China

[Droogs]

I am against a military national service. The military needs to be voluntary. The yoof should do a community based national service where they provide services to community in which they live. still run with discipline but a much better use would be fix the national infrastucture and do things that will help give them a trade/career

 

[artie]

They know you can't give them a clip round the ear, they know they will not get the cane/shoe at school

I received my education mostly in the 60s, when teachers were at liberty to smack, cane, push, pull our hair and humiliate us pretty much as they pleased. One teachers favourite weapon was the 3 ft T square which he applied with sadistic relish.
And it did no good. I believe it had the opposite effect.
To defy authority, take your six of the best or have your head bounced of the blackboard, not a common practice but not unknown and return with head high to you seat gave street (classroom) cred that no schoolboy today will ever know.

and most definitely bring back national Service

O yes, all we need is a generation of fit youngsters trained to kill.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I got "caned" with what I still think was a piece of electric flex. Six lashes, twelve stripes down the inside of the right arm, twelve down the right cheek, twelve down the left cheek and twelve down the inside on the thigh where the end had curled around.
Senior prefect's detentions were three hours .......... stood still, a foot from a wall in a corridor with a cross at eye level. If anyone saw you move in the three hours you got another three hours on another day. You were supposed to get suspended if you got three of them, but I got ten or eleven without being suspended. I got suspended for something else, but by the bye (I gave someone who thought it wise to try to give me a hiding a hiding.). At a junior lever it was three stikes of a size ten plimsoll - I had that nineteen times in one term.
Did it all do any good?

 

[Jester129]

So that's why.......

 

[clogs]

like most had the cane on the legs hit with a stinkey slipper across the face......
Detention well I just walked out.....did anyone know....?.....sorry just didn't care.....
always got could do better or always looking out of the window......
the morons we called teachers didn't realise we were BORED
my best subjects were metal and wood work, science and tech drawing + Geography....
but an hour a week just wasn't enough.......
What use was music and relig studies.....
mind could go to uni and geta masters in knitting.....
education is everything but specialised education is better.....

 

[Amateur]

Its only as you Get older you can reflect back.
At the time you are so entrenched with doing the best you can at work to keep the mortgage paid and the kids and Mrs in food, cloths and water.
Oh if it was only so simple.
My biggest gripe is not realising there are two world's for kids today.
The kids you see for a couple of hours every night and the kids at school, and out with their mates.

From the age of 3 in some cases, to the age of 23 in a lot of cases your children are influenced more by outside society than mum and Dad. They are in education a lot longer than we were.
Every hour of every day in all those years is laid out and planned by someone else.
Influencing how they think.
Peer pressure at school by other kids to conform to "The in crowd" or be mentally tortured and bullied into submission to join them.
To send all kids to university, promising degrees despite their varying mental ability is wrong. How can you class every single kid as academically capable?
But the Unis were quick.
A couple of years ago the UK had produced enough degree kids in photography to fill every job through Europe for the next 20 years.
And when I sat down with a group of teachers to ask why kids doing A levels were not assigned to investigate the type of degrees that potential employers required to secure work positions...I was scoffed at.
But, I argued, it would open the door to working for companies during holiday periods, Get them sponsored. It would give the kids hands on experience within their chosen careers.
So you let them do degrees in Surfing, ( Yes in water, on boards),when they want to work in metallurgy or genetics? What good is that?

Then at Newcastle university when I'd driven my son to look round we sat waiting in reception when a classy middle age gentleman walked in and announced my son's name.
I too got up and advanced towards the man.
"Where do you think your going?" He demanded.
" I'm his Dad. To look round"
" Sit, sir. This has nothing to do with you. It's your sons decision "

But what can you do when it's all about bums on seats and big money payments?
Influence?
I sat down but in retrospect I could have argued about who was actually paying the fees......or maybe decked the idiot for being rude.
alas another opportunity to correct society thrown away, along with a night in the cells and a column in the Evening news paper.

You think you are in control of your kids destiny.
Your not.
You do your best and that's all you can do.
There is a much bigger influence out there today than the family unit.say
Good luck

 

[Phil Pascoe]

A couple of years ago the UK had produced enough degree kids in photography to fill every job through Europe for the next 20 years.

