The Telegraph reports that Britain has plummeted down the graduate league table to 15th in what it describes, somewhat haughtily as the list of ‘educated nations’, and that this has damaged its future.
Horror of horrors, the UK is behind Poland, Iceland, Portugal and Slovakia. How absolutely terrible! Clearly no one from the Telegraph staff has visited any of these countries recently!
I read with disbelief the rubbish that the general secretary of the University and College Union, trotted out about other countries preparing to play a leading role in the new knowledge economy while we risk consigning a generation to the scrapheap of inactivity. What garbage.
The Director of the Russell Group of universities also had a self serving message. She complained that whilst the UK was cutting back on university places, other countries were pumping billions of dollars into their tertiary establishments.
Over the last 20 or so years we have been sending more and more students to universities to do ever more simplified degrees.
Despite denials all education has been dumbed down. Schools eager to be placed as far up league tables as possible have chosen commercially run exam boards which can produce the highest grades. SVQs are module taught and frequently fail to build upon previous work, so that material is learned over a short period and forgotten once
the test is over and the module secured. Lecturers, with a career interest in the success of their students, often double as examiners.
Universities, keen to take advantage of the funding system that pays for bums on seats, and aware of the lowering rigour of Highers and A levels, adapt their courses appropriately.
And what do so many of these graduates do at the end of the course? Sainsbury’s, Tesco, BT call centres and bars employ a fair number of them.
The universities say that we should be preparing for the end of the recession, and so we should, but not the way that we have been doing in the past. (If we must have degree educated staff in Tesco, could they please do a degree in retailing, including a module on customer service?)
We have no plumbers, no electricians, no bricklayers, and no joiners (well not that aren’t called Warszawski or Krakowski!) Although to be fair, both the Scottish and English governments are increasing apprenticeship funding, a
nd that is a most welcome move.
But we don’t need many more people with degrees in media studies or sports science. There are no jobs for them.
It occurs to me that one of the problems with our analysis of success is that we rely on naked figures; targets that are set and achieved, in a soviet fashion (and it happened under the Tories too!!)
From a commercial point of view, it doesn’t matter that we produce 50% of the population as graduates if there are no jobs to use their talents on.
It is of no import where we are in the league table as long as we produce and develop the kind of talents that the country needs and can use. Keeping up the the Polands and the Slovakias on numbers alone is futile.
When will we learn that league tables are the devil’s work?
Horror of horrors, the UK is behind Poland, Iceland, Portugal and Slovakia. How absolutely terrible! Clearly no one from the Telegraph staff has visited any of these countries recently!
I read with disbelief the rubbish that the general secretary of the University and College Union, trotted out about other countries preparing to play a leading role in the new knowledge economy while we risk consigning a generation to the scrapheap of inactivity. What garbage.
The Director of the Russell Group of universities also had a self serving message. She complained that whilst the UK was cutting back on university places, other countries were pumping billions of dollars into their tertiary establishments.
Over the last 20 or so years we have been sending more and more students to universities to do ever more simplified degrees.
Despite denials all education has been dumbed down. Schools eager to be placed as far up league tables as possible have chosen commercially run exam boards which can produce the highest grades. SVQs are module taught and frequently fail to build upon previous work, so that material is learned over a short period and forgotten once
the test is over and the module secured. Lecturers, with a career interest in the success of their students, often double as examiners.Universities, keen to take advantage of the funding system that pays for bums on seats, and aware of the lowering rigour of Highers and A levels, adapt their courses appropriately.
And what do so many of these graduates do at the end of the course? Sainsbury’s, Tesco, BT call centres and bars employ a fair number of them.
The universities say that we should be preparing for the end of the recession, and so we should, but not the way that we have been doing in the past. (If we must have degree educated staff in Tesco, could they please do a degree in retailing, including a module on customer service?)
We have no plumbers, no electricians, no bricklayers, and no joiners (well not that aren’t called Warszawski or Krakowski!) Although to be fair, both the Scottish and English governments are increasing apprenticeship funding, a
nd that is a most welcome move.But we don’t need many more people with degrees in media studies or sports science. There are no jobs for them.
It occurs to me that one of the problems with our analysis of success is that we rely on naked figures; targets that are set and achieved, in a soviet fashion (and it happened under the Tories too!!)
From a commercial point of view, it doesn’t matter that we produce 50% of the population as graduates if there are no jobs to use their talents on.
It is of no import where we are in the league table as long as we produce and develop the kind of talents that the country needs and can use. Keeping up the the Polands and the Slovakias on numbers alone is futile.
When will we learn that league tables are the devil’s work?
Why does Britain have to dumb everything down till it’s totally worthless? We seem to want to have the worst of everything!
ReplyDeleteScotland once had an education system to be proud of but systematic predations from London, and then latterly by the Labour quislings at Holyrood (slavishly following their leader at Westminster) have made a degree in this country totally useless.
They don’t have degree educated people working at Tesco it’s just that a degree is so easy to get that people who otherwise should work at Tesco have been and got one of the myriad toy-town degrees in Abba, Carpet Laying, Media Studies, Sports Science, Computer Gaming etc etc. I have a friend who is a retired lecturer from one of the old Universities (not one of the polies that up graded under Thatcher) and he tells me that current intakes can barely speak English never mind write it (oh and that’s the British students).
It’s fur coats and no knickers Munguin.
ReplyDeleteWe must seem to lead. This drop in the league tables will be a HUGE embarrassment to the governments. How we can be measured as one country is a bit of a mystery though. There are different education systems for all the constituent countries.
I know what your friend means about the ability to speak the language. I look at application forms from people who are graduates and wonder where they learned to speak the language. Paraguay maybe?
It's apparently the duty of the previous generations to disparage the newer :) The country seems awash with business leaders, educators and politicians, deriding the upcoming generations - yet they are the ones who had the reins while the education system allegedly crumbled.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they ought to take a look in the mirror before they start bumping their gums.
I know plenty older people who are clueless about all sorts of things (not just techy or media stuff), I wouldn't dream of disparaging the education of their entire generation(s) on the back of it.
The problem is that we are allowing politicians to use education as a tool. Everyone is agreed, I think, that not everyone needs (or wants) a degree level education, or even stay on at school - but government has needed to keep people from going straight to benefits/keep trying to socially integrate people. It suits them.
