A reader writes:
A few possible reasons for the phenomenon that Steyn mentioned of 1% a generation ago of British acts on the British pop charts having been privately educated to 60% today:
1.Well, the actual % of kids in private ed went up enormously under the Thatcher Terror of 1979-91 - almost doubled from about 5% to about 9%. The northern working class may not have done terribly well under Maggie, but the southern middle class most assuredly did. One can think of a lot of formerly petit bourgeious families who in previous generations might have eschewed the option on financial grounds, or because they thought that the snobby boarders were not for them: the Middleton family would be a paradigmatic example.
2. The whole of the UK pop/theatre/cinema/dance/arty farty/ TV/luvvie sector is massivley skewed towards the London area: where most of the rich kids already be livin'. Number of kids in private Ed in surrey is probably about 25% - South Sheilds, it's probably 2.5%. Being proletarian and/or northern and/or /Celtic like the Beatles or Sean Connery or Richard Burton or Cilla, or the Kinks, or the Stones or the Who, just doesn't seem to be fashionable in Luvvieland like it was in the swinging sixties: all English actresses want to do these days is dress up in bodices and do Jane Austen.
3. Quite a few of these kids seem to come from already established showbiz families who came from more humble beginnings, but made money out of rock n roll/acting etc in the 60s, 70s 80s -Lilly Allen would be an excellent example: does seem to be lot of nepotism and networking going on there.
4. The public schools are there for a reason: to give their kids advantages. Zeitgeist is their middle name. Up till circa 1960, they were there to provide army and navy officers and colonial administrators. In the 80s (when I was in Uni - in some tutorial groups, the only non-privately educated kid there) everyone wanted to be Gordon Gecko (or at any rate the better spoken English character played by Terence Stamp ) which was regarded with horror by many of their parents, who didn't grasp that the empire wasn't there any more. These days, they seem to be deliberately targetting the creative/music/theatre sector as a place to send these upper middle class brats, which woulda been unthinkable in my day.
5. The Cockneys are all in Spain, having abandoned London to get away from the Effnic majorities - as they are now in the inner city - or they're hiding out from The Yard.
A few points here
ReplyDeletea) prior to 1970-odd, High School education in the UK was selective - bright kids went to 'grammar schools', the rest to 'secondary moderns'. That meant that a middle class kid didn't need private education - we all considered that such education was for 'thick rich kids'.
b) but then in most parts of the country selective education was abolished (by ministers who had themselves been educated at top private schools) - with the result that many state secondaries became educational disaster zones, and there was a stampede of those who could afford it towards private education.
c) This was particularly the case in London, where some minorities made school attendance actually dangerous. Sound familiar ? Fortunately the London middle class (or the City types anyway) can afford private fees, unless you can get into one of the very few elite state or Catholic schools like Holland Park (Miliband brothers) or the Brompton Oratory (Blair's children).
d) when I was at grammar school in the 1960s, the local private school was struggling to keep pupil numbers up. Now it's twice the size it used to be.
e) when the grammars went down the tubes, their music education went down too - but at private schools music education thrives.
f) while the sixties bands may have been working class, the 70s prog-rockers weren't. Genesis met at Charterhouse I think, Pink Floyd also publicans. On the other hand Yes were from ordinary backgrounds.
"Anderson left school at the age of fifteen and went through a series of jobs including farm hand, lorry driver and milkman."
I don't think that is a particularly accurate analysis. :p
ReplyDeleteAnon's analysis in comment #1 is a lot more accurate than the OP. I am grammar school educated (Northern Ireland, where they weren't abolished); my son goes to private school, which I can't really afford, out of some concern for his physical safety, and some concern that he get an education, but also I don't want him to be the only white-British boy in his class.
ReplyDeleteShow business and politics in the UK are riddled with nepotism, but we do not seem to have the equivalent of the Barrymore and Huston acting dynasties here. That is because most of our top actors were gay. Even our Barrymore is gay. The awful Redgraves are the nearest thing we have to an acting dynasty. They were mainly gay but a few bisexuals have helped to continue the name.
ReplyDelete"The Cockneys are all in Spain"
ReplyDeleteLiving on benefits?
ReplyDeleteI was the original reader that Anon commented on. I would not disagree with any of his thesis: I don't think they are mutually exclusive necessarily.
