well fuck the lot of you education experts - try doing the job if you think teachers are generally shit. In my experience the vast majority of teachers are fully committed, hard-working people who care a lot about what their students get out of being in school. They put in ridiculousy long hours and put up with a load of crap from kids who don't want to be there. And my experience is 6 different educational settings that covers the range from selective grammar schools, further education and bottom of the heap secondary moderns so I'm pretty well-qualified to comment.
If you really want someone to blame, look at society and parents. Education and being educated is looked down on in the uk. It's seen as being ok to be ignorant. A significant minority of parents offer no support to schools, teachers or the principle of being open to new ideas.
The only other jobs where you have the potential to be told to fuck off, to your face, on a daily basis are things like police and health care. But fuck it, schools and teachers are an easy target aren't they :@
Dragging the thread back onto topic, I'm voting yes.
I was already voting yes, but the nasty tone and lies within the 'No' campaign has just made me more committed.
I don't think anyone's dissing teachers particularly, they're asked to do an impossible job because the system is fucked from top to bottom. We have a enlightenment/early industrial education system in a postmodern/post-industrial/information-driven world, and it's not at all appropriate.
Having said that, in my experience, the vast majority of teachers were shit.
I dunno, but I'm watching the Scottish election results coming in. Looks like a landslide for the SNP 8-O :D
Most seats so far have a swing of about 15% to the SNP which is really significant. I don't think any of the Lib Dem candidates that have been counted so far have even for their deposits back. Of course with the Scottish system there will be a redressing of the vote in the second list, but the way Labour do things they're going to lose a LOT of their big guns* tonight.
*that's as in not big enough for Westminster but hell, it's only Holyrood. They'll accept any old crap up there.
You get two votes. One is for a candidate (FPTP), one for a party(PR).
The more seats you win in the FPTP round the less you are likely to gain in the PR round.
It's complicated :|