What about business? They ought to shut the f**k up about people's education. Business is hand in hand with govt co-opting the education system so that they have grist for their worn out mills. They have a huge impact on the nature and direction of modern education. I don't buy the 'business knows best' BS though. Give people (those who really want it) a good, broad, education, and new businesses (and new types of business) will be born - that's the only way we have a hope of competing in the world this century.
If educators are so appalled at the state of modern education, why is it I don't see or hear of any large scale campaign by these (intelligent? and vocationally passionate?) professionals to wrest back control of their house and put it in order. It's because they let it all happen in their domain on their watch, and if they can't take the blame someone else must.
Thankfully the necessary online resources are getting better and better, as is the organisation of the material. Hopefully it won't be too long before anyone can access top quality learning material online, and cut the ossifying gov/biz/ed institutions out of the loop.
FWIW, i agree with your apparent opinion of the Russell Group (they clearly just crapping it at the thought of a commensurate drop in applications from aspirational overseas students that they can bleed dry), and league tables. On the other hand, I don't notice any actual lack in tradespeople though.
It's not that kids are dumber, just that politicians have wrecked the education process in their attempts to "modernise" it with citizenship classes and diversity awareness programs, along with the ever increasing need to take sex education down to the infants. Problem is, education is one of the few areas that the EU allows our politicians free reign on, perhaps if we left our politicians would have too much to do running the country and leave education to the educators. Though seeing what they did to education, do we really want them running the country as well?
ReplyDeleteLOL, yes Dundee... it probably is, and always has been. I seem to remember a piece of Horace’s or Aristotle’s, I can’t remember which, in which he complained bitterly that the young of his day had no manners and gulped their food... plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose!!
ReplyDeleteI take on board your points. You are of course right. Everyone looks at the past as “la vie en rose”. There is little point in criticising what has gone before (although we might try to learn from their mistakes) but criticism of what is, and what might be, might just get something changed.
We do need to have, as I think you are suggesting, an education system that suits the person to the course offered, rather than it suiting the school or college! Of course that’s much harder work, and whilst this government, like the previous one (and the one before), talks about choice, there is little, unless you are rich!
I’m told you can’t get a plumber or an electrician in some parts of the country for love or money. There used to be quite a few, but they were all Polish (and very good), but the Polish economy is in a much better shape than the British one, so many of them have gone home.
When I needed a plumber recently they sent me a bloke in his 70s who was almost arresting by the time he climbed the stairs to my house. I’d to sit him down with a cup of tea before he started!! But I’m not much in the market for tradesmen, so my experience apart from that is vicarious.
I certainly didn’t mean to imply that the kids are dumber QM. That’s highly unlikely, although (political correctness thrown aside) the number of children born to middle class families must surely be dropping, as people concentrate on their careers and don’t really like all the mess in their beautiful homes. On the other hand there are vast numbers of kids running around some of the rougher areas of the town with no dads but a succession of uncles ... There may or may not be any connection to academic achievement in that.
ReplyDeleteSchools chose exam boards so that they can do well in the league tables. Exam boards want to be chosen because it generates profit. They market the exam papers to the schools on the basis that they are sound and academically rigorous, but that they achieve a high level of passes... ergo pas on the back for the head and more money for the school!
Highers (Higher Leaving Certificate....that’s our A Levels...although they are broader and not so deep as your A levels... more like a Baccalaureate) used to be a searching intellectual test of suitability for academe. Now there are multiple choice questions. I once did a Higher paper, whilst sheltering from a storm of rain in Waterston’s. Easy peasy!
I’m sure they used to be harder than that.
Citizenship classes may be necessary. My mother certainly had what was called Civics in her day. I fear that children aren’t much taught about social responsibilities at home. Likewise, sex education is no existent for boys who have no father. This month’s boyfriend doesn’t want that task!!
There are of course things I would drop. It seems to me that morning assembly achieved very little. It certainly didn’t bind us together as a community, which was one of its functions, nor, in my opinion should it be necessary to have religious services in school. It was a waste of half an hour every day.
If you are in Secondary school for 5 or 6 years, that’s an awful lot of half hours that could have been spent learning history or geography or French or Chinese.
I was in the company of some Norwegian and German teenagers the other night. Both were absolutely fluent in English; far more so than the Scots or English who were there. The Norwegians were also fluent in German.
A Swiss friend of mine speaks German, French, Greek, English and Italian fluently and can get by in Hebrew and Rhaeto-Romanic. He’s not considered to be a linguist and works as a banker.
Perhaps we should let the Europeans control our education. They seem to be able to teach their kids English. Why can’t we?
There is no need for most of these qualifications anyway. I mean, NVQs or whatever for working in a shop or warehouse etc what a joke!
ReplyDeleteWorking in the job is the best way to learn the job and get experience - the way things used to be, even with things like Accountancy.
I used to work in Dodge City/B & Q years ago and they decided to employ graduates for Department Manager and above jobs instead of promoting from within. They quickly dropped that idea when they got people who only knew the theory they were taught instead of having common sense or the experience of the job.
When you are working in a job you learn a lot more because you are doing it all the time and learn the job a lot quicker. Most of this qualifications at College and University is a lot of rubbish.
Huge amount to be said for experience over qualifications Billy.
ReplyDelete"When will we learn that league tables are the devil’s work?"
ReplyDeleteThat says it all as education now is a money making business so that those at the top can increase their wages and bonus's.
enjoy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq0lI-rSFJ8&feature=related
Ahhhh .... lovely and very clever song song CH
ReplyDeleteI may not have a broad historical perspective on this. And I’m a long way from being the brightest apple on the tree of knowledge. But there surely has been a general dumbing down of our society and culture. You see it in people around you who can neither write nor speak their own language properly. I mean the people who don’t even know the difference between YOU’RE and YOUR, ITS and IT’S, TOO and TO and TWO. The really easy stuff! The more "complicated" things like DISCRETE vs DISCREET would be another matter altogether. And then we have history. An American university professor surveyed his incoming freshman class and discovered that 46% of them could not name the century...yes, the CENTURY...in which the American Civil War was fought. (Which killed two of every 100 Americans, by the way. So it's kind of important.) And any proficiency in arithmetic disappeared when we got hand calculators. It goes on and on.
ReplyDeleteIt’s hard to know where the problem is. When we decided that any and all success in life required a university degree, we made it necessary for the universities to admit everyone, and give them a degree, whether they actually learned much of anything or not. A relative of mine received a degree in cultural anthropology from the California university system. She went on to a simple clerical job at the local phone company, which requires that all of their office employees have a university degree of some sort. Cultural anthropology will do quite nicely thank you. And I bet that she doesn’t know all that much about cultural anthropology for that matter.
