The Off Topic Topic

[Josquius]

My favourite story is of George Stephen going down to London to meet prominent folks and them going "who is this guy? Is he german?"
I do find the death of dialects in the UK to be sad. The thing that gets me is that you have entire languages elsewhere in the world going well with as fraction as many people as our dialects.

On grammar. I definitely didn't learn it at school. It wasn't until I learned Swedish that I learned the various terms. And then more when I was expected to teach the shit in Japan.

[HVC]

Cujo's little cousin attacks lady. She's fine

https://twitter.com/EdRussoWX/status/1562102292693876737?s=20&t=3sqOlXcrCckZAl4Ih_rHEQ

[Tamas]

I have read about such a wonderful study, that I have to share it here. It's priceless.

It is about gender equality in Hungarian education, done on a representative sample of teachers by the Hungarian Parliament's financial/economic overseeing/analyst organisation. Turns out this year in higher education 54.5% of students are female, and in gimnasiums (high school meant to prepare you for college/university) 55.4% are female.

The publisher's analysis of the data made them to conclude a number of things:

There is a growing over-representation of women in higher education, which is a demographic risk through decrease of fertility rates since it reduces the chance of finding a husband and thus having a child.

They suspect part of the reason for this over-representation is the "womenification" of the teaching profession, since 82% of teachers are women.

And at this point they just get started. Continuing with their statistical analysis:

Majority of those polled thought that "girlish" attributes such as emotional and social maturity, obedience, good ability to express themselves, are more important in schools than "boyish" attributes like affinity for the sciences, technical and mechanical affinity, logics, field vision, or risk taking.

Those polled believe girls are more diligent.

The publishers believe that manly qualities are being punished in schools which is causing mental stress/problems for boys, who are thus barred from utilising their unique capabilities and this affects their diligence as well.

They are also critical of recent changes to high school final exams. That's because of the 4 subjects part of the final exam, only one is from the sciences (math) the rest is from humanities (Hungarian grammar and literature, history, one foreign language). They are calling for equal number of sciences and humanities to address boys' disadvantage.

To propose an evidence that boys can be just as diligent as girls, they bring the example of "you only need to watch a boy juggle a football to know they can perform tasks with high level of concentration"

They also conclude that women should feel it in their interest to enable men becoming successful, since if "boyish attributes are repressed" that has a negative effect on the economy.

[Josquius]

The problem is real. Boys do tend to underperform vs. girls. Lots of reasons for this. It really is an issue that needs tackling.
But some of their commentary around it.....

There is a growing over-representation of women in higher education, which is a demographic risk through decrease of fertility rates since it reduces the chance of finding a husband and thus having a child.

Hilariously when I met Boris Johnson he had just said similar in his speech. Too many women going to university is a problem as they'll have nobody to marry- the idea that a university educated woman could get on with a peasant who didn't go to uni just didn't compute.

Majority of those polled thought that "girlish" attributes such as emotional and social maturity, obedience, good ability to express themselves, are more important in schools than "boyish" attributes like affinity for the sciences, technical and mechanical affinity, logics, field vision, or risk taking.

i.e. toxic masculinity takes much of the blame. Yes.

They are also critical of recent changes to high school final exams. That's because of the 4 subjects part of the final exam, only one is from the sciences (math) the rest is from humanities (Hungarian grammar and literature, history, one foreign language). They are calling for equal number of sciences and humanities to address boys' disadvantage.

Weird.
The exam related explanation I place the most stock in (in the UK at least, no idea how Hungary works), is that girls tend to get through the troublesome period of puberty earlier than men. Men tend to be right in the midst of hormonal upheaval right at the most critical point of school when they're expected to become nothing more than exam machines.

They also conclude that women should feel it in their interest to enable men becoming successful, since if "boyish attributes are repressed" that has a negative effect on the economy.

Its kind of like brexit really.
We have problems.
Do we take steps to remedy these problems?
hmm....nah. Lets just do something to lean into them and make them even worse instead!

[celedhring]

So, Coldplay has sold out 4 shows at Barcelona's Olympic Stadium. First ever band to do so (not even Springsteen, who has a huge local following). I'm... surprised. I mean, they are a popular band around here, but I didn't know they had that level of following.

[The Brain]

Coldplay is one of those mystery bands.

[Josquius]

So, Coldplay has sold out 4 shows at Barcelona's Olympic Stadium. First ever band to do so (not even Springsteen, who has a huge local following). I'm... surprised. I mean, they are a popular band around here, but I didn't know they had that level of following.

IIRC they've announced its to be their final ever tour before another album or two then retirement?

Are they playing many other places?- maybe there's people coming from around Europe to see them in Barca.

