Be Excellent To Each Other

Jesus wept.

And yet somehow a kid that stupid is doing well at his GCSEs.

I think the cast of Allo Allo should be made to apologise for the holocaust.

It's because they're getting easier, innit?

Couldn't the teacher have used his concerns as a starting point for an interesting discussion about how far novels should reflect reality? Indeed, if that word is not used, does it reduce the realism of 'To kill a mockingbird' (which I should read, someday)?

You really should, it's a fantastic book.

To Kill A Mockingbird is, I think, the only book we did at school that I actually enjoyed at the time and have since read again for my own pleasure.

Great film, too.

I think the teacher should have used his concerns as a starting point for pointing out that the stupid little fuck has ENTIRELY MISSED THE POINT OF THE BOOK.

Is it because I is black?

If you read right down the piece it does sound like he's a bit of a thick agitprop.

This is the kind of stuff that makes me worry about the future of our species.



Humanity: Where even the smart people are idiots.

That or he's a genius who bluffed himself 10 days off.

I can hope can't i?

He'll read '1984' next, and be offended at how it glorifies and supports state-sponsored oppression.

I wish news articles would have the balls to tell me the offending words, instead of asterisking them out for my mind to come up with hilarious alternatives.

I'm just waiting for the time they deem any clue to be offensive, saying such things as:



Where not only do they blank out the whole word, but they add extra characters just in-case you had a hope of guessing.

Ainsley Harriott?

Probably because that was the first class he's had for three years that wasn't exam practice.



Ahh, I see.



"Say sorry."

"I'm sorry you're a fucking idiot."



Um. Eight isn't all that many. I was doing 13 at one point, and I was hardly a hard worker. Ten is par.

To be honest, this all sounds like his stupidity plus a massive case of Cowardly Idiot syndrome on the part of the Pupil Manager. Sorry, I mean, "teacher". They still call them that, right?

Quite genuine sniggers and otherwise general mirth cause there. Well done!

Eight was very much normal in my day.

Hmm. How many did I do.. English Maths Biology Chemistry Physics CDT-Technology IT French Latin P.E. I think that's 10 right? Everyone did essays for P.E. right?

Let me see.

Chemistry
Biology
Physics
One of the humanities
One modern language
Maths
English
Art/Design

Seems about right - especially as a lot of people would have done the '3 GCSEs in 2' double science.

I did 11, can't remember what the others would have been.

Ten was normal at my school.

Maths
English literature
English language
CDT
Extra maths
French
History
Geography
Chemistry
Physics
Biology

And I swear there were another two.

I haven't read the book, I do have it somewhere though. Is it right that it shows the views of the opressed black guy who was wrongly accused or something and it's very much his POV on it all? And shows the hardship he goes through? I mean studying that type of book would help people understand different race and things and push people into embracing different cultures etc? I can't understand how that is racist at all-in fact it just opens a decent discussion for people within the school.

I did:

History
English Literature
English Language
French
German
Maths
Science Double-Award
Design and Technology

That was it for us lot.

Maths
English Language
English Literature
Science
Spanish/French
Technology
RE
Whatever
Whatever
Whatever.

My whatever's were Double Science, History and Art. I did German, Latin and Statistics as extras for a bit (funny story - I didn't even know I'd been studying statistics for a year until the teacher told me), though I dropped Latin because the teacher, despite being the best teacher I've ever had, ran three departments (two unofficially, of course, and probably unpaid) and could only spare half an hour every two weeks, and it just seemed like a lost cause. I got into shit for it, but everyone who stayed on failed, so pish.

I learned loads about philosophy, history and politics in those half hours, though. Not much Latin, but as the Romans said, caecilius est pater, amirite?

I dropped Art eventually too, largely because it didn't seem to be about art, but instead about imitating everything everyone else did (but not as well), and banging out twenty shitty pictures or pretentious masks for the sake of looking clever instead of making one awesome picture. After months of trying the polite, reasonable route, and the passive resistance route of bunking, to no avail, I resorted to the 'pain in the arse' route of making the teachers want me to leave even more than I did, and it worked.

I didn't drop Graphic Design, but after having monumentally awful teachers for two years (the one who convinced me to study it at GCSE having helpfully buggered off), I refused to sit the exam in protest on the grounds that (a) passing using what I'd learned while ignoring the teacher's deranged rambling about his car would have would unfairly reflect well on the school and (b) who the fuck cares about Graphic Design?