All levels of education from kindergarten through university in the US are state controlled matters. And some states do much better than others. Efforts to impose minimum federal standards on the states are controversial. (The US Department of Education is a favorite Washington whipping boy of the conservative Republicans.) Even the various state requirements are regulated by standardized tests, and the teachers plan their curriculums around the test questions. Another aspect of the dumbing down process! I hear a lot of blather about it would all be better if students were not given the long traditional summer break, an anachronism from the time that the kids helped with the field work on the family farm. I don’t think that would help much at all. They learn next to nothing in the nine to ten months they go to school now. So how much more is an additional 20 to 30 percent of next to nothing?
I may not have a broad historical perspective on this. And I’m a long way from being the brightest apple on the tree of knowledge. But there surely has been a general dumbing down of our society and culture. You see it in people around you who can neither write nor speak their own language properly. The first grade stuff. The people who don’t know the difference between YOU’RE and YOUR, ITS and IT’S, TOO and TO and TWO. The more "complicated" things like DISCRETE vs DISCREET are another matter altogether. And then we have history. An American university professor surveyed his incoming freshman class and discovered that almost half of them could not name the century...yes, the CENTURY...in which the American Civil War was fought. (Which killed two of every 100 Americans, by the way. So it's sort of important.) And arithmetic more or less disappeared when we got hand calculators. It goes on and on.
ReplyDeleteIt’s hard to know where the problem is. When we decided that any and all success in life required a university degree, we made it necessary for the universities to admit everyone, and give them a degree, whether they actually learned much of anything or not. A relative of mine received a degree in cultural anthropology from the California university system. She went on to a simple clerical job at the local phone company, which requires that all their office employees hold a university degree of some sort. Cultural anthropology will do quite nicely thank you! And I bet that she doesn’t know all that much about cultural anthropology for that matter.
All levels of education from kindergarten through university in the US are state matters. And some states do better than others. Efforts to impose minimum federal standards on the states are controversial. (The US Department of Education, a cabinet level department, is a favorite whipping boy of the conservative Republicans.) Even the various state requirements are regulated by standardized tests, and the teachers plan their curriculums around the test questions. Another aspect of the dumbing down process! I hear a lot of blather about it would all be better if the schools didn’t take the long traditional summer break, an anachronism from the time when the kids helped with the field work on the family farm. But I don’t think that would help much at all. It seems that they learn next to nothing in the nine to ten months they're in school now. So how much more is an additional 20 to 30 percent of next to nothing?
I may not have a broad historical perspective on this. And I’m a long way from being the brightest apple on the tree of knowledge. But there surely has been a general dumbing down of our society and culture. You see it in people around you who can neither write nor speak their own language properly. The first grade stuff. I mean the people who don’t know the difference between YOU’RE and YOUR, ITS and IT’S, TOO and TO and TWO. The more complicated things like DISCRETE vs DISCREET are another matter altogether. And then we have history. An American university professor surveyed his incoming freshman class and discovered that almost half of them could not name the century...yes, the CENTURY...in which the American Civil War was fought. (Which killed two of every 100 Americans, by the way. So it's sort of important.) And arithmetic more or less disappeared when we got hand calculators. It goes on and on.
ReplyDeleteIt’s hard to know where the problem is. When we decided that any and all success in life required a university degree, we made it necessary for the universities to admit everyone, and give them a degree, whether they actually learned much of anything or not. A relative of mine received a degree in cultural anthropology from the California university system. She went on to a simple clerical job at the local phone company, which requires that all their office employees hold a university degree of some sort. Cultural anthropology will do quite nicely thank you! And I bet that she doesn’t know all that much about cultural anthropology for that matter.
All levels of education from kindergarten through university in the US are state matters. And some states do better than others. Efforts to impose minimum federal standards on the states are controversial. (The US Department of Education, a cabinet level department, is a favorite whipping boy of the conservative Republicans.) Even the various state requirements are regulated by standardized tests, and the teachers plan their curriculums around the test questions. Another aspect of the dumbing down process! I hear a lot of blather about it would all be better if the schools didn’t take the long traditional summer break, an anachronism from the time when the kids helped with the field work on the family farm. I don’t think that would help much at all. It seems that they learn next to nothing in the nine to ten months they go to school now. So how much more is an additional 20 to 30 percent of next to nothing?
I may not have a broad historical perspective on this. And I’m a long way from being the brightest apple on the tree of knowledge. But there surely has been a general dumbing down of our society and culture. You see it in people around you who can neither write nor speak their own language properly. The first grade stuff. I mean the people who don’t know the difference between YOU’RE and YOUR, ITS and IT’S, TOO and TO and TWO. The more complicated things like DISCRETE vs DISCREET are another matter altogether. And then we have history. An American university professor surveyed his incoming freshman class and discovered that almost half of them could not name the century...yes, the CENTURY...in which the American Civil War was fought. (Which killed two of every 100 Americans, by the way. So it's sort of important.) And arithmetic more or less disappeared when we got hand calculators. It goes on and on.
ReplyDeleteIt’s hard to know where the problem is. When we decided that any and all success in life required a university degree, we made it necessary for the universities to admit everyone, and give them a degree, whether they actually learned much of anything or not. A relative of mine received a degree in cultural anthropology from the California university system. She went on to a simple clerical job at the local phone company, which requires that all their office employees hold a university degree of some sort. Cultural anthropology will do quite nicely thank you! And I bet that she doesn’t know all that much about cultural anthropology for that matter.
All levels of education from kindergarten through university in the US are state matters. And some states do better than others. Efforts to impose minimum federal standards on the states are controversial. (The US Department of Education, a cabinet level department, is a favorite whipping boy of the conservative Republicans.) Even the various state requirements are regulated by standardized tests, and the teachers plan their curriculums around the test questions. Another aspect of the dumbing down process! I hear a lot of blather about it would all be better if the schools didn’t take the long traditional summer break, an anachronism from the time when the kids helped with the field work on the family farm. I don’t think that would help much at all. It seems that they learn next to nothing in the nine to ten months they go to school now. So how much more is an additional 20 to 30 percent of next to nothing?
