The 2015 Popularity Contest (aka UK General Election )

[L4Everton]

I'm confused because I don't have the answers. I don't know why poor kids from some backgrounds (ie many ethnic minorities) do well in our schools, yet poor kids from other backgrounds (ie white British) tend to do badly.

I suppose when your mum and dad or whichever is left after ethnic cleansing or some nightmare along those lines says "I never had the privelege of going to school back in our old country, take this chance you have because you are now in the 35% of children in the world that get something approaching a full education and make the best of it"

Whereas when Wayne and Waynetta slob cant even be azzed to check their children stay at home night to night let alone go to school in the first of a morning then there might be some difference in motivation.

I hope the current climate of fear, joblessness, bleak futures and regret at parental level will lead to a utopian furute for state education - but so long as the X factor or being a gangsta or similar offer a way out of the suburbian ghetto then the facebook generation will go along the lines of the britpop generation before it and sew the seeds of its own demise.

(Some of the above is quite cartoonish, but without naming further specifics that could be deemed abusive or down right nasty there is very little other alternative in trying to clarify the positions).

 

[Clint Planet]

The Guardian piece I linked to suggested the biggest reason for the lack of social mobility was education rather than any class system that may still exist.

Yes, yes, but what do you think? To me, it's obvious. There is a modern day underclass who have been all but abandoned by the ruling class. It suits the short-term-ist political aims of the establishment (tories, big business, etc...) to keep them politically illiterate, molified by plasma screens and quad bikes and socially immobile. The long term costs, however, are catastrophic.

I see bright, hopeful kids every day who are hostage to their own dreadful social circumstances. Fat mums in onesies who pick their kids up late from school, half-stoned at 3:30. Intelligent but angry kids who keep goetting into trouble because their life is upside down and all over the place.

No amount of private projects will solve their problems. Ultimately, the government alone has the power to make the necessary change. And yet - constantly - it doesn't. Poverty as a political decision.

I tell you, this country is totally up the junction. Depressing.

 

[L4Everton]

No amount of private projects will solve their problems. Ultimately, the government alone has the power to make the necessary change. And yet - constantly - it doesn't. Poverty as a political decision.

I tell you, this country is totally up the junction. Depressing.

Poverty as a means of political control. Keep one side hopeful, the other side fearful of losing their place at the top table.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Yes, yes, but what do you think? To me, it's obvious. There is a modern day underclass who have been all but abandoned by the ruling class. It suits the sort-termist political aims of the establishment (tories, big business, etc...) to keep them politically illiterate, molified by plasma screens and quad bikes and socially immobile. The long term costs, however, are catastrophic.

I see bright, hopeful kids every day who are hostage to their own dreadful social circumstances. Fat mums who pick their kids up late from school, half-stoned at 3:30. Intelligent but angry kids who keep goetting into trouble because their life is upside down and all over the place.

No amount of private projects will solve their problems. Ultimately, the government alone has the power to make the necessary change. And yet - constantly - it doesn't. Poverty as a political decision.

I tell you, this country is totally up the junction. Depressing.

It saddens me enormously that learning is seemingly held in such low esteem by such a large proportion of the population. I think it's a golden age for learning at the moment with the amount of material we can consume very easily and very cheaply. To me, that's incredibly exciting and it is sad that it doesn't appear to be the norm.

I don't know the answer. I really don't. I'm an adopted child and when my parents wanted to adopt they had to prove they were suitable. Stable relationship, reasonable income, decent people and all that. Having kids is a huge responsibility isn't it?

We have people there to help parents in those early years. We have free nursery places for kids. We have a decade or more of free schooling for each child. They're the kind of things vast chunks of the world would give their eye teeth for. How can you make parents appreciate that? Can you do so? I don't know.

 

[SweetJesus849]

Precisely. Like I keep saying, poverty is a political decision. It is not inevitable.

Too many people just accept inequality and poverty as a fact of life. They blame the disadvantaged for poor, as though it's simply a case of grsfting their way out of their circumstances. And in the meantime, the gap between the rich and the poor gets wider and wider and wider...

It's pretty hard to graft out of circumstances when a) you don't have access to natural resources and b) you don't own much land, you're more than likely going to be depending on someone to provide you with money. Problem is that they don't give you ENOUGH money to make much of anything, they give you enough money to live. Or in many cases not even that, seeing as minimum wage is well below living wage.

