Be Excellent To Each Other

According to a report referred to in this Guardian article.



Ooooh. Dangerous stuff. And, OH NOES! He's stirred the mighty beast that is our fine National Union of Students:




Hmm. In order to consider this chap's argument, we can either assume that either (1) IQ is hereditary, or (2) IQ is a function of education as well of innate ability.

In situation (1), parents with high IQ are likely to have children with high IQ. The fact that the parents have high IQ (and likely going back several generations before them), means that they are more likely to have been successful and more likely not to be working class. Ergo, same for their kids.

So in this instance, they’re looking at it the wrong way around – it’s not that poor people have low IQs, it’s that low IQ people are more likely to be poor. Which (acknowledging some exceptions like Jordan and Peter Andre) is fairly self-evident as an outcome. So Mr Charlton is right, here - if some poor people are innately less able, then to give them a leg up into a university they're not capable of otherwise getting into is anti-meritocratic. And probably counter productive for the students.

HOWEVER, we have situation (2), in which IQ (which he's taking as the be-all and end-all measure here) is not just a function of innate ability, but also determined by your education.

Poorer people are indisputably likely to get a worse education than rich people, merely by virtue of being poorer. Richer, better educated parents are more likely to either (a) play the system to get their kids into a good school (b) be able to afford a house in the catchment area of a good school or (c) be able to afford to send their kid to private school, or pay for extra tuition.

So, poor people are disadvantaged by the system, and clever poor kids can end up as lower academic achievers despite having a higher innate ability than some of their richer peers. And it's that initial disadvantage which is resulting in them being dumped on the "low IQ" scrap heap and told they're not good enough to get into university with all the rich kids.

Hmmm.

I'd say that's not just insulting, but adding insult to injury, myself. Unless he can seriously argue that IQ is 100% entirely genetic....

Middle class teenage girls are more likely to get abortions than working class girls.

EDIT: If they get up the duff, natch.

Um, different topic, perhaps.

You're missing a salient point here Chris, who the fuck wants to get into Oxford or Cambridge? Not me. I've seen the people that go there, arrogant fripperty wankers who, if I was forced to share their company for any length of time, I would have to maim horribly.

And what's with that fucking bizarre propensity for calling Maths students 'Mathmos' and Computer Science students 'Compscis'? I'm sure other subjects have equally inane abbreviations and it's all part of the elitist, snooty attitude.

Give me someone with common sense and a humble attitude to life over some stuffy toff who think he's god's gift.

Plus, all the fit girls go to other Uni's.

At ATP I met someone called Arthy, who actually like electronic music before normal indie/rock/metal bands, which I thought was quite strange because im sure the usual formula is the other way round for the majority of people. Anyway he said he was getting into music earlier this year and bout 150 CDs, its only 5 months old this year how the fuck do you have enough time to listen to all them. oh yeah i forgot to say he went to oxford, in plus points he liked hope of the states, and had heard of the hype foundation who are a local band and I actually practised with them like 3 times. whoa look at me.

But it's universities generally, as well as Oxford and Cambridge in particular, though - so this isn't resricted to those bastions of education for the nation's finest toffee-nosed cunts.

And - some good mates of mine went to Oxford and they were lovely before and after going there, so do bear in mind it's not just the cunts that go there.



GAAAAH.

Sorry, but stabby death for that apostrophe.

EDIT - Runcle, are you sure you posted that in the right thread, mate?

EDIT EDIT - Ah, I see.

I'm not sitting next to you at any BEETO meet then.

Sorry Chris, saying 'Unis' didn't look right somehow. I assert it's valid, because I'm missing a load of letters from 'Universities' and abbreviating it to 'Uni's', in much the same way 'did not' becomes 'didn't'. yeah? YEAH?

Sorry Kern, I'll always agree there are exceptions, however a dude I knew (5 A's at A level, the poncey twat) went to Cambridge (Corpus Christi College, don't you know) and he was a giant, giant arsehole and fit really well into my stereotype. Amusingly he only got a 2:2 for his degree, haha!

No offence taken. I did meet some obnoxious types, but as with most things it's very easy to avoid them.

Anyhow, as we know from 'Brideshead', anything other than a first or a fourth is a sign of a wasted undergraduacy.

Getting back on topic, as someone has said a lot of it depends on the belief in education as a beneficial thing. If you're striving to stay afloat and keep the debt collectors at bay, you aren't going to have the time to nurture such a feeling in your household.

Fuckin' argument thief.



Is it also not completely true though? By whatever means, nefarious or otherwise, the kids of better off parents are, by and large, getting a better education.

That's not what he's saying, though. He's saying that (a) poor kids have a lower IQ (which could be either because he believes that's hereditary or due to poor education. Or, from teh tone of his comments, merely because he thinks it's an inherent characteristic of the greatu nwashed) but then, and this is the main thrust of his argument, (b) it would be anti-meritocratic to help those poor kids go to university - despite the fact that a large part of the reason they can't get there is because they've had a shit education becuse they're poor.

It's basically "you're poor, you're thick, know your place and fuck off".

See?

Given that the future children of this forum will quite possibly have no choice but to attend a Faith School anyway, as part of the planning for the exciting Big War that we're going to all die in, I think the topic of what university they might otherwise have attended* is moot.

Also, there was an excellent documentary on last year called 'The Menace of the Masses', which I procured from UKNova, which is probably elsewhere, and which I can 'provide' if need be. Very pertinent to the discussion indeed.

*Except they won't because they're dead.

Have any Brummies been to University, or even 6th Form?

I guess it all hinges on your definition of meritocracy - is the meritous one the person that is smart or the person that could have been smart if only they'd been born to different parents? And should a university be a meritocracy?

