[Craghyrax]

(Original post by Smack)
Given that unemployed and living in poverty still seems to mean Xbox, smart phone and plenty of alcohol for the weekend I'm not particularly inclined to care if that's what people who disrupt everyone else's education end up being.

That's a popular, but incorrect misconception. There are many families in the UK without electricity, who go without food some days, can't afford school uniforms and go without heating in winter and who become seriously ill because of living in damp conditions.

As I said, going to one state school with some other working class kids doesn't furnish you with a representative view of the whole country. And even if we are looking at kids with x boxes, if their families face financial instability there are a considerable number of ways in which they'll be disadvantaged in education in relation to people who are better off. Stigma and villification from people such as yourself is only one of the many on the list

[Smack]

(Original post by Craghyrax)
You'll forgive me for taking the research on education as a wee bit more representative than than your single opinion based on the one school you went to.

I have my experiences of actually going to an under-performing state school and actually being brought up in a council estate where drugs and unemployment was rife, which I personally think is much more valuable than what researchers who have had a private education and never had to want think.

I've already explained that if the country becomes more poor overall, that then affects the parents of future generations and the home life of future pupils. You might not care about anybody else other than you or yours, but if the state school system just keeps having to deal with more and more social problems connected to poverty, then that will affect the quality of school for everyone. Even for people in different state schools in better areas, because there are less and less resources to go around.
Your solution would just slowly and systematically boot everybody from severely dysfunctional families out of schools until we had large numbers of them with no occupation basically from the time they left nappies until the day they died.
Lots of people like to ignore poor people, but they live in the same society and the problems they face have repercussions for everybody.

It seems considerably more sensible to simply try and tackle poverty and unemployment effectively, which will result in children coming to school not being unruly and disruptive because they will be living with families who have enough money to actually care for them. They won't get sent to school malnourished (which is a big cause of misbehaviour), their families will be less likely to experience dysfunction (alcoholism etc.) and their parents might actually work normal hours and be at home some times to support and motivate their kids rather than leaving them to self raise themselves with the neighbourhood gangs or whatever.
Since 99.9999999% of research in Education suggests that poverty and other social issues are the primary reason for the main problems that weaken the UK education system, I don't think the answer is 'just kick out the poor kids and make poverty worse'

These paragraphs are riddled with straw-men and do not even attempt to answer many of my points.

Firstly, I never said that I don't care about anyone else's education. I said it is not my immediate concern. My first concern will always be that of my own and my family's, as is the same for almost everyone I'd imagine. This is because if you don't put yourself first, no-one else will. If my education is suffering, no-one else gives a damn about it but me. And life is a race where you only get once chance at many things so it's logical for me to not want to have my education and chances of doing well impeded.

Secondly, you have blatantly misrepresented my position. Are you deliberately being intellectually dishonest or do you genuinely believe that people from poor or dysfunctional backgrounds are ... predisposed ... to being unruly and disruptive and that it's impossible for them to sit down and, be quite and listen like everyone else? Lots of people from disadvantaged backgrounds do perfectly well at school. But I suppose you rarely hear about them since they don't expect people to cry them a river; they just get on with it.

My position is that people who disrupt the education of others should not be allowed to continue doing so and that removing them from mainstream education would stop them from doing so. This would help the education of everyone else, which is undeniable. Why should the majority of people in a class have to suffer the effects of a minority of pricks? How does this not damage social mobility? I tend to take a utilitarian approach and believe that if removing disruptive pupils is what it takes to provide a quality education to the vast majority, then that's what it takes. You can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink... but you can stop if from defecating in the water and thus stopping other horses from drinking.

Doing this would help social mobility because pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds could reasonably expect an education of suitable quality that'd allow them to start professional careers if they wished. They'd be able to get better jobs than their parents and leave the slums they grew up in.

And now I ask what your solution may I ask? So far I've gotten that you think that removing unruly pupils is not a good idea in the long run, so are you genuinely suggesting that I should have to share a class with people who'd rather throw rubbers at the teacher than be in school? How are you going to tackle social mobility when many people who attend these lower performing schools are unable to get the quality of education they need to start professional careers? How would you tackle poverty?

That's a popular, but incorrect misconception. There are many families in the UK without electricity, who go without food some days, can't afford school uniforms and go without heating in winter and who become seriously ill because of living in damp conditions.

