I know that educational purists believe in education for its own sake, but the average 14-16 year old doesn't. I have a notion of changing the curriculum to be highly vocational. Each week or two a particular business would be the focus across all subjects (with a few exceptions). In an ideal world, people from that business area would come into schools to share their experience.
So if this week's theme is railways, maths might be looking at equations to do with timetabling or track geometry; geography and history on how railways have shaped the country; English on writing an intelligible leaflets on fares. Next week it's building, so maths is about estimating, trig as applied to roofs or staircases; English, how to write letters to clients etc. Next week running an airline ....
The aim would be to make it evident as to *why* you need to learn this stuff, which most of time is far from obvious to a teenager.
But if you define poverty as having (say) less than 50% of the median income (ISTR that the official definition is something like this), it would be quite possible (in theory) to eliminate it
true. History should deal with a few big issues from their causes. Not , say, WW2 but from the causes of WW1 and reasons for historical anti semitism to rebuliding europe after WW2 and the foundation of the EU.
What makes you think they don't? My 15 year old son has just done some mock GCSE's and wrote essay answers for his history dealing with the causes of WW1 (and other topics).
My point was that you implied history today was "isolated snippets or a load of dates". His history is clearly not that, they are expected to analyse and explain over a range of subjects.
And those deprived of societal norms is defined in terms of percentage :) IOW the figure means that around 10% of people have income that means they cant afford what 90% of us have. Its completely meaningless.
LOL, that did strike me too! Our parents learnt strings of dates and lists of kings, now it seems to be islands of information. I'm not sure they always know what order they are in? I would like the core of the subject to be an understanding of how we brits got where we are now (obviously whitewashing any dodgy bits :-) ) including the industrial revolution, depression (topical!), the wars and the empire. Then take some world shattering events to study, say the vietnam war* or the 1966 world cup. :-)
*I saw a US yoof ask on facebooks version of usenet if the USA had ever lost a war.
I remember a scaffolder being interviewed on the radio recently and he said it was years later that he suddenly realised he needed Pythagorus' theorem to calculate the lenghts of scaffold poles, and his comment about the "so *that's* what it's for!!!" moment.
Mind you, I think 90% of what they teach in schools is useless crap. The problem is that you've no idea which 90% it is.
well if its invested in something tangible, its OK, what I meant was consumption on credit is a dead end street.
In the old days the bank manager taught you that the hard way.
it's personaldebt rather than corporate debt that is the main evil, but even corporate debt based on an economy that runs on consumer debt is terribly dangerous.
Yes. i only demand that they pay the social cost of their actions, rather than get free handouts because they have made the wrong choices.
Ah,but free responsible people who an think are the Enemy of the State that Gordon Brown and T Bliar would like to have.
You now so little of how finance works, its laughable.
Suppose you have 5o0 million quid, and you don't spend it?
what happens to it?
You invest it in something, even if its on;y a bank on deposit. What happens to it after that?it goes to help other people who
- need it
- have more or less a decent track record in paying it back
- do the things they want to do.
Your argument is Mugabe like in its simplicity: lets give all the land back to the people.
A little bit to each.
What happens? there is no farm big enough left or with the expertise to be profitable. There is no farm left that can afford to raise the capital for a tractor, or a grain silo.
Instead of everybody getting equally richer, the whole country gets poorer, and everyone is equally poor, except a very tiny elite who go around enforcing order at the wrong end of a gun.
If Marx had written 'from each according to his abilities, and to each according to his abilities' we wouldn't be in this mess.
The whole point of capitalism is to accumulate capital so that it is available to fund progress towards, hopefully a better society for all.
If you simply give it all away, or, worse still, borrow even more than you have, and give that away too, people will spend it, and then its gone for no more benefit than a year of easy living.
If you have borrowed, that means you have effectively sold your population into economic slavery for years.
What Nu Laber is, is ultimately a sort of feudal monarchy. Where everyone owes everything to King Gordon, and if they are lucky and get their noses Brown enough, they get some back.
I wouldn't mind so much if Gordon lived on a sink estate, on £50 a week, and his kids went to the local 'knife and crime' comprehensive, but they don't do they?
Instead the arch class warrior Prescott, plays croquet on the lawns at Chequers..
This isn't levelling, this is simply grinding the middle classes down, and taking it all for the local Mafia: instead of a multiplicity of place where you might raise capital, there is only one, and thats a political institution, that needs to placate its shareholders. At least with a bank, they only care about profit. The government wants control.
Capitalism and the accumulation of capital is the engine that drives progress. Socialism is a fine idea, that tries to make sure no one gets left too far behind: in that I applaud it, but if it takes over, it halts all progress, and taken to its logical conclusion reverses progress.
The myth of equality is at the heart of all this. People are not equal, they never were and never will be. Some can be trusted with money and power, most cannot. The ability to accumulate it and keep it is at least half an indication that they can be trusted with it. The ability to hoodwink an electorate is not.
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