Hold on one gokking minute

[Walsingham]

If i understand this article correctly, and I may well not, then two students are going to challenge HM government's plan to allow universities to charge

[Monte Carlo]

This was one of Harriet Harman's booby traps left as part of the NuLab revanchee in 2010.

 

It does indeed provide for an 'Equality Impact Assessment' for any policy enacted by a public body. Staggeringly, 'class' is one of them.

 

This action will likely fail. The Coalition should have smashed this law immediately, but were too weak, so screw them.

[Gorgon]

No, and indeed children of well educated well off people generally turn out that way themselves, the opposite for the poor. One might well argue that education should be on the merits, and not be decide on whether daddy is able to pay the tuition for the university with a name that guarantees a higher level of access. If your parents are poor and uneducated you are already up against it, not having well functioning support network.

 

I generally support the notion of trying to level the field as much as possible. The actual problem here is that England is broke, not that you want to discriminate more than you already do, but the effect is much the same.

[Walsingham]

I've got no problem with someone making a normal case in Parliament for improving access to education. But tacking it onto the Human Rights stuff simply turns same into a socialist charter, and in doing so diminishes the entire concept of what I'd call proper human rights. It's pretty revolting, IMO.

[Nepenthe]

I've got no problem with someone making a normal case in Parliament for improving access to education. But tacking it onto the Human Rights stuff simply turns same into a socialist charter, and in doing so diminishes the entire concept of what I'd call proper human rights. It's pretty revolting, IMO.

Human rights have been used to legitimise socialist charters for quite a while now.

[Gorgon]

I don't see any real relevance in what statute they are trying to make their case under. Did they somehow soil efforts towards advancing human rights.... No.

[Gorgon]

We don't have a law for every crime or injustice, you take what's available in ye olde book of laws and make your way from there.

[Walsingham]

Could you develop that point, Gorgo?

[Gorgon]

If there was a 'fairness in education' law, I'm sure that's what they would have been using, the wording in human rights statutes is neccessarily pretty open and vauge by comparison since it needs to incompass any number of imaginable abuses.

[Raithe]

Human Rights is a nice fuzzy area to throw potentially related things in..

 

Plus it means that if the HM Government win, the people making the complaint can then run to Belgium and the EU, make the "Human Rights Abuses" complaint, and get the EU trying to force the fairly broke UK government into spending even more money it doesn't have to "level the playing field"...

[Walsingham]

Be fair, Raithe. The EU wastes a great deal more money than we spend on universities.

 

With no democratic means of arresting that waste.

[Kaftan Barlast]

I feel like playing devils advocate today so: logicly, being discriminated because you were born poor is quite similar to being discriminated because you were born non-caucasian. It's a non-chosen state of being that defines your quality of life.

 

 

"Of course you cant go to Oxford if you're too poor to pay the tuition!"

 

"Of course you cant go to Oxford if you're black!"

[Gorgon]

Well, we can decide to fight against determinism for idealistic reasons, in fact in many areas we do, and if we didn't we would lose out on a whole lot of talent.

[Walsingham]

You also lose out if you can't afford good food, you lose out if you don't take additional classes in things like mathematics... music... You need to have money to meet people, to be social, to... it goes on indefinitely.

 

I understand the logic of seeing someone through basic education, and making sure they get a healthy start in life. But you can't _engineer_ someone's whole life!

[Raithe]

It also reaches that point of holding people back to make room for people who don't have the abilities...

 

How long before we're hearing "it's not fair because my child doesn't have the same opportunities just because he's stupid/lazy/feckless!"

and then we're all in a world of hurt....

 

Part of the issue is laying out what constitutes a proper "basic" education...

[vault_overseer]

So how's vocational education in UK?

 

One of the many problems with providing poor a higher education is that many will simply fail, because of the lifestyles, lack of funds or whatever else. And yet we have this ludicrous idea of sending all poor to unis for [nearly]free, while vocational training is on a decline. As a result we end up with poor dropouts with no useful job skills, who continue sucking on governments tit.

 

Mike Row did a great presentation to us congress about the state of vocational schools here only I can't be assed to find it right now.

[Gorgon]

It also reaches that point of holding people back to make room for people who don't have the abilities...

 

How long before we're hearing "it's not fair because my child doesn't have the same opportunities just because he's stupid/lazy/feckless!"

and then we're all in a world of hurt....

 

Part of the issue is laying out what constitutes a proper "basic" education...

This is about giving everyone the same opportunity to shine, not about lowering standards, in theory at least that should create more success stories out of the whole than if only the privelidged have access to higher education. This long term investment is absolutely necessary in a modern information society, unless you want to start competing for manual labour jobs with the Chinese.

[Gorgon]

So how's vocational education in UK?

 

One of the many problems with providing poor a higher education is that many will simply fail, because of the lifestyles, lack of funds or whatever else. And yet we have this ludicrous idea of sending all poor to unis for [nearly]free, while vocational training is on a decline. As a result we end up with poor dropouts with no useful job skills, who continue sucking on governments tit.

 

Mike Row did a great presentation to us congress about the state of vocational schools here only I can't be assed to find it right now.

