uncleduck

A strange quirk of Northern Ireland's education system is the eleven plus. In its current form, reasonable bright children learn a pile of facts that would confuse their parents and whoever can remember the most gets into a good school. In the grammar school where I teach, we mostly accept A-grade students. The few Cs or Ds sometimes have a defeatest attitude - "I'm only a C - of course I can't do this!"

I'm not anti-selection, though I'm not sure about how it's done. If it wasn't for the 11+, I would not have been to a grammar school. Round our way, you went to the Inter and got a job at 16. Words had three syllables or less and University was a far-off dream.  'Getting somewhere' involved scary people with guns.

When I did it, the 11+ was a straight IQ test (now politically incorrect). It was marketed by out teachers as a test to see if you were good enough at book-stuff to go to the grammar school. If your gifting was hands-on stuff the Head would tell your parents straight and you would go to the Inter without doing the test.

Of course, some people who had no hope of passing did it and failed. Not only did they go to the Inter, but they were failures because they were not good at book-stuff. Quite often they became good artists or tradesmen, but were still Failures.

Reading about the Inter's anniversary last week, I wondered how different we could have been if the test was based on hands-on stuff. My 'thick' mates would have passed, to go to the Inter with a sense of achievement and I would have failed in my kak-handed way and gone to the failures' grammar school. While my mates had choices of joinery or plumbing, I would have gone to Uni because I was useless at anything else.

But, book-work people run the system and make the rules. Then they panic when their toilet leaks or they have a flat tyre because they have no idea what to do.

»Monday, October 15, 2007, 8:19:08 PM BST    »1 comments (0 )     »Send entry    

Posted by: uncleduck    in: My entries