YES! This is particularly interesting to me as I was born just after the war. My father left so we became a one parent family with my mother working as a clippie on the buses to support us. I was lucky enough to pass the 11+ and go to a very good local state grammar school. We had a particularly good master who would often seem to go astray rather than follow the curriculum. We loved it, we weren't doing school lessons, we were having fun. Without going into detail I have only, in the last few years, realised what the crafty sod was doing. He was getting us to listen, analyse, question, research, debate and come to our own conclusions on any given subject. What a teacher! R.I.P. R.E.Jones (Scruff).
What an enlightened guy Peter Hitchens is about a range of subjects. His comments on grammar schools is spot on and was an act of utter vandalism of an effective education system and purely out of socialist dogma
This is particularly interesting to me as I was born just after the war. My father left so we became a one parent family with my mother working as a clippie on the buses to support us. I was lucky enough to pass the 11+ and go to a very good local state grammar school. We had a particularly good master who would often seem to go astray rather than follow the curriculum. We loved it, we weren't doing school lessons, we were having fun. Without going into detail I have only, in the last few years, realised what the crafty sod was doing. He was getting us to listen, analyse, question, research, debate and come to our own conclusions on any given subject. What a teacher! R.I.P. R.E.Jones (Scruff).
I went to one of the few remaining 11+ grammar schools in Yorkshire, in the 80s and my English teacher was in that mould...appropos of nothing made us watch, discuss and debate the incredible BBC jfk assassination documentary from '82 if I remember correctly...truly shocking for my young eyes and gave me a healthy distrust for government from a young age...cannot have been on the curriculum 😅
Absolutely. Might be some years go now but my daughter came home telling us of a school assembly where pupils were instructed to tell their parents to vote ‘remain’. At 17 and not yet able to vote herself, but an informed leaver, she thought that indoctrination unacceptable.
As a concerned parent I've scoured through the curriculum for toddlers and multi-cultural propaganda is threaded throughout under the guise of "British Values". If you look at the children's section of your average bookshop or library it is plain as day how very aggressively it is pushed. I was on the lookout for anything that hinted at noncery creeping in at such an early age.
The big push back has started. We just need to keep calling it out wherever it is and never backdown. Any homework related to any of it, don't let your children do it. Home school if you can. They're trying to remove parental rights. They're not your children, they're the states children now.
@@run2cat4run Liking someones cuisine and using a countries inventions doesn't make a country "multicultural". I honestly do not understand what you mean. Having a taste for tea, writing on paper, putting willow pattern on crockery and using gun powder doesn't make the people of British Isles partially culturally Chinese. However, it does tell you the story of the cultural and other - for good or ill - contact with China over the centuries. On the earlier "point" made, the type of multicultural propaganda promoted aggressively undermines native culture. It is done on purpose. The curriculum is a guideline to be implemented, that is all, but it steers heavily towards MC; and when it comes to recommended source material to use, there is a wealth of material from only a select few "cultures", and hey are not European cultures. The thing is, what is suddenly wrong with assimilation and integration? The best way to learn about another culture is to travel, and the best way to understand it is if you have a firm knowledge and understanding of your own culture.
Thank you so much Mr O’Sullivan for allowing Mr Hitchens to put his points of views across without constant interruptions. So many interesting points to think about and so much more civilised. Once again, thank you.
If anyone doubts the decline in educational standards to which Peter Hitchens refers, I’d like to add my own observations as an ex grammar school boy in the sixties and as an ex teacher many years later in the early 2000s. In my grammar school very few pupils achieved 3 grade As at A level, in my year the number was 4 and all went to Oxbridge. At my London University college very few firsts were awarded, in fact in my year it was only one. Now compare those scenarios to today where 3 A level grade As are ridiculously common and university firsts seem to be awarded to about 25% of all students. There is no doubt that the exams today are much, much easier. When I retired and did some private French A level tuition I gave my old 1965 GCE O level French paper to my students, all of whom were predicted grade A passes. They were horrified at the difficulty and none could do it and would certainly have failed and yet all went on to achieve their predicted grade As at A level. Our young people have been royally conned by a system that rewards mediocrity and it is in no way their fault.
@@James_36 I’m not sure if they are still accessible. I managed to avoid giving mine in at the end of the exam and have kept it ever since. I do also remember the French post A level Oxford entry scholarship papers and they were absolutely brutal. I doubt if current students even in their final year would manage them.
@@run2cat4run It's a known fact, if you come from a wealthy family, with money to pay for an education, you stand a better chance of getting one, especially into Cambridge, but my guessing is your one of them sleep walkers yourself.
I totally agree with Peter on this. The bright working class children get a chance. Some teenagers really are not cut out for exams and buckle under the pressure. They should be able to opt for Maths and English along side a vocational course of their choice at GCSE level. I’m thinking of the SEN children drowning within the mainstream system. Get them ready for the world of work, with a skill or trade, they can make good money. This could be a win win for those at the top and bottom of the current system.
@@lynseypringle9585 like all right wing Brexit supporters you never do any research. You just believe people like Farage and proven liars. Do some proper research rather than the daily mail.
I sat on a Jury with a girl who was 18 years old and she said "I don't care I just want to leave as it's my Nans Birthday and I'm going to miss the party, it was 4pm" I kid you not. The lad got 9 years and it could have gone either way. She was clueless and well out of her depth. Imagine that girl on your Jury saying Guilty just because its the fastest way out of the room.
@@run2cat4run No, but let's go way back so the truth is told on all who suffered at the hands of history, as it stands we have alot of propaganda & history that's based on Myths.
What about all the households with both parents are working? Or are you prepared to financially compensate one of them to give up their possibly very well paid job!