[The Brain]

I have read about such a wonderful study, that I have to share it here. It's priceless.
...

The gist of it sounds familiar from Swedish debate, even if their way of putting some things are weird.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah I think in the UK since 2010 the majority of university students have consistently been women - roughly 55/45%. Though there's significant divergences within subjects - particularly engineering and certain sciences.

In the UK it's a little different and more difficult to assess because courses post-16 are all optional so don't include a mandatory science, maths etc. Personally I think it is not good and that we specialise/narrow too soon - so I know it's coded conservative here but I would support England moving to more of a baccalaureate style system. But I understand that even schools that have lots of girls doing maths and other sciences for some reason tend to have far more boys doing physics and I don't know why

Here there's less focus on girls but some on race and class - particularly by those who want to set up race v class as a tug of war. But I think it's fair to say that most people don't realise quite how high performing some minority groups are - particularly British Indian and African students. Or how much of a shift there's been so I think under 40% of Bangladeshi students went to higher education in the 2000s it's now about 70%. But also how some other groups still under-perform. Basically - I'm not sure if it's similar for girls - but it's actually class, background, gender, race interact in complicated ways with existing discrimination v inclusion etc which makes it really difficult to draw lessons or work out what policy works. But there is also a clear split of girls generally doing far better than boys in almost every community.


For example the Bangladeshi change is in part because about 20% of the British Bangladeshi community live in Tower Hamlets in London. There's been a huge improvement in school standards in that borough in the last 15 years - in particular driven by one schools trust of academies - which has a huge impact on the stats for Bangladeshi students.

[Josquius]

This is a fallacy I see increasingly commonly these days, gross distortions of data from the right to claim "working class white boys have it hardest!".
This is something data may show to be technically true... but not for the reasons implicit in the statement. Its more that poverty stricken areas that do the poorest, e.g. coastal towns, are overwhelmingly demographically white than the whiteness itself being an issue.
Hell. There's a pretty direct relationship between the factors that make these places so poor performers and the fact they are so white.

[Sheilbh]

Totally agree. I think there's a move by some of the populist right (Matt Goodwin springs to mind) to simpllify it to race v class. The reality is it is a mix of those factors and others - including geography - that is difficult to untangle, though we should try.

A big factor, for example, is the huge and sustained improvement in state schools across London over the last 20 years. The annoying thing is no-one really knows what caused it. Some boroughs like Hackney went all in on academies and free schools, some like Tower Hamlets were more resistant - both improved a lot. Similarly there's some focus on a London scheme that allowed more sharing of best practice/teaching resources etc across different boroughs but that's also been tried in other metropolitan areas with mixed results.

We just don't know why it's happened so we can't work out the policy mix that helped and the answer seems to be - try everything. But, for example, over half of the black British population is in London, so London schools going from the worst to the best in the country has a huge impact on the stats - but that's more to do with geography than race or class.

[Josquius]

With London I reckon it's (largely. A myriad factors of course) the immigrant vigour factor at work. Kids of hard working people who give enough of a shit to uproot their life and move to a new place tend to inherit some of these traits.
A class with a bigger chunk of these people will result in the entire class having an uplift too, not just the immigrant kids themselves.
And by "immigrant" here I equally mean moved from elsewhere in the UK as from overseas.

[Sheilbh]

With London I reckon it's (largely. A myriad factors of course) the immigrant vigour factor at work. Kids of hard working people who give enough of a shit to uproot their life and move to a new place tend to inherit some of these traits.

I think that's a big factor. It's grim and I hope I'm wrong but I basically suspect that you have the immigrant work factor, especially as many immigrants are basically working in jobs that are a class below where they would work in their country of origin. So I worry there's a one off boost for that generation but once the next generation is locked into the British class system failures will revert basically. I hope I'm wrong.

A class with a bigger chunk of these people will result in the entire class having an uplift too, not just the immigrant kids themselves.
And by "immigrant" here I equally mean moved from elsewhere in the UK as from overseas.

This is true and possibly an optimistic counter to what I was saying. I hope that's true.

[Valmy]

I wonder if the dominance of RP will be a strange 20th century, top-down mass media blip - but what'll happen instead is standardisation from below - I imagine with lots of American influence, growth of Estuary English and maybe bits of Multicultural London English spreading too?

Seems a bit like the United States' short lived obsession with the "trans-Atlantic" accent in the 20th century. Man was that weird.

[grumbler]

Seems a bit like the United States' short lived obsession with the "trans-Atlantic" accent in the 20th century. Man was that weird.

I don't think that it was an "obsession" outside movie production circles, but I always thought it funny that Jimmy Stewart and Humphrey Bogart killed it by refusing to sound like anyone but themselves.