I have wrote some other stuff in the past that I might post soon that addresses the arguments made by the Association of English teachers. Here is the first:
"Graeme Smithies' opinion piece (Education, 12/5) is highly misleading. Graeme Smithies points to the research that shows that socio-economic
factors can influence a child's academic performance, but then ignores the research that shows that the magnitude of these effects pale into insignificance compared with class/teacher effects. In essence Smithies ends up using research like a drunk uses a light post -- for support rather than illumination.
Furthermore, it is no coincidence that those who selectively and misleadingly cite research to explain away the poor performance of students, are almost always the teachers or administrators of schools with poor performing students.
This ideology of social determinism is simply a convenient tool for administrators and educational unions to escape accountability for their actions.
Ignoring the connection between teaching and learning not only means ignoring volumes of educational and econometric research but also flies in the face of common sense. If there's no connection between teaching and learning, why should we bother with having teachers at all?"
Here is another on inequality:
THE idea that some how inequality in itself is a problem is absurd. Why should we worry about inequality, of any kind, much at all?
You could increase equality by making everyone equally poor. Life is not a race against fellow human beings, and we should discourage people from treating it as such. What matters most is how well people are doing in absolute terms, not relative terms. We should continue to improve opportunities for the poor, but inequality as a problem has been overstated.
Suppose there were some policy that would make the rich poorer without affecting the income of anyone else, by definition, that would reduce inequality, but would you want the Government to flip this switch?
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