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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Michael Gove not fit for purpose
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
North East Quine, part of the problem with Gove's policies for education are another quotation from that article:
quote:
"The trouble with anyone's own experience of school," the teacher points out, "is that it's so formative that it informs all your ideas about education. That's very natural, but not necessarily a good thing."
If the Scottish system is so different, and we all know it is, are these formative ideas going to necessarily convert to the English system?
I know that working in a range of different schools has changed my views on education from those formed from my own schooling.
[ 26. October 2012, 16:02: Message edited by: Curiosity killed ... ]
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
I'm very glad Gove isn't here. I don't really see how he can understand the English system when he didn't experience it himself. If I were in England, I'd be outraged.
I find it odd reading descriptions of his education which don't really square with what I would have expected his experience to be. For instance, bafflingly, the Guardian describes Gordon's as resembling a "Soviet-style Eton" What is that supposed to mean? This is what it looks like; why does the Guardian regard this as "Soviet-style"?
[ 26. October 2012, 17:17: Message edited by: North East Quine ]
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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dv
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# 15714
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Do you think Gove's policies are creating a system to provide a good universal education?
Or are you happy with the teaching of an elite of middle class children and leaving the rest to muddle along with the dregs?
Gove is starting to deal with the hopeless system he has inherited which has seen the UK tumble down the international league tables for core subjects like maths and languages (including English). We have a system of low expectations and the ludicrous notion that all must have prizes. The main barrier to success will be the teachers, sadly, who are themselves largely products of the "good enough, that'll do" comprehensive system. It's a shambles and Gove is its best hope of reform.
Posts: 70 | From: Lancs UK | Registered: Jun 2010
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dv
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# 15714
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
And your experience in schools is?
Been to a couple; worked in a couple. I count myself a survivor of my state education.
Posts: 70 | From: Lancs UK | Registered: Jun 2010
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Justinian
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# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by dv:
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
And your experience in schools is?
Been to a couple; worked in a couple. I count myself a survivor of my state education.
And this compares to the old Secondary Modern schools how?
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Spawn
Shipmate
# 4867
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
And your experience in schools is?
Well my experience of schools is as a husband of a teacher, a parent governor of a primary academy, a user of education (though some time in the past) and a parent. Through these various lenses I experience Gove's reforms as being overwhelmingly good. The reforms are definitely localist - far less micro-management by the DofE than the LEA. In my personal experience, the effect of a potential free school in the area is driving up standards in my childrens' secondary school. In the primary academy of which I am a governor, teachers have had their pay and conditions confirmed and have found the experience of running their own ship far more rewarding. The number of activities they are now offering to the children is truly exceptional. Thankyou Gove.
As I remember it, Gove was an excellent writer on The Times. There isn't a link on this thread to his infelicities in the Radio Times. I think Government-speak rubs off on even the most able people.
I can't be the only one who has noticed the irony in Leo's complaints about Gove's grammar. I'd forgive Leo his repeated mistakes with basic English (in every single post for as long as I can remember) if he hadn't just confessed to being an English examiner in the recent past. His period as an examiner coincides with a dramatic decline in standards. I am not surprised.
Posts: 3447 | From: North Devon | Registered: Aug 2003
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
I have worked in a number of schools, primary and secondary, and was a governor of the local secondary for two terms of office. I trained for KS2/3 teaching. For my sins, I worked in one of the inspirations for the Big Society and Free Schools.
As always, these things are never as black and white as sound bite politics suggest. Some schools and teachers were settling for good enough, but many more are pushing students to achieve the best results they can.
Having worked with students in "challenging circumstances" who struggled to achieve GCSEs for a number of reasons, the EBac is out of many children's reach and will remain so. When we had O levels we also had CSEs and for all those people like Gove who succeeded passing the qualifications to get to the grammar school or equivalent there were many others who did not. All the plans look to be pushing the grammar school contingent upwards and onwards, but not providing for those that aren't going to pass that entrance exam.
How do children like my daughter fit into this system? Extremely high IQ but severe dyslexia (specific learning difficulties). She's now working as an engineer, having achieved a 2:1 MEng from a Russell group university, but she'd have struggled to pass the English component of any grammar school entry at 10 or 11.
Trapping children in schools for longer and longer where they are not achieving is not going to solve anything.
