Just goes to show how worthless education is these days. Employers are complaining more and more and more about new employees who can't read and can't write, let alone hold a pen properly. I always marvel are someone in a more official type job who actually has to write something (for a moment there I thought writing had been abolished by Brussels, anyway...) but they can't do joined up writing.
Now, I don't remember really being taught how to do joined up writing, I think I personally kinda took it on myself as I saw it as "well, that's just the next step in learning to write", so I just tried it out myself. I think we got a little glimpse of teaching to do with it, but meh, they were too busy trying to make "Maths Chest" text books make sense. 
I just got out of GCSE/A-Level education before it completely descended, but the seeds were sewn already. Even when I was at school we weren't taught to learn, rather cram knowledge and then blurt it out on an exam paper and then forget it all - and that method of learning did me no good, because I can barely remember most things I was taught in school - and another thing - there's no broad understanding of any subject, history being one of the worst offenders. You don't get a broad historical understanding of mankind, no, you get a dissection of the 20th Century until after WW2 finished, you get a drowning in the Tudors & Stewarts and then at A-Level it's goddamned Calvinism (the only exam I've ever had to retake, due to the fact that A: the teaching of the topic was crap, and B: it was right at the point that exam boards were re-aligning their sights to make it look like everybody was doing superbly well - but instead, it made everybody look like a f*cking idiot).
I mean, it's like when I took A/S Level Biology - I got a freaking D, and yet I got a double-A grade for science at GCSE...however, when I discovered that I was the sixth highest grade out of everybody who took A/S Biology, it all became clear. There was one A, one B, one C, about 4 D's, and the rest were E's and U's...and there must have been a good 30 people taking A/S biology.
Another example was my Sociology Coursework - I chose a topic I knew plenty about - film censorship, did loads of research because I was really interested (it was something I took interest in outside of school anyway), my teacher gave me *forgets* it was either an A or a B, and then the exam board came in to moderate and it got a freaking E grade. The same happened with almost the entire class, and our teacher was far from a chump, he was (is) a very smart chap, absolutely dedicated to his profession (although he's now heading up the county's police board), so it wasn't a case of dud teacher - rather, dud examiner's board.
When it came time for our A-Level results, I was one of the lucky ones who got their first choice university (UEA actually raised their grades to AAB, rather than their usual ABB for the film course), but when the results came in a loads of people were failing or getting a grade or two, or even three below what they were expecting, UEA dropped back to their original grade and I was lucky to get in (I got the ABB, but had I been just a few points off, I'd have been ABC). A lot of my mates who were going off to uni ended up going to their second or even third choice, the odd one took a year out to re-take some portions to bump their grades up even.
An absolute disaster, and all thanks to the gubment's brilliant idea that was A/S Levels. The teachers themselves admitted (well some anyway) they had naff all idea what they should be teaching. So - if the teachers don't know what the hell they're supposed to be doing, how is that helping the students? Who are after all, the country's bleedin' FUTURE! 
At least A-Level Art was the one refuge of intelligent marking, and I don't say that because I was 3 marks off achieving 100%, but because the marks reflected the work that was put in, the thought processes going on and so on - believe me, several of the grades were awful or a bit disappointing.
Anyway, I've blabbered on too long, but I've personally seen the fall in quality comprehensive education, and I can only imagine it's worse now, and that's certainly what I've heard from younger friends or siblings of friends, or even teachers themselves.
Yeah, thanks a lot Tony Blair and whoever the education person was at the time...thanks a bunch.
Back to the topic, yes...there's too much pandering these days, pandering to the lowest form of life, rather than at least settling in the middle - it's like trying to teach a mixed class and focussing all the energy on the drongo's in the room, the average and smart kids get left to their own devices, or they get dragged down - it's why setting/streaming works - it's just a fact, setting does work.
The gubment would like to think that the drongos would do better because they'd be "pulled up" by the smart kids - *ahem* - have the gubment ever BEEN to a school in their lifetime? That's not how the system works. The smart kids become successful after they leave school, but during school, they are the butt of the cool kid's jokes, they are the targets of the thicko bullies, if they aren't nurtured they descend as the teacher has been busy dealing with rowdy knowledge-cock-blockers who don't even want to be in school anyway, let alone learning something from a book - they'd be best suited learning a skill, a trade - getting out there in a vocation.
And yet Gordo wants compulsory education to be shafted up to 18 - that man literally has NO idea, does he?
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I don't want to sound like a Nazi, but I think that stupid people shouldn't be allowed to breed. If you can't pass a simple IQ and common sense test, then your tubes are tied. I'm not saying "kill em all." Let 'em live, and be as stupid as they wanna be. Just don't let them procreate for God's sake!!
Originally Posted by clanglee
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