Young adults in England have scored among the lowest results in the industrialised world in international literacy and numeracy tests.
A major study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows how England's 16 to 24-year-olds are falling behind their Asian and European counterparts. England is 22nd for literacy and 21st for numeracy out of 24 countries.
Unlike other developed countries, the study also showed that young people in England are no better at these tests than older people, in the 55 to 65 age range. When this is weighted with other factors, such as the socio-economic background of people taking the test, it shows that England is the only country in the survey where results are going backwards - with the older cohort better than the younger.
>>90751 Couldn't that just be because of his interpretation of the terms? I'd wager that the government have a similar interpretation to him, based on all the "war on woke" rhetoric? He isn't arguing that they're being misused, just the way he sees them being used is harmful.
Much like you are appealing to an argument that relies on people knowing what those terms "really mean", he's relying on the audience understanding the implication that such subjects are often misunderstood and that in practical terms the message that gets through isn't always the intended one.
Regardless, he's got the facts and figures to back it up. Far from being privileged as the reductionist race narrative implies, white working class people face some of the most serious disadvantage this country is capable of. Which shouldn't be at all surprising- If white people are the majority of the population they will feel the majority of the bad things as well as the good.
>>90754 No, and we can tell that isn't what he means because he is referring to us literally "teaching [our children] in school" that they "need to start apologising for belonging to a wider group". He's not simply talking about misuse of terminology - he's spreading a far-right conspiracy theory about loony lefty teachers indoctrinating kids.
And you're being taken in by the far-right lies - "far from being privileged as the reductionist race narrative implies"? Again, that's not what white privilege means. Racial privilege theory does not deny the poverty amongst the white working class and I would challenge you to find me a source where you claim it does.
What I'm saying is that he isn't arguing that the terms are being misused. He's saying that [his interpretation of] the terms, which will be influenced by others misusing them even if he isn't aware they're misusing them because he believes that's what they evidently mean, are harmful.
They most likely are harmful, but it does feel a more like tinkering around the edges.
I think it's perfectly understandable to see the 'white' and the 'masculinity' and assume that they apply to yourself. Why would you bother to read up on it and find out that it doesn't actually apply to you or single you out specifically?
Your first encounters of these terms would also likely be in a negative context via tabloids, social media, or conversation in the pub.
They quite often are aimed at you, though. Any time they try the "you just don't understand what it means" or "it doesn't apply to you, don't be so defensive" argument, it's just a crap motte and bailey.
I know this because I'm black. Any time someone's going on about knife crime or whatever, they will inevitably wheel out that classic "Obviously we don't mean ALL blacks!" defense. "If you're one of the well behaved ones who doesn't steal anything or stab anyone it's obviously not YOU we're talking about!" and anyone with an ounce of sense knows that's bullshit, and would quite rightly say as much.
>>90760 >"it doesn't apply to you, don't be so defensive"
But white privilege does apply to white people, all white people, all the time. If people say this then they are the ones who don't understand what it means, so I agree that that argument is crap. The point is that people who are learning about what it means to be white and male should also learn how all privileges intersect, and the fact they are getting shit on by society in a specific fashion may have nothing to do with the white male privilege that they do indeed possess.
So anyway, who are these people you meet that support the ideas of white privilege and black criminality at the same time? They seem very confused about whether they are supposed to be racist or not, how on earth do they function?
>The point is that people who are learning about what it means to be white and male should also learn how all privileges intersect, and the fact they are getting shit on by society in a specific fashion may have nothing to do with the white male privilege that they do indeed possess.
The thing is, while you can talk all day about exactly how those different privileges intersect, I think to the vast majority of people it's absolutely meaningless. It comes off as an entirely academic exercise in hair splitting, while they're dealing with the realities of job prospects and housing. I'm quite a bit more successful than some of the white kids I was at school with in the 80s and I doubt it means much to them that I'm more likely to be stopped by the coppers or get sideways glances in a fancy restaurant; and the fact a job might be more likely to hire a white person than me is again meaningless because that job was out of their reach to begin with. I think it's more fair to say these privileges are distinct than that they intersect.