The thing is, it's not really an issue to be solved at university level, is it? The kids that you want to let in are the smart ones, regardless of their background. If they had decent schooling at an earlier age, you'd know they were smart because they would be getting good enough grades at school to compete for university places.

FTFY, although I agree with what you're saying.

So let's just leave to rot the ones that are clever and could show they are clever if given appropraite education, at whatever age?

From that article:



Sounds like it's in the universities' interests to take them in, doesn't it?

IQ has two thirds of four fifths of fuck all to do with intelligence.

Do you know of anyone that HASN'T gotten into MENSA?

Craster.

Yeah, but he's a mong anyway.

In any drinking game at least, he's sub-mensa.

The only Brummie on here is mrak, as far as I know. However, myself and Dimrill have both attended university, and we're near-Brummie. He completed the course (a few years before I), and I dropped out during my placement year due to being unable to find a placement anywhere in the UK, and my university being staggeringly useless and actually self-defeating - which to their credit, they did at least admit.

At University, I learned about how shit the NHS' then-new IT system was. That was it. I already knew everything else from college, and from self-teaching. For education, it's shit, but for a bezzie, beery, debt-widening pissabout, it's great.

FWIW, I was born in Brum, and have been to Uni, and now work at the place that you hate people going to Uni at.

Milton Keynes!

No, let's focus on teaching them at the point where it's the state's job, not an independant academic institution's.

I went to drawing university. In Leeds.

We didn't have to read or write much.

This. The whole thin ghinges on IQ test = measure of intelligence, when it's simply not. It's a measure of how well you can do IQ tests. Getting a beter education (or simply doing more of those sorts of tests) particualrly at a young age, can give people an advantage on these tests, giving them a higher score even though they could be twice as cretinous as another kid who's clever but has simply never heard of spatial skills.



This assumes that grades indicate anything other than an ability to second-guess exam papers - an increasingly unrealistic assumption with every passing year.

Giving them decent schooling regardless of background is a no-brainer, obviously, but decent schooling doesn't always mean high grades, and the way our education system is currently run, anything other than training the children to mechanically pass exams instead of actually learning anything is considered dangerous radicalism.

Maybe subsequent generations are getting better at doing IQ tests. The whole measurement of intelligence has been called into question recently due to a study which has shown a statistically improbably leap in IQ scores in one single generation which if extrapolated backwards would make most people's great grandparents borderline imbeciles. Either that, or education and IQ are inextricably linked.

Elitism will always out - it's a failing of mankind that some people play their lives wanting to be better than some others. It's the relevant definition or conceit of "better" that causes all the problems.

Those independent institutions which get loads of government money to provide their education functions, you mean?

Faith Schools etc.

Nothing to see here - just another myptarded comment.

He seems to be also missing the likelihood that some intelligent people don't do that well at University because they are there to actually learn and perhaps ask the difficult questions that don't necesserily lead to a good degree.

Certainly true, but I think that's a different matter, though. His objection here seems to just be uppity poor folk wanting to get an education.

Well, people say this sort of thing all the while. It'd be more interesting to examine from a wide historical perspective.

Well, g'wan then.

The guardian reports that the labour minister for higher education thinks his objection is uppity poor folk wanting to get an education.

I haven't seen the full report, and I doubt you have, but I can't see a single thing in one of the quoted sections that looks to be factually incorrect or objectionable.

Well basically, go back... 150 years, and this sort of argument was commonplace. Essentially, that 'Menace of the Masses' film I saw is informing me here. The most pertinent link I can give is to Eugenics, which is basically the ultimate achievable argument/theory of this whole concept. That, y'know, the working class are illiterate and dangerous scum, but most importantly, must be kept that way and not allowed to be elevated any higher.

Relatedly, I've heard it argued that the one good thing about the Big Brother 'instant celebrity' effect, is that it does stick a proleish thumb quite deep into that eye. However, we already used to do this anyway, YEARS ago. And funnily enough it also began with 'B'. Very famous, someone ought to get this.

I realise that none of this refers specifically to the specific article by the specific person - but then well, it's a larger issue.

That's the way I read it, too, though.


Really? How about "On the contrary, the observed pattern is a natural outcome of meritocracy ". It most certainly is not. It's a result of rich people having access to better education. The quoted sections from Mr Charlton are clearly making the case that "poor people are thick, and that's the natural order of things, and that's why their aren't as many as poor people at university, so we should be doing nothing about it".

I'm genuinely surprised that you can't see the unpleasant attitude in those quotes.

EDIT @ AceAceBaby - true, true. But it served a useful purpose in batting Craster back a bit.

On another point the cynical among us may well believe that the Labour government's aim to get so many working class people into HE isn't an attempt to empower the critical faculties of such individuals but to undermine the notion of the working class itself. The 'Uses of Litaracy' isn't a positive one.

I haven't been around a University for a few years now. Are they still quite depressing places to be around?

I can. But WHY are they thick? Some predisposition?

Lack of opportunities.

Fucking hell, if you can't see the blinding obvious you must be so FUCKING THICK.

But once again, you're putting your own stamp on the word 'meritocracy'. In a meritocracy, the one that benefits is the one who is the best candidate. It's not the one who could have been best if they'd been given more investment earlier in their lives.

It's the guardian. It's massively capable of adding it's own sneery attitude through selective quoting.

From what I can see his comments are most likely factually correct. Quite unpleasant and damning of us as a society, but then he's an academic, not a politician.

...What? I was agreeing with Mr. Chris incidentally...

That's one of its aims?



Narf!



Yes they are. Most of 'em, at least.

Oh, goodness - don't do that.

I have no idea.

Are Oxford and Cambridge truly meritocratic though? Perhaps incorrectly I had always assumed that people who went to the 'right' schools had a better chance of getting in.