The reason the grammar schools ended was because the grammar schools were full of the middle class children which disadvantaged the poor. Why would this be? The middle class tended to provide the family life that encouraged learning and provided the recourses and time to enable their children to thrive. I remember the pre internet days when having a current set of the encyclopaedia Britannica provided a marvellous information resource in the home but was unaffordable by the poor. The misguided view of the left was that mixing the comprehensive school children with the grammar schools would mean the disadvantaged comprehensive kids would come up to the grammar school standards. The unfortunate result was the comprehensive kids destroyed very good grammar schools! As mentioned the poor are still disadvantaged!
How could oikish working class kids with their feckless parents bring down middle-class children raised in idyllic, nourishing social milieus, fostered with perfect grace and brilliance when you just said they got all that in the home via encyclopaedia Britannica collecting dust in the bookshelf and Demis Roussos playing in the background? It was middle-class fears about being pushed out by the post-war baby-boom that provided the impetus. Also, the convention at the time of having women in charge of education must've played a part: women have the guile of savages when it comes to children, and they must've known that a so-called comprehensive system would be so much easier to manipulate. Much safer than risking the jeopardy of secondary modern schooling.
As a physics teacher for 30 years. Thank god the last 10 years were in international schools overseas. How the standards have dtopped. I know of schols here which do A level Physics with virtually no practical work at all. 😮
All school classes should be recorded by CCTV. This would guarantee that Children are being taught correctly and possible improve discipline and avoid any misinterpretation of events. We are all being watched anyway.
I failed my 11+ by a shave of a hair when I took mine 20 years ago. I was disappointed, I come from a turbulent home and the one thing I had going for me was my brain, I wish I was given a 2nd chance. Fast forward 20 years and I'd like my daughter to have the opportunity to sit the 11+, albeit the local Grammar, King Edwards now resembles an international school as there's no white faces there, just foreigners bussed in.
Kent still have grammar schools and the examination but at the moment there are not enough places for local children who have passed the exam Meanwhile they are bussing in children from London boroughs to schools as far as Dartford, Gravesend and Rochester. There is a lot of anger.
Hitchens is good on his history, and has long seen the trends since the calamitous 60s. But schools and exams are done, no point trying to prop it all up. The only factors that matter are mums education, and whether there is a father on the scene. Yes, where you live is key too, but the two parent family and mum's attitude to schooling( her educational attitude/ attainment) are the main factors. And the state has,systematically taken all steps to denigrate and attack the family. Marriage and stay at home mums etc. Far simpler than trying to let schools and exams get away with their fiction factory deceits. Home school them. At whatever price it takes.
It is time to bring back the Assisted Places Scheme, which gave opportunities to academically able students to attend grammar schools. The APS which was a great force for social mobility, was abolished by the Blair Government.
The last thing our Lords and Masters want or require is an educated, discerning and critical thinking populace, including teachers, children and politicians.
I have a very similar bckground to Hitchens.I was the last year in the local Grammar before encyclical 1065 destroyed it. Clearly the class /money based system of post code housing school access,together with the purchase of more private school places at prices now elevated to meet world demand by those who can - and why would you not choose that for your child when faced with the junk industrial non-education alterative your child would probaby otherwise receive from the local state entuty - and the conversion of universities into the most grubby, dishonest, businesses has destroyed upward social hope as well as mobility. A coutry to leave. Emigration is now harder, but the only sane choice if you can do it. The comps are centres of mediocre third rate industrial 'educator' style systems and propagandise outrageously. Hellish betrayal of the people. as for the Labour Party - an eternal total horror of soggy bitter incompetent irrelevance and worse - and the one nation 'we are all socialists now' MacMillan joke non-Conservative party, well, they certainly stuffed the educational future of the country. save for the golden passport private school products.
I can see your use of irony but an Encyclical is a letter from the Pope to his bishops. Oxford University received a similar notification from Rome before its foundation.
We live in an age when people who are quick to trumpet any perceived infringement upon their rights can simultaneously protest the very system of laws that make "rights" possible. Incredible.
I agree with everything Peter Hitchens says about O Levels, GCSE & A Levels (experienced both as pupil, student and teacher). But ti must always be remembered that pressure for Comprehensives came from the middle class too many of whose children were "failing" the Eleven Plus. (The majority had to "fail" if the idea of grammar schools as centres of excellence was to be maintained, by definition you cannot have excellence for the majority.) On a wider basis, Hitchen's book is very good but he is far too uncritical of the old Secondary Moderns; some were good but the majority were resigned to churning out factory fodder, no real chance of escaping from this life pattern.
The education system has long now been used to promote an ultra competitive exam system on a fixed curriculum. This means most children will not join the smiling elite but will become the majority disgruntled inadequate learning haters doomed to a life of mediocrity. It could be so much better. Co-operation and nurturing social caring should be the main modus operandi for schools and colleges, not these heartless exams which are skewed towards the privately educated and production of right wing elites. We could cure the obesity issue and drugs issues to a great extent if healthy lifestyles were aggressively encouraged from an early age too. It should be taught that alcohol is a poison fit only for the foolish-not the cool and that fresh fruit and vegetables are a must, not an option on a fat-laden sugar filled menu of processed foods. Or, we could continue to wallow in the current repeated life cycle of wasted, shortened, tragic lives and long term medical misery of diabetes, avoidable mental illness etc.. that most people seem to fall towards. What a shame.
