DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

Now hopping in a barrel is a barrel of fun
But don't hop in if you want to be down, son
'Cause that could mean down and out as an action
What does it lead to?

liberal commie pinkos at the nyt at it again:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/opinion/wrong-answers-in-britain.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Thatcher's Enterprise Zones

We really are reliving the 80s!

Pupils who take 'traditional' A-levels should be given priority for university places

Don't they already get priority though, at least in terms of the "calibre" of institution they get you into?

yeah exactly - at my school we weren't allowed to take general studies a-level on the basis that no decent university would care about it (but bizarrely still had to take general studies classes) (i chose to do four a-levels instead to get out of that, so i have a french a-level instead of whatever knowledge i'd have gleaned in "life skills" and "computer studies" lessons) (this explains everything, in retrospect)

General Studies has ALWAYS been like that. Makes you wonder why they bother with it at all (oh yeah, it's easy and everyone does well in it and it buoys up the school's average grade).

At mine you could take General Studies A-level but only as a 4th A-level.

But yeah thinking back I also had to general studies classes anyway. I remember one about military doublespeak being quite interesting so I guess it wasn't a complete waste of time.

What is General Studies?

He's the lecturer in military doublespeak

I think we were supposed to do something called "Key Skills" as well. Might have been a GNVQ or some such.

I remember fobbing my head of sixth form off every time he asked me how my project was coming along, and then him being quite upset on deadline day when I was forced to admit that I hadn't started it because I thought it was stupid.

We had "Modern Studies" when I was at school, it was my best subject!

That was a proper subject though, traditional or not

What is General Studies?

― Duncan Disorderly (Tom D.), Thursday, August 18, 2011 10:22 AM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

pub quiz with a spatial reasoning round, basically.

Makes you wonder why they bother with it at all (oh yeah, it's easy and everyone does well in it and it buoys up the school's average grade).

yep, my school would only let you do it if you got a C or better in the mock.

at my school we weren't allowed to take general studies a-level on the basis that no decent university would care about it

I may be wrong but my understanding is that that's essentially the difference between your school and mine (think you went to the neighbouring private school in the same city as me?) and between the state and private (or "better") schools' approaches to university entry. private schools presumably market themselves in part on the number of kids they send to oxbridge and are therefore much much better at encouraging their students to consider applying and teaching them the tricks that will improve their chances of getting in.

GS doesn't hurt you chances at oxbridge. it just goes totally unnoticed.

i think in my school the logic was: if you actually spent time preparing for a General Studies A-level that was entirely worthless that would take away from time you could be spending doing stuff that would get you into oxbridge/similar - e.g. getting three As, doing duke of edinburgh, volunteering, playing the violin, whatever.

(yes, my school was almost entirely mobilised towards university entry)

we still had to go to "general studies" but that was, like, in the period that was before sixth form reserved for PSHE, so.

our school didn't do GS lessons. you just turned up to the exam.

"never practice, only record"

our school didn't do GS lessons. you just turned up to the exam.

ah, we did the Critical Thinking Advanced Extension paper that way. (AEA levels: a qualification i had completely forgotten i had until this morning)

who took S level? now that was real talk. i took the physics mock and i was like, 'no way do i need that blot on my mother fucking copybook'.

I may be wrong but my understanding is that that's essentially the difference between your school and mine (think you went to the neighbouring private school in the same city as me?) and between the state and private (or "better") schools' approaches to university entry. private schools presumably market themselves in part on the number of kids they send to oxbridge and are therefore much much better at encouraging their students to consider applying and teaching them the tricks that will improve their chances of getting in.

i guess - we were never specifically coached in any "tricks" to get into university though (i don't even remember any mock interviews - when i turned up at oxford for mine i felt so inadequately prepared, esp compared to the eg etonians i met there)

but as with cis's school, there was a pretty awesome range of extra-curricular stuff that we were encouraged to do, even though no one actually said "this will help you get into oxbridge" - i helped edit the school magazine, which often meant sunbathing on the school lawn pointing and mocking the kids in CCF for playing soldiers

fuck i remember S levels! i was put forward for the english lit one, our teacher was at pains to emphasise that it was just an experiment and didn't matter. i don't think anyone ever actually got their results, lol, which presumably meant we all failed dismally

Thread turns like this make me wonder if UK ILx is the poshest online clique I've ever known.

the English education system never fails to totally hornswoggle me

boom

i couldn't do maths or physics S level now, and i have a phd in that shit.

trying to find past papers online and failing :-(

sorry, "tricks" was definitely the wrong choice of word there but in terms of being expected consider the effect on university entry when making any kind of academic decisions, we definitely weren't. In retrospect I resent them a little bit for that.