Why Mrs Thatcher, the quintessential lower middle class Grammar School provincial meritocrat, in her earlier incarnation as Ted Heath's Minister for education, did so little to reverse the egalitarian lunacy which was loosed on the schools by the hairy 68ers, I just do not know: maybe cos she married money and sent her idiot son to Harrow
Anon states: "This was particularly the case in London, where some minorities made school attendance actually dangerous. Sound familiar ? Fortunately the London middle class (or the City types anyway) can afford private fees, unless you can get into one of the very few elite state or Catholic schools like Holland Park (Miliband brothers) or the Brompton Oratory (Blair's children).
I was born in Brixton in the mid sixties: most of my relatives there remembered it as a sleepy rather boring place where nothing much exciting ever happened. By the time i was a teenager there in the early 80s, it was a war zone. The local whites fled from the cultural enrichment as the red squirrel flies from the grey: except for a few yuppies who moved in as some sort of fashion statement and provided us with a schadenfreudistic frisson whenever they got mugged.
every time you write about british "Class" i read it as "Clash".
ReplyDeletenow there was a real british band. what do we get now? dumford and sons?
i'm guessing that black sabbath, judas priest, iron maiden, and def leppard were not exactly made up of the british upper class.
no need to even check wikipedia for the backgrounds of guys like sid vicious and johnny rotten.
How dare you suggest that any honest Cockney would be claiming Spanish benefits? They're living off all the bank heists. Aint you seen "Sexy Beast" with Ray Winstone?
ReplyDeleteIt's the private schools who have the music lessons, the drama clubs and so on. The Forces of Progress set out to bugger up state education and achieved their aims - the greatest act of philistinism in British history.
ReplyDelete"Up till circa 1960, they were there to provide army and navy officers and colonial administrators.
ReplyDelete...
These days, they seem to be deliberately targetting the creative/music/theatre sector...
Why should third-worlders be expertly governed if they can be expertly entertained instead?
Joe Strummer was a boarding school boy. Strummer's father was a diplomat and spy, a close friend of Kim Philby's.
ReplyDeleteI do genuinely believe that the upper middle class privately educated Labour types like Shirley Williams, Tony Crossland and their aiders and abettors from similar backgrounds in the Universities, teacher training colleges and civil servants and educationalists UK dept of Ed who did such catastrophic damage to the UK school system in the sixties and seventies, were consciously or unconsciously motivated by a desire to have as un-level a playing field as possible for their own offspring vis a vis the state school brats: to try and keep up the intergenrational monopoly on the top jobs. No other explanation makes sense. The great Theodore Dalrymple actually suggested this on TV a while back.
ReplyDeleteI aced the 11 Plus: my reward was to go to the local school which had just been amalgamated with the Secondary Mod down the road to form a new Comprehensive in which 50% were Grammar schoolers, the other half a bunch of (mainly very dumb and violent) secondary mod kids who just beat us up the whole time. I had to take a screwdriver into school every morning. Five kids in my year out of over 150 got into University.
Then, even worse, you had to make common cause with these oiks when the Afro-carribean community from a mile down the road tried to mug you or burn the place down every night.
http://www.davekehr.com/?p=1584
ReplyDeleteThe Stones were neither northern nor proletarian. They were middle-class suburban Londoners. Their main cultural influence was sartorial-- they were the first truly scruffy band-- I mean group. Every other group wore matching suits, even (believe it or not) the Animals, with the jazzier Manfred Mann and Zombies going for a dated beatnik look.
ReplyDeleteThe main exceptions to the Northern-prole-pop/Southern-bourgeois-blues rule-of-thumb were the Animals (Newcastle) and Dave Clark Five (Tottenham).
The Zombies we're from St Albans (the town, not the school), in the middle of the country, and were derided for their 'toff' accents. But Colin Blunstone claims their origins were as humble as any others', and 'that's just how we talk in Hertfordshire.' Still, they had the smartest sound of any group.
Speaking of the Animals, the bourgeois Eric Burdon was the bluesman, while the dirt-poor Alan Price leaned toward pop and music hall on his solo work. As in Philly, the poor kids didn't want to sing the blues, they wanted to escape them!
"The Zombies had the smartest sound of any group."
ReplyDeleteYes, I only know two of their hits, but they sound smart. "She's Not There" from 1964, which sounds far advanced over other British Invasion groups, and "Time of the Season" from 1967???, which sounds like they got out ahead of the Beatles' Abbey Road sound.