Some twenty years ago I read that there were more media studies degrees awarded every year than there were jobs in the whole of the media industry. It rather amuses me that if I suggested there should be 15, 000 degrees awarded every year in Sanskrit poetry everyone would say I was mad ........................ but it's apparently perfectly sensible to award them in media studies, sociology etc. which for the vast majority will be valueless - a degree no longer even proves the holder is literate or numerate.

 

[billw]

Some twenty years ago I read that there were more media studies degrees awarded every year than there were jobs in the whole of the media industry. It rather amuses me that if I suggested there should be 15, 000 degrees awarded every year in Sanskrit poetry everyone would say I was mad ........................ but it's apparently perfectly sensible to award them in media studies, sociology etc. which for the vast majority will be valueless - a degree no longer even proves the holder is literate or numerate.

It seems to be the old polytechnics/colleges that went down that route. They used to be more vocational but have tried to turn vocation into academic degrees, and then introduced "less demanding" academic degrees which really shouldn't be degrees at all. I seem to recall the government not long ago had a crackdown on funding thousands of courses that they deemed to be pointless?

For some courses, having only one or two universities offer them just to ensure there's enough graduates in the field might be a better solution, but universities need money and will offer whatever people want to do.

The university system is quite broken, the sheer number of students I see who are completely disengaged from learning and are clearly there to just get away from mum and dad, or were told to go for family pride, is remarkable. Not to go down a cultural rabbit hole, but one of the staff at uni said that delaying forced marriage was sometimes a factor in the girls choosing university.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Bearing in mind there are people of above average intelligence who for a variety of reasons don't go to university, aiming for 50% university attendance must mean that there are degrees suited to people of below average intelligence. That's quite worrying.

 

[Spectric]

Pah, one of my clients is a trader, he makes more than that, he's 28..........

Yes I have had customers that have worked in the stockmarket and earned an absolute fortune just in bonuses but although they may have been magicians with money some of them were pretty clueless when it came to the simple everyday things. The one question it raised was why would someone who is financially astute and earning big bonus's still want to return to work on Monday when they know they have the ability to just retire, is it pure greed or a lifestyle they cannot escape.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

The one question it raised was why would someone who is financially astute and earning big bonus's still want to return to work on Monday when they know they have the ability to just retire, is it pure greed or a lifestyle they cannot escape.

One argument could be that they are the type of people to whom competition is everything, and whoever dies with the most stuff wins, but I actually think the simple answer is that they are all desperately working to pay for @doctor Bob 's kitchen install. Keeping up with the Jones 's has never been so expensive.

 

[billw]

One argument could be that they are the type of people to whom competition is everything, and whoever dies with the most stuff wins, but I actually think the simple answer is that they are all desperately working to pay for @doctor Bob 's kitchen install. Keeping up with the Jones 's has never been so expensive.

Culturally it's basically this. We live in an individualistic, competitive culture and perception of the self is seen through the lens of materialism.

I would be happy with a Doctor Bob toast rack, let alone a kitchen.

 

[Spectric]

Yes they have loads of money and it was always easy to get work from them, I can see @doctor Bob 's logic, supply a really flash looking kitchen that does not need to last a lifetime because they will want to keep up with the Jones so in a few years he will supply another one, and another which is really good business. Even more clever is if he is using knockdown fittings so it can be fully dismantled and resold to another customer further down the pecking order, so effectively selling one kitchen multiple times.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

The one question it raised was why would someone who is financially astute and earning big bonus's still want to return to work on Monday when they know they have the ability to just retire, is it pure greed or a lifestyle they cannot escape.

I was talking with my wife's boss (an (upmarket) bank manager) and mentioned that the son of an acquaintance was thinking of retiring at 39 after his previous year's bonus was £1.3m. She just laughed and said people like him will never retire - they get too much of a buzz from making money.