Thread turns like this make me wonder if UK ILx is the poshest online clique I've ever known.

Doubt it. They let scum like me in after all.

Thread turns like this make me wonder if UK ILx is the poshest online clique I've ever known.

sometimes i wonder whether i should just tell my life story outright to disabuse people of these simplistic notions of "poshness" as though it's not far more complicated than obvious signifiers would imply, and can't encompass more than one end of the spectrum. (it's not for online though so no.)

That's the poshest poshcard ever!

Also not accusing lex of being posh or having advantages I did not, just to be clear. I did fine.

oh god my school was utterly blatant about it, they were all, "do this because it will look good on your ucas form!" and then you got the actual ucas form and it turned out there wasn't actually space for you to put on all these library monitorships and debating societies so haha it turned out i was right to never take part in anything, ever.

(um except orchestra)

(and the 'international politics discussion society' that was some of my friends in a classroom over lunchbreaks)

I think AEAs were successors to S Levels? the head of english was all "do it, you'll enjoy it" and put me up for... english, critical thinking, and maybe latin (there might have been a timetabling problem that meant i couldn't do latin?). They didn't put me up for history and now i... am doing a phd in that shit.

i went to a comprehensive school in sheffield for the record. and fwiw probably the least posh oxford college (cf. nrq, who is old money).

they should get us all on one of those "i love the 90s" shows. me and lex could do the paul moreley stuff about S levels.

i don't deny it! i guess what i'm saying is, despite what you think you know about someone, you don't know everything.

sorry, "tricks" was definitely the wrong choice of word there but in terms of being expected consider the effect on university entry when making any kind of academic decisions, we definitely weren't. In retrospect I resent them a little bit for that.

yeah i think the biggest "trick" wasn't anything specific, more the assumption that it would happen, that this was how things were done, so it didn't even seem like extra pressure or a weird thing to be thinking about university applications because duh, what else would we be doing? there literally was no other option. it was like, of course you'll be thinking about university, in the same way that of course you'll be thinking of turning up to school tomorrow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarship_Level

i used to get upset about being posh but these days i think, well, my mother worked incredibly hard to have children so middle-class, so fuck you all.

loool

er, in a less belligerent way than that post would suggest

Hey, I went to a hippie free school for the years of my education I spent in the UK, and they didn't bother about A-levels because they were for the maaaaaaan, and they were more concerned with the self-actualisation of the free little hippie children than standards and grades and hassle by the maaaan.

I did, however, just find their website, and they are apparently still going, though clearly OFSTED was sent in to clear out all that hippie muck.

latin (there might have been a timetabling problem that meant i couldn't do latin?)

SO regret not doing latin a-level ;_;

i used to get upset about being posh but these days i think, well, my mother worked incredibly hard to have children so middle-class, so fuck you all.

:D

(cf. nrq, who is old money).

For some reason I read this as "nv is old money", and I thought, WHAT?

NV is in debrett's (under "LOL")

That was the only "trick" I heard about: Take Latin, it will help you at University.

what my public school DIDN'T do, of course, was instil any sort of work ethic into me (maybe it didn't show that i needed this? i coasted through getting top grades at every turn with minimal effort) =====>>>>>> universities, plural = disaster. as i was just discussing on twitter w/another journalist for whom a-levels were basically our academic pinnacle, i'm not even 100% sure what degree grade i got - i assume i actually did get one but honestly i glanced at the results for like a second and the certificate is long lost. so all in all, all those advantages weren't, ultimately, the greatest help (but then ultimately ultimately, after university, they might have been?)

there literally was no other option. it was like, of course you'll be thinking about university, in the same way that of course you'll be thinking of turning up to school tomorrow

iirc there was quite a bit of fuss when i told my school i wasn't going to apply to university? but then they were like "lol w/e you'll do it in the end, gosh having a gnvq as well will look good on your ucas form".

Well, I was possibly in the last contingent of people who moved into "computing" without going to Univ, after that it was 'no degree? Forget it" and even now (especially now, I guess), people just assume I went.