Muslim Youths

Oh not again. Is it that time of year already?

I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave last time round... and the time before that... I haven't actually read the above post - but I would guess it's a call for state funded Muslim schools, again.

~
www.fabulousmother.co.uk

Iftikhar, you think you've got it bad. at least you have some schools representing you.
I'm from the underclass and I think it's about time we too were seen as a western community.
Our teachers are at odds with our children giving them conflicting ideals and our children are forced to learn true values from their friends.
I want teachers who'll teach my kids to hot wire cars, how to get round forensics, fiddle the benefits system and intensive fraud lessons etc etc.
Instead the little bleeders are coming home with all this rubbish about it being wrong to steal, wrong to tell lies etc and they're very confused.
I jsut hope they come out the other end without becoming too brainwashed.
it's the state of the Nation mate!
Craig

This is a joke, right?

'Muslim youths are angry, frustrated and extremist because they have been mis-educated and de-educated by the British schooling. Muslim children are confused because they are being educated in a wrong place at a wrong time in state schools with non-Muslim monolingual teachers.'

Simple - send them to be educated in Muslim countries then. Or perhaps we should demand Catholic (or whatever) education and schools for our kids in Muslim countries. Fat chance.

Not that he ever reads responses.

Yes, let's have more segregation and no integration. Call it multiculturalism. Heaven forbid that people who live in Britain should be in any way British.

www.myspace.com/norwichfacetransplant

well I never. Are old are you you poorly done to young man? Who is feeding you this bait? Why don't you get yourself an education after all was it not Oscar Wilde who pointed out that even though we may all live in the gutter some of us are looking at the stars.

he never responds, no point debating with him

Why don't we all just email him, and tell him to fuck off?

www.myspace.com/norwichfacetransplant

Iftikhar, stop whining and get on with your life. Compare yourself to a Sikh, you'd never hear one of them self-pitying like you. (I'm not a Sikh.)

It's people like Iftikhar and his white liberal apologists that are feeding the BNP and helping them go from strength to strength. And then they say, "Ooh, why is everyone so racist?"...

www.myspace.com/norwichfacetransplant

Being serious now...
The majority of ethnic minorities are happy with things in Britain, I often wonder where the stories about banning Xmas, flying the flag etc come from as the ethnic groups I come across aren't bothered by this. Personally I think they're thought up by right wing bigots as all it does is make the public angry and as Macjoyce says, feed the BNP.
Maybe Iftikhar's a hardcore Combat 18 member! The rant about women's role in society seems a little dodgy. Well I'll give you Thatcher... But men have done worse.
Otherwise the argument's flawed.
If the schools are parent owned rather than state owned then why should the state fund them? The bullying figures are skewed, were they bullied for being Muslim? I find that hard to believe, muslims live in mainly Muslim or multi cultrial areas, so they ae unlikey to be picked on for beliefs alone, especially not at a near on 55% level. even if they were what about other groups picked on?
The boy who spends to much time playing with girls, a seperate school for them? What about the scruffy kid? What about the one with the ginger hair, hey we could have schools just for kids with big ears!
I could go on but can't be bothered, I will say though, I went to school at a time when RE was taught only as Christian, I have no religeon.
Craig

I looked up his site once. They have taken it off now but it did say that a girl had been honour killed because she had been de educated by being in a British school. Muslim schools have primary age girls covering their hair. The Government has set up a separate inspectorate for Faith schools so they will be treated with extra sensitivity. So they can dangerously brainwash the children that attend them more like. Especially anything Wahabist which is like giving the KKK the right to teach their brand of thinking.He is not a joke his lot are dreadful.

He is right about first and second generation immigrants not doing as well as others though. This comes out in the OECD PISA report and the UK is not so bad at this either. If a lot of kids who go to school together are being bullied it is likely that they are being bullied by their classmates.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/16/30/39722183.pdf

Depends. Chinese kids and Indians (largely Sikhs and Hindus) actually do better than white kids. The ones who lag behind are Afro-Caribbean boys and Muslims from just about anywhere. The Muslim kids I know spend far too much time in mosque school reciting the Qu'ran without understanding it and far too little time on things they could and should understand.