The gulag archipelago should be mandatory reading in schools so our children know how dangerous it is to ignore individualism and lump people in groups by class, race etc. History is being ignored and a Dangerous dangerous precedent is being set
In the Irish Republic the teacher often advances to a political position because of the time off [to organise] and the idea that he/she has a vocation like the priesthood. If you want to see seriously unhinged individuals then check out the annual teachers union conferences [3?]. In a rural area where I have family the local Head Teacher was jailed for stealing the children's dinner money over a number of years and five miles down the road the Deputy Head murdered his wife,children and himself. Wasn't Joe Stalin,Mao Zedong, Pol Pot in Cambodia and his wife [Sorbonne,Paris] teachers ] ?
I don't think the police have given up but like petty crime they realise there is no point wasting their time and effort chasing down these people knowing full well that when they get to court the judges and jail system will not be able to deal with them! What keeps you on the straight and narrow? Its generally you have something you treasure and do not want to jeopardise or give up. This normally takes the form of a job, house, family etc imagine living a life where non of that is obtainable or is quickly whipped from under you by family law. what keeps the people who have nothing to loose on the straight and narrow?
I was just about to comment on the fact that most of the young men who fought and suffered in the First World War didn't have the vote, then Peter Hitchens mentioned soldiers and conscription. Denied my post of righteous indignation! 🤣
Prison isnt a deterent for most people from doing crime, especially in the u.k, also are we seriously talking about imprisoning people for 5 years, leaving them completely unemployable and on the scrap heap for smoking a spliff. Ridiculous, the war on drugs was allways unwinnable, you could also ask what right politicians have to decide what someone is allowed to put in there own body.
Legalise Cannabis and let the Government control the supply and strength of the product. Profits invested into homeless and rehab clinics. It's going to happen anyway lets discuss it now.
@@retcon1991 maybe your school will be shut down for not keeping up with the latest trend. I have a relative who is a head teacher in a primary school and she says it is and I know parents in other schools who say they’re getting all the lgbt stuff already. Good luck.
He's wrong about the baby bulge. We only had high birth rates 1943-48. Then below average until 1958-71. The real birth boom was the 1960s peaking 1963-66.
Is it any wonder everyone is high all the time, when a modern job is just being sat at a computer clicking pointless buttons and going to pointless meetings to listen to some sycophant waffling on? How unfulfilling are our lives?
You just HAD to put 50p in Hitchens slot and get him on about his anti drugs rant. There's a reson the police stopped gaoling people for having a bit of puff, because it's harmless. Alcohol kills FAR more people yet that is legal! Do one Hitchens.
Harmless ? Check out the mentally ill on the city streets of America because of drugs. In Seattle and Portland the state approved [and taxed] Cannabis shops sell the weakest weed which over time fails to give a 'high' so the addict seeks out the street trader who laces the plant with Fentanyl and other opioids and this is at epidemic proportions in Scotland. So its all a laugh,eh ?
But Peter, drug use in South Korea and Japan are largely frowned upon because they are still mono-cultures following their traditional values. We mass imported people who think drug use is normal - then normalised it amongst our young to stop arresting too many of the "wrong" people which would be construed as "ist". Baby, bathwater - out your go...
Peter is completely wrong on cannibis or marjuana as he calls it (a bastardised American term). There are a plethora of studies demonstrating the positive effects of the drug but apart from that, as a true conservative he should be for people having the right to choose what they put into their bodies, so long as the impact on the NHS is low/none. A true conservative would value the huge growth it would mean for our economy both through farming, selling, licensing, taxation and tourism. I hate the stuff but let's at least make some money from it and squash all the little dealers from our streets. The only reason it hasn't worked in the USA is because of differing state laws, we don't have that problem in Britain
The fact remains that the grammar school system produced 30 consecutive years of British PrIme Ministers and the destruction of the grammar school system, whatever its faults, led to the re-emergence of privately educated domination of British public life. From Harold Wilson, Ted Heath, Callaghan, and Thatcher to Major, all state educated.
I noticed it when I was in school, it all focused on women's rights movement, anti war sentiment in the 1st and 2nd WW, environmental issues, etc, nothing about family raising, taxes, being involved in politics and society in general, just punch press workers
I joined the army in 1979 at the age of sixteen willing to give my life for Queen and country but not allowed to have a pint in a pub. Although things have changed now and I think nowadays your not allowed to join the armed forces till your 18 correct me if I'm wrong.
@@megaxenu753 As a white Somerset boy where there were only two ethnic families in the entire school (and the black family had white parents!) I often joked that my kid's friendship groups (as they are now called) are like a start of a Bernard Manning joke. They both went to Grammar schools in Trafford and immigrant kids came from families that value education and what it can do - just look at the British cabinet - it's the white male not-so-working class that we have to be concerned about, especially as there seems to be a focus on academic education.
It's a good thing so when the teacher is teaching the class about white guilt, slavery and colonialism the poor lone white kid doesn't have to stand up and be sneered at. Or bullied after school.
I was an exception I missed out on the 11 plus. A brand new comprehensive was built the classes wer streamed and I was put in the top stream. I got 7 GSE O levels which I would never have gained but for the comprehensive system as the school was new it attracked very good teachers.
It is an absurdity that a person who lacks capacity is able to vote but an intelligent and well-informed 15 or 16 year old can't. On what basis is this decided ? They are good enough to sit exams but not make a political choice which will likely have more impact on them than their elders. An utter absurdity.
@@rick11960 Yes but plenty of other people who have cognitive difficulties can such as people with dementia or learning difficulties . Either none of these groups should be allowed to vote or they all should. It's unconscionable that intelligent young people are denied the right to vote but can learn to drive or be used as fodder in the army. But then the voting system in my view is in need of reform full stop. There should be some form of license in place to weed out the ignorant, the lazy and the easily manipulated - i.e the majority of the population.
