Scatter-brained ideas are us.
News from Oxford University, the great appeasers:
Oxford colleges are to lose their 800-year-old right to select undergraduates in response to Government pressure to admit more students from state schools and lower social classes.
I tried and failed to get into Cambridge twice. Guess what? It never even crossed my mind that it had anything to do with me being from a state school. Fact: not until right now, 5 years later, have I considered the possibility. And rejected it.
Also is news:
Candidates will be able to state a college preference once they have been offered a place but in principle all successful applicants will be centrally ranked on the basis of their performance, then distributed randomly.
Idea: what OU needs … is a sorting hat!
Actually this leads to an interesting idea (it’s like that lateral thinking technique). If you’ve got a school with ‘houses’, as I understand some extremely posh schools did/do (anyone know?), then you should give all entrants an in-depth psych test. Then house 1 can be the studious and hard working, house 2 can be the sporty types, house 3 can be the irritating prodigy geeks, and house 4 can be the party animals. Wouldn’t that make school life go much more smoothly?
Tory Convert said:
Dec 16, 05 at 11:47 am“never even crossed my mind that it had anything to do with me being from a state school”
Is that ‘false consciousness’ on your part, Dan
?
Administrator said:
Dec 16, 05 at 11:58 amOf course!
Have you managed to overcome your false consciousness over the oppression you daily suffer because of your gender?
James Hellyer said:
Dec 16, 05 at 1:50 pmThis makes the College system a bit pointless, doesn’t it?
Administrator said:
Dec 16, 05 at 7:01 pmIt would have just about as much point as dividing the kids in a classroom up into the Red, Green, Blue and Yellow groups so that they’ll want to try to outdo each other, yes.
Gavin Corder said:
Dec 19, 05 at 2:53 amMy son hasn’t gone to Oxbridge either.
He didn’t want to. He’s gone to King’s College London to read philosophy with his straight A’s and assorted prizes and gongs from his comprehensive.
And I’m glad he has as he’s far from living in an ivory tower.
But I’m not sorry that I put him and his siblings through prep school. Best money I ever spent.
Chris Palmer said:
Feb 22, 06 at 10:31 pmJames, the College system acts in the same way as before - it’s just that the tutors in individual colleges have their ability to chose students removed. A central body in Oxford interviews and gives out places. Currently being proposed is a system whereby on application to Oxford, you register a preference, and if you are selected, they try to accomodate your choice, and if not they put you in another college (which college doesn’t really matter at the end of the day, because everyone ends up liking the college they’re in and saying that it’s the best.) The original system allowed tutor/interview favourism. Also, if say 10 excellent students applied to say, Brasenose, and there were only 2 places, 8 were left out - whereas under the new system, those 8 would be properly pooled and comparable to other students applying at other Oxford colleges, which is currently not the case.
Chris Palmer said:
Feb 22, 06 at 10:35 pmNice to see that, according to you, only “posh” schools have houses. The local state school has a house system, as do many public schools.