Have we ever been a Christian country?  Is it actually possible to be an 'X' country (replace X with any world faith). 

Quote from: AndrewF on January 02, 2012, 09:35:24

It just doesn't work that way Martin. If they are not at the specialist school from the word go they loose critical time in that speciality, as you well know.

Not true.  Children start to learn musical instruments at different times and reach various standards at different times.  Very often a school will have a peripatetic teacher, for instruction in a particular instrument, whose skills will suffice to  a certain level.  At some stage, dependent on the skills of that teacher, the peripatetic teacher may say that a pupil has attained such a high standard that they have reached the limit of what that teacher can teach them, and this can happen at various ages. So it's at that point that the pupil and her parents, taking advice from the school, might consider transfer to a specialist school where a more intense programme under the instruction of a more highly qualified teacher can be embarked upon.

So, are you suggesting that a pupil who shows remarkable talent in playing the flute, say, at the age of 14 is necessarily going to develop to the same level of a child who was at that level at, say, 8?  The child found to be a prodigy at 14 will have lots of other things to think about in their life - GCSE's in general, friends, sex and sexuality, ... 

They're not starting from the same starting point.

Like Andrew, I believe that you are proposing a Utopian idea that is largely unworkable in real life without a completely different approach to the importance of exams and qualifications in society.  Only then, when exams become largely obsolete, and professional qualifications are only achieved 'in post', would any of your ideas even have a hint of a chance of succeeding.

No, all my posts haven't been about this. Did they teach you to read at your school Andy?

Sorry Martin, you were clearly never taught about rhetorical questions at school, and that might explain, at least in part, why your children appear to have been taught better than you, giving you the impression that education as a whole is better now.   

Certainly you will read reports in the Daily Mail and other such lie-sheets, ...

Well, if you will read those rags, Martin, what do you expect.  I prefer things like the Times Ed. Supplement, the Economist, the Guardian/Independent/Times. 

... that education is far less effective now than it was in the 'good old days', ...

if this is what you think, why not say so rather than hiding your views behind pretentious posts like you've produced here?

But it doesn't seem to be the case if you look at, say, the GCSE examination statistics.  My own experience confirms that education has improved.  I have been favourably impressed with my children's comprehensive education - much better than my grammar school education.

Now, did you do GCSEs, Martin?  Or 'O'-levels?  Did you do modular courses with module-related exams?

You seem to equate 'better education' with 'uplifting the less academic', but they are two completely different issues.  Children at school today will do topics at age 11 that you and I were doing at 14 or 15, and topics we were doing at 11 when they are 14 or 15.  A science (physics) teacher of my acquaintance showed me an 'AS'-level syllabus where the students were dealing with material that he had done in his first year at university, alongside material that he and I had studied pre-'O'-level.

Anyone who tries to compare GCSEs with what came before them is comparing different things, and I think that this is where you seem to have a problem.  You like things to be black and white in terms of comparison, whereas the 'real' world isn't that simplistic.

Oh, re. materials I can't produce.  I have no idea whether any of the 80s and 90s material is online - and if it is, I'm not really sure where to look since I can't remember the report titles or authors (we usually read exec. summaries passed down the 'chain of command'.)  What you have to remember is that true comprehensive education is all about mixed-ability teaching across the board, and no British school has followed this since the latter part of the 20th century.  Selection (aka streaming) is now the norm (as I'm sure your children discovered), and pupils can move up and down the streams until about age 14, when exam requirements lay down externally-established limitations to such movement. 

I won't apologise to anyone who has seen this on other boards - I have now started it on 3 boards and 1 email discussion forum.

In an end of year email, Jim Wallis of the Sojourners (www.sojourners.com) poses the question - "What would it mean if Christians fully occupied the Gospel?".

Regardless of your theological/religious/atheistic beliefs - how would you see the answer to this question?  Remember that, whilst Wallis poses it from within the context of the USA, it can have any context you find yourself in.

Quote from: AndyHB on December 29, 2011, 18:01:08

]So you think we ought to have state-sponsored 'exclusive' schools?  How would you decide which child was most suited to such a school, by the way?

Actually I think the argument for state sponsored schools for the exceptionally gifted has its pros and cons, but essentially, if it is to work,  then children should be selected on the basis of their natural ability rather than their ability to pay. 

It's a pity then that the very schools that most regularly provided such a service, grammar schools, have been abolished by most Local Authorities!!

The idea of selecting children on the basis of an examination at the age of 11 and then segregating the 'intelligent' from the 'less intelligent' is a very poor one.  Children develop at various stages. Far better to have streaming within the same school where children can move between streams at the end of each year.

So, which is it to be, Martin?  State-sponsored schools of excellence, which will necessitate a form of selection and an age for that selection, or comprehensive schools that have streaming (selection with a different name) and which have been shown to be largely ineffective at pulling the 'least gifted' up to anywhere near the level of the average, let alone the most gifted (most of whom are actually pulled down to the average).

... but I do agree that it does need to have the pedestal it is on broken down!

I sometimes wonder exactly who builds the pedestal?  It's rather like the pedestal that people in the pew build for those who do mission work; they must be super-spiritual and 'special' to be able to do that kind of work (which, of course, is totally untrue).