"As in Philly, the poor kids didn't want to sing the blues"
ReplyDeleteWe gotta get out of this place, if it's the last thing we ever do.
I interviewed the married couple who wrote that song, Barry Mann and Cythia Weill. It was going to be Mann's breakthrough as a rock star, but the Animals beat him to it, and he had to admit that the Animals singing about getting out of a coal mining town kind of topped his singing about getting out of Brooklyn.
It became a theme song for American soldiers in Vietnam.
I propose an explanation with a somewhat different emphasis:
ReplyDeleteThe British working class hardly exists any more-- its heirs have all devolved into the British welfare-dependent-drunken-yob/ football-hooligan class.
Children from that class are so remarkably degraded and intoxicated that they don't even enter singing contests any more, much less form bands or participate in theatre.
So the only groups from which talented youngsters can emerge are the salaried- and upper- classes. Many of those young people go to non-State schools because their parents want to keep them out of the drunken-hooligan class.
Elite culture has been globalized, popized, and princess di-ized.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9b655e8e-70bd-11e2-85d0-00144feab49a.html#slide0
ReplyDeleteThere's also the fact that in the 1950s and 1960s, upper class people had not yet been persuaded to embrace lower class White and nonWhite culture for the most part. They were still going through the same upper class motions of their ancestors.
ReplyDeleteBy the end of the 70s that was over. Everybody now dressed like either trailer trash, pimps or aluminum siding salesmen. Everybody looked like hell in a hand basket.
Once the Leftist pathology had entirely permeated mainstream culture, THEN the upper-middle and upper classes began to participate in their own cultural destruction.
John Cronin,
ReplyDeleteJust out of interest, what secondary school did you attend?
- I was attending school in Streatham, south London, at around the same time. Your story rings a bell with me.
Anon: went to Clapham College (just by Clapham South Station) 76-83
ReplyDeleteClapham College was the premier Catholic school of that part of south-west London (Balham, Clapham, Tooting), I believe.
ReplyDeleteThe educational geniuses who ran British state education in the 1970s had the very bright idea of putting a posh grammar school (Emmanuel School, founded in the 1500s, and in those days state funded), bang next to one of the roughest, toughest, blackest comprehensives in London (Spencer Park, alas no more).
Needless to say the Emmanuel kids got the sh*t kicked out of them on a daily basis - and their distinctive 'Just William' style school caps stolen as trophies.
The Labour Party of he '70s wanted to merge Emmanuel (an ancient school going back to Elizabethan days that taught an awful lot of eminent men) with Spencer Park. Emmanuel took a vote of parents and went private. It has since thrived and never looked back. If Labour had their way it would now be destroyed and forgotten.
FAO Grammar School boys.
ReplyDeleteYou Grammar school types so often sound like Ronnie Barker in the 'Two Ronnies' 'I know my place' sketch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2k1iRD2f-c
You didn't go to a fee paying school but your better because you got to where you are today on merit and a least your not a chav.
However, the eleven-plus was not and is not an IQ test but mostly a test of education up until that point.
As I am sure you are aware, many parents in Grammar School areas employ(ed) after school tutors specifically to help their kids pass the eleven plus.
So, it did not and does not sort kids out in terms of potential, but frequently on other factors.
You may argue that this is/was a good thing anyway, but lets drop the nonsense that bright kids went to 'grammar schools', the rest to 'secondary moderns' because it isn't true, it is/was the wrong sort of test and the figures don't support that view.
Click on this link and search for Koestler and that will bring you to the relevant part:
http://ia600202.us.archive.org/6/items/TragedyAndHope/TH.pdf
But here it is anyway:
A survey of more than four thousand
children, reported by Thomas Pakenham in The Observer, concluded that "the 11-plus
examination and our selective educational system itself are seriously biased in favour of
middle-class children and against virtually all those from poorer families." Using I.Q.
tests that are themselves biased in favor of middle-class children, the survey showed that
of all eight-year-old children with I.Q.'s of 105, only 12 percent of lower-class children
were subsequently able to get to grammar schools, while 46 percent of those from the
middle class could get to grammar schools (and thus get access to a curriculum preparing
for college). Of eight-year-olds with I.Q.'s of 111, 30 percent from the lower class but 60
percent of a higher social background subsequently reached grammar school. And of
those exceptional children with I.Q.'s above 126, about 8: percent of both social levels get
to grammar school.