Sigh. You don't get it, do you? It's not the wasting of money that is depressing or frustrating, it's the institutional inequality sustained by a chronic lack of government spending and redistribution of wealth.

Here here.

For sure, the government waste an awful lot of money, I've no doubt about that at all. What would happen to it though? Social mobility has proved notoriously difficult to shift over the years, despite substantial attempts to provide equality of opportunity.

It would seem rather depressing to suggest that a proportion of society will always be poor and thus must be sustained by welfare, but is that really the case? Attempts to create a socially mobile society don't really seem to have worked thus far.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/22/social-mobility-data-charts

It makes really sad reading.

That article isn't exactly convincing though I'll be honest. It gives the impression that an education is like the only way out when it's really not. And one also has to look at the quality of education before they do anything, because clearly in the UK it's not really all that, which starts with the teachers and how they are helped (not judged), with how the curriculum is taught and also what the curriculum is, but education is just one issue. The other issues are realistically much more difficult to tackle.

One has to look at the amount of opportunities that are given to the supposed underclass - let's be honest they have basically none. Whereas you'd be doing well if you found the son or daughter of a rich man who was unemployed unless they're either detested by their parents or have absolutely given up on making a decent living and decided to just be a free roaming hippy a la Into The Wild. They might not have an opportunity in their own business by they'll have connections if nothing else, and odds are, plenty of them. What connections will a poor man have? His boss is about it.

To suggest it's all on education is incredibly naive.

 

[L4Everton]

It saddens me enormously that learning is seemingly held in such low esteem by such a large proportion of the population. I think it's a golden age for learning at the moment with the amount of material we can consume very easily and very cheaply. To me, that's incredibly exciting and it is sad that it doesn't appear to be the norm.

I don't know the answer. I really don't. I'm an adopted child and when my parents wanted to adopt they had to prove they were suitable. Stable relationship, reasonable income, decent people and all that. Having kids is a huge responsibility isn't it?

We have people there to help parents in those early years. We have free nursery places for kids. We have a decade or more of free schooling for each child. They're the kind of things vast chunks of the world would give their eye teeth for. How can you make parents appreciate that? Can you do so? I don't know.

The generations of privilege that have led some portions of society to become devoid of responsibility, to believe they are owed a living and that any children they have will be someone elses burden are well and truely over. The golden days of living on easy street are gone. There is competition now, for everything. No rights, no queues, just competition.
The feckless, the lazy, the intellectually strained, are no longer being invited along on the coat tails of the high and over achievers. London makes all the money, thats where it gets spent. Scotland didnt have the cabers to do it on principal and neither will anyone else. Should the offspring of the ruling elite and their tag alongs be 'feckless, lazy, intellectually strained' then of course exceptions will be made. But power and hypocrisy have been the same thing since history started happening.

Perhaps the pain and suffering being doled out like bread on the old bread line will be the wake up call to a country built on the ruthless nature of generations that made fortunes on the back of slavery, cut throat industrialisation, workhouses, as well as some good things like invention, science, medicine and even something as fundamentally British as seafaring. Perhaps to move forwards there has to first be a step back. Just a shame as ever that those being hit the hardest are those that are already punch drunk. But when they die, who cares right????

 

[Bruce Wayne]

That article isn't exactly convincing though I'll be honest. It gives the impression that an education is like the only way out when it's really not. And one also has to look at the quality of education before they do anything, because clearly in the UK it's not really all that, which starts with the teachers and how they are helped (not judged), with how the curriculum is taught and also what the curriculum is, but education is just one issue. The other issues are realistically much more difficult to tackle.

One has to look at the amount of opportunities that are given to the supposed underclass - let's be honest they have basically none. Whereas you'd be doing well if you found the son or daughter of a rich man who was unemployed unless they're either detested by their parents or have absolutely given up on making a decent living and decided to just be a free roaming hippy a la Into The Wild. They might not have an opportunity in their own business by they'll have connections if nothing else, and odds are, plenty of them. What connections will a poor man have? His boss is about it.

To suggest it's all on education is incredibly naive.

Of course it isn't all about education, and the Rowntree quote doesn't suggest it is. It suggests that education is a sizable chunk (of over 50%) of what contributes to social mobility. I don't think you can ever be guaranteed anything in life, and all we can ever really do is improve our odds by doing what we can with the circumstances we find ourselves in.