And there are also a great many families who are classed as living in poverty yet still live very comfortable lives relative to most of the world. Through my charity work I've been in some of the worst areas in my city, in the tower-block flats and a lot of people were living fine, if a little cramped. Makes me annoyed that people here who are a negative impact on society can still live much better lives than people in developing parts of the world who'd give their arm and a leg to be taught how to count.

As I said, going to one state school with some other working class kids doesn't furnish you with a representative view of the whole country. And even if we are looking at kids with x boxes, if their families face financial instability there are a considerable number of ways in which they'll be disadvantaged in education in relation to people who are better off. Stigma and villification from people such as yourself is only one of the many on the list

I'm not even sure why I'd dignifying this with a response, but it's you who seems to think children from poor families are all disruptive and unable to perform to the same level as those from more stable families, like it's some sort of genetic predisposition. The way that you seem to think that removing unruly pupils means deleting all poor people from schools (I mean ..."I don't think the answer is 'just kick out the poor kids"... seriously, WTF since when did poor kid = unruly, disruptive etc?) is highly condescending and I'm not in the least surprised that you were privately educated and thus have no experience of what you talk about. It's easy to tell people that they should have to suffer a **** education when you went to a private posh Christian school with small class sizes. Now hopefully you'll see why I believe what I said in the first paragraph.

[evening sunrise]

(Original post by Craghyrax)
That's a popular, but incorrect misconception. There are many families in the UK without electricity, who go without food some days, can't afford school uniforms and go without heating in winter and who become seriously ill because of living in damp conditions.

In which case why is Clegg faffing around talking about opening doors at Uni for poor people. He needs to get his priorities right, electricity, warmth and absence of damp should be his focus and absolute priority.

Nevertheless your post does not address the previous posters point about alcohol, cigarettes etc etc.

All the same your argument is compelling, all university grant and bursary funding should be redirected to address these issues leaving everyone with a loan. It is appalling that these things you describe exist and we are providing students with household incomes of a stonking 25K in excess of 7K pa to piss up the wall, spend on designer labels and mobile phone contracts.

BTW: do you know how to tell a uni student from a "poor" background and one from a middle income one? The former is loaded and the latter is skint.

The reason one gets a degree and works hard to get into the 40% (plus 9% graduate tax) income tax bracket is that if you didn't the government would not be able to give the household on 25K per annum 500 pcm in child tax credits in addition to their child getting a loan, grant and bursary, whilst your child gets 3.5K. and your expected to trump up the difference, so 3.5 grossed up at 40% + 9 gives 7 K. 500 * 12 / .2 = 7.5 k. So 45K p.a becomes 38K in terms of disposable income after supporting the student, and 25K becomes 32.5K, so the difference in disposable income for your hard work is (assuming you only have a 25K level mortgage rather than a 45K level mortgage) 5.5K - minus tax, that is such a good value proposition that you can put me down for 10.

But seriously why bother?

But child tax credits are needed, we have friends in the caring professions, earning between 16 and 18 K p.a. full time. The people need caring for and the tax credits are needed so that folks can do these jobs. What irritates is where that fiscal contribution ends up, in the specific case I know first hand, it ended up in the 450K yacht in the med and 500K farm house in the UK the owners of the home purchased when they retired. They could have paid decent wages reducing the need for tax credits and settled for a 75K yacht and 200K house, but I am so pleased I helped them buy these baubles.

Middle England is the engine room of this country, you would think that our highly qualified politicians and civil servants would understand that if you keep nicking the oil from the engine to stop the doors squeaking your engine eventually seizes.

Over and above this, your statements regarding the poor are somewhat economical with the facts, as many have serious issues and physical/mental conditions to the point of being dysfunctional. As 25K is the threshold student finance uses that is the definition we will use. I have friends who earn about this amount and less and they have 42 inch flat screen TVs xboxes and laptops, dishwashers, annual holiday etc etc. So lets leave all the social science sound bites out.

Yes, I was raised on council estates, one in particular very dodgy. Yes I attended several state schools, the last one totally failing and even though renamed it still has the flags for context set today. My son attended our well regarded state school, people brought their kids from far and wide, well until a new headmaster arrived and by the time my son reached the 6th form Ofsted took over as it was failing totally. If you really want to see how the " poor " live then join the odd chat room and once accepted then pop along to one or two of the face to face meetings, usually at a club or someones house. Unfortunately HMRC will not accept such an experience as justification for withholding ones tax payments......... worth doing though to broaden ones experience.

