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Yep, they want to control you all right

My feeling is that if we care about social mobility, then we should care about reducing assortative mating.

Because social mobility is such an important value we should therefore control who people marry.

Hmm, yes.

This is not a good combination either, for here comes the idiot stupidity:

The obvious way to do this would be to reduce social segregation in our education system. Even if we don’t meet our life partner at school or university, we might meet them later on through the lifelong friendships we form there.

What’s driving the rise in assortative mating is that people pair of later, doing so with people they meet though work. Which, in itself, is going to involve a certain stratification, innit?

We shouldn’t stop at schools. I’ve often struggled to explain why academic selection at 18 is OK when – off the back of the evidence – I could never support it at 11 or 14. Maybe because it’s not. In one of the most thought-provoking papers I’ve read recently, Tim Blackman, the vice chancellor of Middlesex University, argues a comprehensive university system in which more young people of mixed abilities go to their local university could bring similar academic benefits to comprehensive schooling.

Sigh.

45 thoughts on “Yep, they want to control you all right”

  1. So the head of the University of the North Circular wants to force people to go to his institution rather than a better one?

    Can’t think why.

  2. Has she thought of taking one of these lonely underachievers into her bed? In the interests of research as to why bright educated women are uninterested in partnering the inarticulate and uncouth nor passing their genes to the next generation?

  3. And for the next fifty shades film, the male lead should be an overweight sweaty plumber. Not a 20-year-old chiselled multi-billionaire.

  4. Ah yes, the Left’s insistence that all must have University. For a political movement that’s apparently on the side of “the working folk”, they do seem very dismissive of anyone who decides to go in to the trades.

  5. Rhyds
    “For a political movement that’s apparently on the side of “the working folk”, they do seem very dismissive of anyone who decides to go in to the trades.”

    If they can’t get them in a University, how can they indoctrinate them?

  6. If they can’t get them in a University, how can they indoctrinate them?

    They seem to be doing a “good” job at that in schools, no need for universities.

  7. Even without grammar schools, we have selection at 16. Most A-level students go to uni so the split at 16 is probably the most fundamental in our system.

  8. “And for the next fifty shades film, the male lead should be an overweight sweaty plumber” … with politically incorrect views and no inhibitions about expressing them.

  9. @decnine,

    If he keeps saying women should be confined to the kitchen, bedroom, and nursery, there is a risk that would get dangerously close to the original premise and risk ruining the effect of our “50 shades of social engineering propaganda”.

  10. similar academic benefits to comprehensive schooling

    Q. Such as?

    A. Vastly increased levels of functional illiteracy and innumeracy. Ignorance of history, geography, and just about any other subject unlucky enough to find itself on the curriculum. Relentless mindwashing by postmodernists, Cultural Marxists, and other such vermin, resulting in a hatred of Britain and its institutions and a propensity to vote for an unreconstructed Communist controlled by an evil cabal of even more unreconstructed Marxists.

    Q. What else?

    A. Er, that’s it.

  11. When I was at uni, there were distinct social groups: public school students didn’t socialise with those from state schools. An exception was made for grammar school kids, who were allowed to mix with either group. But I doubt that’s the answer they’re looking for.

  12. I’ve often struggled to explain why academic selection at 18 is OK when – off the back of the evidence – I could never support it at 11 or 14.

    Because even a Guardian reader realised it was completely rational to select academically at 18?

    In one of the most thought-provoking papers I’ve read recently, Tim Blackman, the vice chancellor of Middlesex University, argues a comprehensive university system in which more young people of mixed abilities go to their local university could bring similar academic benefits to comprehensive schooling.

    And the arms race of competitive virtue signalling by the Left enters a new and more lunatic phase.

  13. In one of the most thought-provoking papers I’ve read recently, Tim Blackman, the vice chancellor of Middlesex University, argues a comprehensive university system in which more young people of mixed abilities go to their local university could bring similar academic benefits to comprehensive schooling.