White working class kids do very badly at school, possibly even worse than Afro-Caribbean and Muslim kids. When collecting this sort of data, class is always left out of the equation, so white kids who go to posh private schools are categorised as the same as white kids from council estates. It's all part of society's politically correct idea that everything's about race and that class doesn't matter anymore.

www.myspace.com/norwichfacetransplant

Did anyone see the series 'The Trap'? It said that mobility between classes in the UK is worse now than it was 20 years ago - or it could have been longer.

~
www.fabulousmother.co.uk

And it makes the argument for making clear lines between education, religion and politics - as they do in France. If we abolished the private and faith schools and made everyone have the same education then things might start to get a lot better.

But how would the rich and middle class ensure their kiddies got a head start in life? Next you'll be suggesting free university education for all!
(that's sarcasm by the way)
Craig

How non-PC you all are! It makes me proud to be an ABC-er. For my opinion, just read everybody else's.

Well, to slightly break up the chorus of agreement, I'm not opposed to Muslim schools. As I've probably said before, I think, Iftikhar is an extremely unsympathetic advocate for something that it principle could work quite well.

Like Tony, my preference is for no involvement of religious organisations in the state funded education system whatsoever. But we are where we are. Church schools won't go away. There's no reason why we shouldn't have Muslim schools on the same basis.

That basis is that Church's chuck in some cash and get to have a say in how schools are run (although the state still provides the vast majority of the funding, I think roughly 90%).

If Mosques or Muslim business people want to put up some funding for state schools and run them within the state system on the same basis as churches do, that's fine by me. As far as I know, the government isn't opposed to them doing so.

But obviously these schools would teach people in English and wouldn't be allowed to use discriminatory practices to only employ Muslim teachers, so Iftikhar wouldn't be happy with them.

The state historically never had a monopoly on the provision of education - in fact globally, the church is one of the largest providers of social care, education and health. The church built schools for the state not vice versa and continue to fund 10% of project costs.

I am already loathe to send my children (not that I have any yet) even to a top state school because of the government's narrow curriculum and refusal to permit the IGCSE or Pre-Us. Independent schools give parents choice.

If independent schools were abolished, many leading schools would relocate abroad and people would simply send their children to Switzerland. Okay not everyone can afford that but if the only choice of school I had was my local primary in my deprived neighbourhood, I would educate my child myself at home. S/he would learn English, maths and science the old fashioned way, Latin and German from a young age and I would start piano lessons aged 4 - but most importantly, s/he would have one-to-one tuition from a highly motivated teacher with postgraduate qualifications!

So it is impossible as Tony suggests to 'make everyone have the same'.

I agree with David and have said this many many times to this spammer - no-one is stopping Muslims building schools and then providing funding as the dioceses have done.

jude

"Cacoethes scribendi"
http://www.judesworld.net

The Aldridge Foundation is sponsering schools in deprived areas because of the educational underachievement in these areas.
I'm in the process of enrolling my youngest for next September. I don't want him at the local one because it's crap but there are some good ones nearby in more affluent areas, so fingers crossed.
Craig

"So it is impossible as Tony suggests to 'make everyone have the same'."

Well, on a purely practical level you couldn't actually ban private schools without a level of coercion that would be incompatible with democracy.

It is possible for state schools to be so good that private schooling is considered unnecessary and weird, though, because quite a few countries have managed to do it.

I agree with Buk, it has been done.

Simply abolishing anything but state schools isn’t going to solve the problem of division unless you have a plan to correct the flaws in the existing state system.

I went to two state schools and the teaching couldn’t be faulted in either. However, they differed massively due to their intake – and unfortunately, yes, it was a class thing. In the ‘rougher’ school there was an overriding sense of ‘what’s the point’ that came, not from the teachers, but from the students. I went with the crowd and left with far less than I should have done (I was able to take a degree years later, only because I was a mature student).

There is something fundamentally wrong with secondary state education in this country. It works for some but fails too many. There’s a theory that the size of comprehensives is partly to blame. A good school needs to be able to influence their pupils’ attitude to learning, regardless of any conflicting influences they may be living under. In vast, impersonal schools, this is difficult to do.