[llys]

I agree with Smack. Disruptive pupils should be removed from mainstream schools to Pupil Referral Units. This would allow mainstream schools to offer better education to the majority.

I also agree with Craghyrax in the sense that I don't think those pupils should just be left to their own devices - obviously that would be a bad idea. I think there should be a big focus on Pupil Referral Units. Unlike mainstream schools PRUs have the chance to really do things differently (one example) and ultimately make a difference to their pupils. Research should focus on what approaches work with those children and then PRUs should be financed properly to implement one of these approaches (the variety that suits them best).

[Blutooth]

Cleggster is assuming the general public are idiots, and is trying to make decisions for them. Most students who want to apply to good unis know that they should pick up traditional subjects. SO I don't see how he is helping the issue, except for unfairly punishing the odd media studies student who might have got into a russell group university with a good PS and extra-curricular's. Anyway,who is he to say someone with an AAB in non-traditional subjects can't apply to uni. Rant over...

The answer is to increase the amount of streaming that goes on and to reintroduce grammar schools. Competition is a meritocracy that breeds success, gives students drive and ultimately acquaints students with lessons that they shall be faced with in the real world. Let the more academic students exist in environments where they can bound of each others' energy.

[Blutooth]

(Original post by Craghyrax)
I know what you mean, but my conclusion about performance is meant to be a post-hoc analysis of the problem, rather than an attitude that I would advise anybody acting on before the student in question has actually tried.


I agree with you that stereotypical assumptions are very dangerous and lead to harmful effects and policies such as setting and streaming that has been shown to exacerbate underachievement. There are many threads in the Universities forums begun by users who ended up getting good grades but went to mediocre Universities because of the pessimistic grade predictions and application advice of their schools.

My experiences are contrary to what you suggest: In the top set in maths there were 30 pupils whereas in the bottom sets there were around 8 as the underachieving kids needed more attention. But regardless, high achieving students who want to study deserve to do so unhindered whether it entrenches social inequality or not. That is what school is for afterall.

There is also an assumption assumed by most of those who argue against streaming that once the sets have been decided that's the be-all and end-all. That is simply not true, a set 5 or 6 student can always climb his way up to a top set through dedication and resolve. Things are more fluid than might be suggested; and it is that fluid movement, these tides of erudition which push and encourage students to be their best.

And what of you, you were at Cambridge were you not? If schools shouldn't be setted then perhaps universities shouldn't be streamed too. I mean, that would certainly rid the universities of the blatant inequality we are seeing now.

Anyway, in real life things are streamed: jobs are streamed according to ability. We have street cleaners and Biomedical scientists and only those more able can do the latter. Life is in part a competition, and though you may not realise it: you "compete" for a potential life partner, you "compete" for a preferable job and you "compete" for the best education possible. Of course, in life there is a lot of getting along with others and mutual cooperation too, but the sooner kids learn that life is competitive, the sooner they can start improving their chances.

(Original post by Craghyrax)

Having researched education myself, the data is pretty scary. Your social class, race and postcode basically determine what grades you get, which suggests that what people attain is really not to do with their personal abilities and merit but completely to do with the environment they were exposed to.

It seems like you are treating individuals as so many sodium atoms and hydrogen molecules whizzing around in the lab of some scientist. Individual performances are too be ignored in favour of the mean. Social class, race and postcode clearly do not determine what grades you get, thought they might factor in someone's motivations.

[Bobifier]

(Original post by Smack)
I have my experiences of actually going to an under-performing state school and actually being brought up in a council estate where drugs and unemployment was rife, which I personally think is much more valuable than what researchers who have had a private education and never had to want think.

I'm going to confess that I didn't read anything you wrote after the point at which you claimed that anecdotal evidence is more reliable than proper research. However, I feel comfortable assuming that everything you said was wrong since someone who believes that can't possibly get anything right.

[green.tea]

(Original post by alexs2602)
I must admit I'm quite skeptical. Even as someone who is working class/state schooled I think he'd be better off concentrating on improving state schooling rather than making it easier for people to get into better unis. I'd rather universities became more competitive and made progress. Instead perhaps it would make more sense to increase the grade requirements of middle class/privately schooled students so it's harder for them to get in and they might then actually be just as likely to achieve a first as students from a 'poor' background.

How? Theyre constantly knocking down and rebuilding schools round here and its an utterly pointless waste of money. The same **** teachers in a new building will still be ****. A good teacher teaching in a caravan would get better results. Theres only so many good teachers to go round.

