Grim... wrote:
sinister agent wrote:
But anyway. On the plus side, I recently heard talking of scrapping the idiotic target (even taking on board the fact that most targets for public services are inherently idiotic) of 50% of people going to university. I'd imagine that would have been impossible even if it weren't actively dropped anyway, seeing as fewer than 50% of people can afford it.
Magic stats!
It says that 51% of girls went to uni in the article AnonX linked to, I think.
Yeah, and plenty of them couldn't afford it. Even taking into account the many who will leave anyway (not least because some never really wanted to go in the first place, but were strong-armed into it by their schools) for whatever reason, enough students leave with little but debt and stress to make me highly suspicious of the whole thing. And that's before we get onto whatever the coalition are going to do with fees for next year.
Anonymous X wrote:
My girlfriend differs in opinion. She thinks it's plain
mental that people can leave education completely at 16 in this country. When she's had her sisters and other relatives stay over, she's told them that most British people leave education at 16 and go out to work straight away without an apprenticeship. The response is always stunned shock, but they find that as an explanation why most of the population they encounter here are uneducated alcohol-abusing barbarians.
Still, I know what you mean, S.A. I found secondary school, latter secondary school, years 10 and 11 appalling, as it was impossible to learn properly a lot of the time. So many kids there didn't want to learn, so were disruptive and affected the outcomes for those of us who wanted to continue learning after 16. I enjoyed doing A-levels at an FE college so much as it was in an environment conductive to learning in a way that secondary school wasn't, as we were all voluntarily there. I'd hate A-levels to end up like GCSE Plus.
That's exactly it. In principle, more education is good. But not when that education is little but exam-schooling, box-ticking shite to begin with. It just becomes more of a bad thing, making the unbothered even less bothered, the disillusioned more disillusioned, and everyone else crowded out of any decent teaching time by the former.
NervousPete wrote:
(V for Vendetta stuff)
I'll be honest - my opinion of the film sank to almost zero with the very first lines V spoke. HEY LOOK HE IS CALLED V AND HE IS SAYING LOTS OF V WORDS LOL.
Vuck off, more like.
End of an Era wrote:
Saint's Row 1 & 2 are much better than the latest crop of GTA releases. Play them.
GTA is an increasingly impressive technological achievement, and usually well-written, etc. etc. With each release, though, they're becoming less fun. Saints Row tries to be fun and nothing else.