 

[selectortone]

Some twenty years ago I read that there were more media studies degrees awarded every year than there were jobs in the whole of the media industry. It rather amuses me that if I suggested there should be 15, 000 degrees awarded every year in Sanskrit poetry everyone would say I was mad ........................ but it's apparently perfectly sensible to award them in media studies, sociology etc. which for the vast majority will be valueless - a degree no longer even proves the holder is literate or numerate.

Nothing new there. In 1970, in the gents at the Students Union at the University of Surrey, some bright spark had scrawled above the toilet roll dispenser in one is the stalls "Sociology degrees - please take one". Funny what you remember from all those years ago.

 

[Amateur]

Some twenty years ago I read that there were more media studies degrees awarded every year than there were jobs in the whole of the media industry. It rather amuses me that if I suggested there should be 15, 000 degrees awarded every year in Sanskrit poetry everyone would say I was mad ........................ but it's apparently perfectly sensible to award them in media studies, sociology etc. which for the vast majority will be valueless - a degree no longer even proves the holder is literate or numerate.

The thing is university top line sociology lecturers knock out 100,000 a year!!!!

Good money when your in a subject that makes you look at things yet do nothing about your findings and observations?

 

[D_W]

Yes I have had customers that have worked in the stockmarket and earned an absolute fortune just in bonuses but although they may have been magicians with money some of them were pretty clueless when it came to the simple everyday things. The one question it raised was why would someone who is financially astute and earning big bonus's still want to return to work on Monday when they know they have the ability to just retire, is it pure greed or a lifestyle they cannot escape.

The market isn't that complicated if you're selling and making a commission. The avenue to making a lot of money is to get a slice of the sale and find people with a fair bit of money and no interest in investing their own. Inevitably, salespeople who aren't too interested in details or ethics are better at this (as many of the brokers and client managers for high wealth individuals don't have college degrees here. They go work in a crappy brokerage, aren't phased by the lack of ethics, get their securities licenses and then from there, the person who sells the most moves forward).

Anyone here who has ever worked in a technical job with account managers will generally find that too much principle leads to not being the account manager.

 

[D_W]

Some twenty years ago I read that there were more media studies degrees awarded every year than there were jobs in the whole of the media industry.

I doubt that, but don't doubt there are double the number of media studies graduates vs. any kinds of jobs (and a lot of the entry level jobs don't pay enough to live).

When I was in college, someone on the college newspaper staff took it upon themselves to publish a list of information that they got from the bursar/interview part of the office (the one who did outreach to employers and arranged for them to come onsite to interview). The information was simple:

*Major
*average starting salary
*percent of graduates getting a job related to their major

Once you got outside of what people would normally think of as desirable jobs (nurse, physician, lawyer, engineer, etc), the numbers were pretty bleak. There were also some really rigorous difficult majors (atmospheric sciences, etc) heavy in physics and mathematics that had high % job placement and low salary. Rough day for some people reading the newspaper that day.

One of the majors was integrative arts (whatever that is) with a dance concentration. I really have no idea how that can be a 4 year degree, but know one person who did it (she has a franchised studio of dance/exercise classes, one that doesn't require a degree. It's a very fair question to her what advantage going to college provided - she could've opened her studio 4 years earlier without debt equal to or greater than her first year's income).

Colleges are an industry - they will operate in their own interest first, even at the highest levels (post-graduate research) - whatever pays is what gets the most priority.

 

[glenfield2]

I haven’t followed this thread closely but to just chuck my tuppence worth in: it’s an easy target to say that kids today do easy and pointless degrees and should do more ‘with their hands’ or study ‘relevant’ subjects.
But just what is relevant - less than 20 years ago there was barely an internet let alone YouTube, Facebook, gaming etc etc. Kids doing irrelevant subjects - especially creative ones like media, art, design and learning out to think outside the box drove this all forwards.
And who knows where we will be or what will be needed in another 20 years?
All this from a 73 year old with a degree in a pointless subject - philosophy - my fair share of ‘coshing’ from grammar school prefects and an only partially fulfilled desire to do stuff with my hands.

 

[Chris70]

My humble achievements ran to three O-levels, but still, I don't think one can say philosophy is a pointless subject. I love wisdom.