I may not have a broad historical perspective on this. And I’m a long way from being the brightest apple on the tree of knowledge. But there surely has been a general dumbing down of our society and culture. You see it in people around you who can neither write nor speak their own language properly. The first grade stuff. I mean the people who don’t know the difference between YOU’RE and YOUR, ITS and IT’S, TOO and TO and TWO. The more complicated things like DISCRETE vs DISCREET are another matter altogether. And then we have history. An American university professor surveyed his incoming freshman class and discovered that almost half of them could not name the century...yes, the CENTURY...in which the American Civil War was fought. (Which killed two of every 100 Americans, by the way. So it's sort of important.) And arithmetic more or less disappeared when we got hand calculators. It goes on and on.
ReplyDeleteIt’s hard to know where the problem is. When we decided that any and all success in life required a university degree, we made it necessary for the universities to admit everyone, and give them a degree, whether they actually learned much of anything or not. A relative of mine received a degree in cultural anthropology from the California university system. She went on to a simple clerical job at the local phone company, which requires that all their office employees hold a university degree of some sort. Cultural anthropology will do quite nicely thank you! And I bet that she doesn’t know all that much about cultural anthropology for that matter.
All levels of education from kindergarten through university in the US are state matters. And some states do better than others. Efforts to impose minimum federal standards on the states are controversial. (The US Department of Education, a cabinet level department, is a favorite whipping boy of the conservative Republicans.) Even the various state requirements are regulated by standardized tests, and the teachers plan their curriculums around the test questions. Another aspect of the dumbing down process! I hear a lot of blather about it would all be better if the schools didn’t take the long traditional summer break, an anachronism from the time when the kids helped with the field work on the family farm. I don’t think that would help much at all. It seems that they learn next to nothing in the nine to ten months they go to school now. So how much more is an additional 20 to 30 percent of next to nothing?
I may not have a broad historical perspective on this. And I’m a long way from being the brightest apple on the tree of knowledge. But there surely has been a general dumbing down of our society and culture. You see it in people around you who can neither write nor speak their own language properly. The first grade stuff. I mean the people who don’t know the difference between YOU’RE and YOUR, ITS and IT’S, TOO and TO and TWO. The more complicated things like DISCRETE vs DISCREET are another matter altogether. And then we have history. An American university professor surveyed his incoming freshman class and discovered that almost half of them could not name the century...yes, the CENTURY...in which the American Civil War was fought. (Which killed two of every 100 Americans, by the way. So it's sort of important.) And arithmetic more or less disappeared when we got hand calculators. It goes on and on.
ReplyDeleteIt’s hard to know where the problem is. When we decided that any and all success in life required a university degree, we made it necessary for the universities to admit everyone, and give them a degree, whether they actually learned much of anything or not. A relative of mine received a degree in cultural anthropology from the California university system. She went on to a simple clerical job at the local phone company, which requires that all their office employees hold a university degree of some sort. Cultural anthropology will do quite nicely thank you! And I bet that she doesn’t know all that much about cultural anthropology for that matter.
All levels of education from kindergarten through university in the US are state matters. And some states do better than others. Efforts to impose minimum federal standards on the states are controversial. (The US Department of Education, a cabinet level department, is a favorite whipping boy of the conservative Republicans.) Even the various state requirements are regulated by standardized tests, and the teachers plan their curriculums around the test questions. Another aspect of the dumbing down process! I hear a lot of blather about how it would all be better if the schools didn’t take the long traditional summer break, an anachronism from the time when the kids helped with the field work on the family farm. I don’t think that would help much at all. It seems that they learn next to nothing in the nine to ten months they go to school now. So how much more is an additional 20 to 30 percent of next to nothing?
I may not have a broad historical perspective on this. And I’m a long way from being the brightest apple on the tree of knowledge. But there surely has been a general dumbing down of our society and culture. You see it in people around you who can neither write nor speak their own language properly. The first grade stuff. I mean the people who don’t know the difference between YOU’RE and YOUR, ITS and IT’S, TOO and TO and TWO. The more complicated things like DISCRETE vs DISCREET are another matter altogether. And then we have history. An American university professor surveyed his incoming freshman class and discovered that almost half of them could not name the century...yes, the CENTURY...in which the American Civil War was fought. (Which killed two of every 100 Americans, by the way. So it's sort of important.) And arithmetic more or less disappeared when we got hand calculators. It goes on and on.
ReplyDeleteIt’s hard to know where the problem is. When we decided that any and all success in life required a university degree, we made it necessary for the universities to admit everyone, and give them a degree, whether they actually learned much of anything or not. A relative of mine received a degree in cultural anthropology from the California university system. She went on to a simple clerical job at the local phone company, which requires that all their office employees hold a university degree of some sort. Cultural anthropology will do quite nicely thank you! And I bet that she doesn’t know all that much about cultural anthropology for that matter.
All levels of education from kindergarten through university in the US are state matters. And some states do better than others. Efforts to impose minimum federal standards on the states are controversial. (The US Department of Education, a cabinet level department, is a favorite whipping boy of the conservative Republicans.) Even the various state requirements are regulated by standardized tests, and the teachers plan their curriculums around the test questions. Another aspect of the dumbing down process! I hear a lot of blather about how it would all be better if the schools didn’t take the long traditional summer break, an anachronism from the time when the kids helped with the field work on the family farm. I don’t think that would help much at all. It seems that they learn next to nothing in the nine to ten months they go to school now. So how much more is an additional 20 to 30 percent of next to nothing?
I may not have a broad historical perspective on this. And I’m a long way from being the brightest apple on the tree of knowledge. But there surely has been a general dumbing down of our society and culture. You see it in people around you who can neither write nor speak their own language properly, even the first grade stuff. I mean the people who don’t know the difference between YOU’RE and YOUR, ITS and IT’S, TOO and TO and TWO. The more complicated things like DISCRETE vs DISCREET are another matter altogether. And then we have history. An American university professor surveyed his incoming freshman class and discovered that almost half of them could not name the century...yes, the CENTURY...in which the American Civil War was fought. (Which killed two of every 100 Americans, by the way. So it's sort of important.) And arithmetic more or less disappeared when we got hand calculators. It goes on and on.
ReplyDeleteIt’s hard to know where the problem is. When we decided that any and all success in life required a university degree, we made it necessary for the universities to admit everyone, and give them a degree, whether they actually learned much of anything or not. A relative of mine received a degree in cultural anthropology from the California university system. She went on to a simple clerical job at the local phone company, which requires that all their office employees hold a university degree of some sort. Cultural anthropology will do quite nicely thank you! And I bet that she doesn’t know all that much about cultural anthropology for that matter.