    So, Tim, what will the ‘academic standards’ be like to accommodate this vast influx of people completely unsuited to an academic higher education? To keep your fees high and the numbers rolling it would have to be near impossible to fail to get a degree, wouldn’t it?

    Tim Blackman, aiming to make your now near worthless degree completely worthless. Ironic as it has never been more expensive to acquire one.

    If a financial company kept on raising the fee for a product while deliberately reducing the quality of the product they’d end up in jail.

  14. In one of the most thought-provoking papers I’ve read recently

    The main thoughts it provoked was who is this nutcase and why does he want to destroy higher education?

  15. Back to the old Uni system of grants for the brightest–mainly in science/eng. To Hell with Bliar and his 50% tripe.

    Purge leftists and useless left-sucking courses. Expel all snowflakes and surcharge their student debt 20-fold. To be aggressively collected throughout their lives.

    Job done.

    Also sickening is that the dozy cow who wrote the article seems to be part of a small groundswell of “loneliness” whingers that the scummy left is throwing up.

    Best that action be taken against them before it becomes another area of state snooping and control.

    “Excuse me/ I’m from the DSS. It has been brought to our attention via CCTV and your non-attendance at our local “Meet your Neighbours” courses that you don’t bother with people much. As that is really not good for you , do you mind if we ask why?”

    “Fuck off”.

  16. She briefly, briefly skirts along the edge of the real issue, the choices of women, before declaring that “hectoring” and marching off into the hinterland of Vast State Control Of Everything.

  17. Aren’t there some European countries where most kids go to their local uni, rather than selecting by ability? Germany and Italy, I think. Happy to be corrected.

  18. Comprehensive schools with classes of mixed abilities are not successful, they offer lowest-common-denominator schooling. And the lowest denominator is usually the little shit who cannot sit still for 30 seconds. The only people I know who think otherwise went to grammar or private school instead. I did not learn anything at my comprehensive from year 7 until they put us into sets based on ability in year 10. And even then it took until sixth form for anything vaguely resembling good schooling to emerge.

  19. “And for the next fifty shades film, the male lead should be an overweight sweaty plumber. Not a 20-year-old chiselled multi-billionaire.”

    Hey don’t knock plumbers! They probably earn more than the average graduate does these days……..

  20. Its weird, the Left seem to be doing everything they can to destroy the ability of the working classes to compete with their social superiors. The more they destroy the education system, and break up traditional family structures, the more entrenched the advantages are for the middle and upper classes who manage to keep a stable family environment for their offspring, and provide an education that still imparts some knowledge and a sense of personal responsibility. The dimmest Tim-Nice-But-Dim will find it easier to get on in life if all the oiks from the council estate have been given 13 years of State Comprehensive ‘education’ followed by 3 years at ‘All shall have a Degree’ University.

  21. Horrible sentiments expressed in this article.

    They never do stop pushing for more, and your education, wealth, success, even whiteness will always be held against you as signs of unfair privilege. Which is why it is never worth conceding even the smallest thing, and in fact pushing back at every opportunity.

    They don’t actually want any of the things they push for because they never stop when they get them. All they actually want to do is destroy.

  22. My missus went to a vastly overcrowded state secondary school – the only state school in her town – and did poorly at O level. Her best friend did very similar to her at O level. Her friend later went to Oxford university after getting more qualifications at night school, much later my wife did a foundation year plus almost 2 years of a degree (dropped out due to disability, not academic issues).
    Foundation year was at a college 3 bus journeys away at the far side of a nearby city. Call it 4 hours travel a day.
    The foundation year did GCSE in first semester and A level in 2nd semester. She passed both. That’s 3 months for 6 GCSEs and 3 months for 5 A levels.
    The foundation year was not however at lowest common denominator level, there was a deadline to meet for the exams, there was coursework and assignments – and they met them or dropped out.

    Perhaps schools coddle the students too much.