I’ve read that educationalists realised the size of the new comprehensives was a potential problem years ago, but the answer they were given was, yes, but the buildings are there now, we can’t afford not to use them.

p.s. Craig, my fingers are duly crossed.

~
www.fabulousmother.co.uk

Cheers Lou, I am quietly confident.
Craig

I would love state schools to be so good that I wouldn't be forced into the private sector... after all why should I have to pay twice? For this to happen they would need to scrap SATS, introduce IGCSE and old style A levels (no modular approach, minimal coursework), focus on the basics of spelling, grammar and punctuation which seem to go uncorrected. I would also like to see an emphasis on articulation and pronunciation. In sixth form there needs to be a move away from spoon-feeding information and encouraging critical thinking skills. If my child was bright I would want them to go to a grammar school because you cannot underestimate the cumulative effect of grouping lots of bright children together. I would introduce an attractive teachers pay scale for those with Masters and Doctorates.

However, the best teachers will only be attracted to teach in a school where behaviour is at a certain standard. A massively important factor is parent-teacher cooperation and discipline. When you enroll your child for an independent school you are not just purchasing a service - you are entering into a formal contract. The school agree to provide a certain level of education and in return, you sign up to an agreement about your child's attendence, participation, and behaviour - if you breach this agreement, your child can be made to leave. The problem with state schools is too many parents do not want teachers or the school to enforce standards. If the state school system is ever to be good enough there should be a 'three-strikes-you're-off to approved school' rule.

A good school should be able to enter into a contract with parents and be allowed to quickly remove pupils who breach this agreement without lengthy processes and appeals etc.

jude

... and in defence of grammar schools etc. I would point out that I support as much money being put into non-grammar schools or more as they do in the Netherlands (instead of writing those kids off as the secondary modern used to).

Also the 11+ needs to be revisited... the problem with that system was a highly dyslexic genius-mathmetician would fail to get in! I think the idea of specialist academies could be a good one if worked correctly.

jude

"For this to happen they would need to scrap SATS, introduce IGCSE and old style A levels (no modular approach, minimal coursework), focus on the basics of spelling, grammar and punctuation which seem to go uncorrected. I would also like to see an emphasis on articulation and pronunciation. In sixth form there needs to be a move away from spoon-feeding information and encouraging critical thinking skills."

I generally support all of that.

I think you can - and possibly in the past we did - go too far on obsessing about spelling, grammar etc. but the situation I experienced where I'd reached sixth form college and had a A Grade GCSE in English Language before anyone made a serious attempt to tell me the difference between a verb and an adjective surely is too far in the other direction.

I learned the parts of speech aged 9 from Mrs Pavi a poetry fanatic who taught the poem 'Every name is called a NOUN, As field and fountain, street and town; In place of noun the PRONOUN stands As he and she can clap their hands; The ADJECTIVE describes a thing, As magic wand and bridal ring; etc. etc' a twee piece of doggerel but it worked!

In middle school 8-11 we had a series of books called 'word perfect spelling' and you would have entire exercises on common errors such as when to use 'their, there and they're' so when I started secondary school I had a very good foundation in English language.

My brother who is 5 years younger than me and some way above average intelligence still confuses 'their, there and they're' so I can only conclude that he wasn't taught as I was.

We don't have to go back to writing out irregular verbs from the blackboard by rote. The Word Perfect spelling series made use of poetry and prose to make the exercises and lessons interesting and quite bearable!

jude

Jude, I love that little poem. Never heard it before.

I Googled the whole thing in case anyone else is interested:

Every name is called a NOUN,
As field and fountain, street and town;
In place of noun the PRONOUN stands,
As he and she can clap their hands;
The ADJECTIVE describes a thing,
As magic wand and bridal ring;
The VERB means action, something done -
To read and write, to jump and run;
How things are done, the ADVERBS tell,
As quickly, slowly, badly, well;
The PREPOSITION shows relation,
As in the street, or at the station;
CONJUNCTIONS join, in many ways,
Sentences, words, or phrase and phrase;
The INTERJECTION cries out, ‘Hark!
I need an exclamation mark!