and their not quite so marvellous successors (esp shirley williams, in '76), phased 'em out.

i don't have an answer on it: but they did seem to propel people with working-class backgrounds into power, whereas now the political establishment is and will increasingly be made up of the privately educated.

otoh dividing people into officer material and cannon-fodder at age eleven is some fucked-up shit.

i don't have an answer on it: but they did seem to propel people with working-class backgrounds into power, whereas now the political establishment is and will increasingly be made up of the privately educated.

Funny how there are no grammar schools in Scotland, and haven't been for yonks, and yet people from working-class backgrounds seem to do better than they do in England

So fuck that argument

Especially since I went to grammar school in Scotland!

(mind you that was yonks ago)

dyou mean within the scottish political establishment tom?

Yes, I suppose, in all walks of life really. In the UK establishment too, for that matter.

Anyway in Scotland they divide everyone up into blue eyes and green eyes at age zero and that is seriously fucked up shit.

LOL, true. Different attitude to education in Scotland fundamentally tho, they've always thought that even plebs should be educated

Maybe it's because Scottish accents don't have an RP equivalent, and so it's much harder to profile someone as belonging to a certain economic stratum based upon their voice?

^^^n.b. I know this is clearly wrong, I'm just curious as to how vehement the negations will be.

^^ yeah i was going to say, it's more an argument for stealing the scottish model than for the english system as it stands.

xposts to tom

ha i went to a grammar school so mega-mega dud

lol

dividing people into officer material and cannon-fodder at age eleven is some fucked-up shit.

I agree with that now but when I was 11, any test that would have rescued me from thickos would have been received with open arms and a sharpened number two pencil. As it was, I had a difficult time that year so a standardized test where I came top in the school really helped me towards not feeling useless. Not everyone can be in the fast stream (and if there isn't one available to people who use state education, that's wrong) but I always thought there should be later intervals to allow for people who didn't come into their own until 14 or 16, as does happen.

muggins 'ere got fast-tracked aged six, more or less. jury is still out.

any test that would have rescued me from thickos would have been received with open arms and a sharpened number two pencil

ha that was the trap i fell into, i just ended up with thickos with a master race complex

ILX?

Ouch

that too xp

Dud. Wrong answer to the wrong problem. There were no grammar schools where I grew up so I'm not a product of the system, but my Dad was. He flunked everything on purpose, but I think secretly he missed his mates.

still i can say i went to the same school as trevor brooking, that guy from haircut 100 and that guy from bloc party so it's not all bad

The (perhaps unsurprising) result of the 11+ was not dividing up the 'thickies' from the non-thickies. I passed it for instance. At my grammar school the teaching was awful, sadistic and out of date (the RE teacher taught us sex education at 14). It was when it came to further education that the divisions really came in. Kids with a county/rugby club background were encouraged to apply for university. Those who were really 'the right sort' got the Oxbridge treatment. The rest of us were told to get a job and, this being 1983, oh how we laughed!

Obviously this is my experience only and may have been different elsewhere.

as with private schools, student grants, etc, it is fairly striking how many of those staunchly opposed to them at the same time benefitted from them.

I don't think this is true at all, it tends to be twats like (Paisley Grammarian) Andrew Neil who go on and on about them, even tho not even Tory Party supports them anymore

At my grammar school the teaching was awful, sadistic and out of date

oh sounds familiar

this thread should incorporate single-sex schools as i'm not sure whether my school was shit just because it was a grammar or because there were no girls

We had girls later on. The teachers were still the same though. When the girls arrived (from a mix of grammar and sec. moderns) I think they were pretty shocked at our teachers. They were particularly awful. Although to be fair only three of them were ever convicted of sexual offences.

haw the 'classics master' at mine got outed as a nonce by the daily star a couple of years ago, which was a shame as he was one of the few good teachers!

It's always the classics master....

in hindsight yeah it was sort of predictable

I went to a grammar school in one of the few places that still has them (1993-2000) and had a great time.

I worked really hard for my eleven plus, because I knew if I failed I was gonna get my head kicked in every day at the worst of two local comps. If it looked like you weren't gonna pass the exam, they'd tell you to put the better local comp as your first choice, otherwise you could put the grammar, and get into the rough as fuck comp if you failed.

i ended up at the local comp that i'd been avoiding 5 years previously and was disappointed to find out it was actually alright :( i think i missed the rampant personality disorders found at the grammar school

All the hard kids at my primary wanted to go to the rough comp because "It's a doss and you don't even have to do joined up handwriting".

sounds good

these schools aren't in the er 'east london' area are they?

Nope.

good, you'd be amazed at how many mutants from my old school i keep bumping into on the internet

I did the grammar school thing briefly (too poor to pay forever) plus it was in South Africa and I think its destroyed my internet fun. I'm less fastidious about the way I type but I still get a little antsy if I use a semi colon in the wrong place.

I did the grammar school thing briefly (too poor to pay forever) plus it was in South Africa

not the same thing then surely

It does give you a false sense of superiority.

"I got to go to one of the country's best schools on the basis of MERIT rather than cash" When it's more like "I got to go to there because I happened to be living in the right place and I am good at questions like:

"Add a letter to this word to make a new word that describes a wooden shoe: _LOG"

schoolchums always got mad butthurt when it was pointed out to them we sit the same exams as the thicko comp kids

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you guys did the right thing