These figures are taken from a recent volume, edited by Arthur Koestler, entitled
Suicide of a Nation? ( Hutchinson, 1963).
I don't regard ex-Grammar school types a class enemies, but you lot really do come across as a bit smug sometimes.
Secondary Modernist; read the bloody message. I didn't GO to a Grammar School. It was comprehensivised the year before I started. And it was a bloody disaster (I mean literally bloody in some cases)
ReplyDeleteThe other thing is it was a Catholic Comprehensive. If there's one thing worse than going to school along with white trash, it's going to school alogside 2nd and 3rd generation South London Irish white trash. I can say this as I'm a Mick meself: although my Hibernian cousins all used to deride us as "Plastic Paddies)
And, as Anon points out, if there's one thing worse - lots worse - than attending a school with lots of South London Irish hooligans, it's attending a school on the next block to an establishment which is 90% Afro-Carribean. I remember Spencer Park well: I think my schoolmates may have stabbed a few of em over the years.
As I said, pre war Brixton was an extremely boring, slightly grotty lower middle class hood where the only exciting occurrence in a century had been the Zeppelin raid of 1916 (which incidentally killed most of Max wall's family) Brixton in 1985 was pretty much uninhabitable.
while the sixties bands may have been working class, the 70s prog-rockers weren't. Genesis met at Charterhouse I think, Pink Floyd also publicans. On the other hand Yes were from ordinary backgrounds.
ReplyDeleteRoger Waters was the odd man out. All other Pink Floyd membrs were middle-class. Contrast Gilmour´s and Water´s singing in the track "Confortably numb". Easy to tell their background from the way they pronounce.
Supertramp had a similar situation with Roger Hodgson (publican) and Rick Davies who never got on well partly due to their different backgrounds.
Most other ands were middle-class (Jethro Tull, King Crimson).
Prog-rock appealed to musicians with a classical training.
Anonymous: More on Spencer Park "school"
ReplyDeleteI am sure you remember the Clapham Junction train crash in 87 or 88 when about fifty people were killed. An ex schoolmate of mine who was in the Met at the time said that a lot of the Emmanual kids came down to try and help the injured up the embankment (accident was literally right beside the school) Said copper then said. "It's a good thing we got there before Spencer Park came on the scene, or they'd have been out stripping the bodies."
A (perhaps over long) response to sec mod
ReplyDeleteYou say
"However, the 11-plus was not and is not an IQ test but mostly a test of education up until that point. I STRUGGLE TO THINK OF ANY TEST WHICH CAN 100% DISTING TWEEN THE 2
As I am sure you are aware, many parents in Grammar School areas employ(ed) tutors specifically to help their kids pass the 11pluseleven plus.
OOOH!! SCUM. KULAKS. TAKE THEIR KIDS INTO CARE TO BE BUGGERED BY SOCIAL WORKERS!!
So, it did not and does not sort kids out in terms of potential, but frequently on other factors.
IN THE REAL WORLD HOW CAN THESE FACTORS BE UNTANGLED?
lets drop the nonsense that bright kids went to grammar schools, the rest to secondary mods' because it isn't true, it is/was the wrong sort of test and the figures don't support that view.
I DID NOT SAY THAT EXACTLY. ANON WAS OBVIOUSLY OVER SIMPLIFYING HERE A BIT, BUT GENERALLY, THE UPPER QUARTILE WENT TO THE GS’S. IN A GOOD YEAR I THINK BOUT 29% PASSED IN AVE YR..
OBVIOUSLY THERE WERE INIQUITIES MISTAKES ANOMALIES, AS IN ANY HUMAN ENDEVOUR. KIDS WHO FAILED AT 11, FOR EX WERE oftenGIVEN A 2ND OR 3RD SHOT AT 12 OR 13 AND TRANSFERRED. WAS NOT UNKNOWN FOR UNACEDMIC KIDS WHO FLUKED A PASS TO BE TRANSFERRED THE OTHER WAY
A survey of more than four thousand
(WELL THAT’S A REP SAMPLE, INNIT?)