Force everyone through an education, whether vocational or otherwize, by cutting them off welfare if they don't.

[Nepenthe]

Human Rights is a nice fuzzy area to throw potentially related things in..

 

Plus it means that if the HM Government win, the people making the complaint can then run to Belgium and the EU, make the "Human Rights Abuses" complaint, and get the EU trying to force the fairly broke UK government into spending even more money it doesn't have to "level the playing field"...

While I do realise that the EU is Satan, the human rights complaints go generally to the European Court of Human Rights, an organ of the Council of Europe, which, in fact, has **** all to do with the EU. (Russia and Turkey, among others, are members of the Council of Europe).

[Walsingham]

I'd echo vault overseer's observation that we have neglected vocational training thanks to New Labour's middle class imperialist view that everyone should go to university and drink small amounts of good quality wine at bad parties.

 

Going back a bit, I think my original objection was that:

 

1. It's fair enough to wonder why there aren't more poor students in higher education, and to want to see a healthy (whatever that means) number of students coming through from that background. Talent and determination do not solely arise from mummy and daddy.

2. The great failure is not university. The failure is schooling at secondary level. Children who go through government schools have wildly diverging standards of education and support. Improve this level and there's no reason why university intakes wouldn't go up.

3. I know and work with a lot of bloody clever people from poor backgrounds. But equally you have to admit that some people are poor because they're stupid or lazy or both. In that respect the system 'works'. The children of stupid lazy people tend to absorb the same values and standards.

 

I really am becoming dreadfully right wing. I blame cycloneman. I used to be all woolly and a bit lefty before I was forced to confront it head on.

Edited June 25, 2011 by Walsingham

[Darth InSidious]

The wonderful thing about lumbering the average graduate with

[Orogun01]

You also lose out if you can't afford good food, you lose out if you don't take additional classes in things like mathematics... music... You need to have money to meet people, to be social, to... it goes on indefinitely.

 

I understand the logic of seeing someone through basic education, and making sure they get a healthy start in life. But you can't _engineer_ someone's whole life!

But you can't _give a poor kid a break_ in his life, is that what you mean?

 

Climbing through social strata is hard enough when you aren't born into it, when you have the whole world against you its next to impossible. So why is a qualified kid without the economical means less deserving of higher education than a rich prick?

 

I disagree with this fatalistic notion that as a general rule you are poor because you are stupid and lazy and therefore your son should also be the same. The option should be viable for those who want to better themselves.

Edited June 25, 2011 by Orogun01

[Gorgon]

It's all about resources right from the beginning, a stable home environment with prepare you, and the lack of one hamstring you. This conservative cannon nonsense about everyone deserving their place, I can't believe anyone buys into that.

[Nepenthe]

You also lose out if you can't afford good food, you lose out if you don't take additional classes in things like mathematics... music... You need to have money to meet people, to be social, to... it goes on indefinitely.

 

I understand the logic of seeing someone through basic education, and making sure they get a healthy start in life. But you can't _engineer_ someone's whole life!

But you can't _give a poor kid a break_ in his life, is that what you mean?

 

Climbing through social strata is hard enough when you aren't born into it, when you have the whole world against you its next to impossible. So why is a qualified kid without the economical means less deserving of higher education than a rich prick?

 

I disagree with this fatalistic notion that as a general rule you are poor because you are stupid and lazy and therefore your son should also be the same. The option should be viable for those who want to better themselves.

No; See the point above about the current trend (in more places than the UK) of trying to send everybody through a university education. The system starts to slowly collapse when everybody starts doing random degrees "to better themselves" instead of

 

Now, while I believe that studying opportunities should be handed out based solely on merit (and, unlike in Sweden where you can buy yourself into University, they are here), I insist that they should be limited in number.

[Orogun01]

No; See the point above about the current trend (in more places than the UK) of trying to send everybody through a university education. The system starts to slowly collapse when everybody starts doing random degrees "to better themselves" instead of

 

Now, while I believe that studying opportunities should be handed out based solely on merit (and, unlike in Sweden where you can buy yourself into University, they are here), I insist that they should be limited in number.

I see your point and I would like to offer the story of my second mother as a counterpoint.

 

She was on her late 40's when she came to the US 8 years ago, the first job she could find was cleaning houses. I mention her age because I want to paint the picture that this was a 50 years old woman cleaning houses in order to manage a living and still send financial support back to us. The sequence of jobs she held were of almost the same quality, from being a stay home servant to a family in Tennessee (which as I am told wasn't enjoyable) working in a gas station and the sorts. Which brings us to the point were after we secured through some contacts on the education sector in Cuba false documents showing that she had been a teacher, is that she was able to pursue a decent career as a teacher.

This is relevant because in order to do so she had to complete classes; since her major had been in science, classes which she took in college which she wouldn't had been able to do if the tuition cost were incredibly high or without government programs to help students. She now teaches middle school.

 

Now I have a shot at an even better life because of her efforts. Hard work can only take you so far before the world buries you, a break at some point is necessary.

Edited June 25, 2011 by Orogun01