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Our kid is dumber than your kid! Education experts are apparently flocking to Belfast. Baaaaaaaaaaaaaa humbug.
The pre-report linked to above includes an intriguing titbit:
Prof Brighouse is expected to recommend that schools and parents of pupils who perform worst in tests should receive extra Government money.
In his speech this afternoon, he will propose a financial incentive for schools to take on poorer performing students.
That could have some interesting incentive effects.
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Rewarding schools and parents for producing uneducated twits?
*shudder*
I thought there was already ‘special’ education for ‘tards… or perhaps this is just for the garden variety lazy sorts?
In any case, I’m safely out of town from tomorrow until later this month.
Ed writes:
“Rewarding schools and parents for producing uneducated twits?
*shudder*”
You forgot to insert the word ‘Catholic’ between ‘uneducated’ and ‘twits’. My postjudiced hunch is that the idea is to reinforce affirmative action in favour of Catholics, as opposed to Protestants. According to an aunt of mine, who for many years was headmistress of a large secondary school for girls in (Catholic) West Belfast, Catholics are particularly mistrustful of the 11-plus examination because they have a considerably lower success rate than Protestants. It would appear that, like all groups in multiracial societies suffering from cognitive disadvantages, the Taigs don’t want ‘equality of opportunity’ – they want ‘equality of outcome’. Presumably the idea is that by fiddling around with the education system, this goal can somehow be achieved.
Let’s translate the following citation from Newspeak into English:
Newspeak original:
“Prof Brighouse is expected to recommend that schools and parents of pupils who perform worst in tests should receive extra Government money.
In his speech this afternoon, he will propose a financial incentive for schools to take on poorer performing students.”
English translation:
“Prof Brighouse is expected to recommend that Catholic schools and parents of Catholic pupils who perform worst in tests (because Catholics are somewhat less intelligent than Protestants) should receive extra Government money.
In his speech this afternoon, he will propose a financial incentive for schools to take on poorer performing students, that is to say more dumb Catholics.
I admit I’m flying a kite here. I could a self-hating Taig. But it is generally recognised that Catholics are, on average, less intellectually talented than Protestants. That’s not to say that there is any shortage of Prod morons in the North of Ireland, but there certainly is a glut of Catholic ones.
Is there any topic on which Mr. Copeland cannot graft his rather, ummm, unique take on distributed intelligence?
I mean, really, Catholics are less intelligent than Protestants? How odd, then, that in the US students at Catholic schools regularly outperform their (predominantly Protestant) counterparts who attend the government school system.
I suppose next we’ll be hearing about how Methodists are more intelligent than Anglicans.
RCD,
You’re comparing private Catholic schools with public Protestant schools. Apples and oranges.
I’ll be back later to continue obsessing.
But, Charles, surely you are giving away the store if you claim that the inherent intelligence gap between the Protestants and the Catholics can be erased or even reversed depending on whether they go to public or private school.
This reminds me of the story of the late Samuel Weir, Canadian lawyer, philantrophist and art connoisseur who possessed a portrait of Justice Osgoode after whom Osgoode Hall, Canada’s premier law school was named.
Apparently, Weir was going to present the portrait to Osgoode Hall. He also wanted to endow a scholarship for students who were just managing to scrape through their studies because according to Weir, there were scholarships aplenty for the smart ones but nothing for the dolts.
Well Osgoode Hall turned down his munificent gesture so in a huff Weir withdrew his offer of the portrait and it hangs now in the private collection of Samuel Weir at Riverbrink, the home built to house his art collection in historic Queenston, Ontario.
Hmmm.
What a great idea!
Providing funding for idiots! When I win the lottery I think I’ll provide for a Chair of Studies in Stupidity or perhaps a Professorship of Imbeciles. LOL! You can bet that’ll annoy the heck out of some people. 🙂 Fits right into my personal philosophy that you can’t have a good day until you’ve ruined one for someone else.
🙂
RCD,
From what I read in the press, most public schools in the US are such a disaster that they would almost turn an Einstein into a loser. While a good private school, although it will not turn a slow learner into an alpha plus, will at least get the most out of her potential.
When comparing the cognitive ability of different groups on the basis of their school performance, it is of course essential to ensure that the schools they attend are in some way comparable, i.e. to hold the educational environment as constant as possible. My point is that in a ceteris paribus situation, Catholics apparently don’t do as well as Protestants.
