Polko says.. Common Sense and Education.Unfortunately, I have found that these two things very rarely surface in an individual in anything like equal proportion. If one aspect is lacking you tend to find that that person reverts to saying, "of course you see all these educated people, they have no common sense". Or vice versa.
Recently I have had cause to remind myself that education really does give you a better chance in life.
I will interject to explain a little about Polko. Polko - the real Polko now not anonymous blog Polko (although they are very much the same person in many a way!) - has a First Class Honours Economics Degree (gained when degrees were degrees), a Masters Degree from a top London University, several peer reviewed papers published in professional journals and is the author of a book (that nobody will read because its subject is so academically interesting). To top all this I have a fair amount of common sense and basic 'life skill'. I can get stuck in when it comes to plumbing, electrical work (and we're not talking about changing a plug here - I have practically re-wired a four storey Victorian office and shop saving thousands on some spotty young electrician who would have been working from the manual and from the manual only, down'ing tools when he hit a problem he'd never encountered before). Oh, and Polko possesses a sense of humour too. Well fuelled by Mrs Polko I might add.
Back to the plot.
...which brings me to this morning. This morning I looked around at the few people that live on top of my hill and realised that I am the one that has the easier life (I very rarely work 5 days a week), more frequent holidays, for what they're worth the nice cars, more hobbies and interests outside of bringing up my family and, not that it registers high on my scale, but a higher disposable income (despite having had a child with a money-sucking leach from outer space - no, really - somebody had to and this alien appeared to have a good strong and varied genetic structure).
The defining factor is quite possibly level of education - at least that's what my econometrics/statistics background tells me! Somebody else lurks a little higher up the hill. Another one like me with even more years of education under his belt. This one an eye surgeon. I have a suspicion he too doesn't work as much as people think he does (not now anyway) to live in the big house.
So, I thank my parents at least for giving me the two things that I consider to improve my score; a basic training in common sense (don't you like my builder's bum - below) and the possibility to pursue education to the highest level I could.
...which brings me to the worry that if the people that publish my son's SATS practice test papers (Coordination Group Publications Limited - where the strapline image 1 above was lifted from) can't spell, and these are foremost education consultants, then how are the teachers that have been entrusted with my son's education supposed to give him an adequate one? (Don't even get me started on the fact that one of his teachers burnt all the toast - I mean ALL the toast - on day one of the SATS week breakfast club. I don't think they teach toast making on the PGCE? But, then again, you don't need teaching, you need common sense.. equal proportion as Depeche Mode once said - Get The Balance Right).Anyway.. I was working through a few revision papers with my son at the weekend as this is SATS week for Year 6 pupils. As I read the inside cover of the English answer booklet I noticed that they started to flip around with the spelling of practice, sometimes appearing as practise instead of with the c..? Odd I thought, maybe it was a one-off - I know I'm hard on the people that work with me for spelling and general consistency/typo errors but everybody's allowed one mistake - but it just kept coming up time and again. More strange is the fact that it changes between practice and practise throughout all the English and Maths, etc papers - no consistent error, just all over the place, sloppy practice..
Either get something right or get something wrong? The inconsistency shows me two things. That this was a true misunderstanding and not just a one-off mistake and, more worryingly (given that the page footer pronounced proudly that Glenn Rogers and Vanessa Kushner were to be thanked for the proofreading) nobody had been bothered to check through it - despite this gem of wisdom from the instructions to children!
Wherever you are out there in the real world - well done Glenn, well done Vanessa. You couldn't even do this simple task right!Here's the paper - click the link for a larger view - wonder at the inconsistency of it all. The Maths one is unfortunately the same - but in an inconsistent way!
The English paper sternly warns: These practice papers won't make children better at English... How could they, they didn't help the people writing them did they?
So, what of the world that my child is growing up in? I fear it is disappearing down a very long but fast rotating grey vortex.
...which brings me to the Public sector. As the Director of a company I received a notice a few weeks back asking me to check our current accounts position with a local authority that shall remain unnamed (in Lancashire and begins with B - there are a few but it's one of those!). So, given we have an environmental policy we filled out the form and e-mailed it back to them. Problem 1: the form stated we had to do this by Friday 9 May 2009. Now unless my year planner has been hijacked in some cruel hoax I think Friday was the 8 May don't you? Error one. Maybe Vanessa or Glenn now work at B? Problem 2: When e-mailed a bounce back occurred about five minutes later, the postmaster@b_.gov.uk telling me that the address I had used did not exist. Error two. Now I have some friends who work in the public sector that constantly moan they don't get paid as much as others (whilst almost in the same breathe deriding anybody who appears to get paid a lot without really knowing the stress and strain that others might go through in their jobs). Don't get me wrong, not all of these people moan. But some do. I have only one thing to say about it: pay peanuts and you get monkeys. Clearly b_.gov.uk are following this recruitment method.
...which brings me to the end. For now. I sincerely hope I spelled everything correctly today. And my son too as he's going into his English SATS just about... ... ...now.
1 comment:
I have now to remember everything covered in your blog - thank goodness for the multi-tab function of firefox!
My responses to the most salient points:
Education I hope that you do realise how lucky you are to have been able to get the level of education that you achieved. I hoped to continue on to complete an MA and a PhD. I was accepted for the MA but failed to get funding and so my education had to stop with my entirely worthless degree. Particularly with the likelihood of tuition fees increasing in many cases to £5000 a year, fewer and fewer people will be able to improve themselves through education.
Common Sense I certainly frequently bemoan the lack of this in society generally. I think that while you can't be taught it, the educational opportunities available to an individual can certainly enhance this, and as long as these opportunities are on the decline, each generation will have less and less to pass one.
Doing it yourself I do very much admire how much you have been able to learn and do yourself. It would be nice to be in the same situation, but sadly without the same flexibility of working hours, we are far more limited, as are many others stuck in the rat race, as to when we can get stuck in to give it a go. It's not to say we have no time at all for such things, but if we are to have any sort of enjoyable life outside of work (and it's fair to say that neither of us especially enjoy DIY), then learning how to rewire, plumb toilets etc. becomes a low priority and getting someone else in to do it makes much more sense. You're more than welcome to come round to help out any time you like!
SATS There is a teacher on the counselling course I am currently enrolled on (I mean aside from the one teaching the class, smartarse) who I recently had a conversation with regarding SATS. She said it is very much true that many other areas get overlooked in order to 'train' children to pass their SATS. I didn't realise that they were being trained, or at least tested, in such a poor way. I am sadly not very surprised to hear that it is the case. It seems to me just another argument for scrapping, or at least rethinking (or, if you prefer Hollywood terminology, 'reimagining') the test system.
Spelling Mistake I have not gone through with a fine-toothed comb, as I am aware myself of how prone to error I can be, but in your paragraph regarding the public sector, you said "whilst almost in the same breathe deriding anybody". This should have been 'breath' not 'breathe'.
I think I'm done. I am aware that I should be working, however, and so some responses are probably a bit too briefly summarised here. I'm also unconvinced of text being the best basis for a good discussion due to the lack of opportunity to assess intonation and body language, thus leading to easily to misunderstanding.
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