children, reported by Thomas Pakenham (SON OF LORD LONGFORD COUSIN OF THE GHASTLY HARRIDAN HARPERSON, AND A STEREOTYPE EXAMPLE OF THE GUILT TRIPPED WET ARISTO WHO DID SO MUCH TO MAINTAIN BRITAIN’S STATUS POST WAR)
- in The Observer, WHICH WOULD HAVE SUPPRESSED ANY EVIDENCE WHICH CONTRADICTED IT concluded that "the 11-plus
examination and our selective educational system itself are biased in favour of mid-class children and against virtually all those from poorer families. WELL, THEY WOULD SAY THAT, WOULDN’T THEY, TO PARAPHRASE MANDY RICE-DAVIES" Using I.Q.tests that are themselves biased in favor of middle-class children, the survey showed that of all eight-year-old children with I.Q.'s of 105, only 12%t of lower-class children were subsequently able to get to grammar schools, while 46% of those from the middle class could get to grammar schools (and thus get access to a curriculum preparing for college). Of eight-year-olds with I.Q.'s of 111, 30 percent from the lower class but 60percent of a higher social background subsequently reached grammar school. And of those exceptional children with I.Q.'s above 126, about 8: percent (THIS SH OULD PRESUMABLY BE 80%? of both social levels get to grammar school.)
1. THE avail OF GRAMS V SEC MODS WAS SPOTTY. SOME AREAS HAD A MUCH LARGER % WHICH OBVIOUSLY MADE IT EASIER FOR THE MID CLASS KIDS. IN LARGE AREAS OOP NORTH, GRAMMS WERE PRETTY THIN ON THE GROUND IN REL TO THE SUNNY SOUTH. MANCHEST GRAMMAR , FOR EXAMPLE MIGHT AS WELL HAVE BEING A PUBLIC SCHOOL AS THE LOCAL BOURGY WOULDA FOUGHT LIKE MAD TO KEEP OUT THE PROLES. BUT THIS IS NOT AN ARGUMENT FOR THEIR ABOLITION
2. ALSO A LOT OF WORKING CLASS KIDS JUST UNDOUBTEDLY felt OUT OF PLACE THERE. GEORGE BEST, FOR EXAMPLE GOT ONE OF THE HIGHEST SCORES IN N IRE BUT HATED IT (A) COS THEY PLAYED RUGBY, (B) HE WAS THE ONLY KID THERE TO COME FROM HIS ROUGH AS F*** PROD BACKGROUND THERE AND (C) LAST BUT NOT LEAST HAD TO TAKE THE BUS 5 MILES THROUGH CATHOLIC TERRITORY EVERY DAY . DENNIS SKINNER MP BELIEVE IT OR NOT PASSED IT AT NINE AND WENT TO GRAMMAR. I KID THEE NOT
These figures are taken from a recent volume, edited by Arthur Koestler, JESUS – YOU ARE SERIOUSLY QUOTING THE PARANORMALIST RAPIST AS AN AUTHORITY??? -
I don't regard ex-Grammar school types a class enemies.
WELL, GEE THAT’S SWELL OF YOU, SECONDARY MODERNIST, FEELING IS OCATED. I DO HOWEVER REGARD POLLY TOYNBEE, HARRIET HARMAN, TONY BLAIR TONY BENN, ED MILLIWIERD AND ALAN RUSBRIDGER AS MINE, AND WOULD GLADLY SEE THEM SWINGING FROM A LAMPPOST AFTER A (VERY) BRIEF PEOPLE’S TRIAL.
John Cronin said...Secondary Modernist; read the bloody message.
ReplyDeleteJohnny me old mate.
My comment wasn't particularly aimed at you and contained a line in bold and italics from the first comment here.
Aside from that, I sympathise with your unfortunate experiences at school.
I don't come from your neck of the woods. But...as a youngster I was at various times beaten up, mugged, assaulted, threatened, and so on, all by various persons of vibrancy - although all of the same particular category of vibrant personage.
It has been my experience that if you talk about that to people from the whiter parts of Britain, like Scotland, Wales, Devon, Newcastle and so on, that can only mean you are an evil racist even though you were on the receiving end of such vibrant cultural practices - which of course, we should all be celebrating.
The icing on the cake, the ultimate proof that you an evil nazi, being that you have a working class accent from London or somewhere near there. No more evidence of ones utter evilness and hitler-worshiping will be required.
So, like you, I have experiences that can never be shared in polite company.
We should have some sort of secret handshake or sign that we are fellow knowers of dreadful truths.