The only fair way is to tier schools on iq.

[Blutooth]

(Original post by Bobifier)
I'm going to confess that I didn't read anything you wrote after the point at which you claimed that anecdotal evidence is more reliable than proper research. However, I feel comfortable assuming that everything you said was wrong since someone who believes that can't possibly get anything right.

It was actually quite a good post- a bit waffly but there was substance to the waffle.

[green.tea]

(Original post by llys)
I agree with Smack. Disruptive pupils should be removed from mainstream schools to Pupil Referral Units. This would allow mainstream schools to offer better education to the majority.

I also agree with Craghyrax in the sense that I don't think those pupils should just be left to their own devices - obviously that would be a bad idea. I think there should be a big focus on Pupil Referral Units. Unlike mainstream schools PRUs have the chance to really do things differently (one example) and ultimately make a difference to their pupils. Research should focus on what approaches work with those children and then PRUs should be financed properly to implement one of these approaches (the variety that suits them best).

No, because i was sometimes disruptive but only in classes with pants teachers. Of the teachers i had time for one left to work at a uni, another became headmaster and one was liked and respected by everyone. Of the teachers i tormented two got the sack and the rest were pretty much universally disliked and afaik never progressed. Its personality as much as owt. If you forget your book and someone yells in your face you'll hate them. If you like someone you dont wanna disappoint them by forgetting your book.

"I know all your tricks"

"but how could you know that you dont know about the ones that you dont know about?"

*rapturous laughter from class*

I was hated.

[alexs2602]

(Original post by green.tea)
How? Theyre constantly knocking down and rebuilding schools round here and its an utterly pointless waste of money. The same **** teachers in a new building will still be ****. A good teacher teaching in a caravan would get better results. Theres only so many good teachers to go round.

The only fair way is to tier schools on iq.

What!? Just what are you going on about?

I was talking about the teachers. Am I to assume you misunderstood what was obviously perfectly straightforward to everyone else? Schooling =/= schools(buildings). At least that's what I think you were angling at.

[green.tea]

(Original post by alexs2602)
What!? Just what are you going on about?

I was talking about the teachers. Am I to assume you misunderstood what was obviously perfectly straightforward to everyone else? Schooling =/= schools(buildings). At least that's what I think you were angling at.

What i was angling at is your idea for improving state schooling. This is indicated in my other post by the word "how?". Where are you gonna get the good teachers? You think higher pay so it ranks alongside law as a job you do for cash will do it? I dont. Although more pay wouldn't hurt you still wouldnt have many more people with the rare combination of traits that make good teachers. My secondary school wasnt bad and had about 6-7 good teachers in the whole place.

[Fires]

The real question is - do Clegg and the LibDems have any real determination over policy in the Coalition? Despite all the hot air from some of the more extreme numbnut Tory back backbenchers, all the evidence is that they don't. Every policy currently underway is essentially a right-wing Tory one. Cameron & co simply sound like they've made an agreement to push for something the LibDums want, then tactically drop it with lots of manouvering when the time comes.

So we can take anything Clegg says on policy for what it is - just wishing it were so.

[green.tea]

(Original post by Fires)
The real question is - do Clegg and the LibDems have any real determination over policy in the Coalition? Despite all the hot air from some of the more extreme numbnut Tory back backbenchers, all the evidence is that they don't. Every policy currently underway is essentially a right-wing Tory one. Cameron & co simply sound like they've made an agreement to push for something the LibDums want, then tactically drop it with lots of manouvering when the time comes.

So we can take anything Clegg says on policy for what it is - just wishing it were so.

I dunno. I think this could be achieved by a tiered system and the tories could get behind that. With the reds out of the picture their wanting smart working class to go to **** schools so they can become class warriors wouldnt come into it. That would make it a "fair race". This policy is crap imo. How are they going to measure "ability to excel"? Why not do that at the start? I see no reason at all. Deciding 20% of premature babies must go to uni just means dropping the grades in some cases to meet that quota. Instead of making the system fair theyre trying to impose fairness on an inherently unfair system and ignoring the real problem which is that the top teachers go to the top schools. Nothing will happen. Its typical government bull**** along the lines of john majors "classless society".

[Craghyrax]

(Original post by Smack)
I have my experiences of actually going to an under-performing state school and actually being brought up in a council estate where drugs and unemployment was rife, which I personally think is much more valuable than what researchers who have had a private education and never had to want think.

