The Escaping of Yet More Worms From Cans - Page 5

garinda · 09-03-2005, 15:29

Hyndburn must be one of the few places where aprenticeships are available then. l don't know where, as most of the traditional industries have gone. Can you get them in a call centre?
I know in London people are leaving the City, Medecine etc. to get apprenticeships as plumbers and electricans. l saw a film about it, made by a media student!

WillowTheWhisp · 09-03-2005, 15:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lampman

Any prospective employer who lets the applicants colour become a deciding factor,doesn't deserve the position of authority and should be dealt with with the exsisting laws.

And there we have a dilemma because some of the existing laws dictate that an employer should use a person's ethnic origin as a deciding factor. If the firm has less than its "quota" of employees from a certain minority and one person from that minority applies for the job yet is not as qualified or suitable as other applicants the employer is under pressure to take on that person to fulfil his or her quota.

garinda · 09-03-2005, 15:39

I agree with Willow, positive discrimination is wrong. People should be judged on merit, not to make up numbers to fulfil PC quotas l speak as someone who, off the top of my head fits into two anti-discrimination catagories. l'd have hated to have got a job on anything other than my own abilities.

Lampman · 09-03-2005, 15:53

Yes,Margaret is correct.Children are the future,we all know it,yet it beggars belief that education standards have fallen year by year.
People quote that A level passes are on the up.Yet once of a day whatever the subject,the answer would be marked down for incorrect spelling.
Nowadays the standards are truely appalling(yes there are outstanding pupils)some kids on leaving school can hardly read or write.
Where lies the future for them and indeed for us.
Back to basics the 3'R's?(No I could never understand where 'rithmatic came in either!)

garinda · 09-03-2005, 16:00

l failed maths at o-level, and as a challenge retook it ten years later as a GCSE. Standards have slipped, 25% was an assignment about taking a mortgage out. lt was much easier, but that didn't stem my joy as l skipped to work having passed it. lt meant more to me than graduating.

Margaret Pilkington · 09-03-2005, 20:39

Garinda, maybe your life skills proved useful and made the Maths O level easier.
The other thing about mature learners is that THEY present themselves for education, and as such are a better bet than the kids who are at school because the law says that is where they should be.
It is far, far easier to educate someone who actually wants to learn, than it is to educate a sullen teen with a chip on their shoulder.
As for spelling......I think that damage was done when they started messing about with the different methods of teaching kids to read. I know that my daughter was learning to read using something that was called the Initial Teaching Alphabet.....I was glad when they ditched it because she had to re-learn all the proper ways to spell words. I used to sit and go through 20 spellings with her 3 nights a week.
She thought it was a pain at the time but it paid off in the end.

fireman · 09-03-2005, 21:08

Before my retirement I was involved in recruiting fo Greater Manchester Fire Service and you would not believe the conditions imposed on us by the home office to make things easier for ethnic minorities to join the fire service. Trouble was it was at the expence of the white lads.

WillowTheWhisp · 09-03-2005, 21:42

Do you mean that you actually recruited people who were less suitable for the job than some others who applied?

fireman · 09-03-2005, 22:00

without doubt but statistics soon showed that they did not last

-pixie · 10-03-2005, 06:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

As for spelling......I think that damage was done when they started messing about with the different methods of teaching kids to read. I know that my daughter was learning to read using something that was called the Initial Teaching Alphabet.....I was glad when they ditched it because she had to re-learn all the proper ways to spell words. I used to sit and go through 20 spellings with her 3 nights a week.
She thought it was a pain at the time but it paid off in the end.

I remember when I was doing my degree we looked into real books vs phonics. I forget the majority of it (it was that interesting!), but the gist of one side was that it didn't matter if the child had spelled the word correctly as long as they had used it in context and tried. To me that just plain daft. If a word isn't spelled correctly its wrong.