If I recall the Tory’s held office during the 50s into the 60s and did very little. There seems to be a theme here Personally I think Peter is quite correct about the Tory party Power & Money to seek office It has no other guiding principles I’d add indifference too the above
Give it a rest, the destruction of the education system was 90% Labour - good education enables social mobility which is the last thing Labour want. I'll leave the last words to Labour legend Sir Anthony Wedgewood Benn "The problem with Grammar schools is they take good Labour stock (that's all you are to them - stock) and turn them into bloody Tories." This is why British schools have become little more than left-wing indoctrination camps - that's what happens when you let the state run education - you end up with re-education camps - they teach you what to think not HOW to think - which was their primary task. Of course the "Tories" are now just another cookie-cutter globalist Social Democrat party so it's all rather moot these days.
I am very left wing compared to Peter and I never understood why they got rid of grammar schools. I have always thought it was better to not only keep them but make more of them. I could never see what was particularly left wing about being anti grammar schools. I think they should have more and also make more engineering/technical/ skilled schools for those who may not be academically minded but have other talents. There should be no lauding of grammar schools over technical schools as they are of equal value to society. They need to change the testing to get in though. Marijuana should be legalised as it has a great deal of medicinal value.
All those poor people who support grammar schools don't realize that their children would not go to grammar school. Hitchens pretends that the grammar school system was fair - it was not.
Drugs drugs drugs , cannabis ,stronger drugs. Where’s me statins, anti depressents, painkillers …. Oh that’s right , NO ONE HAS EVER DIED of cannabis ingestion , yet I can’t buy 3 packets of paracetamol in Boots as it may kill me .
Time for faith schools to be charity funded, so they don’t have to teach lgb+ etc. national curriculum means nationalised children so it should be denationalised
Should the grammar school system be reintroduced?
Immediately
Yes
Yes
YES! This is particularly interesting to me as I was born just after the war. My father left so we became a one parent family with my mother working as a clippie on the buses to support us. I was lucky enough to pass the 11+ and go to a very good local state grammar school. We had a particularly good master who would often seem to go astray rather than follow the curriculum. We loved it, we weren't doing school lessons, we were having fun. Without going into detail I have only, in the last few years, realised what the crafty sod was doing. He was getting us to listen, analyse, question, research, debate and come to our own conclusions on any given subject. What a teacher! R.I.P. R.E.Jones (Scruff).
I doubt we have the quality of teachers to do so.
What an enlightened guy Peter Hitchens is about a range of subjects. His comments on grammar schools is spot on and was an act of utter vandalism of an effective education system and purely out of socialist dogma
spot on ,as a casualty of the comprehensive school experiment in the 1970s i totally agree.
I was a teacher for 25 years. I thank God that I’m now retired. The system has gone to the dogs!
Lucky for you, you got out before the rot set in.
Peter Hitchens assessment is highly accurate. The quality of education has deteriorated which is perfectly visible today, particularly in Parliament.
Thats exactly what they want.
I read Hitchens' Revolution Betrayed and it left me with such anger at what has been done to the education system in the UK.
Blame Fabians & Communists
This is particularly interesting to me as I was born just after the war. My father left so we became a one parent family with my mother working as a clippie on the buses to support us. I was lucky enough to pass the 11+ and go to a very good local state grammar school. We had a particularly good master who would often seem to go astray rather than follow the curriculum. We loved it, we weren't doing school lessons, we were having fun. Without going into detail I have only, in the last few years, realised what the crafty sod was doing. He was getting us to listen, analyse, question, research, debate and come to our own conclusions on any given subject. What a teacher! R.I.P. R.E.Jones (Scruff).
Our Science teacher in Coventry was a bit like that and if someone prompted him he would talk about all sorts of things.
he would be arrested today for child abuse today.
@@orangefacedbuddah1776 You are probably right. Were did it all go wrong?
I went to one of the few remaining 11+ grammar schools in Yorkshire, in the 80s and my English teacher was in that mould...appropos of nothing made us watch, discuss and debate the incredible BBC jfk assassination documentary from '82 if I remember correctly...truly shocking for my young eyes and gave me a healthy distrust for government from a young age...cannot have been on the curriculum 😅
All this Transgender children nonsense is the real child abuse what on earth are people thinking.
Absolutely. Might be some years go now but my daughter came home telling us of a school assembly where pupils were instructed to tell their parents to vote ‘remain’. At 17 and not yet able to vote herself, but an informed leaver, she thought that indoctrination unacceptable.
Lie
@@randomname3109 you would like that to be so.
@@brianwillson9567 but it is in fact a lie
@@randomname3109 Except its not, its on record. Don't gaslight.
@@NPC--666 source please
As a concerned parent I've scoured through the curriculum for toddlers and multi-cultural propaganda is threaded throughout under the guise of "British Values". If you look at the children's section of your average bookshop or library it is plain as day how very aggressively it is pushed. I was on the lookout for anything that hinted at noncery creeping in at such an early age.
Those laying in Flanders Fields and beyond must be rolling in their graves 😢
The big push back has started. We just need to keep calling it out wherever it is and never backdown. Any homework related to any of it, don't let your children do it. Home school if you can.
They're trying to remove parental rights. They're not your children, they're the states children now.
Teaching kids about other cultures undermines the British… LOL!
@@jonnychris4070 the British Empire rule other countries and took bit and bobs back to UK so it been multicultural for hundreds of years now
@@run2cat4run Liking someones cuisine and using a countries inventions doesn't make a country "multicultural". I honestly do not understand what you mean. Having a taste for tea, writing on paper, putting willow pattern on crockery and using gun powder doesn't make the people of British Isles partially culturally Chinese. However, it does tell you the story of the cultural and other - for good or ill - contact with China over the centuries.
