As Mr Francis undoubtedly knows but did not explicitly mention, we are moving out of an unusual period of social mobility. Post-war the proportion of high-education jobs expanded enormously, so that there was room to take in both the children of the already educated and a huge cohort of newcomers. That has now stopped – jobs for graduates cannot keep expanding forever – so getting new groups in will mean getting some graduate children out to make room. Which makes for some interesting new challenges to policy.
Mobility rates are, by any standards, fairly high, with around 75% of adults belonging to a different social class to the one they grew up in.
I find that more than fairly high; almost incredible.
Jon Hawksley
2 years ago
An interesting and informative article that raises more questions than it answers. Too often the goal is seen to be income but inevitably that equips more people to be competitive whilst reducing the chances of each person. If the objective is fulfilment then the goal needs to be tailored to each individual, which the article does recognise. A sense of fulfilment comes with completed pattern recognition, when things fit together, and there are no loose ends to fret about. It is however transient and needs challenges to sustain it over a lifetime. Investment in education should therefore stimulate the interest in and the ability to solve problems. To give everyone goals and the tools to achieve them it must entice and offer tailored pattern recognition, be it artistic, linguistic, mathematical, dexterity….. There is no one size that fits all. It also needs to remove the hurdles that demotivate people and I fear that social media, focussed on illusory goals, is increasingly a cause of dissatisfaction rather than motivation.
It was not interesting and informative, it is pure post-modernism education speak.
“But what about merit itself? And the meritless? (More than a third of young people do not achieve decent passes in English and Maths GCSE.) Is merit too narrowly based around cognitive-analytical abilities as revealed by tests?”
That this sort of person manages education is frightening, as to him it is all about social engineering, not giving skills and qualifications.
Last edited 2 years ago by Galeti Tavas
Andrea X
2 years ago
Only very tangential to the article, but when has the word “student” gone out of fashion? Now everyone is an”learner”. Is “student” a loaded word now?
I’ve worked a long time in academia and loathe that term. It’s often wielded against teachers and professors undergoing continual professional development, with the idea that ‘learners’ are passive receptacles to be filled up with learning goals picked out by school and college administrators (who are ultimately guided by politicians).
Chris Wheatley
2 years ago
Not a lot new here but a good summary of where we are.
It seems to come down to ‘Equality’ versus ‘Equal Opportunity’. This was once a Left v. Right match, but today things are more complicated – because we have more views, of course.
Certainly, the road to success through higher education seems pretty useless for most young people and there are a limits to the number of useful apprenticeships, mainly because these rely on a mentoring approach and mentors don’t grow on trees. It is very difficult to teach a young person a trade, especially when that person has to look at a phone every two minutes.
50 years ago, everything for young people was automatic. Get a job, get a home and spouse, have children, spend the rest of your life bringing up the children, die.
Today every single one of those ideas is questionable – leading to a big chorus of, “What’s the point?” Originally the point was to keep the genes ahead of other genes. Now genes don’t seem to be important so the point becomes, “Party, party, party”. How many times do you hear, “You’re only on this Earth once….”
This article was exceptionally depressing to me – like reading the director of the great ‘Sausage Machine’ tell of how his process can get us 30% closer to the ultimate goal of making all equitable by making every person into a sausage more like the rest of the sausages. To him education is not that amazing opening up of the mind and imagination – discovering aesthetics, wonder, reality, history, art, literature, drama, and universal truths. It is stamping out units which are no better or worse than the other units.
This guy would make a good petty functionary in the ‘NICE’ (The National Institute of Coordinated Experiments) organization in CS Lewis’s great dystopia ‘That Hideous Strength’.
As Mr Francis undoubtedly knows but did not explicitly mention, we are moving out of an unusual period of social mobility. Post-war the proportion of high-education jobs expanded enormously, so that there was room to take in both the children of the already educated and a huge cohort of newcomers. That has now stopped – jobs for graduates cannot keep expanding forever – so getting new groups in will mean getting some graduate children out to make room. Which makes for some interesting new challenges to policy.
True. I was struck by this sentence;
I find that more than fairly high; almost incredible.
An interesting and informative article that raises more questions than it answers. Too often the goal is seen to be income but inevitably that equips more people to be competitive whilst reducing the chances of each person. If the objective is fulfilment then the goal needs to be tailored to each individual, which the article does recognise. A sense of fulfilment comes with completed pattern recognition, when things fit together, and there are no loose ends to fret about. It is however transient and needs challenges to sustain it over a lifetime. Investment in education should therefore stimulate the interest in and the ability to solve problems. To give everyone goals and the tools to achieve them it must entice and offer tailored pattern recognition, be it artistic, linguistic, mathematical, dexterity….. There is no one size that fits all. It also needs to remove the hurdles that demotivate people and I fear that social media, focussed on illusory goals, is increasingly a cause of dissatisfaction rather than motivation.
It was not interesting and informative, it is pure post-modernism education speak.
“But what about merit itself? And the meritless? (More than a third of young people do not achieve decent passes in English and Maths GCSE.) Is merit too narrowly based around cognitive-analytical abilities as revealed by tests?”
That this sort of person manages education is frightening, as to him it is all about social engineering, not giving skills and qualifications.
Only very tangential to the article, but when has the word “student” gone out of fashion? Now everyone is an”learner”. Is “student” a loaded word now?
I’ve worked a long time in academia and loathe that term. It’s often wielded against teachers and professors undergoing continual professional development, with the idea that ‘learners’ are passive receptacles to be filled up with learning goals picked out by school and college administrators (who are ultimately guided by politicians).
Not a lot new here but a good summary of where we are.
It seems to come down to ‘Equality’ versus ‘Equal Opportunity’. This was once a Left v. Right match, but today things are more complicated – because we have more views, of course.
Certainly, the road to success through higher education seems pretty useless for most young people and there are a limits to the number of useful apprenticeships, mainly because these rely on a mentoring approach and mentors don’t grow on trees. It is very difficult to teach a young person a trade, especially when that person has to look at a phone every two minutes.
50 years ago, everything for young people was automatic. Get a job, get a home and spouse, have children, spend the rest of your life bringing up the children, die.
Today every single one of those ideas is questionable – leading to a big chorus of, “What’s the point?” Originally the point was to keep the genes ahead of other genes. Now genes don’t seem to be important so the point becomes, “Party, party, party”. How many times do you hear, “You’re only on this Earth once….”
This article was exceptionally depressing to me – like reading the director of the great ‘Sausage Machine’ tell of how his process can get us 30% closer to the ultimate goal of making all equitable by making every person into a sausage more like the rest of the sausages. To him education is not that amazing opening up of the mind and imagination – discovering aesthetics, wonder, reality, history, art, literature, drama, and universal truths. It is stamping out units which are no better or worse than the other units.
This guy would make a good petty functionary in the ‘NICE’ (The National Institute of Coordinated Experiments) organization in CS Lewis’s great dystopia ‘That Hideous Strength’.