Sadly, yes, leo completely blew any discussion about Gove by starting with nitpicking pedantic opening post, and subsequent posts haven't improved matters.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Spawn
Shipmate
# 4867
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
As always, these things are never as black and white as sound bite politics suggest. Some schools and teachers were settling for good enough, but many more are pushing students to achieve the best results they can.
I'm with you. The vast majority of teachers I encounter are doing their best and always have done under difficult and ever-changing circumstances.
quote:
How do children like my daughter fit into this system? Extremely high IQ but severe dyslexia (specific learning difficulties). She's now working as an engineer, having achieved a 2:1 MEng from a Russell group university, but she'd have struggled to pass the English component of any grammar school entry at 10 or 11.
I don't see how Gove's reforms would affect your daughter? They may have given her the choice of an academy or free school. Gove's reforms aren't about a return to the grammar/secondary modern system but about improving comprehensive education. If I was going to improve on the idea of an academic qualification like the EBAC, I'd take up Labour's idea of a Technical Baccalaureate for those children who are not gifted academically (though I guess that given your daughter has a 2:1 she doesn't need it). We have got to be practical, rather than ideological, in improving education. Gove's offer of autonomy for schools is important but there are other things as well that government, parents, governors and teachers can do and are doing.
Posts: 3447 | From: North Devon | Registered: Aug 2003
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Moth
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# 2589
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Posted
I always think that the problem often lies in the fact that most successful people, almost by definition, thrived in the education system they experienced. This convinces them that whatever they experienced 'works' and should be imposed on everyone else.
Those who did not thrive in that system don't often reach the top, so don't have the chance to say that it didn't work for them.
The system worked fine for me - working class girl, grammar school, Oxbridge, qualified as a barrister but happily teaching law. It certainly wouldn't work for the students I now teach, particularly as the competitive elements in education have increased so much. When I got into grammar school, no-one was privately tutored for the entrance exam. When my son got in (2001) almost three quarters of applicants were privately tutored. Now, everyone who can afford it pays for private tutoring and almost everyone who gets in has been tutored.
The students I teach come mostly from very deprived backgrounds. They have got into studying law by the skin of their teeth. Some drop out, but those who succeed are very good. However, since we are not a Russell group university, they will still be fighting a difficult battle to get the job they deserve.
I wish we could be more meritocratic, not less, to be honest. To ensure that bright children from any background can succeed, as they were able to in the 1950s and 60s. To ensure that the less able middle class kids didn't steal good school and university places from brighter working class kids. I just don't quite see how we get from where we are now back to that situation, but I strongly doubt that more competition is the way to go. I am middle class myself now, and know just how much better equipped I am to succeed in any competitive system than the parents of my students are.
Quite honestly, what we want is a good school within walking distance of every child. One that can stretch the brightest and support the weakest. Other countries can do it - Finland for example. Why can't we?
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"There are governments that burn books, and then there are those that sell the libraries and shut the universities to anyone who can't pay for a key." Laurie Penny.
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
Thank you for that Moth. It makes a lot of sense.
One thing I find quite disturbing is that nobody these days seems have the same assumptions about education as were taken for granted 50 years ago. In those days, even most people who were stretching themselves to give their children a bit of a leg up, thought it was a good thing that there should be a ladder, that everyone should be encouraged to climb it if they could or wanted to, and that by the time you got to the top, you should be different. I suspect a lot of people no longer believe that.
I think Educating Rita embodies a lot of the assumptions and dreams of my parents and my generation about what education used to be about. I suspect a lot of people now would think a selection of:-
1. The film's patronising towards a working class culture that has a value of its own and to which Rita/Susan should have been faithful.
2. She's just a chav and should have stayed with Denny and had a baby.
3. Hair dressing is just as cultured as literature. Why couldn't she have stayed there?
4. Why should she have studied literature and not something more useful like business studies that she could have used in a salon, and would give her more prospect of paying back her enormous loan?
5. Why should public money be wasted on anybody anyway?
6. Why should anyone want or be expected to become educated or bourgeois? The original Susan was just as good as Frank.
7. She's taking a place that my Tristram or Andromeda could have had.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
One problem is a failure to understand the normal distribution and what average means. We have to expect that most schools, pupils and teachers will be average - because that is literally what average means. Expecting every school to be above average is insane. Satisfactory is supposed to mean that something satisfies thee conditions it is supposed to meet - something OFSTED apparently doesn't understand.
We have become confused between minimum acceptable standards; we want 99% literacy, and evaluative standards - we want to group people by ability/performance. The same goes for schools.