On the earlier "point" made, the type of multicultural propaganda promoted aggressively undermines native culture. It is done on purpose. The curriculum is a guideline to be implemented, that is all, but it steers heavily towards MC; and when it comes to recommended source material to use, there is a wealth of material from only a select few "cultures", and hey are not European cultures. The thing is, what is suddenly wrong with assimilation and integration? The best way to learn about another culture is to travel, and the best way to understand it is if you have a firm knowledge and understanding of your own culture.
i could listen to him for hours, from Australia
Yeah Id rather be listening to him from Australia as well.
His brother far supercedes him, look up 'Christopher Hitchens'
Much better when Peter is on O'Sullivan's half hour. He actually gets to speak.
Thank you so much Mr O’Sullivan for allowing Mr Hitchens to put his points of views across without constant interruptions. So many interesting points to think about and so much more civilised. Once again, thank you.
I suffered in school by not being separated from the thickos at age 11.
Now forcing kids to stay in school an extra two years means you don't escape the thickos in 6th form any more.
They drag everyone down. Mob rule =comprehensive system
If anyone doubts the decline in educational standards to which Peter Hitchens refers, I’d like to add my own observations as an ex grammar school boy in the sixties and as an ex teacher many years later in the early 2000s. In my grammar school very few pupils achieved 3 grade As at A level, in my year the number was 4 and all went to Oxbridge. At my London University college very few firsts were awarded, in fact in my year it was only one. Now compare those scenarios to today where 3 A level grade As are ridiculously common and university firsts seem to be awarded to about 25% of all students.
There is no doubt that the exams today are much, much easier. When I retired and did some private French A level tuition I gave my old 1965 GCE O level French paper to my students, all of whom were predicted grade A passes. They were horrified at the difficulty and none could do it and would certainly have failed and yet all went on to achieve their predicted grade As at A level. Our young people have been royally conned by a system that rewards mediocrity and it is in no way their fault.
i have always wondered about this,i have saved your reply on word,very helpful and informative.
is there way to get hold of O level exam papers?
When I graduated in 1984 only 8% went to University and only 3% of those got a First.
@@James_36 I’m not sure if they are still accessible. I managed to avoid giving mine in at the end of the exam and have kept it ever since. I do also remember the French post A level Oxford entry scholarship papers and they were absolutely brutal. I doubt if current students even in their final year would manage them.
a good education comes 90% from parents who want to give their kids a good education.
Providing they have money and don't both work full time jobs.
But if they can't read?
We need GOOD schools
Got any proof that is true?
Lots of parents don't even speak English now
@@run2cat4run It's a known fact, if you come from a wealthy family, with money to pay for an education, you stand a better chance of getting one, especially into Cambridge, but my guessing is your one of them sleep walkers yourself.
Peter Hitchins a sane voice crying in the Wilderness.
After the death of the great Roger Scruton, Peter Hitchens is now the voice of reason.
I totally agree with Peter on this. The bright working class children get a chance.
Some teenagers really are not cut out for exams and buckle under the pressure. They should be able to opt for Maths and English along side a vocational course of their choice at GCSE level. I’m thinking of the SEN children drowning within the mainstream system. Get them ready for the world of work, with a skill or trade, they can make good money. This could be a win win for those at the top and bottom of the current system.
Rubbish. The grammar schools were dominated by middle class students and poor children went to less well funded schools
@@johnvale3217 really? Everyone had the chance to pass their 11+.
@@lynseypringle9585 like all right wing Brexit supporters you never do any research. You just believe people like Farage and proven liars. Do some proper research rather than the daily mail.
Excellent as always - intelligence and common sense does exist out there 🤣
"The role of state schools is for the government to create good citizens" - Michael Malice
The older I get, the more I agree with Peter Hitchens.
His brother was right about the plague of Islam, shame they left out Israel.
@@sinnyozzy Yeah, he was. He warned us that 'Islamophobia' would gain traction and be a way of stifling criticism of Islam.
The older you get the more right wing you become its called wisdom and you realise how stupid you were in your youth.
School has one and only purpose to create obedient workers.
Now obedient slaves.
I sat on a Jury with a girl who was 18 years old and she said "I don't care I just want to leave as it's my Nans Birthday and I'm going to miss the party, it was 4pm" I kid you not. The lad got 9 years and it could have gone either way. She was clueless and well out of her depth. Imagine that girl on your Jury saying Guilty just because its the fastest way out of the room.
THEY'LL BE USING THE KIDS TO GRASS UP THERE PARENTS SOON !! NOW WE'VE I HEARD THAT BEFORE 😵😵😵
Pavlik Morozov approves!
East Germany for one…. 😕
It’s happening!
Remember, this quality of conversation won't exist in 20 years time.
Schools should provide unbiased eduction. Politics should be banned unless in the context of history
So banned history lessons?
The regime only stays in power because it controls the narrative.
@@run2cat4run No, but let's go way back so the truth is told on all who suffered at the hands of history, as it stands we have alot of propaganda & history that's based on Myths.
@@run2cat4run I suggest you learn grammar before you attempt to discuss history
@@run2cat4run Your Marxist Jihadist Mythology isn't History
Home School your children PLEEEEEASE
What about all the households with both parents are working? Or are you prepared to financially compensate one of them to give up their possibly very well paid job!
The reason the grammar schools ended was because the grammar schools were full of the middle class children which disadvantaged the poor. Why would this be? The middle class tended to provide the family life that encouraged learning and provided the recourses and time to enable their children to thrive. I remember the pre internet days when having a current set of the encyclopaedia Britannica provided a marvellous information resource in the home but was unaffordable by the poor. The misguided view of the left was that mixing the comprehensive school children with the grammar schools would mean the disadvantaged comprehensive kids would come up to the grammar school standards. The unfortunate result was the comprehensive kids destroyed very good grammar schools! As mentioned the poor are still disadvantaged!
How could oikish working class kids with their feckless parents bring down middle-class children raised in idyllic, nourishing social milieus, fostered with perfect grace and brilliance when you just said they got all that in the home via encyclopaedia Britannica collecting dust in the bookshelf and Demis Roussos playing in the background? It was middle-class fears about being pushed out by the post-war baby-boom that provided the impetus. Also, the convention at the time of having women in charge of education must've played a part: women have the guile of savages when it comes to children, and they must've known that a so-called comprehensive system would be so much easier to manipulate. Much safer than risking the jeopardy of secondary modern schooling.
Grammars took business away from Private schools.
Be nice to see selection based on merit and not every other factor these days.
As a physics teacher for 30 years. Thank god the last 10 years were in international schools overseas. How the standards have dtopped. I know of schols here which do A level Physics with virtually no practical work at all. 😮
He has a valid point
Why does Kevin O'Sullivan sound SO BORED when he asks his questions ??
All school classes should be recorded by CCTV. This would guarantee that Children are being taught correctly and possible improve discipline and avoid any misinterpretation of events. We are all being watched anyway.
I failed my 11+ by a shave of a hair when I took mine 20 years ago. I was disappointed, I come from a turbulent home and the one thing I had going for me was my brain, I wish I was given a 2nd chance. Fast forward 20 years and I'd like my daughter to have the opportunity to sit the 11+, albeit the local Grammar, King Edwards now resembles an international school as there's no white faces there, just foreigners bussed in.
Year I left high school our school excelled in better o+a levels than the local grammar n private schools..
I don't always agree with Peter but he is always worth listening to in relation to a range of social subjects.
The Guardian - 'a paper by illiterates for illiterates'
Kent still have grammar schools and the examination but at the moment there are not enough places for local children who have passed the exam Meanwhile they are bussing in children from London boroughs to schools as far as Dartford, Gravesend and Rochester. There is a lot of anger.
It is certainly true that 'A-levels' have been massively dumbed down in the past half-century.
Hitchens is good on his history, and has long seen the trends since the calamitous 60s.
But schools and exams are done, no point trying to prop it all up.
The only factors that matter are mums education, and whether there is a father on the scene.
Yes, where you live is key too, but the two parent family and mum's attitude to schooling( her educational attitude/ attainment) are the main factors. And the state has,systematically taken all steps to denigrate and attack the family. Marriage and stay at home mums etc.
Far simpler than trying to let schools and exams get away with their fiction factory deceits.
Home school them. At whatever price it takes.
It is time to bring back the Assisted Places Scheme, which gave opportunities to academically able students to attend grammar schools. The APS which was a great force for social mobility, was abolished by the Blair Government.
I think it's time for home schooling, much easier these days with the internet
And indeed some 'educators' are fearfully realising the threat.
The last thing our Lords and Masters want or require is an educated, discerning and critical thinking populace, including teachers, children and politicians.
I have a very similar bckground to Hitchens.I was the last year in the local Grammar before encyclical 1065 destroyed it.
Clearly the class /money based system of post code housing school access,together with the purchase of more private school places at prices now elevated to meet world demand by those who can - and why would you not choose that for your child when faced with the junk industrial non-education alterative your child would probaby otherwise receive from the local state entuty - and the conversion of universities into the most grubby, dishonest, businesses has destroyed upward social hope as well as mobility. A coutry to leave. Emigration is now harder, but the only sane choice if you can do it. The comps are centres of mediocre third rate industrial 'educator' style systems and propagandise outrageously. Hellish betrayal of the people. as for the Labour Party - an eternal total horror of soggy bitter incompetent irrelevance and worse - and the one nation 'we are all socialists now' MacMillan joke non-Conservative party, well, they certainly stuffed the educational future of the country. save for the golden passport private school products.
I can see your use of irony but an Encyclical is a letter from the Pope to his bishops.
Oxford University received a similar notification from Rome before its foundation.
@@rick11960 liar it was called an encyclical at the time because of its portentous nature
Zoom teaching could be the future😮??
and calm and with excellent manners.
We live in an age when people who are quick to trumpet any perceived infringement upon their rights can simultaneously protest the very system of laws that make "rights" possible. Incredible.
I agree with everything Peter Hitchens says about O Levels, GCSE & A Levels (experienced both as pupil, student and teacher). But ti must always be remembered that pressure for Comprehensives came from the middle class too many of whose children were "failing" the Eleven Plus. (The majority had to "fail" if the idea of grammar schools as centres of excellence was to be maintained, by definition you cannot have excellence for the majority.)
On a wider basis, Hitchen's book is very good but he is far too uncritical of the old Secondary Moderns; some were good but the majority were resigned to churning out factory fodder, no real chance of escaping from this life pattern.
The education system has long now been used to promote an ultra competitive exam system on a fixed curriculum. This means most children will not join the smiling elite but will become the majority disgruntled inadequate learning haters doomed to a life of mediocrity. It could be so much better. Co-operation and nurturing social caring should be the main modus operandi for schools and colleges, not these heartless exams which are skewed towards the privately educated and production of right wing elites. We could cure the obesity issue and drugs issues to a great extent if healthy lifestyles were aggressively encouraged from an early age too. It should be taught that alcohol is a poison fit only for the foolish-not the cool and that fresh fruit and vegetables are a must, not an option on a fat-laden sugar filled menu of processed foods. Or, we could continue to wallow in the current repeated life cycle of wasted, shortened, tragic lives and long term medical misery of diabetes, avoidable mental illness etc.. that most people seem to fall towards. What a shame.
