Friday 1 November 2013

Don't let ideology beat reality

I remember in the 70s the arguments I had with people who insisted everyone was born the same and there was no such thing as natural intelligence or ability but just a product of their environment. This then allowed them to interfere with the environment in every possible way to make sure everyone was treated the same regardless of what they believed were absent, their natural ability. Up to a degree the same applies to modern multiculturalism, which perpetrates the similar myth all cultures are equal and can live side by side, despite only existing at all as they've spent hundreds or thousands of years living isolated in one place. So really this uses the opposite argument when it suits them, that the culture (as opposed to individual abilities) does not need generations of building up to create, but can be maintained away from home and as a part of as many as possible others all mixed up in one town or city.

Back to the main point, since the 70s sibling studies, including many on identical twins, have shown whatever the environment people turn out pretty much as they were, just enhancing or restricting their existing traits, while the reading of the human genome can now assign virtually every single quality to a few lines on a barcode and CAT scans of the brain demonstrate it in practice. But the main damage was done in the 70s already and British society has suffered for decades as a result. The one chance bright children from poor families had to get a proper academic education was in grammar schools, everyone had an equal chance to get in without paying as long as they passed the test, getting a second chance two years later. But because of ideological imaginations the treat them all the same and they'll all do equally well was forced on society and as a result the opportunity to be pushed academically was lost forever unless the parents gave up everything and spent all the available spare money on sending them to a private school.

Every other course and most jobs require exams to get them, whether passes or taking extra ones for entry, but they banned the operation for the entire secondary school system which sets the foundation for everyone's future further and higher education. There's never been any objections by the left for university entrance exams where required, or for the Civil Service, or needing the very O and A levels to go to the next level, but blinded to the fact the same exams were able to sort out the academic elite at 11 and again at 13 and direct the education to exam passes primarily, rather than a more vocational syllabus. Unfortunately when false childish views become so prevalent they make the law, you can only get false childish laws as a result, and in this country at least once passed most laws remain unless there's a revolution of some sort.

4 comments:

  1. Perhaps you would agree with an educational policy that reintroduced Grammar schools across the UK? Which party would have the courage to do it?

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  2. My own parents spent thousands for no good reason sending me to private schools as I missed grammar by a couple of years. I said on another entry they were the only way to provide a good education for everyone able, but the left pretend we are all the same so don't need individual attention, much like Mao's cultural revolution, Vote UKIP and grammar schools will return, no one else wants them in Britain.

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  3. Having attended an all boys' Grammar school, I know how powerful an academic education can be. My own background was a family relatively poor but with aspirations. If I had not gone to Grammar school and subsequently University I would have gone into the Steel works on some kind of apprentice scheme.

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  4. Yours and many examples like it show the subsequent success clever kids from poor backgrounds had through decent free schooling, now they are either left behind or if they can spend far more than they can really afford on private education. The Moral Maze on Radio 4 last week was all about natural ability, and even when a study of 10,000 people showed just over half was genetic half of the speakers refused to accept it. It's hard wired attitudes which deny science in this way which keep society down to mediocrity when many people could do so much better given the chance, as proved in the 60s and before.

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