One hypothesis is that negative selection plays an important role – for centuries, the brightest Catholic male children were selected for the priesthood and so removed from the gene pool. Priests don’t marry, whereas Protestant pastors do. On the other hand, perhaps the most intelligent individuals were also those most likely to desert Roman Catholicism and opt for a more mumbo-jumbo free belief system.
At any rate, in Northern Ireland both Catholic and Protestant children attend denominational primary schools which (as far as I know) apply highly comparable teaching methods. Yet Catholics have poorer school results; hence the most plausible null hypothesis would seem to be that there is a genetic component.
But frankly, I’m just guessing.
IMHO the greatest single factor in the destruction of public schooling in America can be attributed directly to Congress. Once Congress allowed public servants to unionize everything just started to go to hell. Right now the national average is somewhere around $10,000 per student per year for public education. In some areas it’s much higher than that like in Washington D.C. where it’s around $12,500 per student per year. An appalling amount for so little.
Frankly there’s never really been a worthwhile accounting for all those costs but I’d suggest that the vast majority of those funds are entirely eaten up by teachers. In a township local to me a veteran teacher with 20 years of senority earns at least $85,000 USD. If that person has advanced degrees then they can earn another $15,000. This is for working less than 180 days a year. They get the summer off. They get a week for Thanksgiving. Two weeks for Christmas. A week for Easter and God knows what else. They also get about a week off each year for teacher conferences and meetings. And then they get their vacation time.
So the net is far far less than 180 days per year. What a scam.
Whoops! Sorry all. I posted that previous message in the wrong place. :/ Teach me to write multiple replies at the same time.
Sorry.
CC, where did you get the idea that Catholics have poorer school results than Protestants?
While you’re at it, maybe you could demonstrate the genetic distinction between Protestants and Catholics. There was hardly much of a difference between the “settlers” and “natives” in the first place, you might be interested to learn that there is no guarantee a contemporary Catholic is descended solely, or even largely, from “natives”. The same is true for Protestants.
This is due to two separate phenomena.
1) Mixed marriages required, on pain of excommunication, the one catholic parent to ensure the children were brought up catholic.
2) Meanwhile during the penal laws, one great way to ensure you inherited you father’s property was to renounce catholicism and convert to protestantism. This cut all your siblings out of the picture.
Where else did you think Gerry got a name like Adams? or Ken Maginnis a name like, as it was originally spelt: McGuinness
By the way: Do you really imagine that natural selection works in such a short span that an event as recent as celibacy of catholic priests could have any kind of effect? I’m staggered by such ignorance, even by your standards.
Wow, ed, remember to remind me to immigrate to the US ASAP. Life there as a teacher is good! Compared to the performance-driven hell here…
😉
There’s a teacher shortage, especially in the hard sciences, so you’d be very welcome here. The main reason for the shortage though is the interference by the teacher’s unions. The salary scales are set in such a way that for the first 5-8 years of your career your life will literally suck. You’ll probably be eligible for food stamps. A starting teacher, in that town I mentioned previously, only starts are $30k and the annual increases are very modest until around the 8-10th year. Here in New Jersey, where minimal car insurance will cost around $1,500/year, $30k is about what an experienced grocery store clerk makes.
This weighting is deliberately set to reduce the incentives for new teachers. Without an influx of new teachers the unions can argue for more money to keep the ones already on the payroll. With starting salaries so low very few people want to become teachers. It’s a Catch-22 situation and it’s obscene.
As an example here in New Jersey an average of half of very municipal budget is spent on education. Of that education budget at least half is spent on the teachers. In fact that town dealt with a wholesale teacher strike at the beginning of the school year due to a couple issues:
1. The teachers objected to increasing their share of healthcare premiums from zero (0) to $15 per month.
2. The teachers objected to a new salary scale that pushed more money to the newer teachers rather than rewarding the most senior teachers.
There you go. Another profession I should have been in. And to think of all those times when I would literally work around the clock. sigh.
Hard sciences? What a coincidence! Gotta start working on a plan to migrate to the US after I’ve finished my contractual obligation to the Ministry of Education.
Having a double major in chemistry and english probably wouldn’t hurt… Might put myself with the ‘in’ crowd. 😉
The Wobbly Guy