Some nobhead tried to spring the exam on me at the end of the day, after doing another exam, but fortunately my former Latin teacher was invigilating, so I told him what was going on, and he looked very, very pissed off with someone I couldn't see for a moment, then accepted the blank exam paper I'd autographed and formally protested on and let me go.

Fun times. Man, school is shit. I spent my year 8 IT classes carrying tables for the caretaker, had a bunch of PE teachers casually walk off while a gang of cunts hurled stones at my eleven year old face (a passing nurse conveniently kept me from bleeding to death), and once had a maths teacher who tried to give me detention for not bringing in my textbook, deaf to my explanation that I'd been at the House of Commons all day and had been told not to bring anything*. And this drama queen fuckwit is 'protesting' because someone in a book said 'nigger'? Get to fucking fuck.


*I ended up walking out with a pithy remark, utterly humiliating the pizza-faced cunt. I still remember the look of fear and impotent rage in his eyes, it was great. Doubly great when he tried to give me detention the next week for not doing the homework he'd set after I left, and I just laughed until he gave up.

I invented education. And schools.

You are Plato and I claim my oily young Olympic hero.

I went to a pretty decent comp in Cardiff that had a very good reputation and I think the average there was probably about 8 O' Levels. This was 24 years ago, mind and a couple of things have altered since then, that not so much make it easier for the kids more for the schools to hit targets - the kids leaving with more qualifications seems to be a moot point as they've degraded the system so much I think most Uni's don't trust it anymore.

The two most notable things they changed were this - when I sat O's and A's it was a certain percentage of the entrants were awarded grades, not what score they got. So the top 10% got an A, the next 15% got a B and the next 25% got a C, or something similar. Everybody else failed. Nowadays, there appears to be a score to hit and then you get an A or a B etc, and I've heard from some teachers that that score is much lower that before - so the exams aren't any easier, it's easier to get better grades. Quite how this helps the kids I don't know.

The other difference and one that is probably for the better was the introduction of the modular system or being marked on stuff as you go through the syllabus on coursework rather than having one fuck off and die exam at the end of the two years.

But, as I said, most people here can't remember what they got, so it's a bit of a moot point if you got 8 with mixed grades or ten A*s in the last few years. It was very very unusual in my year for more than a handful of the most academically focused and bright kids to come out with anything other than a mixed bag, not 10 or 12 straight As.

We're breeding a nation of geniuses I tells ya

I did

Maths - in the first year of them thar GCSEs and
History
English
Science
French
Latin

I think that's about it - 8, English and Science both being 2. And they were a piece of piss, I guess because I'd been taught more rigorous standards for O level. I well remember my Biology teacher - who'd written the Study Aid thing for Biology - putting up the GCSE equation for photosynthesis with a lofty "here's what they want you to learn". And then adding an O2 to one side and saying "and here's what's true", which I took as a fairly good summary of GCSEs to some extent but the progression through education in general - you get lied to a little less the higher up you go. Only History that I didn't finish with an hour or more left, sitting there playing 33 a side (lines on an A4 sheet) pencil cricket because we weren't allowed to go early. In fact, I got to the point where I was looking forward to playing the cricket and didn't mind the exams.

I done 9.

I can't remember what GCSES I got.. it was nearly 20 years ago, I don't think they are on my CV any more.

I sort of dropped that stuff of when I got my degree.

I just fed the rabbit and handed out milk.

You are showing your age, didn't Thatcher stop the milk at schools?

I did 9 too which was the case for most kids in our year, with a few of the smarter ones doing 10.

I say 'smarter'.. I was one of the few that didn't get straight As in everything.

It was Mr McCarran who stopped it at mine. Yes I'm old, don't know how old though I've ran out of fingers and toes.

I'm still pissed that they told us electricity flows pos -> neg at GCSE, then on the first day of A-Levels said "Yeah, that was a lie, because it's easier to understand."

Fucking literally the exact polar opposite of the truth.

I need to try and remember what GCSEs I did.

English Language, English Literature, Science, Further Science, Maths, History, Geography, Economics, French.

I think that's it.

English Lang, English Lit, Maths, Higher Maths, French, French for Business Studies, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Studies and Drama.

I then proceeded to fuck up my A-Levels to a near-unprecedented degree, partly due to having discovered girl (yes, just the one), partly due to soap-opera-plot-worthy developments but mostly due to extreme laziness.

Oh mothers. Tell your children. Not to doooo what I have done. Spend your life in sin and misery. In telephone tech support.

I like what Anthony Flack said about it years ago, most of all, and quote him at every opportunity: