shuggy's blog
I wonder if your support of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is based on the actual or idealized war?
I can see wanting Saddam overthrown. Considering the aftermath, is that really the war you support?
I found myself, I support overthrowing Saddam except for afterwards, when this, this and this occured.
If it's any consolation, Shuggy, (and I suspect it's not much), your comments about education are exactly what I've been hearing for the past 15-20 years from family and friends who teach in state primary schools in England. None of them are particularly political, they just used to enjoy teaching and now they don't due to the excessive bureaucratic controls they've been placed under, which seem to serve no known purpose apart from making politicians' lives easier.
I think you may have understated Blair's ability to take a Tory label and then change the underlying reality so much that you end up with a different entity: I have in mind such things as PFI and the Irish "Good Friday Agreement". The Blair version ends up being so much worse. He can also make things so much worse all on his own: in this I am influenced by my GP who strongly opposed the Tory introduction of "fundholder" practices, and now says that he was wrong, fundholding was an improvement and Blair did terrible damage in sweeping it away. Add to his actions the transparent fact that he is a loathsome wee twat, and why should his downfall be mourned?
As long as there's no parental choice in the State education system, there is a potential need to control teachers, absent any kind of meaningful pressure from the 'consumers'.
Unfortunately what control is excercised is over completely the wrong things, but that's another story.
the Irish "Good Friday Agreement".
I noticed the 'Keeping the Faith' website claimed Blair authorship for the Good Friday agreement. And a few other things that he was not responsible for. I really don't think PFI has been a notable success, either for the Tories or Labour. Wouldn't you agree it represents a failure to grasp the fundamental question of whether to privitize or not? This present arrangement is a bit of a mess - all these layers of contracts.
As long as there's no parental choice in the State education system
Laban - I certainly don't think teachers should be unaccountable but in the Scottish system, there's a fair amount of parental choice already. The problem with what Blair is suggesting, as I see it, is the absence of anything that would function like the price-mechanism to choke-off demand. Without this, schools just get bigger and bigger, which isn't good. Presently I'm in one that has a roll of 2300. It's just too damn big.
Wouldn't you agree it represents a failure to grasp the fundamental question of whether to privitize or not?
I think I probably would agree with that. A small experiment was not unreasonable, but it looks a poor idea to me.
Speaking as a parent I am disgusted with what has happened in the English schools (I don't know about Scotland). I had my children late in life so I am fifty with daughters of 10 and 7. They attend one of the best state primaries in London and I am shocked by how much education/schooling has changed since my day. I mean, they hardly do any writing, so that the 10 year old, who is facing secondary school next year, can barely write a grammatical sentence and does not have a clue about comprehension. She does however score highly in all those silly multi-choice papers they give them because they are so simple you'd have to have serious problems not to score highly. We are trying to get her into a selective school, because our local comprehensives are less than brilliant, so we have to fork out hundreds of pounds on private tutors. My friend sent her child to a private school, and although she is no cleverer than mine, she can write a literate sentence. Actually, I was at university with Digby Jones, I was one of the leaders of the 'ultra-lefts' and the college and he was a vociferous Tory. Many the slanging match we enjoyed and just to think thirty years later I'd end up agreeing with him on one thing, breads my heart!
Incidentally, Shuggy, shouldn't it be 'a roll of 2,300'?
Um, yes - what did I say? Oh I see...
breads my heart!
Incidently, Sue, shouldn't that be 'breaks'? 
Sue, give up and pay up. We went for a private school, having first taken out a "flexible mortgage".
Dearieme - Give up or payup did you say? Sorry, I did mention that I was an 'ultra-leftist' at university and I still am. I believe that education is a positive social good and benefit and should be the best that can be provided for everyone. How can you talk about a truely meritocratic society when most of the population are demi-semi-educated? Blair et al talk about the war against terrorism, don't they or their advisors know that thoroughgoing modernity and secular education is the only defence and way of binding the nation together. Have you read 'Jude the Obscure'? That's fiction of course, but thwarted educational hopes and ambitions are very much a reality. I wish we had paid for our daughters to go private, on pragmatic grounds, but we shouldn't of had to think about that. My friend, who sent her kids private could only afford it because her partner comes from a wealthy family, but even he can't afford to send than to private secondary school. How many people, second mortgage or not, could afford the £120,000 it would cost to put a child through private school in London. Then of-course, there are the university fees to be considered. I suppose you would answer that increased employability would enable the child to soon pay his/her parents back. Maybe that's true, but what about all those children whose parents cannot afford to borrow up to the hilt? Anyway, my substantive point is that the quality of education is not as high as it used to be. I bought a Key Stage 3 Maths book last week, to see what the level is like and it was no higher than what we used to do at primary in 1968. It prompted the thought that really what this New Labour Government is doing is returning to the days before the second world war when most children left school after 'elementary' school. Unfortunately, in those days, there was plenty of unskilled manual work around, but nowadays there is less and less. Also as I said, education has an integrative role in society and the way things are shaping up, this Government is making it divisive.
Shuggy: The good news is that I really enjoy reading your blog, I've always found scottish people very sensible and less class-ridden than the English. Something to do with the Highland Clearances no doubt. However, your mistake was a category mistake, mine was a typo. It is a common error, I will grant you but it still irks me everytime I see it. 'Rolls' are 'muster rolls' while 'role' is a part you play. As I said, a common error and a sad indictment of our education system. I remember being in an ultraleft meeting back in the glory days of the Miners' Strike, when a woman who was head of an English Department sent round a note about a Social, asking people to supply 'plates, forks and knifes'. This particular woman is now an Inspector for OFSTED. Who educates the educators?
Sue, "I believe that education is a positive social good and benefit": so do I - I am the product of a Scottish rural academy. But after a modern English primary schooling for my nipper, I despaired and decided that she gets only one shot at it, and pulled her out. A neighbouring couple did it too, and he's a Labour party adviser, but they also had had Scottish rural educations way back when, and such a thing can't be matched in England now without paying. That's how it is. Thank God for the building society.
Bob Piper is right about this - a lot of the stuff that the Keeping the Faith website claims as Blair's work is actually the work of a Labour government as a whole.
However, I think that it was fairly plain that the Tories wouldn't have been able to conclude the Good Friday Agreement in anything like the time that Labour did.
The idea that Labour simply started what the Tories finished would not find much favour among many of those involved in the process (certainly the ones that have talked to authors about the subject).
Shuggy,
I totally agree about school size; stuff initiatives and strategies, smaller schools are better. I spent many miserable years in a comp. with about 1,700 on roll and I didn't get to know the names of a quarter of the teachers. Now I work in a school where I know the names - and quirks - of 80% of the students. It's a no-brainer, but the obsession with the cost benefits of large schools and the futile belief that 'management' will find a solution is driving us further in that direction. Personally, I'd put a 1,000 pupil limit on schools, but that's a pipe dream.
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