So of course a wealthy person may have more opportunities than a poor person, that's inevitable. That person may do fine in life even without an education, which is something the poor person probably can't say. If the poor person made the most of their schooling though I reckon they'd still do alright in life.

The challenge is how to encourage that to happen.

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/7/45002641.pdf

The top 10 in terms of social mobility are:

1. Denmark, 2. Australia, 3. Norway, 4. Finland, 5. Canada, 6. Sweden, 7. Germany, 8. Spain, 9. France, and 10. USA

What do these countries do that we don't?

 

[L4Everton]

To suggest it's all on education is incredibly naive.

When the carrot is the stick. Education will continue to be the measure for how much someone wants to better themselves and earn opportunities - it is a reimagined and resold ideal, because without it those that make the decisions would be guilty of removing the only way out of the underclass thats left. That education is not the meritocracy it is sold as is irrelivant, its more a token gesture, empty as the promises of change each wave of politicians makes.

Any we wonder why people have given up, why they dont instill in their children the willingness to achieve and better themselves. When parents are crushed before they are actually parents, is it any wonder they struggle to bring up children with an outlook less bleak than their own. Telling lies and selling lies is one thing to a set of people you want to vote for you - being called to book on it if you have told and sold the same to your kids when they have grown up disenfranchised and hateful of your hypocrisy is quite another.

 

[L4Everton]

What do these countries do that we don't?

Have masses of natural resources (or war debts or both) with which to prop up their failing public services so that no one is left behind?

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Have masses of natural resources (or war debts or both) with which to prop up their failing public services so that no one is left behind?

For some sure, but not sure the Nordic countries have that, with the exception of Norway.

 

[L4Everton]

For some sure, but not sure the Nordic countries have that, with the exception of Norway.

Those that dont, how do their total populations stack up vs the UK's?

 

[SweetJesus849]

Of course it isn't all about education, and the Rowntree quote doesn't suggest it is. It suggests that education is a sizable chunk (of over 50%) of what contributes to social mobility. I don't think you can ever be guaranteed anything in life, and all we can ever really do is improve our odds by doing what we can with the circumstances we find ourselves in.

So of course a wealthy person may have more opportunities than a poor person, that's inevitable. That person may do fine in life even without an education, which is something the poor person probably can't say. If the poor person made the most of their schooling though I reckon they'd still do alright in life.

The challenge is how to encourage that to happen.

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/7/45002641.pdf

The top 10 in terms of social mobility are:

1. Denmark, 2. Australia, 3. Norway, 4. Finland, 5. Canada, 6. Sweden, 7. Germany, 8. Spain, 9. France, and 10. USA

What do these countries do that we don't?

If that's top 10, then wouldn't that place the UK someone in the top 15-20? I'm surprised the USA is in the top 10 by the way, considering it's one of the most unequal countries in the entire world.

With regards to "what these other countries do that we don't", the biggest difference seems to be our approaches to things like employment. Whereas these other countries value education more than anything, we see a degree as a basic requirement and then decide we want real life experience. As a young person who's just graduated myself, my experience is that experience isn't exactly easy to come by, especially around the North West.

 

[Boss_Blue]

As a young person who's just graduated myself, my experience is that experience isn't exactly easy to come by, especially around the North West.

I finished my degree nine years ago mate and it was the same then.

I wish there had been more emphasis placed on working hard to create opportunities for yourself during my education as it took me a little while to start working my way up the career ladder.

Bit disheartening to hear not much has changed in that respect.

 

[The Esk]

It saddens me enormously that learning is seemingly held in such low esteem by such a large proportion of the population. I think it's a golden age for learning at the moment with the amount of material we can consume very easily and very cheaply. To me, that's incredibly exciting and it is sad that it doesn't appear to be the norm.

I don't know the answer. I really don't. I'm an adopted child and when my parents wanted to adopt they had to prove they were suitable. Stable relationship, reasonable income, decent people and all that. Having kids is a huge responsibility isn't it?

We have people there to help parents in those early years. We have free nursery places for kids. We have a decade or more of free schooling for each child. They're the kind of things vast chunks of the world would give their eye teeth for. How can you make parents appreciate that? Can you do so? I don't know.

It is incredibly difficult to get anyone to value something that they themselves have not benefited from.

Hence if the parent has not benefited from education then it is unlikely that they will pass any value of education onto their children.

That is the challenge that teachers in the state system face.

 

[Coach]