  23. “Aren’t there some European countries where most kids go to their local uni”: that used to be the Scottish habit. But it was accompanied by a ferocious defence of university standards: lots of students were chucked out. if the student did badly enough during the academic year he might even be refused permission to take his end-of-year exams. Rotten lab marks, sonny? Off you go.

    I can’t imagine that the Guardian would approve of that aspect, eh?

  24. And, it was not “most kids”, it was “the normal choice for the few kids who do go to university is …” A very different platform.

    Anyway, to return to the original article, why would the fact that Successful Susan has known that Dim Darren would have trouble existing as a plankton feeder from age 11 or 12, rather than needing to work it out at age, say, 24, make her any more likely to shack up with him?

  25. @Andrew M
    “When I was at uni, there were distinct social groups: public school students didn’t socialise with those from state schools. An exception was made for grammar school kids, who were allowed to mix with either group. But I doubt that’s the answer they’re looking for.”
    Speaking as someone who went and got a job at the earliest opportunity, by the time I’d been working for a couple of years, whether you’d gone to public school or grown up on a council estate had become largely irrelevant. You were associating with people from your own age group up to those approaching retirement age with the wealth of diverse experience they’d acquired along the way. You were assessed by how well you cut it in your chosen career & your personal qualities, not where you came from or what school you’d attended. Our Friday night drinking gang included a geezer from the rough end of Leyton & a baronet.
    Come to think of it, the only people seemed bothered by antecedents were the odd university grad. Look at me! I went to Wherever! But then, they were essentially retarded children in our grown up world.

  26. Re “Aren’t there some European countries where most kids go to their local uni”: also partly depends on the model of what a “university” is … if universities are primarily seen as teaching centres, and research largely takes places at separate research institutes, there may be less of a pecking order. On the other hand, a university that has become a centre of excellence for research will generally be keen to find brilliant young minds to teach, in the hopes that some of them join the programme.

    Having said that about research driving “pecking order”, which is at least partly the case in the UK, the USA has many liberal arts colleges that offer no or almost no postgraduate teaching at all, and have no research programmes to speak of, yet these can be very prestigious, competitive, and attract students from thousands of miles away. But lots (most?) of Americans go to in-state universities, particularly because at public universities it reduces tuition fees.

  27. It’s 30 years since I was at my comprehensive school, I thought comprehensive schools were all streamed/setted as that was what I experienced. How on earth can you teach a class when every class in the school contains the whole ability spread of the whole school, instead of each class contains 30 self-similar pupils.

    The headmaster who retired just before I started made it his stated intention to run the school as “a comprehensive grammar school” which worked very well. We were even in a BBC documentary showing parents from posh bits of the city driving over to try and get their kids in. And it continued working very well until the Labour council – horrified at the success of the school – killed it off through various meddling and interference.

  28. Google fu is failing me at finding the % of Americans who go to college in-state (of course, in the bigger states that might still be equivalent to someone from Cornwall going to university in Newcastle … or even Berlin). But a relevant find on trends at the more prestigious “state flagship” universities is

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/nations-prominent-public-universities-are-shifting-to-out-of-state-students/2016/01/30/07575790-beaf-11e5-bcda-62a36b394160_story.html?utm_term=.189bf36d6e64

  29. “My feeling is that if we care about social mobility, then we should care about reducing assortative mating.”

    My plan; just send a few hundred well-educated lefty women like her to a mens prison for a few weeks. I’m sure they’d meet and reproduce with all sorts of non-elite males there. Problem solved!

  30. @tomsmith,

    The graun even wheeled out someone to describe the Putney bridge pusher as an example of white male privilege. Whatever happened to putting it down to good old-fashioned obnoxious self-obsessed wanker privilege?

  31. Not to worry. The Muslim invasion will fix it. Your 9 year old grand daughter will be assigned to a man for marriage.

  32. Gamecock
    My 9 year old grand daughter might have a couple of generations worth of student debt. She might welcome a rich man assigned to her, especially if he hasn’t his own student debt.