All levels of education from kindergarten through university graduate study in the US are controlled by the individual states. And some states do better than others. Efforts to impose minimum federal standards on the states have been controversial. (The US Department of Education, a cabinet level department, is a favorite whipping boy of the conservative Republicans.) Even the various state requirements are regulated by standardized tests, and the teachers plan their curriculums around the test questions. This is another aspect of the dumbing down process! I hear a lot of blather about how it would be better if the schools didn’t take the long traditional summer break, an anachronism from the time when kids helped with the field work on the family farm. I don’t think that would help much at all. It seems that they learn surprisingly little in the nine to ten months they go to school now. So how much more an additional 20 to 30 percent of classroom time would actually add is questionable.
I may not have a broad historical perspective on this. And I’m a long way from being the brightest apple on the tree of knowledge. But there surely has been a general dumbing down of our society and culture. You see it in people around you who can neither write nor speak their own language properly, even the first grade stuff. I mean the people who don’t know the difference between YOU’RE and YOUR, ITS and IT’S, TOO and TO and TWO. The more complicated things like DISCRETE vs DISCREET are another matter altogether. And then we have history. An American university professor surveyed his incoming freshman class and discovered that almost half of them could not name the century...yes, the CENTURY...in which the American Civil War was fought. (Which killed two of every 100 Americans, by the way. So it's sort of important.) And arithmetic more or less disappeared when we got hand calculators. It goes on and on.
ReplyDeleteIt’s hard to know where the problem is. When we decided that any and all success in life required a university degree, we made it necessary for the universities to admit everyone, and give them a degree, whether they actually learned much of anything or not. A relative of mine received a degree in cultural anthropology from the California university system. She went on to a simple clerical job at the local phone company, which requires that all their office employees hold a university degree of some sort. Cultural anthropology will do quite nicely thank you! And I bet that she doesn’t know all that much about cultural anthropology for that matter.
All levels of education from kindergarten through university graduate study in the US are controlled by the individual states. And some states do better than others. Efforts to impose minimum federal standards on the states have been controversial. (The US Department of Education, a cabinet level department, is a favorite whipping boy of the conservative Republicans.) Even the various state requirements are regulated by standardized tests, and the teachers plan their curriculums around the test questions. This is another aspect of the dumbing down process! I hear a lot of blather about how it would be better if the schools didn’t take the long traditional summer break, an anachronism from the time when kids helped with the field work on the family farm. I don’t think that would help much at all. It seems that they learn surprisingly little in the nine to ten months they go to school now. So how much more an additional 20 to 30 percent of classroom time would actually add is questionable.
I may not have a broad historical perspective on this. And I’m a long way from being the brightest apple on the tree of knowledge. But there surely has been a general dumbing down of our society and culture. You see it in people around you who can neither write nor speak their own language properly, even the first grade stuff. I mean the people who don’t know the difference between YOU’RE and YOUR, ITS and IT’S, TOO and TO and TWO. The more complicated things like DISCRETE vs DISCREET are another matter altogether. And then we have history. An American university professor surveyed his incoming freshman class and discovered that almost half of them could not name the century...yes, the CENTURY...in which the American Civil War was fought. (Which killed two of every 100 Americans, by the way. So it's sort of important.) And arithmetic more or less disappeared when we got hand calculators. It goes on and on.
ReplyDeleteIt’s hard to know where the problem is. When we decided that any and all success in life required a university degree, we made it necessary for the universities to admit everyone, and give them a degree, whether they actually learned much of anything or not. A relative of mine received a degree in cultural anthropology from the California university system. She went on to a simple clerical job at the local phone company, which requires that all their office employees hold a university degree of some sort. Cultural anthropology will do quite nicely thank you! And I bet that she doesn’t know all that much about cultural anthropology for that matter.
All levels of education from kindergarten through university graduate study in the US are controlled by the individual states. And some states do better than others. Efforts to impose minimum federal standards on the states have been controversial. (The US Department of Education, a cabinet level department, is a favorite whipping boy of the conservative Republicans.) Even the various state requirements are regulated by standardized tests, and the teachers plan their curriculums around the test questions. This is another aspect of the dumbing down process! I hear a lot of blather about how it would be better if the schools didn’t take the long traditional summer break, an anachronism from the time when kids helped with the field work on the family farm. I don’t think that would help much at all. It seems that they learn surprisingly little in the nine to ten months they go to school now. So how much more an additional 20 to 30 percent of classroom time would actually add is questionable.
I may not have a broad historical perspective on this. And I’m a long way from being the brightest apple on the tree of knowledge. But there surely has been a general dumbing down of our society and culture. You see it in people around you who can neither write nor speak their own language properly, even the first grade stuff. I mean the people who don’t know the difference between YOU’RE and YOUR, ITS and IT’S, TOO and TO and TWO. The more complicated things like DISCRETE vs DISCREET are another matter altogether. And then we have history. An American university professor surveyed his incoming freshman class and discovered that almost half of them could not name the century...yes, the CENTURY...in which the American Civil War was fought. (Which killed two of every 100 Americans, by the way. So it's sort of important.) And arithmetic more or less disappeared when we got hand calculators. It goes on and on.
ReplyDeleteIt’s hard to know where the problem is. When we decided that any and all success in life required a university degree, we made it necessary for the universities to admit everyone, and give them a degree, whether they actually learned much of anything or not. A relative of mine received a degree in cultural anthropology from the California university system. She went on to a simple clerical job at the local phone company, which requires that all their office employees hold a university degree of some sort. Cultural anthropology will do quite nicely thank you! And I bet that she doesn’t know all that much about cultural anthropology for that matter.
All levels of education from kindergarten through university graduate study in the US are controlled by the individual states. And some states do better than others. Efforts to impose minimum federal standards on the states have been controversial. (The US Department of Education, a cabinet level department, is a favorite whipping boy of the conservative Republicans.) Even the various state requirements are regulated by standardized tests, and the teachers plan their curriculums around the test questions. This is another aspect of the dumbing down process! I hear a lot of blather about how it would be better if the schools didn’t take the long traditional summer break, an anachronism from the time when kids helped with the field work on the family farm. I don’t think that would help much at all. It seems that they learn surprisingly little in the nine to ten months they go to school now. So how much more an additional 20 to 30 percent of classroom time would actually add is questionable.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with education in the UK is by its very nature. By being in the public services big tent, as opposed to being independent, it has succumbed to all of the 'interests' that infect public service provision.