If the Emmanuel parents didn't vote to go private back in 1977 (the Labour govenment of that time vowed to 'close every fucking grammar school' in the words of the Labour Education Minister), it would no doubt have merged with Spencer Park, down the road and 500 yeras of proud history would have gone down the drain.
ReplyDeleteAnother less illustrious south London grammar school, Battersea Grammar voted to stay in the state system 35 years ago (the parents were probably less well-heeled on average than Emmanuel parents), Now it's completely obliterated and forgotten.
>> John Cronin said...
ReplyDeleteAnon: went to Clapham College (just by Clapham South Station) 76-83
2/12/13, 1:02 AM
Anonymous said...
Clapham College was the premier Catholic school of that part of south-west London (Balham, Clapham, Tooting), I believe.<<
And I live in Tooting. Because I could not afford to buy a house in a posh area where the State schools are decent/safe/mostly upper-middle-class white-British, I have to impoverish myself sending my son to private school in Wimbledon for as long as I can. Then the well-off left-liberals in Islington can look down on me because their kids go to State school!!
@Secondary Modernist - I went to a bog standard primary school in Northern Ireland, took the 11+, got into grammar school same as my dirt-poor mother before me. All my friends at school in Belfast were working class, mostly low-end working class (as in dad doing life for terrorism, according to rumour). No 'coaching' going on, and we got a good education.
ReplyDeleteObviously these days in England there is heavy coaching for the few remaining grammars and they're heavily middle class, but that was not the case in Belfast in the '80s, and I'm sure it was not the case in England before they were abolished. Maybe a few not so bright upper middle class kids were coached, but the Grammars took 30% of the population so most of the upper middle class didn't need to bother, and lots of working class kids got in on pure ability. I never got any coaching for the 11+. The only coaching I got was for GCSE German, which probably helped me scrape a 'B'.
Secondary Modernist quoting that Fount of Wisdom, the Observer:
ReplyDelete"Using I.Q. tests that are themselves biased in favor of middle-class children"
Or: 'middle class children average higher IQs than lower class children'. Because IQ
(a) aids upward social mobility, eg my mother's journey from Northern Irish potato field to academia, and (b)Is partially heritable.
Secondary Modernist:
ReplyDelete"Of eight-year-olds with I.Q.'s of 111, 30 percent from the lower class but 60 percent of a higher social background subsequently reached grammar school"
Whereas now the % of IQ 111 working class English kids who get to Grammar school is approximately 0%.
Due to regression to the mean effects, the actual IQs of the lower class kids who scored 111 was probably lower than that of the upper middle class kids who scored 111. I saw this at my Grammar; the lower-stream classes were dominated by lower class kids who had got lucky on the 11+. That's a flaw in testing but it's not easily avoidable.
And of course the upper middle class kids will have had other advantages.
At the risk of turning this correspondence into a mystifying bore for steve, American readers and readers from other parts of globe, I'll pontificate on the parlous state of British state education a little longer.
ReplyDeleteThe Labour administration of 1974-9 really went to town with their mission of destrying grammar schools. They were true zealots and thought of thesmselves as the moral equiavlent of American anti-segregationists (whom they aped) and the 'bussing' campaign which ran around roughly the same time, only the preoccupation was with 'class' rather 'race'. (This formerly was the great British division, but in true aping America style, 'race' is now the dominant theme and class is more or less ignored, in particular Labour have turned their backs on the poor).
eDucation in Britain was largely in the hands of local authorities. A few local authorities, run by Tories, managed to hum and haw, drag their feet and outlast the Callaghan government and when Thatcher came along ttheir grammar school were safe. This was in accord with the preponderence of public opinion.
In Greater London, both the boroughs of Sutton and Kingston retained their grammar schools. In central London, education was run by the now defunct ILEA, which was directly politically elected, dominated by out and out marxists and had an absolutely appalling record. Maggie more or less abolished ILEA by decree.
Anyway, the best performing state school in England is Tiffin School in the borough of Kingston-Upon-Thames, Surrey (but really Greater London), a grammar school that was saved by the tenacity of the local council. These days a huge proportion of Tiffin pupils are of Chinese or subcon origin. If selection ever returned to mainstream secondary education in London (which it won't), I have no doubt whatsoever this trend will be virtually universal.
http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2013/02/newark_police_hunt_for_suspect.html#incart_river_default
ReplyDeleteTo: Secondary Modernist
ReplyDeleteI salute you, comrade. Anyway, I thought IQ was like, an ardeefishul social construct, man.