I don't think you should care about what I think. I do think that you must be quite proud to assume that your single personal journey can tell all of us more about trends in education than piles and piles of research looking at hundreds and thousands of individuals and schools across the country over many years. It is those findings I'm alluding to, not my own personal experiences, because this limitation applies as much to my own individual experience as it does to yours.

(Original post by Smack)
My position is that people who disrupt the education of others should not be allowed to continue doing so and that removing them from mainstream education would stop them from doing so. This would help the education of everyone else, which is undeniable. Why should the majority of people in a class have to suffer the effects of a minority of pricks? How does this not damage social mobility? I tend to take a utilitarian approach and believe that if removing disruptive pupils is what it takes to provide a quality education to the vast majority, then that's what it takes. You can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink... but you can stop if from defecating in the water and thus stopping other horses from drinking.

I'm a utilitarian, but it doesn't sound like you are. Most utilitarians are vehemently against privileging yourself and your family over other individuals. They argue that (1) all people are equal, and (2) that maximising everybody's happiness or wellbeing is the most important moral priority. Under these conditions your suggestion could only count as utilitarian if you were able to somehow persuade me that the well being of all of those individuals who were kicked out of school was being considered and weighed up equally to the well being of those who remain in school.
Check it out.

As for the so-called 'undeniability' of whether kicking poorly behaved students out would help everyone or not, we seem to be talking past eachother. I've already said that it wouldn't help everyone at all, it would just result in a situation where school was reserved only for a supposedly deserving elite. Everyone excluded would be left to face unemployment and poverty. The overall levels of poverty would raise, and once the excluded pupils had children, they would go to schools, burdening them with more issues. It is not condescending to point out that if you don't eat a good diet, you are likely to misbehave. People living in poverty are often malnourished. That is just one example. And it wouldn't even be that good for the people who remained in school, because the state would have to divert funds from schools into other social services in order to tackle the greater problems related to increased poverty, unemployment and crime.
I am not going to repeat this.

Doing this would help social mobility because pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds could reasonably expect an education of suitable quality that'd allow them to start professional careers if they wished. They'd be able to get better jobs than their parents and leave the slums they grew up in.

For the people who stayed in school, yes. However for those who were excluded, research demonstrates that the likely path is a life of unemployment and often involvement in crime instead.
Your solution would dramatically increase the number of people living in poverty and the rates of crime in the country.

And now I ask what your solution may I ask? So far I've gotten that you think that removing unruly pupils is not a good idea in the long run, so are you genuinely suggesting that I should have to share a class with people who'd rather throw rubbers at the teacher than be in school? How are you going to tackle social mobility when many people who attend these lower performing schools are unable to get the quality of education they need to start professional careers? How would you tackle poverty?

Well we know that the number of families living in poverty has risen drastically since the Thatcher era. This correlates very nicely with the 'rolling back' of the welfare state. Its a bit of a no brainer that effectively taxing corporations and increasing state spending on welfare would reduce social problems drastically. Its also a no brainer that states need to stimulate their economies in times of difficulty by encouraging industry and creating jobs. The increase of welfare provision would be one simple way to create more jobs of many.

And there are also a great many families who are classed as living in poverty yet still live very comfortable lives relative to most of the world. Through my charity work I've been in some of the worst areas in my city, in the tower-block flats and a lot of people were living fine, if a little cramped. Makes me annoyed that people here who are a negative impact on society can still live much better lives than people in developing parts of the world who'd give their arm and a leg to be taught how to count.

I certainly agree that people in developing countries (e.g. where I grew up) experience far greater suffering, and I wish people were more aware and more willing to give to charity and so forth. But just because someone is worse off than someone else doesn't mean that there's any justification in just dismissing problems and not seeking to improve them.

I'm not in the least surprised that you were privately educated and thus have no experience of what you talk about. It's easy to tell people that they should have to suffer a **** education when you went to a private posh Christian school with small class sizes. Now hopefully you'll see why I believe what I said in the first paragraph.

Private schools in South Africa aren't the same as private schools in the UK. It wasn't posh, and the education system in SA is very bad. Poshness doesn't exist in South Africa, because the predominant principle of social division remains race. There are class differences, but they overlap so strongly with race that most people still think in those terms. Also I was only there for a few years. I attended a further education college for my A levels where the average attainment of my class mates was somewhere between E and C.

