Steve - Welcomes Winter

I've decided that it's winter now.

It may seem a bit premature to decide it's winter in August... but, it's winter for all the reasons I like winter. I wore my coat out today, on a walk, at night, which was at 8PM. I love nightwalks, I look forward to being able to take them whenever when I'm at uni. It was so dark today, I loved it.

Here are some photos.










If you've not seen my photography before you're probably either thinking "...what's the point in that?" or something else. I hope it's something else!

Steve - Lambasts The Education System

I've just finished all my state education, couple of months back. I've been heavily critical of it since about year 10, but I feel like doing it again now, so I will.

My main issue, and what I believe is the crux of the issue, is qualifications.

My school's motto is relevant here. It actually has two mottos. A modern one, "Working Together for Excellence", and an older latin one which translates roughly as "Learn or Fuck Off" (actually as "Learn Or March", but that's less fun to say). The key words here are 'excellence' and 'learn'. Nowhere does it say "Get the Grades" or "Prepare for the Workplace". Sadly, this is what it's about. Teachers teach for exams. Exams are there to assess your ability in a subject and give you a bit of paper certifying that. Those certificates are used by businesses to choose the right employee.

Learning and understanding are merely coincidental. You only get that if it fits in with the course specification. Skeptical? Go up to a teacher after a lesson and ask them whether teaching to exams often comes at the expense of the ideal way a student would learn. The good teachers factor in a few non-curricular lessons to their schedules, and will explain things outside the course structure if you ask them to, but not all will, not all can!

Order is one of the best examples of this. When I was confronted with my first sums "2+5=8", I was under the impression that the you worked out the left hand side and put the answer on the right hand side. True, and enough to get me through that set of exams, but was it a helpful way of learning? A couple of years later they confronted me with sums that were 'backwards',"8=5+?", this made absolutely no sense to me. It was like making a sentence backwards. I told my teacher about this and she just said we had to do them backwards. If I had been taught what the equals sign actually meant, then this would have been easy to tackle. As it was, I was very confused.

And there's another example. Anyone who has been in school a while will be familiar with the chime "why do we have to know this?". We're brushed off with some answer about how it will be useful later on or that a qualification in German makes us more employable or whatever. Fact is, that doesn't help at all. To understand something properly, and I imagine this is true for others too, I need context. Context is essential to have a working knowledge of almost anything. All the teachers know is that we need to know it to pass the exam, but saying this would lead people to the conclusion that the whole system is pointless, and that is not good for well settled classes.

There's a concept called the 'hidden curriculum'. This is a word for a whole group of things that school teaches you but doesn't say it's teaching you. Getting up early in the morning is one, the intrinsic value of work, the idea of obedience to an authority figure, the subdivision of time into little blocks with little or no bearing on understanding or even reality (obedience to the bell) and the idea that there are specific times for specific things, conformance in general (ask anyone why you have a uniform and you'll see what I mean). What do all these things have in common? That's another concept called the 'correspondance principle', that school corresponds to the workplace, and a major function of the education system is simply to drum into you that these things are important.

In a sense, I'm stating the obvious. We all know:

1. We work hard
2. We get good grades
3. We get a good job
4. We get lots of money
5. ???
6. Happiness!

You know, one of the most offensive and/or shaking questions you can ask someone is "Are you happy [with your life]?". Try asking a couple of people, preferably those past their younger years and see what answers you get. Some people might get upset. Who would want to admit that all their life's work, completing step 1, 2, 3, and 4 at much expense, hasn't paid off. Admitting that they're not happy, fully admitting it, is effectively saying they've wasted a huge portion of their life. No one wants that.

Anyway, I digress. Most of us know that the education system is for getting us jobs. You might wonder how different things would be if we learned for learning's sake, I wonder that fairly often. But anyway, at least it's fair, right?

Those entering sixth form now will be completing something like an ALICE test. This can come in the form of a full test or just a questionnaire asking you your race, gender, parent's occupations, etc. Most don't give it a second thought. Most aren't told what they're used for.

They're used to set the first target grades, the grades that the school has to get most people achieving or it's failing, teachers don't touch them. If you're black or your parents have 'working class' jobs, or you don't answer the survey like I did, you'll find your target grades are perhaps even comically low. That's right, black and working class students are predicted lower grades. These grades are used to assess how the schools are doing. If the school is failing working class pupils for some reason, that's okay, because they were predicted lower anyway and the school's statistics won't suffer.

So why are they predicted low in the first place? Because on average, in order of widest gap:

• Middle class students achieve better than working class students.
• East-Asians and Whites achieve better than Pakistanis/Bangladeshis and Afro-Caribbeans.
  
• Girls achieve better than boys.

The argument goes that schools should not have to pay for the fact that certain groups achieve on average worse grades than others. It's not the school's responsibility. From the perspective of the statistics, this makes sense. Schools in working class areas, without the predicted grades lowering, would achieve less than schools in middle class areas. It essentially evens out the table. This makes sense if you're looking at protecting the schools and making the statistics valid.

What does this say about priorities in education? Do we care more about the individual student or the school/stats? Do we accept the inequality as it is (and, as it is, social class is six times more influential on attainment than IQ), or do we do our best to encourage schools to improve everyone? You already know the answer.