I work for a marketing firm, and if we have a campaign that's not resonating with the target audience, we drop it like a hot coal. We wouldn't start telling people they just don't understand the message we were trying to send, that's just mad. If you just changed it from "white privilege" to "BAME disadvantage" you would instantly have a much more relatable message that's essentially the same underneath. But for some reason people are completely committed to defending a controversial and confrontational framework. We actually do a lot of leaning into the progressive stuff nowadays, and the primary reason for that is that middle class white people like it. They're not putting black people in adverts for the sake of black people.
But to bring this round to the actual subject matter again, I think you're right to point out that he might be misusing these terms, and he may be blaming them in bad faith. That doesn't change the fact there's empirical evidence that working class white people are very much disadvantaged, systemically so. There was none of this when I was a school, but I distinctly remember a lot of lads in particular falling into bad behaviour because teachers would more readily label boys as being troublemakers than girls. We also have empirical evidence that boys have been underachieving compared to girls for a long time now. So I don't think it's a stretch to say that something similar is going om- Our assumption that one group is privileged over the other is causing us to in fact neglect them. When he talks about things like white privilege and toxic masculinity that's what he really means, and many people would understand that intuitively.
Overall I don't want to sound dramatic but I genuinely worry that if we continue to dismiss all this stuff it will only further division and cause more harm overall. If we're going to talk about addressing inequality I want it to be a genuine and fair effort, not just some bizarre historical role reversal. I don't mean to imply you are dismissing it, even, but when your only contribution is to be pedantic about terminology that is what it looks like.
>>90765 >the fact a job might be more likely to hire a white person than me is again meaningless because that job was out of their reach to begin with
I had a bit of a flippant conversation with my friends recently about the gender pay gap as I was trying to convince once of them to demand a higher pay rise for a more senior position she has been offered.
When one of them mentioned the lack of female directors of FTSE firms I pointed out that nobody we went to school with is in danger of becoming one either regardless of gender because there's much bigger factors at play; they didn't seem aware of that, which I found a bit surprising.
>>90765 >I think you're right to point out that he might be misusing these terms, and he may be blaming them in bad faith. That doesn't change the fact there's empirical evidence that working class white people are very much disadvantaged, systemically so.
Well we're in agreement, then? My point is not "white privilege is a concept obvious to and well understood by everybody", and needless to say neither is it "white working class people are not disadvantaged to those of other racial backgrounds" - my overarching point is "this professor is an arse and using disingenuous right-wing rhetoric". As I said earlier he's talking about teaching white privilege in schools - first I've heard of that being on the National Curriculum, and if it was either the teachers do a shit job, which means the problem is with the teaching, or they do a good job, which means the pupils understand the nuances of the theory anyway. So if we want to tackle this problem we'd be better off listening to people other than him.
There are indeed counterpoints from other academics in this article, some of which appear to directly refute the entire premise:
>Dr Sam Baars, director of research and operations at the Centre for Education and Youth, told the committee he did not see whiteness as a marker of disadvantage, and that at other stages in education those gaps were flipped on their head.
>Prof Kalwant Bhopal, director of the Centre for Research in Race and Education at the University of Birmingham, commenting after the hearing, added: “This argument presents a discourse that you cannot discuss race and class together.
>“It suggests a hierarchy of oppression which ignores the evidence that Black, Indian and laplanderstani/Bangladeshi poor working class pupils are disadvantaged in their educational experiences due to the structural and institutional racism they experience.
>“Furthermore, it is not white working class groups who are the most disadvantaged, it is Gypsy, Roma and Traveller groups who have the worst outcomes at all stages of their educational experiences.”
Not him but intersectionalism is utterly fucking daft, both white privilege and toxic masculinity are disingenuous concepts touted by middle class tossers who only want to deflect from the realities of economic disadvantage, and you're a wee daftie arguing in bad faith.
Black people have problems unique to being black but the problems relating to being poor are the same problems experienced by poor white people, it does nobody any good pretending it's a complex tangled web of injustice because it isn't- The poor people problems are a result of dogshit liberal capitalism and the black people problems are a result of racism.