Incidentally, I once scored 134 on the Stanford-Binet. Mr Sailer, is that good or bad?
Simon
ReplyDeleteI went to a bog standard primary school in Northern Ireland...
I am very happy for you. However, do remember that anecdotes do not equal data, and your own experience, whilst very interesting, does not undermine the point that I made.
Secondary Modernist quoting that Fount of Wisdom, the Observer
If you had followed the link you would have seen that the quote comes from the book Tragedy & Hope by Carroll Quigley which in turn quotes The Observer which in turn quotes figures from Arthur Koestler's book Suicide of a Nation?
That would be Arthur Koestler who not only wrote Darkness at Noon but was awarded the Sonning Prize "for outstanding contribution to European culture" and, in 1972, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).
Carroll Quigley attended Harvard University, where he studied history and earned B.A, M.A., and Ph.D. degrees. He taught at Princeton University, and then at Harvard, and then at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University from 1941 to 1976.
From 1941 until 1969, he taught a two-semester course at Georgetown on the development of civilizations. According to the obituary in the Washington Star, many alumni of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service asserted that this was "the most influential course in their undergraduate careers".
In addition to his academic work, Quigley served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Navy, the Smithsonian Institution, and the House Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration in the 1950s.
Now, if it was good enough for Carroll Quigley its good enough for me.
Simon, amongst other things Steve Sailer blogs about HBD and from time to time IQ.
I'm sure Steve Sailer and his readers understand the point I've made, even if you find it uncomfortable.
To reiterate, the eleven plus was not an IQ test but mostly a test of a child's education up to that point and therefore, it cannot be said with any accuracy that "bright kids went to 'grammar schools', the rest to 'secondary moderns'.
From today's Daily Mail: The Essex blonde Towie fan who's officially smarter than Albert Einstein! Lauren, 16, scores a whopping 161 on IQ test
ReplyDeleteRead more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2277493/The-Essex-blonde-whos-officially-smarter-Albert-Einstein-Lauren-16-scores-whopping-161-IQ-test.html#ixzz2Kiv7llI2
Read the comments.
Chav's with brains!!!!
The horror! The horror!
This thread and the previous one has stirred old memories. John Cronin - are you the guy who wrote 'The Forgotten Victims' for Right Now ?
ReplyDeleteIt's well worth a read, about the killing of elderly Brits in vibrant London.
http://web.archive.org/web/20021122164913/http://www.right-now.org/articles/rn2702.htm
And music journalist Simon Price, perpetrator of one of the most SWPL pieces of journalism in world history (for the Independent newspaper in May 2008):
"I've been mugged three times in London. Now, looking at it objectively, spread over 20 years of living in one of the world's most crowded cities, that's not a bad tally. The trouble is this: every time, the perpetrators were young, male and black. On the third and most serious occasion, I was clubbed on the head with a metal bar, dragged into an alley, and held with a knife to my neck by one guy while his accomplice raided £500 from my bank account.
What do I "do" with that? The progressive thing to do is, if not write it off as a statistical blip, at least place it in the context of wider sociological factors. But one's intellectual and visceral responses are two different things, and as a committed anti-racist I was shocked to find myself flinching every time a young black male (particularly if dressed in a particular fashion) passed me in the street. Maybe I shouldn't have thrown that victim counselling leaflet in the bin.
This is precisely why Love Music Hate Racism needs to exist."
What Simon said. I came from a poor (no bathroom, toilet half way down the garden) but brightish family background - in 1964 no one had heard of coaching for the 11-plus. It was just something you took, and you passed or you didn't.
ReplyDeleteThere were plenty of well-off kids there, but if I had to guess at the class composition I'd say there were more kids from terraced houses than detached ones.
Not so now, of course. In those few counties where grammar schools still exist competition is fierce - because if you get in, you've saved tens of thousands in school fees for mum and dad. Passing the exam in a well-off family is the signal for Dad to take everyone off to the States for three weeks in the summer.
To: Anonymous
ReplyDeleteThis is actually a bit spooky. You has a dam' fine memory, bro. Yup, I wrote that piece in 2001. How the hell did you make the connection?