At any rate, I never knew that I wasn't allowed to be interested in poverty in the UK just because I wasn't poor. Or that failing to go to a state school in a working class area of England would prohibit me from being allowed to hold opinions.
I think if you can back up your opinions with well grounded arguments and facts, then it shouldn't matter whether you've directly experienced it first hand. I'm not sure what I need to do before you'll actually allow me to hold views. Do I need to go and redo my education all over again until it satisfies you? I might as well laugh in your face for daring to express an opinion about the 'christian private school' I attended, since it is blatantly obvious that you know nothing about education in South Africa and are merely projecting your ideas of British private schools onto it.

Most researchers in the social sciences try their hardest to use research methods that give them as much first hand experience of problems as they can. During my MPhil I went to three working class schools and conducted loads of interviews. Most of the wider research I have read used methods like ethnography which involves living with a community for a sustained period of time in order to represent their experiences faithfully. Its not just all statistics, although you need them too if you want to get an idea of the extent of something and how widespread it is.

(Original post by Blutooth)
It seems like you are treating individuals as so many sodium atoms and hydrogen molecules whizzing around in the lab of some scientist. Individual performances are too be ignored in favour of the mean. Social class, race and postcode clearly do not determine what grades you get, thought they might factor in someone's motivations.

I see what you're saying, but when you have a good deal of information (in this case decades and decades of research and hundreds and thousands of studies) which all point very unambiguously to massive trends, then you can't just dismiss those trends. Of course there are always exceptions, and people are individuals who make their own choices. But if you find a crazily high correlation somewhere, you have to take that seriously and look into why so many people are behaving in the same way.

[Craghyrax]

(Original post by evening sunrise)
In which case why is Clegg faffing around talking about opening doors at Uni for poor people. He needs to get his priorities right, electricity, warmth and absence of damp should be his focus and absolute priority.

I perfectly agree. Historically, unfortunately, the education system has always been seized upon by our government as a 'quick fix' to social issues. Its assumed that if you fix up education that you can counteract inequalities and all the rest. But that's a big problem when education is just one influence and context in which people grow up. They also have homes and families, and you need to address all of those as well, not just tinker with the easiest target in order to satisfy your voters that you're trying to do something.
Really its all just lip service in order to stay in power a bit longer

All the same your argument is compelling, all university grant and bursary funding should be redirected to address these issues leaving everyone with a loan. It is appalling that these things you describe exist and we are providing students with household incomes of a stonking 25K in excess of 7K pa to piss up the wall, spend on designer labels and mobile phone contracts.

I agree that the way student finance eligibility is calculated is very flawed. I do not agree that you should not means test, and that the poorest individuals should not receive more money. I just think you ought to means test well, (so look at more than parental income, but work out whether the person is actually still being supported by the family, look at assets, look at debt). And you should also calculate a more realistic figure of what support to give.
I think the amount of student financial support available has reduced under the current government. Unfortunately they're not redistributing it to other necessary areas of need, so that's no good.

But child tax credits are needed, we have friends in the caring professions, earning between 16 and 18 K p.a. full time. The people need caring for and the tax credits are needed so that folks can do these jobs. What irritates is where that fiscal contribution ends up, in the specific case I know first hand, it ended up in the 450K yacht in the med and 500K farm house in the UK the owners of the home purchased when they retired. They could have paid decent wages reducing the need for tax credits and settled for a 75K yacht and 200K house, but I am so pleased I helped them buy these baubles.

Benefit fraud is something really small, like 0.5% There are frauds, but considerably less of them than the Daily Mail etc. would have you believe.

Over and above this, your statements regarding the poor are somewhat economical with the facts, as many have serious issues and physical/mental conditions to the point of being dysfunctional. As 25K is the threshold student finance uses that is the definition we will use. I have friends who earn about this amount and less and they have 42 inch flat screen TVs xboxes and laptops, dishwashers, annual holiday etc etc. So lets leave all the social science sound bites out.

But where do you think that serious physical and mental conditions come from? There is plenty of research demonstrating that your life expectancy is significantly reduced if you don't have a stable income. Job insecurity and unemployment also bring on a whole gamut of mental and physical problems.
I disagree that I should 'leave the social science sound bites out'.

The whole purpose of social science is to improve knowledge about social policy, and about society in order to help us to make the best decisions. It would be stupid to leave out information that is relevant. To do anything else is to just cherry pick information in order to come up with a view you like best, without being hampered by any concerns for accuracy.

