The new head of Britain’s biggest teaching union has called for the private education system to be nationalised.
Umm, just how will this improve matters? Other than, of course, removing that competition which shows up how crap much of the State education system is? And, umm, removing from the education system that money which parents currently pay to educate their children privately.
Seriously, just how would increasing the enrollment in State schoolsw by 7% on the same current budget makes things better?
That such logical stupidity can be seriously put forward by a teacher tells you something about what is wrong with the education system….the quality of the people in it isn\’t quite all it might be.
“Seriously, just how would increasing the enrollment in State schoolsw by 7% on the same current budget makes things better?”
By raising taxes, duh! There’s clearly lots of money in the education system: all those fees come from somewhere. So we just increase taxes to mop up the money freed by not having to pay fees, yes? It’s all so obvious.
I liked last years NUT chief Baljeet Ghale better, her speech at ‘NUTfest 07’ addressed all the big issues for todays schools:
“This year marks 200 years since the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It is 60 years since India’s break from the shackles of colonialism and 40 years since Israel illegally occupied the West Bank and the Gaza strip….”
It would help the Union achieve one of its great goals – reducing differences in wages and conditions between teachers. There is a reason they push for standard national wage levels. I can’t think of it off hand but presumably it is because they do not want any invidious distinctions between their members.
Closing down the private system would stop the poaching of their best teachers by the Public and Independent Schools. It would stop teachers stuck in the State system comparing pay packets and ask what the Hell their Union has done for them lately.
But mostly it would stop people realising what a crap job they do.
At the risk of breaking Godwin’s law, all you need to know about teachers is that both Pol Pot and Heinrich Himmler were teachers before they went into politics.
Go on, you always suspected it didn’t you?
“Heinrich Himmler were teachers ”
I thought he was a chicken farmer?
I thought he was a chicken farmer?
His father was a teacher.
He was born in 1900 and was at college during the early 1920s. I think this included agricultural college. By 1925 he was a member of the SS and in 1927 took over the leadership of that organisation, although it was still subordinate to the SA. Notionally he was a farmer during the same period that the Nazis rose to power but given that his jobs in the SS were full time, I wonder how much of a farmer he could be. I note that many left sources like the Trotskyist Sparticus repeat the Chicken farmer comment. I suspect that he used the farmer story to make himself seem more down to earth whilst his opponents used “chicken farmer” to ridicule him.
“bringing funding for state schools into line with the levels enjoyed by the private education sector”
Another Big Lie. If you grind the figures published by DfES and chuck in true cost of pensions promises, the amount spent per State pupil is in the order of £9,000, so it’s more than the better-value i.e. cheaper private school fees.
So they have long achieved what they said they would and proved that it doesn’t work.
“Notionally he was a farmer during the same period that the Nazis rose to power but given that his jobs in the SS were full time”
So, another never-worked-in-a-proper-job Party man. They do have a terrible record at governance, don’t they?
“They do have a terrible record at governance, don’t they?”
The awful tragedy of the Nazi ascendancy in Germany after January 1933, is that the Nazis gained overwhelming majorities in popular plebiscites in November 1933 and August 1934, which endorsed a one-party state and then Hitler as supreme leader with the constitutional powers of Reich chancellor and Reich president combined.
Doubtless there was intimidation at the polls and many had been disenfranchised but independent observers don’t dispute that the Nazis did attract wide popular support at the time – see the account in William Shirer: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
Anthony Kershaw remarks that the personnel establishment of the Gestapo was relatively small – Germany did not have a significant internal security problem before the outbreak of WW2. The Nazi government was hugely successful in reducing mass unemployment, “from 6 million in October 1933 to 4.1 million a year later, 2.8 million in February 1935, 2.5 million in February 1936, and 1.2 million in February 1937.” [CP Kindleberger: The World in Depression 1929-1939 (Allen Lane, 1973) p.240]
Keynes had visited Hamburg to give a lecture in January 1932 – DE Moggridge: Maynard Keynes (1992) p.539. On his return, he wrote in the New Statesman: “Germany today is in the grips of the most powerful deflation any nation has experienced . . ”
Brustein’s assessment:
“The Nazi Party leaders were savvy enough to realise that pure racial anti-semitism would not set the party apart from the pack of racist, anti-semitic, and ultranationalist groups that abounded in post-1918 Germany. Instead, I would suggest, the Nazi success can be attributed largely to the economic proposals found in the party’s programs, which in an uncanny fashion integrated elements of 18th and 19th century nationalist-etatist philosophy with Keynesian economics. Nationalist etatism is an ideology that rejects economic liberalism and promotes the right of the state to intervene in all spheres of life including the economy.”
W Brustein: The Logic of Evil – The Social Origins of the Nazi Party 1925-33 (Yale UP, 1996), p.51
“That such logical stupidity can be seriously put forward by a teacher tells you something about what is wrong with the education system….the quality of the people in it isn’t quite all it might be.”
But he isn’t being stupid Timmy. He is being dishonest but he knows exactly what he wants.
The NUT wants the risible academic standards of the worst state schools to be imposed upon all the schools. That way no-one will be able to hold the bad schools, and ropey teachers, to account.
Just out of interest, I would love to know how the school league tables stack up against the particular union affiliation of their teaching staff. I’m not over-impressed by the teaching profession as a whole, but I suspect the NUT is a magnet for the d
The Leader of Shining Path (forget the name) was a University Lecturer.
“The Leader of Shining Path (forget the name) was a University Lecturer.”
So what. Hitler had pretensions to be an artist and Che Guevara was a qualified physician.
Che Guevara was a qualified physician.
Was he?
I thought the failure to locate any university that had trained him had placed the claim into question.
Abolishing private education is probably against EU human rights law. Invoking the vile EU as a bulwark against disgusting Sparts like this Greenshields fellow gives me no end of the old cognitive dissonance.
Just out of interest, I would love to know how the school league tables stack up against the particular union affiliation of their teaching staff.
Interestingly, Monty, even in the days of the closed shop, the teachers unions never went down the road of “single union” arrangements in individual schools (indeed, took action against the imposition of a requirement to join a union by some Labour councils ) Most schools have a large NUT membership, most secondaries have significant NASUWT presence as well, ATL are small in the state sector and dominant in the independents. Secondary School Teacher of the Year, Tim Costello, is an NUT rep in my area, by the way…
Having known Bill Greenshields for many years I am sure he is not a Nazi – in fact I know he is very much against this regime. On the contrary, in my converstions with him he merely wants equal opportunity for all children and he may think that private education leads to elitist education.
Comprehensive education was meant to help all children but over the last 30 years a muddled approach and problems with funding has not lead to the state education system becoming equal to private education. Many parents who have fallen on the wayside have had to send their children to state schools because they can no longer afford the privilege and larger classes always mean less personal attention.
Bill just wants equality of opportunity for all of our children I am sure so being so rude about his intentions and beliefs are not fair. There is nothing wrong in having an opinion even though I may not agree entirely with him but to call someone a Nazi is not to understand what the Nazis were about. Before you stoop to this I suggest that you look at what they actually did to all people – especially those with special needs – let someone express an idea before you condemn them or you yourself may actually be more naziistic than the person you are defiling. I believe in free speech since we will always then know what someones beliefs and intentions are so by denying Bill free speech you are actually “burning his books” so let the man have his say and be constructive in your beliefs in private education and support your own beliefs rather than a complete attack on the person. What do you think is actually good about private education and what is society as a whole to benefit from it? No judgement – just good arguement for and against. DE.