It started when I was a kid in the 70's and they took Catholic teaching out of Catholic school because the Protestants and Athiests were offended.
yeah the 70s were fun for some,but its were standards began to fall.
@Alan 59 😂😂
There was a drug sweep in Westminster a while back and by all accounts the amount detected in the toilets of Westminster/Parliament was huge
The gulag archipelago should be mandatory reading in schools so our children know how dangerous it is to ignore individualism and lump people in groups by class, race etc. History is being ignored and a Dangerous dangerous precedent is being set
Teaching in my opinion is the most overvalued 'profession ' in the anglosphere.
In the Irish Republic the teacher often advances to a political position because of the time off [to organise] and the idea that he/she has a vocation like the priesthood.
If you want to see seriously unhinged individuals then check out the annual teachers union conferences [3?].
In a rural area where I have family the local Head Teacher was jailed for stealing the children's dinner money over a number of years
and five miles down the road the Deputy Head murdered his wife,children and himself.
Wasn't Joe Stalin,Mao Zedong, Pol Pot in Cambodia and his wife [Sorbonne,Paris] teachers ] ?
@rick11960 oh,yes, spot on..
I don't think the police have given up but like petty crime they realise there is no point wasting their time and effort chasing down these people knowing full well that when they get to court the judges and jail system will not be able to deal with them! What keeps you on the straight and narrow? Its generally you have something you treasure and do not want to jeopardise or give up. This normally takes the form of a job, house, family etc imagine living a life where non of that is obtainable or is quickly whipped from under you by family law. what keeps the people who have nothing to loose on the straight and narrow?
I was just about to comment on the fact that most of the young men who fought and suffered in the First World War didn't have the vote, then Peter Hitchens mentioned soldiers and conscription. Denied my post of righteous indignation! 🤣
Neither did all the women, left at home, to do the jobs, the men had left to go to fight!!
Prison isnt a deterent for most people from doing crime, especially in the u.k, also are we seriously talking about imprisoning people for 5 years, leaving them completely unemployable and on the scrap heap for smoking a spliff. Ridiculous, the war on drugs was allways unwinnable, you could also ask what right politicians have to decide what someone is allowed to put in there own body.
Legalise Cannabis and let the Government control the supply and strength of the product. Profits invested into homeless and rehab clinics. It's going to happen anyway lets discuss it now.
Can you talk about Irelands new Hate Speech laws please, its like North Korea here no one will talk about it
North Korea with the Irish smile..Ah Sure..
Social engineering of the Public through the young.
I'm a primary school teacher and I've seen no promotion of any of the elements that you've discussed.
and yet miraculosly you have millions of young people in firm support of men who wear skirts and whatever lgbtqia propoganda there is out there.
Oh it’s coming. Equity, noncery, LGBTQ’s+2S etc.
@@michaelfern4079 "it's coming" is not what's being proclaimed - people are saying it's already here.
@@retcon1991 maybe your school will be shut down for not keeping up with the latest trend. I have a relative who is a head teacher in a primary school and she says it is and I know parents in other schools who say they’re getting all the lgbt stuff already. Good luck.
He's wrong about the baby bulge.
We only had high birth rates 1943-48. Then below average until 1958-71.
The real birth boom was the 1960s peaking 1963-66.
Mr Hitchens is a smart man so why and how can an 'accident ' caused by drugs be an accident? It's not an accident ; patently.
Is it any wonder everyone is high all the time, when a modern job is just being sat at a computer clicking pointless buttons and going to pointless meetings to listen to some sycophant waffling on? How unfulfilling are our lives?
It would be good if people stopped asking Peter Hitchens his opinions.
You just HAD to put 50p in Hitchens slot and get him on about his anti drugs rant. There's a reson the police stopped gaoling people for having a bit of puff, because it's harmless. Alcohol kills FAR more people yet that is legal! Do one Hitchens.
Harmless ?
Check out the mentally ill on the city streets of America because of drugs.
In Seattle and Portland the state approved [and taxed] Cannabis shops sell the weakest weed which over time fails to give a 'high' so the addict seeks out the street trader who laces the plant with Fentanyl and other opioids and this is at epidemic proportions in Scotland.
So its all a laugh,eh ?
Hitchens half hour.
20 minutes.
They cut the ad breaks for RUclips
Lol
When I learned at a desk. I learned without trying. As soon as I went to shared desks. All I did was piss around.
But Peter, drug use in South Korea and Japan are largely frowned upon because they are still mono-cultures following their traditional values. We mass imported people who think drug use is normal - then normalised it amongst our young to stop arresting too many of the "wrong" people which would be construed as "ist". Baby, bathwater - out your go...
Peter is completely wrong on cannibis or marjuana as he calls it (a bastardised American term). There are a plethora of studies demonstrating the positive effects of the drug but apart from that, as a true conservative he should be for people having the right to choose what they put into their bodies, so long as the impact on the NHS is low/none. A true conservative would value the huge growth it would mean for our economy both through farming, selling, licensing, taxation and tourism. I hate the stuff but let's at least make some money from it and squash all the little dealers from our streets. The only reason it hasn't worked in the USA is because of differing state laws, we don't have that problem in Britain
Great story about the returned letter😂😂.
Ive been saying that for years.
The fact remains that the grammar school system produced 30 consecutive years of British PrIme Ministers and the destruction of the grammar school system, whatever its faults, led to the re-emergence of privately educated domination of British public life. From Harold Wilson, Ted Heath, Callaghan, and Thatcher to Major, all state educated.