ReplyDeleteThe kind of interests that are represented by militant education unions, who oppose all kinds of reform - which might upset their member’s apple cart. We have an education system designed in Scotland, and in England that serves the interests of the teachers and their unions, not the kids.
Sad, by the answer is here - academy schemes, make more schools independent of local government interference. If the problem is public sector unions preventing reforms which will reverse educational decline - then --- the answer to me seems obvious?
... League tables? A distraction, the real problem is the teaching unions and successive government failing to face them down.
p.s thats better spelling now! I thought I'd make an unusual effort given it's teaching I'm on a rant about ;)
Dean:
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure if you mean by “Academy” the Tony Blair idea that Gove is now trying to bring in in England. If so I really don’t know enough about it to comment (it not affecting our schools at all, I never bothered much with reading about it) or maybe you are talking about selective education with which I do agree.
When it was abandoned in both England and Scotland, it was a divisive thing. At 12 you “passed or failed” the Qualifying exam. If you failed you went to a school that taught metalwork and woodwork and technical drawing (along with a minimum of English, maths and science, religious education and PE), you would leave school at 15 or 16 with a lower level qualification. The brightest would go off for apprenticeships, the rest to factory and labouring work.
If you passed you were destined for a school that taught Latin, French, Physics, Chemistry, etc. There was literature, music, rugby ... and you were destined for university (at the top end) or commerce for the less intellectual.
Of course in these days most girls were headed for domesticity, regardless of their intellect or abilities.
It was all class and snobbery.
On the other hand on the near continent, people went to schools that best suited their talents judged over a long time, not just one exam. And most importantly there was no shame in going to a school that taught technical subjects.
You didn’t ‘fail’ if you went to learn joinery. And you didn’t ‘pass’ if you went to learn law, or classics.
It seems that a return to a system like that would be good. A return to what we had in teh UK would be altogether bad. It’s a question of whether we can remove the “pass/fail” thing. I don’t consider it a failure to be able to build a wardrobe, or put up shelves, no more than I think it is a huge success to be able to recite Horace. LOL
As long as the 'independents' are independent, I'm fine with them - take away any state subsidy (if such is given), remove charitable status from them and let them go. Then they will be free of public sector 'infection' (and floating happy and free without any surrounding context to infect them?).
ReplyDeleteAs far a school for the majority of people goes, I'm with you Tris - more (and reasonably early) streaming into appropriate areas based on a sound and fair assessment(s) of the students current ability. As long as there are options for educatation throughout life it's no problem for people to pick up things they wish they had done previously.
As far as just getting a job goes - hopefully the kids at school are currently being suitably informed that getting on the job ladder early and foregoing uni is a very good option - particularly in the current degree glut. Now if only we had a real minimum wage that also didn't age discriminate, instead of subsidising the uk businesses sponging off the state. :)
Dean:
ReplyDeleteI do very much agree with schools being able to teach a curriculum that they think is suitable to the students they have. Indeed education is of necessity an individual thing. Schools can only move people in the right direction. Each school should have flexibility; and each teacher too.
The idea of a National Curriculum, which was introduced by Mrs Thatcher across the UK (except Scotland), was wrong in my opinion, restricting freedom of local schools, as it did, and making an even bigger division between the public and private education sector, which was not required to adhere to it. However, it did allow for a far more flexible population. People could far more easily ‘get on their bikes’ and move to another part of the country if they knew that their children’s education would only suffer slightly by the move. Previously a child could be completely lost in a new school because of different subjects, taught at different levels.
So it was something that had merit. I went to school in England, so perhaps you could fill me in on what happened in Scotland, because I’m assuming there was something similar here?
PS... lovely to see you are making an effort with your spelling.... And much appreciated too :)
Tris,
ReplyDelete"It’s a question of whether we can remove the “pass/fail” thing. I don’t consider it a failure to be able to build a wardrobe, or put up shelves, no more than I think it is a huge success to be able to recite Horace. LOL"
Absolutely, I share your sentiments on selection and targeting education to ability.
And concerning the national carriculum mistake [again, agreed] - surely the academy schemes being roled out by Michael Gove [one of my fav. Scots in this government] will go somewhere toward that goal?
somepapfaedundee,
ReplyDelete"As far a school for the majority of people goes, I'm with you Tris - more (and reasonably early) streaming into appropriate areas based on a sound and fair assessment(s) of the students current ability"
Yep, agree.
However, providing charitable status to independent schools isn't state subsidy, it is a reasonable recognition for the valuable role they play in civic, local and national lives. I would never agree to removing their charitable status - that is merely an underhand socialist way of further establishing the government monopoly over education. Something I shall never agree to.
Interesting point there Dundee.
ReplyDeletePeople change as they go through life. Some who didn’t make the most of their educational opportunities when they were 14 might well have changed their minds by the time they were 30. Additionally we no longer live in a world of leaving school, getting a job and then retiring at 65 with a clock and a pension.
People may want to, but may also be forced to learn new skills in an ever changing world and this is something that I don’t think our education system really addresses.
If you trained in a skill that is no longer useful, how easy is it to completely change tack at 40 or 50 and learn completely different skills/
Does the state really assist? Should it? Are there good educational opportunities at affordable prices, or should it cost anything? Does anyone at Jobcentre Plus know anything about how to give suitable advice on how to progress this?
Dean:
ReplyDeleteCharitable status given to businesses which make profits can only be justified if the taxpayer can see and quantify the contribution made to society by these businesses.
And that contribution must not be that they take kids whose parents can afford the fees and turn them out with a better chance in life than they might otherwise have had, had their parents been poor.
Asda do a great deal for the communities in which they are situated. Should they get tax relief too?
I know that you get a better education at private school. That is good, but the reason that it is better is largely because the money that is put into it is greater, and teachers don't have the distraction of kids who don't want to learn and parents who don't care if they do or not. If you are paying for the education, then you damned well want results. You don’t throw away thousands for no return.
A friend of mine taught maths for a while at an estate school and said that she spent most of her day trying to get the class to shut up and not steal each others' rulers (rules).
If cabinet members send their kids for private education then we will never get better state education. Their hearts aren't in it.
Does Michael Gove (one of my least favourite people in the Cabinet) have children? He looks like he's only one himself really! LOL!!!!