Essentially - for evaluative examination you should be using a grade curve, the top x% get an A, (the next y% get a B etc) in any given year regardless of the difficulty of the exam as they are still the best performing x%. So the rate of particular grades should not change from year to year. How big the percent bands are reflect how fined grained you need your analysis to be to be useful (and how good your measuring tool actually is.)
You show improved standards by the difficulty of the assessments and the nature of the minimum requirements.
We what we mean when we say we want everyone to have access to "a good school", is that we want an average school to have standards we think provide a sufficiently good standard of education.
[ 27. October 2012, 12:35: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
One problem is a failure to understand the normal distribution and what average means. We have to expect that most schools, pupils and teachers will be average - because that is literally what average means. Expecting every school to be above average is insane.
Yes, I'm puzzled by that one. Admittedly I last did Maths in 1963, but I was quite good at it. I'm also puzzled that anybody can sell that to a profession that is supposed to include a lot of people whose job is supposed to be the teaching of basic Maths. Or has that gone the same way as we are always being told Grammar and Spelling have gone?
quote:
Ditto:
Essentially - for evaluative examination you should be using a grade curve, the top x% get an A, (the next y% get a B etc) in any given year regardless of the difficulty of the exam as they are still the best performing x%. So the rate of particular grades should not change from year to year. How big the percent bands are reflect how fined grained you need your analysis to be to be useful (and how good your measuring tool actually is.)
I can see the argument, but don't accept your dogmatic 'should'. I think though you've got to be clear what you are trying to measure, and whether your mechanism will measure it.
If you say 10% will get an A, 20% a B, 20% a C, 10% a D and 40% will fail, you are saying that in any particular year there are bound to be those calibres of people, irrespective of the quality of the syllabus or the teaching. It measures everybody in relation to their competitors, but makes no measure of quality. It is based on a belief that statistics is a good enough tool to do this.
There may be some defence for this if you have a really huge sample, but it cannot be defended for a small or ordinary sized sample.
It would be dishonest to publish the pass mark as 40%, but to have hidden beneath your hand a policy that what decides whether you reach that isn't marking your paper, but where it stands in relation to everyone else's.
It is also provides no intellectually legitimate basis for employers comparing people who took their examinations in different years or from different boards, or for educators comparing the calibre of students, syllabus or teaching in different years.
What has been the problem is a widespread suspicion that grading to a standard, rather than a grade curve has been massaged to produce an impression that 'every day and in every way, things are getting better and better'.
If one is grading to a standard, there has to be some reliable way of ensuring that each year and each board is grading to the same standard. Testing results against a grade curve may be a useful way of checking examiners' marking standards - if there are dramatic discrepancies between years, or recently, half years, that does suggest somebody is getting something wrong. But there has to be a clear idea what standard = A, B, C, D etc. and how one measures this. Otherwise the examination doesn't really have any credibility at all.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Spawn:
I can't be the only one who has noticed the irony in Leo's complaints about Gove's grammar. I'd forgive Leo his repeated mistakes with basic English (in every single post for as long as I can remember) if he hadn't just confessed to being an English examiner in the recent past. His period as an examiner coincides with a dramatic decline in standards. I am not surprised.
My 'mistakes' are usually over spelling and capitalisation because I type too quickly.
Remember that Gove started 14 out of 26 sentences with a conjunction. My written style is not that unpolished.
How do you define 'recent past'? I started marking English in 1975.
You may like to blame me for the supposed decline in the English education system but bear in mind that we all have to work to a mark scheme rather than impose so called pedantry. In all mark schemes that I have seen since the 1970s, Gove would not get an O'level nor its equivalent. He certainly wouldn't under the recent tightening up in England (and Wales before they decided to remark).
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Enoch, the way that O Levels and GCSEs in the early days were marked was by using the bell curve, - the top 10% got an A - and the marks to pass each grade changed every year. This was seen as the way of balancing out the differences between papers.
More recently GCSEs have been working on pass marks as being grade boundaries - so 80% plus gives an A* or whatever. And because people know exactly what they have to achieve, more candidates are achieving higher grades - otherwise known as grade inflation and the source of all the stories in the Press.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
leo completely blew any discussion about Gove by starting with nitpicking pedantic opening post, and subsequent posts haven't improved matters.
The discussion about Gove which followed my Op wasn't what i intended.
