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grim reader
10:24 / 12.06.03
With respect, Lurid, I don't feel that point can be emphasised ENOUGH! There is such a blatent segregation between rich and poor, and people really spend far too much time trying to make up excuses for this, or to deny it is even happening. It is too blatent for me to accept that i'm overstating it; it's been stated loud and clear and graphically throughout my school career, and i can only pass on what I've seen and experienced. Class mobility also allows deniability in this issue. I know many intelligent working class people, who have gone on to do university courses and stuff, IN SPITE of school, not because of it. Many have gone into activism and learnt more about the world through that than they ever did in school. I don't believe that one can make a credible case that the intelligent student need not be concerned with matters of wealth or class, but i welcome any attempts.

educationally, underperformance gets levels of attention depending on social factors rather than purely on need. I'd be interested in you developing this point. All i've ever seen is underperformance being ignored, and those who are underperforming are put in lower sets where the subject is dumbed down. Also, kids humiliated for not being able to keep up. I did Further Maths for A-level, and rather than give me the support i needed in ambitiously attempting this purely out of love of the subject, i was mocked as being 'the thick one in the class'. Because i was concentrating so hard on this 'extra', with no real support academically or morally, i ended up doing worse on my normal maths a-level than i might otherwise have. I didn't even sit the Further Maths exams in the end. Now, I know i'm picking out a very specific experience, but this is a familiar experience to many, and we have a right to feel hard done by that the teachers had this attitude of 'well, it isn't our a-level'. The kids who were selected out as being 'thick' from year 7 have an even greater right to feel hard done by, and it isn't suprising they become 'charves' or 'pikeys'; they find self-worth in tribalism, as do we all, its just some of us are accepted into the academic tribe and others are shat on from a height by it.
 
 
PatrickMM
13:13 / 13.06.03
There is such a blatent segregation between rich and poor, and people really spend far too much time trying to make up excuses for this, or to deny it is even happening. It is too blatent for me to accept that i'm overstating it; it's been stated loud and clear and graphically throughout my school career, and i can only pass on what I've seen and experienced.

In the US at least, class separation seems largely to be self motivated, and occurs without any sort of prompting or actual segragation. There are exceptions, but on the whole, it seems like the poorer people stick together, the richer people stick together, leaving the ones in the middle generally together. I don't think that anything can be done about the fact that people will generally want to befriend people with common backgrounds and experiences. I know most of my friends from high school live a couple of streets over from me at most, and that's probably true of a lot of people. And, while it may sound elitist, if you're rich, you're more likely to be smart, or at least have some skills, because if your parents got rich, there has to be something working on the genetic level.

Diversity sounds good in practice, but the way it's being dealt with at colleges over here is simply horrendous. The basic idea of diversity seems to be get enough minorities to make the numbers look good, then separate all the minorities out through special "minority action" programs, and things like that, thus singling out everyone who is different, and keeping groups together, the opposite of diversity.
 
 
passer
21:01 / 16.06.03
This topic is now officially a theme in my life. I opened my paper and behold: a story on an "unstructured school".

Of course, this article only cemented my deep seated belief that this sort of school can be good for some students, but not all. As much as people decry stupid menial tasks, a lot the higher level processing you take for granted, such as being able to type a coherent paragraph in an online discussion, are based on having all those menial tasks down so well that you don't have to think about them. Most students aren't going to pick up on this and be responsible enough to learn these very obviously boring, but necessary skills without a certain level of structure and discipline. The key being that that level of needed structure differs for every student and in an ideal world students would be able to access schools that meet their needs, but that’s a rant for another day.

To get back on the class issue, IMO, many of these schools are private particularly because money can allow students to circumvent the hoop jumping hoi polloi have to go through to prove that they're "qualified." There's no harm in allowing your kids to "play" as the head of this school puts it if your kid will always have access to funds. The same is not true of your average student without any money to fall back on who has to worry about scholarship money and paying off college debt later in life.

And, while it may sound elitist, if you're rich, you're more likely to be smart, or at least have some skills, because if your parents got rich, there has to be something working on the genetic level.
I'm not going to let this slide. Rule of thumb: if you ever have to preface a statement with "this might sound fill in the blank", you're not fooling anybody. It is elitist. Genetics has very little to do with your life other than medical conditions. However, lots and lots of money giving you access to lots and lots of services does. The sheer amount of time freed up by not having to work through high school or college has got to have some effect on grades that has nothing to any genetically inherited brilliance.

Diversity sounds good in practice, but the way it's being dealt with at colleges over here is simply horrendous. The basic idea of diversity seems to be get enough minorities to make the numbers look good, then separate all the minorities out through special "minority action" programs, and things like that, thus singling out everyone who is different, and keeping groups together, the opposite of diversity
As for self segregation, I find that the administration at school has very little to do with it and very little power to stop it if they tried. See the thread on the Georgia prom. People will do as people want, particularly at the college level. Personally, I find self segregation extremely hypocritical, but the general motivating factor is relief at being around people with a perceived common background. As much as people will try to gloss over it, minorities still have a different lived experienced. For example how many straight people, especially those who are interacting with queer people for the first time, can share a laugh at the often traumatic, and often hilarious stories about coming out to your family without any complex explanation? Not that most people really mind giving that explanation, but it does gets tiring.
 
 
grim reader
01:08 / 18.06.03
Hi Patrick,
The poor people tend to stick together over here too, as do the rich; thats what segregation kind of instills into people. I don't think anyone is suggesting we 'do anything about' people making friends; it is people becoming enemies which we should be concerned with. Why do people become enemies along class lines?

I'm not sure what it means to be smart, but it sounds like a fudgin' dumbass word to me. I value intelligence, honesty, creativity and compassion. That's either in the individual or it isn't, doesn't matter about genetics or any other spurious fiction pulled out of a hat to justify people with those qualities being shunted into the underclass. I think there are more obvious factors at work on the institutional level before we need to get into the genetics of the matter. Besides, genetics hardly justifies an individual being humiliated, degraded and tortured in the way they are because of class.

Diversity sounds good in practice, but the way it's being dealt with at colleges over here is simply horrendous. The basic idea of diversity seems to be get enough minorities to make the numbers look good, then separate all the minorities out through special "minority action" programs, and things like that, thus singling out everyone who is different, and keeping groups together, the opposite of diversity.

This sounds like an interesting implementation of the old imperial advice 'divide and rule'; in order to control an empire, you need to divide people and break down communication between them. I think you mean it 'sounds good in principle', as it sounds like a total failure in practice. I don't know a lot about minority programs, but at my university we've been doing some fairly dimwitted classes called 'whiteness workshops' telling us that we can't use the term 'race' because of Adolph Hitler's deathcamps.
 
  

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