Some people have both at once, some people only have one or the other, some people have neither. Some people have vaginas. That is all.
>>90769 >both white privilege and toxic masculinity are disingenuous concepts touted by middle class tossers
Yeah it's well known there are no fisherpersons or anti-racists from working class backgrounds are there. Fuck off to bed Piers, you've got to be up early for GMB.
You might think it's a clever sleight of hand to imply being a fisherperson or anti-racist means buying into those concepts, but it's not. Most of the working class lefties I know are very skeptical of it all because it doesn't achieve meaningful material change. Like otherlad hinted at:
>We actually do a lot of leaning into the progressive stuff nowadays, and the primary reason for that is that middle class white people like it. They're not putting black people in adverts for the sake of black people.
The primary thing it achieves is making middle class people pat themselves on the back for a job well done when in reality they've done absolutely nothing. Remember how Black Lives Matter was really achieving something this time around? Really really, like for real this time?
Next time, though. Next time will be the actual revolution won't it.
That's definitely something that happened but something else that happened was lots of people responding to it with the cynicism it deserved. It seems a bit of a stretch to call it "largely led" by that. Almost as though you're just lashing out with the same impotent bitterness as always.
>>90773 I think the huge, pan-American protests happened before some marketing department (not the CEOs, you're very good at being very wrong about everything btw) got that bright idea, and few people invested and involved with BLM gave a shit or they were actively irritated by what they viewed as the appeasement of liberal indifference.
The point that none of it achieved anything still stands though. Unless you're the sort that thinks getting Biden elected instead of Trump will count as an achievement.
Of course, I am bitter, you're right about that. The prevalence of meaningless gesture politics nowadays, combined with smart-arses on the internet who like to stick up for it all just to be a holier than thou prick, deeply angers me.
So you're upset that the BLM protests didn't... what, exactly? Overthrow the US government? Bring down capitalism? Immanentise the eschaton? I know it's a shame on all fronts there but what can you expect to happen if a strategic genius like you doesn't get involved? Obviously we'd be living in a utopia by now if only everyone had listened to you from the start.
>>90778 Better them than the smart-arses who endlessly whine about other people's efforts, just to be some holier-than-holier-than-thou prick. It's just another form of the same thing but thinks it's somehow more "authentic" simply because grumpy sods always think they are.
That's not it, though, is it lad. Their grievance is not that you're not making unsatisfactory efforts, it's that you're actively standing in the way of genuine progress with disingenuous bullshit.
Just like you immediately derailed any discussion of the subject matter of that study, by focussing instead on whether or not the language was used right. All you do is distract, misdirect, and divide.
>>90780 Okay, so they're still smart-arses on the internet who like to stick up for it all just to be a holier than thou prick then. To be honest, I thought as much.
"I'm complaining about people complaining but god forbid if anyone complains about me complaining about people complaining, they're hypocrites and their motives are obviously suspect. I'm going to do the right thing by complaining about them."
>The pandemic has seen most children in England slipping back with their learning - and some have gone significantly back with their social skills, says Ofsted.
>A report from the education watchdog warns some young children have forgotten how to use a knife and fork or have regressed back to nappies. Older children have lost their "stamina" for reading, say inspectors.
>>91368 It's sad that schools are supposed to make up for this deficit. It's like putting a plaster on an infected wound, there's no cure for terrible parenting. You almost wonder if 'Parenting' should be on the curriculum as a way of reducing these bad habits in future generations but you'd have no end of argument about what should be on it, if Mumsnet is anything to go by.
>>91369 This was, to some extent, what Sure Start centres used to cover and help with. Get your baby weighed and get some support with how to parent.
It's largely laziness, in my experience. If it wasn't for school meals then my sister-in-law's kids would only have hot meals on rare occasions; usually she leaves sausage rolls, crisps and other snacks on a little table for them to help themselves to whilst they're watching TV and she stares at her phone.
If you are too busy to teach your child not to shit their pants and to hold a knife and fork you are too busy to be a parent and the state needs to take your kids away so you can get back to whatever else it is that is more important.