My point, (if it is pedantic to query someone who writes 14/28 sentences ungrammatically) was that if he cannot write a sentence, he shouldn't be in the post (even if his policies were good - which they are not.).
[ 27. October 2012, 16:54: Message edited by: leo ]
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Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Enoch, the way that O Levels and GCSEs in the early days were marked was by using the bell curve, - the top 10% got an A - and the marks to pass each grade changed every year. This was seen as the way of balancing out the differences between papers.
More recently GCSEs have been working on pass marks as being grade boundaries - so 80% plus gives an A* or whatever. And because people know exactly what they have to achieve, more candidates are achieving higher grades - otherwise known as grade inflation and the source of all the stories in the Press.
Bell curves were the best way to get grade inflation.
If you entered 50 pigs into the exam, or 50 functionally illiterate pupils, then the other 50 children got median marks or above.
So all the children passed.
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My reviews at http://layreadersbookreviews.wordpress.com
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
One problem is a failure to understand the normal distribution and what average means. We have to expect that most schools, pupils and teachers will be average - because that is literally what average means. Expecting every school to be above average is insane.
Yes, I'm puzzled by that one. Admittedly I last did Maths in 1963, but I was quite good at it. I'm also puzzled that anybody can sell that to a profession that is supposed to include a lot of people whose job is supposed to be the teaching of basic Maths. Or has that gone the same way as we are always being told Grammar and Spelling have gone?
quote:
Ditto:
Essentially - for evaluative examination you should be using a grade curve, the top x% get an A, (the next y% get a B etc) in any given year regardless of the difficulty of the exam as they are still the best performing x%. So the rate of particular grades should not change from year to year. How big the percent bands are reflect how fined grained you need your analysis to be to be useful (and how good your measuring tool actually is.)
I can see the argument, but don't accept your dogmatic 'should'. I think though you've got to be clear what you are trying to measure, and whether your mechanism will measure it.
If you say 10% will get an A, 20% a B, 20% a C, 10% a D and 40% will fail, you are saying that in any particular year there are bound to be those calibres of people, irrespective of the quality of the syllabus or the teaching. It measures everybody in relation to their competitors, but makes no measure of quality. It is based on a belief that statistics is a good enough tool to do this.
There may be some defence for this if you have a really huge sample, but it cannot be defended for a small or ordinary sized sample.
It would be dishonest to publish the pass mark as 40%, but to have hidden beneath your hand a policy that what decides whether you reach that isn't marking your paper, but where it stands in relation to everyone else's.
It is also provides no intellectually legitimate basis for employers comparing people who took their examinations in different years or from different boards, or for educators comparing the calibre of students, syllabus or teaching in different years.
What has been the problem is a widespread suspicion that grading to a standard, rather than a grade curve has been massaged to produce an impression that 'every day and in every way, things are getting better and better'.
If one is grading to a standard, there has to be some reliable way of ensuring that each year and each board is grading to the same standard. Testing results against a grade curve may be a useful way of checking examiners' marking standards - if there are dramatic discrepancies between years, or recently, half years, that does suggest somebody is getting something wrong. But there has to be a clear idea what standard = A, B, C, D etc. and how one measures this. Otherwise the examination doesn't really have any credibility at all.
Well, we do have a very large sample - tens of thousands take the exams each year. Say you have a hard exam one year and the most able score in the 70s to 80s, the following year it is easier and the most able score 80s to 90s. Meanwhile the least able score 5-10 in the first exam and 15 to 0 in the second exam. They are still going to be scoring less than the more able pupils. The assumption is that if the pupils who took the exam in the harder year would have got higher marks in the easier year - just as those who did take it.
This comes back to the purpose of the exams,do you want to know if the pupil has learnt a specific list of things - or do you want to pick the most able pupil ? If you grade according to the specific list of things, you will gradually get more and more people in your top grade as people teach closer and closer to the syllabus and cram and whatever else to achieve that.
Ideally employers should not just be looking at exam grades to choose their employees.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
This comes back to the purpose of the exams,do you want to know if the pupil has learnt a specific list of things - or do you want to pick the most able pupil ? If you grade according to the specific list of things, you will gradually get more and more people in your top grade as people teach closer and closer to the syllabus and cram and whatever else to achieve that.
On that logic, and taking into a/c what Leo has said - with which I agree - if nobody has learnt anything at all, the person who blagged their way through best would get an A. You would regard that as both a sound guide and proof that the grade curve works.
