Does this constitute snobbery?

[Richard Barrett]

Mr Gove may mean well

The evidence is heavily stacked against that I think.

[french frank]

Why? Is ignorance not depressing, as well as hard to forgive in certain cases?

It's not for anyone to FORGIVE someone else for their ignorance. One might muse about how anyone came to be unaware of something that one knows very well. Why is knowing about Kafka any more useful than being able to recognise a subordinate clause, or use the subjunctive properly?

[Bryn]

Why? Is ignorance not depressing, as well as hard to forgive in certain cases?

Please take your place. the machine awaits your attendance.

[Bryn]

But wouldn't that distinction suggest that the discount doesn't apply in Summer?

Indeed. No need for the discount when there is still plenty of daylight to enjoy.

[Conchis]

]Mr Gove may mean well [/B](though you probably don't agree), but he doesn't understand that different people should receive different treatment. One size fits all does not work for teaching people.

Michael Gove does not 'mean well' to anyone apart from himself.

As his ruinous (for the country) political career has demonstrated, he has zero aptitude for administration and a total dearth of practical ideas (though plenty of hot-air waffly 'theory').

I will concede him a certain talent for attaching himself to 'powerful' people who can further his own ends, as well as a keen antennae for when to drop them once they've wised up to his game (David Cameron? Boris Johnson?).

Personally, I think he belongs in a very small category of people who should have been humanely slaughtered at birth. I wouldn't be surprised if the idea crossed his own (real) mother's mind.....

[pastoralguy]

Michael Gove does not 'mean well' to anyone apart from himself.

As his ruinous (for the country) political career has demonstrated, he has zero aptitude for administration and a total dearth of practical ideas (though plenty of hot-air waffly 'theory').

I will concede him a certain talent for attaching himself to 'powerful' people who can further his own ends, as well as a keen antennae for when to drop them once they've wised up to his game (David Cameron? Boris Johnson?).

Personally, I think he belongs in a very small category of people whom I think should have been humanely slaughtered at birth. I wouldn't be surprised if the idea crossed his own (real) mother's mind.....

Harsh...

But fair.

[Conchis]

Harsh...

But fair.

Have you ever seen Polanski's film of Macbeth? Polanski takes some liberties with the character of Ross (played by John Stride) to make him an obvious 'attacher to power', who is first loyal to Duncan, then quick to transfer his allegiance to Macbeth, then equally quick to jump ship and side with Malcolm.

That's Gove.

[Alain Maréchal]

Have you ever seen Polanski's film of Macbeth? Polanski takes some liberties with the character of Ross (played by John Stride) to make him an obvious 'attacher to power', who is first loyal to Duncan, then quick to transfer his allegiance to Macbeth, then equally quick to jump ship and side with Malcolm.

That's Gove.

It sounds astonishingly like the career of François Mitterrand, and in spite of the fact that it was well-known to all in politics, it ultimately did him no harm at all. I shall watch (from a distance) with interest.

[eighthobstruction]

Well put. It's disappointing that there have been so many equivocal responses.

....well I have the feeling 95% of the replies had little to do with the OP....I think nearly all said what a reprehensible rat fink Conchis has been....some in no certain terms....others easing off believing that this was a kind off moral maze reality tale to turn around to see the facets....some were never quite sure if it was a wind up [me]....that it has charged and dribbled to 11 pages shows that it was a weekend potboiler for the flies [me] to feed on....don't take it too seriously....it was a pretty open shut case....open to analysis ....but a shaggy dog story for all that....

[Conchis]

....well I have the feeling 95% of the replies had little to do with the OP....I think nearly all said what a reprehensible rat fink Conchis has been....some in no certain terms....others easing off believing that this was a kind off moral maze reality tale to turn around to see the facets....some were never quite sure if it was a wind up [me]....that it has charged and dribbled to 11 pages shows that it was a weekend potboiler for the flies [me] to feed on....don't take it too seriously....it was a pretty open shut case....open to analysis ....but a shaggy dog story for all that....

Really?

A couple of people have popped in to engage in low-level abuse but have offered no follow-up. I've certainly been called far worse for far less!

Thought I say it myself, this thread has been an example of the forum at its best: it's got silly at times :) but maybe that was necessary light relief. It's encapsulated an interesting socio-cultural-political discussion, which you'd be unlikely to find in any branch of Wetherspoons.

I'll admit I began the thread in a spirit of frustration after my rather desolating experience in Cleethorpes (a town that invites desolation) but I now feel somewhat better about it all. And guess what? Today, I had an email from the organisation I worked with there on Friday telling me how much they'd enjoyed working with me! :)

[Pulcinella]

1 I think all reading is for comprehension, not just the 'comprehension paper'
2 Fluency in reading is surely helped by comprehension
3 See 2, plus a chance to exercise pupils' 'instinctive understanding' of punctuation grammar etc.

It would help if we had seen the teacher's notes for this part of the course... you know aims etc

I suspect that the 'aims' are covered in the SATS syllabus/guidelines, but will try to remember to ask when I go back after the half-term break.

I hope that some of the kids pointed out that "5pm" couldn't be "in the morning"!

Oh, there's no scope for being a smart alec.


The school has recently become an academy. These questions were part of some material that the academy had produced that was being used in a pre-school booster class that was underway when I turned up last week. I assume that they are typical of the sort of question that appears in the SATS papers.

[Dave2002]

A slightly different example: I think someone who had lived in Britain during the last fifty or so years would have had to have made a conscious effort NOT to know who David Bowie was. Said effort would have involved avoiding all news on television and radio, turning one's eyes away from newspaper stands, (latterly) staying off the internet and blocking one's ears when in the vicinity of 'pop' radio.

You know David Bowie was a pop/rock star, that he was male and that he died three years ago. That's probably all you need to know about him, but I'd wager you've taken in quite a bit more than that, via osmosis.

A bit more information on said woman: she worked for an arts organisation, which perhaps made her ignorance of Kafka that bit harder for me to take.

I suppose you are very familiar with the works of Gabo then. If not, you are deficient.

https://theculturetrip.com/south-america/colombia/articles/the-best-books-by-gabriel-garcia-marquez-you-must-read/

Maybe you are, in which case I'm sure I could come up with other examples of things which you don't know about. It is not a given that everyone has to go around rooting out obscure facts, even though some of us do just that for things which interest us. Re David Bowie - personally I was aware of him, and even after being so appraised I rather wish I'd saved time and effort, though I can see that some people have thought that he was a significant person with influence - and given that observation, I guess he was.

Does that make me snob? Possibly, or maybe I just like different things.

[LMcD]

'Learn to differentiate between ignorance and stupidity'.
I'm just wondering how the poor woman felt when she became aware of your self-indulgent silent disapproval - or was she too ignorant/stupid to notice?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Thought I say it myself, this thread has been an example of the forum at its best

I think that you're on your own in this opinion.

Not that that has ever stopped you before.

[LMcD]

Thus conchis doth make cowards of us all....