I noticed it when I was in school, it all focused on women's rights movement, anti war sentiment in the 1st and 2nd WW, environmental issues, etc, nothing about family raising, taxes, being involved in politics and society in general, just punch press workers
School is not about education but about the ' hidden agenda'. [ Ivan Illich :''Deschooling Society '''/
I joined the army in 1979 at the age of sixteen willing to give my life for Queen and country but not allowed to have a pint in a pub. Although things have changed now and I think nowadays your not allowed to join the armed forces till your 18 correct me if I'm wrong.
Peter, chill. Smoke some weed bro. To be fair, Peter is a legendary buzz kill. Always appreciate his perspective.
And just see the chaos and mental illness due to drug use on the city streets in the USA.
Is it good or bad that in inner city schools there isnt any white/British students? What do people think.
Racial division thanks to the loony radical,left teaching critical race theory.
depends how you want to view it. it forces them to compete i guess.
@@megaxenu753 As a white Somerset boy where there were only two ethnic families in the entire school (and the black family had white parents!) I often joked that my kid's friendship groups (as they are now called) are like a start of a Bernard Manning joke. They both went to Grammar schools in Trafford and immigrant kids came from families that value education and what it can do - just look at the British cabinet - it's the white male not-so-working class that we have to be concerned about, especially as there seems to be a focus on academic education.
It's a good thing so when the teacher is teaching the class about white guilt, slavery and colonialism the poor lone white kid doesn't have to stand up and be sneered at. Or bullied after school.
@@wellyman2008 "worrying" about different racial groups, whichever they might be, is not good for your mental health.
I was an exception I missed out on the 11 plus. A brand new comprehensive was built the classes wer streamed and I was put in the top stream. I got 7 GSE O levels which I would never have gained but for the comprehensive system as the school was new it attracked very good teachers.
People's lives are turned upside by being caught drink driving, yet they still do it.
It is an absurdity that a person who lacks capacity is able to vote but an intelligent and well-informed 15 or 16 year old can't. On what basis is this decided ? They are good enough to sit exams but not make a political choice which will likely have more impact on them than their elders. An utter absurdity.
Democracy is a sham.
The Frontal Cortex is not fully formed-do you know any fifteen year old people apart from yourself ?
@@rick11960 Yes but plenty of other people who have cognitive difficulties can such as people with dementia or learning difficulties . Either none of these groups should be allowed to vote or they all should. It's unconscionable that intelligent young people are denied the right to vote but can learn to drive or be used as fodder in the army. But then the voting system in my view is in need of reform full stop. There should be some form of license in place to weed out the ignorant, the lazy and the easily manipulated - i.e the majority of the population.
When I was fifteen my thoughts were not on politics but on the price of chocolate,fizzy drinks,comics and cinema tickets.
@@rick11960 And now ?
To be fair, schools have always been propaganda and indoctrination machines. It just depends on what the culture of the time is
Hitch loved the stickers on letter joke!
Wish the other Hitchens was with us too
The pro war neo con atheist. No thanks.
If I recall the Tory’s held office during the 50s into the 60s and did very little.
There seems to be a theme here
Personally I think Peter is quite correct about the Tory party
Power & Money to seek office
It has no other guiding principles
I’d add indifference too the above
Give it a rest, the destruction of the education system was 90% Labour - good education enables social mobility which is the last thing Labour want. I'll leave the last words to Labour legend Sir Anthony Wedgewood Benn "The problem with Grammar schools is they take good Labour stock (that's all you are to them - stock) and turn them into bloody Tories." This is why British schools have become little more than left-wing indoctrination camps - that's what happens when you let the state run education - you end up with re-education camps - they teach you what to think not HOW to think - which was their primary task. Of course the "Tories" are now just another cookie-cutter globalist Social Democrat party so it's all rather moot these days.
Thatcher closed the majority of Grammars as Education Secretary 1970-74 and as PM 1979-90.
I am very left wing compared to Peter and I never understood why they got rid of grammar schools. I have always thought it was better to not only keep them but make more of them. I could never see what was particularly left wing about being anti grammar schools. I think they should have more and also make more engineering/technical/ skilled schools for those who may not be academically minded but have other talents. There should be no lauding of grammar schools over technical schools as they are of equal value to society. They need to change the testing to get in though.
Marijuana should be legalised as it has a great deal of medicinal value.
Become? Didn’t Peter actually go to a school when he was young?
In your opinion.
People risk loosing it by drink driving why wouldnt they risk it all for a spliff
simple, if you have a military ID you can drink.
Peter is completely wrong about drugs. We have evidence of this, Prohibition in the USA.
It’s just as well Talk TV isn’t
All those poor people who support grammar schools don't realize that their children would not go to grammar school. Hitchens pretends that the grammar school system was fair - it was not.
Drugs drugs drugs , cannabis ,stronger drugs.
Where’s me statins, anti depressents, painkillers ….
Oh that’s right , NO ONE HAS EVER DIED of cannabis ingestion , yet I can’t buy 3 packets of paracetamol in Boots as it may kill me .
Peter Hitchens is the Man! but I disagree with him here I was a late bloomer and and doing well now and would not have under the pre 1965 system
why?
Hitchens "fries the fat off the brain" just as the great John Lennox does when discussing Christian apologetics.
Tell us something we don’t know
Time for faith schools to be charity funded, so they don’t have to teach lgb+ etc. national curriculum means nationalised children so it should be denationalised
Look in the window they studying thats good look away now.
I’ve never seen a more dead country/society !
Peter Hitchens
I make him right to be frank
Indoctrination not education.
Cannabis is also a risk factor for heart attacks, especially when combined with exercise.
Sad Peter was never as intelligent or charming as his brother, his opinion here is incorrect
😊