Dean, sorry I wasn't more clear with my post, I have state subsidy and charitable status as two separate items in a comma separated list. Just to be clear - I mean them as separate things and do not conflate charitable status with (direct) state subsidy: a state subsidy I don't even know to exist (as I indicated in parenthesis).
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't expect you to wish for the removal of charitable status from independent schools ;)
You want the government to get out of education, but you want the government to support your independent schools by offering the various benefits of charitable status to the independent schools themselves and the individuals and bodies who assist in their funding. An underhand, elitist way of co-opting the state so that they can get a help paying for things that benefit their own :)
I'm glad we seem to agree on the real substance though, that education needs to fit people, not the other way around.
...tris:
It's a problem, if the state doesn't assist in later-in-life educational opportunities, what mechanism is there? Much will depend on the nature of the new education required; common (particularly Uni level) subjects have a lot of well organised content on the internet via various opencourseware efforts, so for the self-motivated who don't require a qualification at the end there is some hope (for those subjects available on the internet). For qualifications though, it all costs.
I think it's a question that needs addressed quickly though, the 'job for life' thing is ancient history. Re-skilling isn't just something that the state 'helps' you do when your industry dies any longer, I think it is part of modern working life for many people already, and something that people from all strands of society are now well advised to be ready to do.
Well said tris!
ReplyDeleteIndependent schools are the educational equivalent of gated communities.
Out of curiosity, to what degree do you (anyone here) think schools can realistically deviate from a national curriculum?
Tris,
ReplyDelete"I know that you get a better education at private school. That is good, but the reason that it is better is largely because the money that is put into it is greater, and teachers don't have the distraction of kids who don't want to learn and parents who don't care if they do or not"
I think you can make too much hay about the educational failures of your average comprehensive vis-a-vis their independent counterpart being all about the money.
I know that money and investment is a huge part of it, but not, to my mind, the main one. I rather think the real advantage in independent schools [I dislike calling them 'private'] rests in their autonomy.
What do I mean by that?
Independent schools have more freedom over teaching and staffing, over resource targeting. Their advantage is their freedom from local councils; which lack imagination, the capacity for innovation and seek to run everything according to a generalised plan, based on rigid averages. All must conform or be punished. The net result is parents loose choice and say, head teachers become totally dejected, demoralised and powerless.
I think you miss the real point about independent schools strengths. It isn't the money, though that is obviously important. It is their independence from local councils, parents and teachers become central.
somepapfaedundee,
ReplyDelete"I'm glad we seem to agree on the real substance though, that education needs to fit people, not the other way around."
Does that mean Mr Blair will call us 'progressives' as well? LOL
But yes, I count myself as being lucky I rcieved my education in schools independent of local government incompetence. I always find they tend to prioritise themselves, and their teaching unions ahead of parents, pupils and head teachers.
Dean, I shudder at the thought of Bliar calling me anything!
ReplyDeleteI think you hugely underplay the importance of money to independents.
As you say -
* they have more freedom over staffing - a large part of that is down to being able to recruit the best from the labour pool through higher salaries, not to mention staff being more likely to want to work at better resourced schools. Money.
* better resource targeting - and the more resources you have doesn't make that process significantly easier? Of course it does. it also makes it easier for schools to recover from instances where they make mistakes in their targeting of resource. Money.
The other effect of money for independent schools is, as mentioned previously in comments here, that it allows the independent schools to be composed of self selecting groups with far fewer disruptive pupils and unhelpful parents. Perhaps we should let them have charitable status (and perhaps some subsidy too) to better fund the bursary program, but put the ratio of bursary to paying places to 1:1 and distribute the allocation of bursary places by random (or some other way of mirroring the state's requirements to educate the full spectrum of young people), and see how things go ;)
I'm far from being an expert in education though, and so would appreciate it if you fleshed out the restrictive behaviours of local councils and unions, I've no doubt there are some but I don't know what they are, cheers.
Here in the states, at a time when more and more employers are requiring a college degree, even for relatively menial jobs, the universities have been quite willing to oblige, with relaxed entrance requirements, dumbed down curriculums, and grade inflation. In the US, education at all levels is a responsibility of the individual states. With state budgets now under severe strain, the allocations to the state universities are often being drastically cut, with the slack taken up by individual tuition increases. So even today’s much devalued university degrees are becoming more and more expensive. With most of the state universities needing money, it’s to their advantage to attract as many students as possible. Even if the education they offer bears little resemblance to any real need of the student in the labor market.
ReplyDeletesomepapfaedundee,
ReplyDeleteRestrictive behaviour can range from anything to anyone.
A good example, I'll take one from bonnie Glasgow [the council there - AKA 'the Kremlin'- is sickening].
My school was a bursary/grant maintained secondary, that is financially independent of the said council. It, last year scored in the much-maligned league tables second best free school in Scotland. And it is free entry, no charging. [Though it's catchment area can act as a def-facto form of selection, granted].
One of its strengths is the way it can tailor teaching around what pupils & parents want. Rather than have the local council [who are far from education experts] telling my old rector if he could or couldn't establish double periods for French or German, and drop double period for some other class - he could act.
Basically, my point is less micromanagement by fools, politicans and nepotistic Labour councils like Glasgow City Council.
Next up, budgets can be applied more creatively. At the moment local councils direct state heads how they can spend their money; by being independent [not necessarily one which charges for entry] is that they can target money on local priorities. My point here, local councils tend NOT to respond quickly, or indeed at all occasionally, to local situations in different schools - all of which have different catchment areas, different democraphics to statisfy.
Then of course, you have local government merging and closing state schools at will. Altering catchment areas, and interfering in school policies in all sorts of ways, all of which they act without much in the way of effective public scrutiny because NO ONE votes in local government elections except people like me, who are deeply party active.
Hope that outlines some of what I mean, tried to base it on my own experiences! ;)
Dundee:
ReplyDeleteI certainly agree that it is necessary to start providing some sort of "education for life" on the state (hard though the thought may be at this point.
Employers appear to need qualifications and if people are to be flexible in their work choices, then they have to be able to obtain these. Ordinary people can’t afford to pay for night classes. It’s all they can do to make ends meet. If they wait till they are unemployed to retrain, then clearly there is no money at all and what Jobcentre offers is plain rubbish. Most of the training companies contracted by JC+ are cheap as chips (that’s why they get the contract) and the quality of what they do is often quite simply appalling.
Life has changed and education must change with it. But ask yourself employers...do you always need qualifications? Doesn’t experience count?