If you really want to see how the " poor " live then join the odd chat room and once accepted then pop along to one or two of the face to face meetings, usually at a club or someones house. Unfortunately HMRC will not accept such an experience as justification for withholding ones tax payments......... worth doing though to broaden ones experience.

What do you mean.

[Smack]

(Original post by Craghyrax)
I don't think you should care about what I think. I do think that you must be quite proud to assume that your single personal journey can tell all of us more about trends in education than piles and piles of research looking at hundreds and thousands of individuals and schools across the country over many years. It is those findings I'm alluding to, not my own personal experiences, because this limitation applies as much to my own individual experience as it does to yours.

If this tells us that poor education is linked to poverty, then it tells us nothing that we didn't already know. If it tells us that we shouldn't be excluding problematic pupils from mainstream education, and it's people who've never had to suffer a poor education telling us this, then I'm not interested, no.

I'm also a utilitarian, but it doesn't sound like you are. Most utilitarians are vehemently against privileging yourself and your family over other individuals. They argue that (1) all people are equal, and (2) that maximising everybody's happiness or wellbeing is the most important moral priority. Under these conditions your suggestion could only count as utilitarian if you were able to somehow persuade me that the well being of all of those individuals who were kicked out of school was being considered and weighed up equally to the well being of those who remain in school.

The majority of pupils who just wish to get a decent education would be much happier if the minority of disruptive pupils were removed. The disruptive pupils themselves often want to be removed, too, so yes, my solution maximises everyone's happiness.

For the people who stayed in school, yes. However for those who were excluded, research demonstrates that the likely path is a life of unemployment and often involvement in crime instead.

And this is where I think that social science can be nonsensical. You're not treating people as individuals. People are not predisposed to taking this path, they make a choice to, and they know the consequences of it.

Your solution would dramatically increase the number of people living in poverty and the rates of crime in the country.

Only if your assumption is that if the number of pupils who are disruptive increases, which is a bizarre assumption to make.

Well we know that the number of families living in poverty has risen drastically since the Thatcher era. This correlates very nicely with the 'rolling back' of the welfare state. Its a bit of a no brainer that effectively taxing corporations and increasing state spending on welfare would reduce social problems drastically. Its also a no brainer that states need to stimulate their economies in times of difficulty by encouraging industry and creating jobs. The increase of welfare provision would be one simple way to create more jobs of many.

I don't think that any of this is a "no-brainer" an disagree with much of it, but that's for a different thread.

I certainly agree that people in developing countries (e.g. where I grew up) experience far greater suffering, and I wish people were more aware and more willing to give to charity and so forth. But just because someone is worse off than someone else doesn't mean that there's any justification in just dismissing problems and not seeking to improve them.

No-one is saying otherwise, but I wouldn't classify many of the "problems" some in society face as actual "problems"...

Private schools in South Africa aren't the same as private schools in the UK. It wasn't posh, and the education system in SA is very bad. Poshness doesn't exist in South Africa, because the predominant principle of social division remains race. There are class differences, but they overlap so strongly with race that most people still think in those terms. Also I was only there for a few years. I attended a further education college for my A levels where the average attainment of my class mates was somewhere between E and C.

I just used your own words. I did a search for all posts made by you containing the phrase "private school" and found a few posts where you said you went to a private Christian school and also described it as "posh".

At any rate, I never knew that I wasn't allowed to be interested in poverty in the UK just because I wasn't poor. Or that failing to go to a state school in a working class area of England would prohibit me from being allowed to hold opinions.

You can be interested and I'm glad that people from non-disadvantaged backgrounds are interested in helping those who are. What I'm saying is that it's easy for people whose education was never continually disrupted to say that these pupils shouldn't be excluded. I think that if you had to endure this, or your children had to, you'd have different views about exclusions from mainstream education.

I think if you can back up your opinions with well grounded arguments and facts, then it shouldn't matter whether you've directly experienced it first hand. I'm not sure what I need to do before you'll actually allow me to hold views. Do I need to go and redo my education all over again until it satisfies you? I might as well laugh in your face for daring to express an opinion about the 'christian private school' I attended, since it is blatantly obvious that you know nothing about education in South Africa and are merely projecting your ideas of British private schools onto it.

No-one is saying that you can't have opinions, but I, and this is nothing personal, cannot place as much value to someone's opinions who has no direct experience with the subject as I would with someone who has. Which is why I think your views on exclusions for the most unruly pupils would be different if you had to share a classroom with them. I think you'd be like me and see it as a necessary evil if we're to improve the quality of education for the majority of pupils in underperforming state schools.