    But to be serious:
    A BA is a signalling mechanism: I’m intelligent. Not many jobs, apart maybe from law and medicine actually need it. If everyone has a BA the signal is worthless. So go back to 10% uni and stop this nonsense about everyone being brilliant.

  33. Critics said the exam regulator’s decision to lower the mark ­thresholds needed for good grades made the reforms pointless, especially if it becomes routine.

    Sally Collier, chief regulator of Ofqual, said: “I want the message to be that students have done fantas­tically well. All our kids are brilliant.

    “From my point of view the most important thing for our ­students is that they get the praise they deserve for having undertaken new courses of study, whether A-levels or GCSEs, and we recognise the work schools have done to get there and we are not detracting from that.”

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/schools-fear-chaos-over-tough-a-levels-twk5q906r

  34. I’ve always understood that in France anyone who wants to do a degree just turns up on the first day of term. If they can’t hack it they drop out.

    Must be very hard to budget and plan for.

    I’m happy to be corrected and for the actual situation to be explained in these hallowed pages.

  35. @Bloke in Germany, August 13, 2017 at 2:04 pm

    The graun even wheeled out someone to describe the Putney bridge pusher as an example of white male privilege. Whatever happened to putting it down to good old-fashioned obnoxious self-obsessed wanker privilege?

    MET happily conspired by publicly performing dawn-raid, name & shame with photo arrest of USA banker. Then six hours later release without charge when he proved his innocence – he was in California at time of incident.

    Chap has now hired bodyguards to protect him as release treated as not-news by MSM. I hope he sues MET.

    What happened to “helping with inquiries”, presumption of innocence, … ?

  36. Aren’t there some European countries where most kids go to their local uni, rather than selecting by ability? Germany and Italy

    I understand the Italian system is that anyone with the (A level equivalent) can enrol at university. The result is classes of hundreds, most of whom never pass any exams and eventually drop out.
    I always though the Italian practice of applying the title Dr to anyone with a degree rather doubtful. Then an Italian colleague and PhD (mathematics) student explain the process of obtaining a degree and the time it took and it all began to make sense. (“you have to pass the exam with 110%” — no I still don’t quite understand)

  37. @ Andrew M
    When I was at Uni there may have been distinct social class groups but I was completely unaware of them. Some of my friends were from Public School, some from Grammar School and some were Rhodes Scholars. We were who we were and how much money our parents had didn’t matter.

  38. “Sally Collier, chief regulator of Ofqual”

    Sally, employed to ensure qualifications are worthless by the end of her term. NoQual will be a better name, or AllQual to be ‘inclusive’.

  39. Bloke in Costa Rica

    You’re not “selected” at age 14 or 18 or 21. You’re selected about a millisecond after the sperm with your father’s contribution of genes makes it through the egg wall. It bears repeating that, while not all poor people are thick, virtually all thick people are poor.

  40. “What happened to “helping with inquiries”, presumption of innocence, … ?”

    White, male, American, banker. That’s not a good hand in Diversity Poker. If that photo had been anyone else bar a middle aged white man the story would never have been news.

    I hope he moves back to the USA for safety and then sues the Met for millions.

  41. If we care about social mobility (which I actually do) we should get rid of the blocks to it, destroy nepotism in the BBC and the Westminster bubble, respect skilled craftsmen more than slick salesmen [my previous parish church has a monument (carved in stone of course) to an earlier parishoner who was a stonemason and Lord Mayor of London], promote people on merit regardless of quotas or PC/non-PC opinions, and encourage competition so that any firm that allows bigotry to affect its selection and promotion policies suffers the deserved consequences.
    [Tim-nice-but-dim has value in contexts where integrity and trust are more important than cleverness, but rarely as CEO]

  42. Pingback: It Is Not Social Mobility, It Is Abolishing Class Divisions | PopularResistance.Org

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