As for the question of whether how much independence the schools have from the curriculum, I simply have no idea. Not much I suspect.
How much could they have...well, of course if national Examinations are to have much in the way of credence (not that they really do), the curriculum can't be hugely different, but clearly independent schools do have leeway, as still teach to GCSE and Higher standard.
Dean:
ReplyDeleteI appreciate that they are other things besides money in the equation. We start off with children who come from homes where education is considered a priority. (Otherwise they wouldn’t be wasting their money on good education.)
In many cases they are not hugely rich, which indicates that sacrifices are made.
I’m not sure though what most local councils have to do with education since the reforms which gave headmasters control of budgets... but I may be mixing England and Scotland here.
I'm inclined to think that neither teachers nor parents should be central. Kids and their needs should be central. I agree that this is maybe the case ion independent schools, more than state schools.
I suspect that that's because they tend to get teh best teachers, but that again may be down to money... as much as to status, or the sheer joy of teaching receptive kinds who are not being disrupted by the school bully...
I'm having difficulty with Blogger tonight, so if I don't get any further post answered, I apologise in advance.....
Is there any one thing that one learned in education that they can and still find very useful today?
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to see, Danny, that the situation that exists here, in both Scotland and England, exists too in the states.
ReplyDeleteSomehow driven by a desperate need to get people through university when as clearly as day is day, there are not that many jobs that require university education.
I'm certainly not a snob about this. I'd be perfectly happy for skilled tradesmen to have degrees in plumbing, electicianship, joinery, car mechanics plastering, roofing...etc
But I wonder if that is what is required. On the job training with a good college keeping an eye on the skills that are being imparted, lest the tradesman teaching be showing people sloppy practices, is what is the best preparation for that kind of job.
Employers may too be to blame. There is no need for graduates to be doing half the jobs that they are.
Universities are certainly to blame for going along with the government inspired expansion scheme. But then they would. Empire building seems to be endemic in educational institutes.
So people ask... why do all the foreign students come to Britain for their second degrees?
Simple. The universities beg and plead with them to come. There are teams all over India and China selling the university. They talk of the prestige of a British degree... and people believe them. An Indian and a Chinese friend of mine came here to do masters and ended up laughing their way to the graduation ceremony.
They said it was easier than their original bachelor’s degrees taken respectively in Outer Mongolia and in Karela (കേരളം) I added that translation of the word Karela, because I think the script is absolutely fantastic and I know that you would appreciate it Danny.
One last post...
ReplyDeleteThanks Dean, that's fairly clear stuff I guess. Although given that the schools are run by the local council, thay are going to open & close depending on the winds that blow through local govt, I'm not sure that if all schools were independent there wouldn't be similar vagaries.
On a slight tangent - I assume you believe all schools should be independent? Assuming this, how do we ensure all schools are similarly funded? Or are schools in poor areas more poorly funded?
Touching on an earlier point, you don't think that independent schools with the mix of pupils common to most state schools would be performing as they are now do you?
Cheers.
tris, IMO experience counts buckets! In my field, it's easy to demonstrate your skills (to some degree) regardles of qualifications - so I'm probably biased. Although thinking about it, it's more the ability to demonstrate technical competence without either qualifications or prior employment experience.
Also the penultimate two paras in your last post are on the money for me. I know someone who works in an independent (has worked in state too), and they say one of the most standout things is that you see the difference in the healthy confidence most of the kids end up having (from early on too). I want that, andthe better education that goes with it for all kids (or as many as we can get it to) - that's never going to happen if we pretend wealth isn't the fundamental differentiator, between the systems and access to them AND/OR the state side gets on with streaming pupils on aptitudes and behaviour/learning difficulties.
cynical - three R's, legislative process, history, basic scientific principles and method, introduced to poetry, literature. All from school, I've found them all useful.
cya
p.s. munguin&tris - btw, I read the blog frequently, and enjoy it. Keep up the good work!
CH: There's lots of stuff that I learned at school that is useful... let's see.....times tables are useful.
ReplyDeletehum......
Well there are times tables... oh damn I said that already.....
hum... tra la la la talk among yourselves....
Did I mention times tables?
Point taken :)
Pythagros tris otherwise the world would be more squint than it already is. Sorry to be a bit of an old square but some things have a more basic use but spending an education learning about politics, weird not much use on a desert island.
ReplyDeletesomepapfaedundee,
ReplyDeleteI absolutely do believe that every school should be made independent of local government.
"I assume you believe all schools should be independent? Assuming this, how do we ensure all schools are similarly funded? Or are schools in poor areas more poorly funded?"
The means of funding are variable, and don't leave inner city schools in poorer areas less well off at all. In England, the Blair Academies scheme, originally called 'city academies' solved this problem by engaging private funding through offering them limited influence over day-to-day operations. It has been enormously successful in these poorer areas, independent of local government, free at the point of use, funded by a mixture of statre grants, bursaries and private capital. Brilliant.
But we can expand it! Why stop at academies for senior school? Why not primaries? Michael Gove is proposing to move the academy system to primaries. Once this begins, and the rest of the educational establishment see the superiority of this independent model of governance, they shall all choose - mostly - to follow. No child shall be left behind ... in England where government is far more bold than here in Scotland.
"Touching on an earlier point, you don't think that independent schools with the mix of pupils common to most state schools would be performing as they are now do you?"
I think that they would perform better once independent, precisely because they can become more responsive to their community/catchment area democraphics! The make-up of the state schools don't hold them back, what does is lack of operational independence for those said schools, the ability to raise funds independently of local government [like academies can].
Lets liberate the learning system! No more state monopoly!
Square ha ha ha... You choke me up sometimes CH..... as you equal to the sum of the other two squares?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that Pythagoras is a lot of use on a desert island though CH.... unless you want to work out the angle that you’re gonna have to jump to miss the man eating croc..
Whereas times tables... well, they are useful for loads of stuff, which I’ll tell you about another time... OK....
I’ve actually (honestly) found my French verb tables, learned at an age when learning that kinda stuff was a synche have stuck with me, and if ever I’m stuck for the imperfect subjunctive...well... there is is on teh tip of my langue!!
And that would be handy if you were stuck on a desert island with a French speaker, and required to use the imperfect subjunctive....
Dundee:
ReplyDeleteI am really glad that you enjoy the blog. I hope you will continue to contribute. I have thoroughly enjoyed your comments on this subject ... and I bet the other readers have too.
Thanks for that...don't be a stranger!