That may not matter too much with classics. Nobody dies if none of the students have learnt the fourth conjugation pluperfect properly. But it doesn't do for medicine. Nor does it do for basic maths. What the grading system should be measuring is the competence and calibre of the students' achievements in the subject they are supposed to have been studying.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Education minister Michael Gove has written an open letter, published in the new radio Times, to one of his former schoolmasters.
Three of his sentences begin with 'Because'.
Four with 'But'.
Five with 'And'.
One sentence has no verb.
Having taught English Language to O'level, CSE and GCSE, and having been ranked 'most normal marker' in moderation trials, I can assert confidently that Gove would not pass O'level, not CSE Grade 1, not GCSE grade C (and that, before the bar was raised.)
What confidence can we have in him to do his job?
It's worse than you think Leo. Highly likely that one of his officials wrote it. Govt house style and all that. This sort of thing works fine when spoken, but makes you look like a 24 carrat chump when submitted as written prose.
[ 27. October 2012, 21:10: Message edited by: Ramarius ]
Posts: 950 | From: Virtually anywhere | Registered: Jul 2011
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
I'm confused. Why is it a sin to start a sentence with "But" or "Because"?
Because I am a writer and editor, I know that these rules are not hard and fast.
But for my personal knowledge, you might have convinced me.
And even sentence fragments without verbs can be effective writing on occasion. Like this.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
This comes back to the purpose of the exams,do you want to know if the pupil has learnt a specific list of things - or do you want to pick the most able pupil ? If you grade according to the specific list of things, you will gradually get more and more people in your top grade as people teach closer and closer to the syllabus and cram and whatever else to achieve that.
On that logic, and taking into a/c what Leo has said - with which I agree - if nobody has learnt anything at all, the person who blagged their way through best would get an A. You would regard that as both a sound guide and proof that the grade curve works.
That may not matter too much with classics. Nobody dies if none of the students have learnt the fourth conjugation pluperfect properly. But it doesn't do for medicine. Nor does it do for basic maths. What the grading system should be measuring is the competence and calibre of the students' achievements in the subject they are supposed to have been studying.
I think this is why you need minimum standards or perhaps what would be better termed mastery standards, quality evaluation of your assessment tools, good curriculum design etc. I suppose I am saying that bit is a process issue you shouldn't be trying to fix by fiddling with the outcome assessment.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
To put it another way, I shouldn't need to know whether you got grade a to c in your English GCSE to know that you can read. Literacy should be a mastery/minimum standard. The same goes for the equivalents in other subjects.
I am not sure if a one off sit down exam is the best way to assess minimum/mastery standards but that is another issue.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
Interesting.
Typically when you take this type of approach you expect everyone to pass and require 95% or above on the assessment - it being pass/fail only. It is the way the European Computer Driving License used to work(don't know if that is still going) and its the way a standard driving test works now basically.
Its no use for discriminating between applicants who have the qualification - but it guarantees a certain skill set.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
Well, we do have a very large sample - tens of thousands take the exams each year. Say you have a hard exam one year and the most able score in the 70s to 80s, the following year it is easier and the most able score 80s to 90s. Meanwhile the least able score 5-10 in the first exam and 15 to 0 in the second exam. They are still going to be scoring less than the more able pupils. The assumption is that if the pupils who took the exam in the harder year would have got higher marks in the easier year - just as those who did take it.
I think the issue is that some subjects are optional, so you can get vicious cycles like this:
- Subject (say, Geography*) is perceived as a soft option for some initially arbitrary social reason.
- Weaker pupils are disproportionately entered for Geography on the grounds that it's not as hard.
- The median mark is lowered.
- The grade boundary for a C comes down.
- Go to 1.
* I don't think Geography is a soft option: that's just an example.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
Expecting every school to be above average is insane.
I would have gone with 'contrary to the laws of mathematics', but your version works just as well.
quote:
Originally posted by Leo:[/qb]My point, (if it is pedantic to query someone who writes 14/28 sentences ungrammatically) was that if he cannot write a sentence, he shouldn't be in the post (even if his policies were good - which they are not.).[/qb]
Leo: if that was your point, MY point (and the point of several other people) is that the man can indeed write a sentence. There is nothing 'ungrammatical' about starting a sentence with certain words, no matter how many times you claim otherwise. In which case you'll have to find some other, more substantive reason for kicking him out of office. You could try the mathematical conundrum for starters.
[ 29. October 2012, 08:07: Message edited by: orfeo ]
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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