I studied Sociology. Can you tell? It's a bit ironic really. I probably learnt more in real terms on that two year course than I did on any other, mainly due to the quality of the teaching. Even then, because we had to cover so much in such a short time, we didn't actually read any theorist's work in depth. As for the other subjects... yes, I suppose maths I learned a lot, but there was no context so it's probably going to be totally useless to me. Computing was an utter joke. If I didn't know about computers before I started that course, I would have failed. Part of this was due to one of the teachers being absolutely terrible, but a large part of it was also due to the nature of the course. It was plainly wrong in some cases. But rather than actually learn about computers as I have been doing since I was 10, we... memorised facts about them. It was possibly the most useless, in terms of learning, course I have taken ever. I stopped going for the last three months because it was just insulting. I got a B. I could have done better, but it wouldn't have been worth it, every moment of that course was agony.

And yet I've coded and run three websites, innumerable scripts, and I've worked for three years as a computer technician. I got into a Writing course at an Arts university when I only took English to GCSE level and didn't even take an arts based subject that far. Go figure.

One day I'm going to start up a free school, and there won't be any fucking qualifications, just learning.

Well... this blog post was a good effort... went off the rails a bit at the end...

Steve - Feels Better Than He Did Earlier

So there's this girl.

Why is it always a girl? I don't know, that's a common question I ask myself. I suppose I did have a boy problem once, and he was my first real problem, and he did last pretty long, but still, I'm a sucky fag. More of an assertive gay dyke-mike. Assertive in the sense that, if someone's not already gay, their chances of becoming so increase the more time they spend around me. Yep, that's right, I turn girls gay! If I were more masculine I'd be a bit worried :P

Anyway, this morning I felt pretty ashamed, 'cause'f the email I'd sent her last night. It might have been because I finally hit on the truth. Then again, it might have been because I only got four hours sleep. It wasn't really an email to be ashamed of... *shrug*. I feel better now though.

I tidied a lot today, and stormed out a playlist for girl. I like it quite a bit. Dunno if she will, but perhaps, at least some of it. I also made a vague attempt at some poetry. I failed, but given that there's a finite number of failures before each success, I'm one step closer. Here's what happened:

It's a bitter irony,
where others fear too few
I fear too large a degree,
of that which makes you live,
as active.

Two envelopes lie

A clot in your brain

That's actually three pieces I tried to do. Failed at all three. I think I'm calling it... Stutter.

Steve - Ponders if They Really Do Get Everyone in the End

I'll get the hang of this blogging thing eventually...

Now is the time that everyone is going off to university, except some people who will be going in a couple of years.

I worry, you know, I worry a lot about this. Up to now schooling has been more or less compulsory. We've been effectively forced to go. This means we can hate it and console ourselves by saying "one day, I'll get out of this, and things will be better" and really believe it.

When we move on to post eighteen, we are making--very definitely--our own choices. This can be good, but it can also be bad. If someone takes business computing and doesn't like it, they don't rationalise it by saying "one day, I'll not have to do business computing any-more" they say "this is what life is like", or "the money's worth it", or "I don't know what else to do", or "Eh... it'll get better".

This means that people, especially more passive people, are effectively choosing the path for the rest of their lives. People who choose business computing now will probably be spending a considerable amount of their lives filling in spreadsheets or writing macros for Microsoft Office. And the scary thing is, the universities are in on it too. You pick up a few prospecti and you'll see people touting links with business and placement schemes. The World Of Work starts wrapping its tendrils around you from probably the second year.

To me, right now, nearly all the people I know are all beautiful. These are people who have not 'specialised', who still get big chunks of holidays in which they have their own time, who still have hours after school in which to pursue their own interests, people--above all--who are not owned.

The thought of these people becoming drones terrifies, angers, and physically sickens me.

Sure, they'll get married, go out a couple nights a week for drinks, go play golf with workmates, but is this really the life for an individual? Or is it a cage?

And I see it happening already. I'm losing people. Spontaneity is draining out of people, and they're getting 'rewarded' for it, for 'growing up'. I have a friend, a good few years into work, who recently spent probably around a month in solid overtime mode, working on weekends, etc. He won bread, sure enough, but he neglected his boyfriend in more ways than one, in my opinion, and... most of all... put his work before people. He's one of the biggest reasons I want to succeed in my plans, just to prove him wrong in what it is clear he believes: that I'm being naive. I can't wait for it. There's a bit of spite there, I'll admit.

So, the race is on to try to nudge people in ways I think will put them on less closed paths. Ones that, as mine, have the career prospects of a limp tangerine. Liberal arts courses are the obvious ones, though anything is better than something with 'business' or a synonym in the title.

At the same time... I don't want to unduely influence someone. I try to be transparant and explain my thinking to people rather than telling them to do things (though telling people never gets anywhere anyway), recommend them books and things, deconstruct things like the joys of working life, etc, but I still feel guilty about it sometimes... what if I'm wrong? What if I lead people into poverty or such? I'm trying to live by example, but this is all new to me too.

But when it comes down to it, I know it's more than I'm worth to stand by and watch people lose themselves and become Standardised. I know before long, five or ten years, most of my generation will be locked up in offices. There will be people who will never realise what they could be.

And that, more than anything else, is what kills me.

Steve - Is Nervous

20 days until I leave!

Things Steve has to do before he leaves (bigger font, bigger (in effort required) job):

Clean up out my room. Pack. Decide what to take. Pack! Finish his end-of-phase writing project. Read at least one of the many books he has bought off of his reading list. Compose grace's secret present (shh) ASAP. Complete forms and submit them ASAP. See Roby. Give Jade her present. Finish school intranet. Put this up in his sociology room. Return sociology books. Perfect school build system. Donate a couple of Steve Bruce pins to Sociology. Give English teacher a copy of his works, with a covering letter of thanks for encouraging him. Find true love!

So many things D: SO LITTLE TIME.