Anonymous: You were kind enough to describe Clapham Collegs as "The Premier catholic school in SW London" It might have been back in the sixties, before my time, but that status did not long survive merger with St Gerards Roman Catholic Secondary Modern.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, I assume you are "Anonymous" because you work for the government in some capacity and are not allowed to say rude things about multiculturalism?
Its interesting to note that now all three main parties in the UK are united in their opposition to grammar schools. Those that survive are tolerated - but thats it, no more.
ReplyDeleteInteresting because all the polling evidence would imply that most people would like to see them back.
A parallel with immigration policy of course, all the mainstream parties refusing to entertain policies that would guarantee them a huge number of votes.
Note: I went to secondary school at almost the same time as John Cronin. 76 - 82 in my case. My school had been a grammar not long before I arrived and the decline in the school was detectable.
Note also this was in Hatfield in leafy Hertfordshire, Colin Blunstone's (The Zombies) home town of Hatfield. See, its all connected somehow!
Genesis met at Charterhouse I think
ReplyDeleteMost of them but Phil Collins was a grammar school boy.
Secondary Modern:
ReplyDelete"Simon, amongst other things Steve Sailer blogs about HBD and from time to time IQ.
I'm sure Steve Sailer and his readers understand the point I've made, even if you find it uncomfortable.
To reiterate, the eleven plus was not an IQ test but mostly a test of a child's education up to that point and therefore, it cannot be said with any accuracy that "bright kids went to 'grammar schools', the rest to 'secondary moderns'."
I understand your point. You're ignoring mine, which is that when the 11+ test was working, SOME bright working class kids, and most of the brightest, did go to Grammar School. Nothing you said argues against that. Anyway I get the impression you're not exactly a person of good will; I rarely see anyone but bad guys use that "anecdotes do not equal data" crack.
@Secondary Modernist: Are you one of those John Prescott types who failed the 11+ and became filled with resentment against those who passed? Your statements above fit the profile.
ReplyDeleteI had a friend in Ulster, farming stock but dad an academic, fail the 11+. Instead of being filled with resentment he retook it at 13, got into a good Belfast Grammar, and is now a successful vet in the Republic. But of course anecdotes are not data and so can be ignored.
John - I'm the anon who wrote about the forgotten victims, not the one who wrote about Clapham College. Incidentally, I see that leftie professor and BBC regular Laurie Taylor chose to send his son Matthew, now a senior Establishment figure, to Emanuel.
ReplyDeleteI blogged your piece a few years after it came out.
http://ukcommentators.blogspot.co.uk/2004/08/stoke-newington-nightmare.html
and again in 2010
http://ukcommentators.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/geoff-was-epitome-of-london-man.html
Laban
"The Cockneys are all in Spain, having abandoned London to get away from the Effnic majorities"
ReplyDeleteThe urban working class are in the middle of an ongoing ethnic cleansing similar to the one that occurred in US cities from "West Side Story" days onwards.
When the grammar school issue comes up the only real criticism I see is Secondary Modern's attack. That the selection process was flawed, the 11+ dooming some children to a poorer education (nowadays thats done purely through family wealth and/or postcode lottery - much fairer /sarcasm).
ReplyDeleteWhat myself and others like is the potential for a more meritocratic education system, that doesnt discard poor-but-bright children. Issues with the selection system, with the 11+ could be addressed. Its not rocket science.
In short, anyone who attacks the grammar school concept and focuses on the 11+ as if it were some immutable constant of nature has got nothing. So much so that I believe their real issue is with meritocratic education and they secretly (and not so secretly) revel in the modern wasteland of British education.
There is a massive thread at the Daily Telegraph right now on the issue of Indian students entering UK universities.
The few, bitter SWPL liberal hold-outs on that thread love to carp about chavs, stupid whites etc and the wonderfulness of Indians. These are the same people who then apply their moral grandstanding to grammar schools. They are the ones condemning white kids to academic failure and then, with sickening hypocrisy ridicule them and compare them to non-whites who have, apparently, gone through a more meritocratic system.
"i'm guessing that black sabbath, judas priest, iron maiden, and def leppard were not exactly made up of the british upper class."
ReplyDeleteBruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden is very obviously privately educated (Oundle, in fact). Sabbath, certainly not. Def Leppard, I'm not sure.
The earlier wave of British rock was largely grammar-school - Ian Gillan of Deep Purple and Pete Townshend of The Who went to the same West London grammar.