Comments on: Schools to match London’s wealth

By: Captain Badger

Captain Badger — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 21:18:44 +0000

No, it’s just we all agree with you, so we’re not arguing.

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By: Nasrin Azadeh

Nasrin Azadeh — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 09:53:28 +0000

Did I kill the debate, I only wanted to provoke critical views. Tayles is needed here.

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By: Captain Badger

Captain Badger — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 09:21:22 +0000

Nasrin, I think what I was trying to say is that we must offer people equal opportunity going forward, and accept that, apart from redefining the past through language, there isn’t anything we can do about it.

One of the many things we waste our time on in this country is agonizing over our past wrongs. The lesson we must learn from making mistakes is not to make them again, as opposed to learning complete paralysis for fear of making new ones. I think it’s called ‘learned helplessness’ – it’s something that happens to people in abusive and arbitrary relationships, or working for local government.

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By: Nasrin Azadeh

Nasrin Azadeh — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 20:56:22 +0000

“the explosion of oversight has been far from uniform while the responsibilities and resources allocated to overseers has grown. In the case of the UK, for example, formal arms-length overseers doubled in size and real term resources during the 1980s and 1990s, at a time when UK civil service was cut by more than 30 per cent and local government by about 20 per cent (Hood et al. 1999).”

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By: Nasrin Azadeh

Nasrin Azadeh — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 19:56:15 +0000

Captain Badger:I suspect that if we left off with the nannying until people asked for help, we’d be astonished with what our fellow citizens would achieve for themselves.

The point I was making was in fact questioning the philosophy behind equal opportunity as how far back one might look for inequality in ones life. The moment of equal opportunity is defining a ‘point’ from which onwards, shortcomings of childhood background counts no more – a point where individual’s responsibility begins to take advantage of opportunities in an enabling environment. I believe in living with our differences with less greed. However Youngsters do need mentoring and discipline to be able to discover their capacities – out of junk publicities.

Personally, with my experience living in a peculiar country I am afraid to have to say that I have enough of so called ‘noble poor’ with their wicked policies enforced under degrading coercive controlled system – stripping me of what I have earned.

Deprivation finds true meaning where you are dispossessed of your belongings. Misery is enormous when barred from your intrinsic shared values remaining to regret the lack of it for the rest of your life.

“In the past, the poor did not see the lives of those better off. Whenever I talk to some older person who grew up impoverished in rural America before WWII, they always observe that, “of course, we didn’t know we were poor.” Without modern visual media to beam the lives of those better off into their awareness, few poor people in the past had to confront the disparity on a nearly daily basis. Now they can.” Comments in Guardian

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By: Captain Badger

Captain Badger — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 16:22:02 +0000

Many ‘famous’ English schools have annexes in Asia, and are more affordable. (like, 40% of the price)
If you’re in Thailand you’re spoilt for choice.

Most of the income London banks area earning comes from overseas, and so any tax paid is effectively a freebie.

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By: Max

Max — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 16:12:43 +0000

I’m living in Asia and due to return shortly so my daughter can get a “good education” and have a better life. I’m worried. Am I doing the right thing? Is it going to be possible to get a good education without bankrupting myself. It’s starting to sound like we could better off where we are.
As regards the London situation, having so few earning so much is understandably disgusting but a return to the bad old days of high taxation is not the way. As long as these high earners are spending their cash in the UK and generating income for the country through their work I guess it’s something we just have to live with. Surely the onus is on the government to simply stop wasting the vast resources it already has and concentrate on investing more effectively in things that matter, like education and health.

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By: Captain Badger

Captain Badger — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 08:52:22 +0000

Nasrin:

Mission creep is a common error most fields of endeavour. In your example, the headmaster exceeds his remit as he steps from phase 2 to phase 3, and tries to resolve problems which are beyond his reach. It’s a sign of deep distrust in humanity that he didn’t believe the people who’s job it is to give children good backgrounds (parents, for example) could actually be trusted to do so, and so he should interfere.
Typically, when someone trundles along & tries to do my job, I leave ‘em to it. I can’t be surprised that other people do the same. I suspect that if we left off with the nannying until people asked for help, we’d be astonished with what our fellow citizens would achieve for themselves.

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By: Nasrin Azadeh

Nasrin Azadeh — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 02:10:37 +0000

the literature on equality of opportunity was highlighted in a study by considering the headmaster of a sought-after boys’ private school who is newly committed to the concept. After a moment’s reflection, however, the headmaster finds himself inexorably sliding down a slippery slope into straightforward equality of outcome. Richards describes the slide in four phases. In the first phase, the headmaster realizes that it is inconsistent with equality of opportunity to prevent girls from attending the school. In the second phase, he notes that he must also ensure that he selects only on academic ability, such that a particular cultural background is not a requirement of entry. In the third phase, he realises that applicants face an inequality of opportunity as a result of the unequal backgrounds they have experienced; so “the headmaster, although now rather puzzled, wonders about offering remedial classes, and starts to wrestle with counterfactuals about what the children would have been like if they had had each other’s backgrounds.”5 Fourth and finally, the hapless head is stymied:
He will not be left with this particular puzzle for long, however, since the critic will already have moved on to matters still more perplexing. Even equality of background could not give genuine equality of opportunity, since the children’s different genetic endowments would still leave them with unequal chances of success. This seems to imply that genuine equality of opportunity requires the admission of everybody – the equality of outcome to which the headmaster always thought equality of opportunity was opposed – or, since this is impossible, either closing down the school or admitting pupils by lot. Neither of these is anything like what he had in mind when he started off in pursuit of equal opportunities, but he can now see no escape.

Source:Clare Chambers, Each outcome is another opportunity, Dept of Intl Relation, Social Justice working papers, Oxford Univ Sept 2006

also in my blog: The moment of equal opportunity, http://www.genuspolitics.blogspot.com

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By: Tim Ireland Too

Tim Ireland Too — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 23:25:58 +0000

As long as this site doesn’t become political, you may carry on as you are.

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