Dear Editor,
Once again numerical data is being used to come to "wrong-headed" conclusions about schools and the causes of failure. New secondary schools are being branded as being responsible for "breeding criminals" based on the fact that a larger number of convicted felons are past students of such schools.
We still will not face the fact that our high schools have acted mainly as filter plants sifting out weaker or simply less-focussed students, among whom are those most likely to end up on the wrong side of the law. When will we start to admit that once we place students selectively on the basis of an academic test their performance and behaviour will be reflected in the quality of students that the schools get? The failure to acknowledge this has led to a failure to ask the right questions and this has prevented us from facing the real causes of the problem.
It is noteworthy that the report in the Observer points to the fact that one of the schools named produced the 2013 Rhodes scholar. He went from Vauxhall to Ardenne, which produced among its graduates one of the more notorious criminals of recent years. Are we going to blame Ardenne for his deeds? The more relevant question to ponder is what was different in the experience of Tamar Jackson at Vauxhall and later at Ardenne? Tamar Jackson, is not alone in being an outstanding scholar from a non-traditional/new secondary school, and all our schools have produced a number of criminals and street people.
The tendency of influential people in this country to apply naïve empiricism when analysing social problems has led to a failure to propose suitable solutions. Dr Leachim Semaj in commenting on the issue drew attention to the reduction of crime in New York during the 1990s, which has been widely credited to the no-tolerance policies introduced by Mayor Guiliani. But what has been pointed out by many, including in the book Freakanomics, crime went down all across the US about the same time, even though most cities did not introduce any special measures as New York had done. A more plausible cause, they suggest, was the decision to legalise abortion some 20 years earlier, reducing the number of unwanted children growing up in the country.
The report on these schools is probably accurate, but it is another reflection of a placement system that channels students according to performance to different schools, just as the results in CXC, Champs and Manning Cup reflect the channelling of academic and sporting talent. We need to concentrate our efforts on finding ways to make intervention In the lives of potential criminals in all our schools.
R Howard Thompson
Mandeville, Manchester
howardthompson507@yahoo.com
'Wrong-headed' conclusions from naïve empiricism
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Once again numerical data is being used to come to "wrong-headed" conclusions about schools and the causes of failure. New secondary schools are being branded as being responsible for "breeding criminals" based on the fact that a larger number of convicted felons are past students of such schools.
We still will not face the fact that our high schools have acted mainly as filter plants sifting out weaker or simply less-focussed students, among whom are those most likely to end up on the wrong side of the law. When will we start to admit that once we place students selectively on the basis of an academic test their performance and behaviour will be reflected in the quality of students that the schools get? The failure to acknowledge this has led to a failure to ask the right questions and this has prevented us from facing the real causes of the problem.
It is noteworthy that the report in the Observer points to the fact that one of the schools named produced the 2013 Rhodes scholar. He went from Vauxhall to Ardenne, which produced among its graduates one of the more notorious criminals of recent years. Are we going to blame Ardenne for his deeds? The more relevant question to ponder is what was different in the experience of Tamar Jackson at Vauxhall and later at Ardenne? Tamar Jackson, is not alone in being an outstanding scholar from a non-traditional/new secondary school, and all our schools have produced a number of criminals and street people.
The tendency of influential people in this country to apply naïve empiricism when analysing social problems has led to a failure to propose suitable solutions. Dr Leachim Semaj in commenting on the issue drew attention to the reduction of crime in New York during the 1990s, which has been widely credited to the no-tolerance policies introduced by Mayor Guiliani. But what has been pointed out by many, including in the book Freakanomics, crime went down all across the US about the same time, even though most cities did not introduce any special measures as New York had done. A more plausible cause, they suggest, was the decision to legalise abortion some 20 years earlier, reducing the number of unwanted children growing up in the country.
The report on these schools is probably accurate, but it is another reflection of a placement system that channels students according to performance to different schools, just as the results in CXC, Champs and Manning Cup reflect the channelling of academic and sporting talent. We need to concentrate our efforts on finding ways to make intervention In the lives of potential criminals in all our schools.
R Howard Thompson
Mandeville, Manchester
howardthompson507@yahoo.com
'Wrong-headed' conclusions from naïve empiricism
-->