[green.tea]

(Original post by Smack)
The majority of pupils who just wish to get a decent education would be much happier if the minority of disruptive pupils were removed. The disruptive pupils themselves often want to be removed, too, so yes, my solution maximises everyone's happiness.

I was removed from my middle school and sent to what was the best school in bradford at the time. It didnt maximise the non disruptive pupils happiness.

At my middle school i played the classical naughty school boy very well and swept others along. They sent me to the other school because they had a culture of treating us as adults. No bells, calling us students and stuff like that. Thats the sort of thinking we need.

Incidentally labour wanted to close my new school down.

[llys]

(Original post by green.tea)
No, because i was sometimes disruptive but only in classes with pants teachers. Of the teachers i had time for one left to work at a uni, another became headmaster and one was liked and respected by everyone. Of the teachers i tormented two got the sack and the rest were pretty much universally disliked and afaik never progressed. Its personality as much as owt. If you forget your book and someone yells in your face you'll hate them. If you like someone you dont wanna disappoint them by forgetting your book.

At my middle school i played the classical naughty school boy very well and swept others along. They sent me to the other school because they had a culture of treating us as adults. No bells, calling us students and stuff like that. Thats the sort of thinking we need.

That reads like the change worked well for you? So why do you think it wouldn't work for other disruptive pupils? A PRU is still a school btw, just a school that has a lot more freedom of how to do things and usually much smaller classes.

[Craghyrax]

(Original post by Smack)
The majority of pupils who just wish to get a decent education would be much happier if the minority of disruptive pupils were removed. The disruptive pupils themselves often want to be removed, too, so yes, my solution maximises everyone's happiness.

We are just talking past eachother But really, how is this in the best interests of the pupils who are excluded?
Your logic implies that we should only provide education to deserving individuals. That is not in any way utilitarian. Utilitarians advocate considering everybody's best interests regardless of whether the person is deserving or not. Their interests are valued equally on the basis of their humanity.

(Original post by Smack)
I just used your own words. I did a search for all posts made by you containing the phrase "private school" and found a few posts where you said you went to a private Christian school and also described it as "posh".

You pay fees at regular schools in SA not just specialist ones, so its not at all comparable to the UK in that sense.

(Original post by Smack)
You can be interested and I'm glad that people from non-disadvantaged backgrounds are interested in helping those who are. What I'm saying is that it's easy for people whose education was never continually disrupted to say that these pupils shouldn't be excluded. I think that if you had to endure this, or your children had to, you'd have different views about exclusions from mainstream education.

Equally if you had read all the research there is in the field of education, you would not have the same views about exclusion as you do.

(Original post by Smack)
No-one is saying that you can't have opinions, but I, and this is nothing personal, cannot place as much value to someone's opinions who has no direct experience with the subject as I would with someone who has. Which is why I think your views on exclusions for the most unruly pupils would be different if you had to share a classroom with them. I think you'd be like me and see it as a necessary evil if we're to improve the quality of education for the majority of pupils in underperforming state schools.

Well I thought that was quite a personal attack frankly. We went from discussing different ideas about how to fix education to suddenly scrutinising my personal life And in quite a derogatory way too.

And as for having experienced poverty, I consider myself privileged but I wonder whether you had your electricity and phone cut off because your parents couldn't afford to pay the bills? Did you grow up wearing second hand clothes that were donated? Did you sometimes run out of food in the house without money to buy more? These experiences were a part of my childhood, and I'm therefore indignant at being lambasted for going to a 'posh school'.

However I don't even know why we're bothering with personal bios here. As far as I'm concerned a good idea should be tested by its merits, and the reasons supporting it. Not on the personal histories of the persons holding those views.
Your stance seems to be "My opinion is worth more than yours because I went to a working class state school". You haven't convinced me in the slightest that excluding children from school will be in everybody's interests, or indeed in the interests of society as a whole which will certainly be faced with a sharp influx of unqualified young adults needing work, and heightened crime levels.

Furthermore I don't see how who I am and what my experiences are matter in the slightest when I'm supporting my views with a considerable amount of research conducted in many more schools, focusing on many more students than that which you have experienced. If you want to have a go at something, read the actual research and try and find holes in their methodology. Personally, as I've said before, I find information drawn from a wide number of cases and a large number of informed dedicated researchers to be more convincing than the prejudices of one person who got irritated with the noisy kids in his school.