>>91368 When I worked with young children I was shocked to learn that even 4 year olds had trouble at lunchtime because mothers would, allegedly, still be breastfeeding them. Similar deal with water because they wouldn't have it at home.
Young children are weird though, it might just be that they were acting up because some weirdo from Oftsed was watching them eat or they need to get used to spending time in environment. Same where it talks about teenagers bringing their internet beefs into the classroom which sounds more like a temporary problem.
Lunchtime was amazing because the kids would eventually go play and then I'd get to gorge myself on bangers and mash. I bet if you went to a posh place you'd get turkey dinosaurs.
>>91373 It's more likely that they started school not fully toilet trained, the teaching staff helped them with their toilet training and having gone several months without that support from the school and solely having to rely on their parents to teach them they've regressed.
There is no fucking excuse for sending a kid to school who isn't toilet trained or who needs nappies unless they're disabled. It's unacceptable.
>>91376 You're the first person to mention wealth. I know plenty of messed up children from well off backgrounds because their parents don't attempt to discipline them.
Your true colours and prejudices are showing. It's the soft bigotry of low expectations "it must be poor people who don't toilet train their kids, but they can't help it because they're poor so it should be excused."
Shit parenting is shit parenting. It doesn't matter what your social status is, if your child starts school in nappies you are a shit parent. That's all there is to it.
>>91378 Well it is what it is. Send your kid to school in a nappy and you're a shit parent. That's all there is to it.
I've seen plenty of posts along your lines, usually from the highly patronising "we know what's best" authoritarian wing of Labour. It's extremely prejudicial but they don't see it because it's not as overt as discrimination from other directions.
Teaching how to use knife and fork? Is that a thing? I was never taught that. I picked it by myself I think. Unless I'm still poor and surrounded by poor people and hold them in the wrong way, I'm not too sure.
Anyway, I don't think it is a problem of wealth. Growing up, my household was dirt poor, council-housed, and I used to get free school meals. My mother would make sure I had one hot meal a day at the very least, so I am not sure why these lot who decided to have kids can't do the same. They can't even potty train their kids. It is just ridiculous.
Also fuck David Cameron and his lackey Nick Clegg for getting rid of EMA. I had to give my younger brother pocket money when he started his A-Levels 10 years ago. I am still mad about that.
I'm not a parent, so I might be well off base here, but I think there's a lot of things kids learn just by having engaged or present parents - children can learn language just by interacting with people, and I'm quite sure observing and copying dextrous tasks like fork handling is wired in to our caveman brains.
>>91381 >Anyway, I don't think it is a problem of wealth. Growing up, my household was dirt poor, council-housed, and I used to get free school meals. My mother would make sure I had one hot meal a day at the very least, so I am not sure why these lot who decided to have kids can't do the same. They can't even potty train their kids. It is just ridiculous.
I think, for want of a better word, it's a question of pride. People of previous generations would be mortified and felt that shame was being brought upon their household if certain standards were upheld whereas there's an increasing number of people who are shameless and idle.
Are you suggesting that being judgemental and feeling shame might be beneficial for society. And feeling pride should be about bettering yourself rather than being always comfortable with yourself. That doesn't sound very woke.
>>91393 People are just as judgemental as they were before, if not even worse. It's just that we're learning to tune it out. Shame was always a shitty way of getting people to do things.
>>91381 My mum has a proper go at me when I don't hold cutlery properly, but I don't understand what I'm doing wrong. I'm a left-handed abomination so I hold things like Quasimodo anyway, it's a form of discrimination I think.
>One in three UK teachers plan to quit the classroom within five years because of increased workload and diminishing respect for the profession, according to a major union survey.
>The poll by the National Education Union revealed an education workforce exhausted after a year of Covid disruption, with 70% reporting increased workload over the last 12 months and 95% worried about the impact on their wellbeing. Out of a poll of 10,000 members, 35% said they would “definitely” not be working in education by 2026, while two-thirds (66%) said the status of the profession has got worse and blamed government for failing to listen to or value teachers.
