Closing time
The other day, I wrote a ‘joke’ that, at the end of the new Harry Potter book, Hogwarts is closed after a poor OFSTED report only to be reopened as a City Academy specialising in training call centre workers. Whoops, a bit of satire there.
Of course, it’s rubbish, isn’t it? An absurd extrapolation of the notion that schools now only exist to produce economically-optimised drones. Bollocks, in other words.
A secondary school which has opened an on-site call centre where pupils can practise selling mobile phone contracts and answering customer complaints has been criticised for lowering children’s expectations.
Christ. I feel sick.
I’m trapped in a giddying Moebius band of conflicting emotions. It’s a relief to find that there are people on the planet who have a lower expectation of our species than I do. That my sociopathy is not total. But then I’m horrorstruck that people actually exist who loathe and despise humanity (children in this particular case) to such an extent. But, hang on, why should I give a shit? People are arseholes. And round and round.
The pinnacle of creation? You can bugger off. The only worthwhile contribution opposable thumbs have made to the planet is the opportunities they afford for self-abuse.
Posted on July 23rd, 2007 at 12:43 pm
NOOOOoooooooo!!!!!!…
Via Justin at Chicken Yoghurt, who has turned into a fortune teller!…
I’m torn about this. On one hand it answers the age old complaint that school doesn’t prepare kids for “the real world”. There are plenty of ex-Secondary Modern kids out there who will tell you they were never interested in the academic side of things and were happy to spend their time in home economics or woodwork classes. If you were very cynical, this is just a modern version of that. If, in that part of the world, the real world is working in a call centre, then maybe so be it.
But those who were a bit cleverer than most and were stuck in SM schools were generally fucked. There was no access to the examinations required for universities, and even if there were the teaching would not be up to standard for them. The point of a comprehensive was to allow those who did want to float up to do so. Grammars were meant to work in the same way but because the 11+ was easily abused it didn’t for all. If this is the school’s attitude to its own kids, and this is how vital sponsorship resources are being spent, then what about those children who have a chance to do well and are entirely capable? If you’re stuck in a school where the official protocol is that you won’t amount to anything and that you will be selling mobile phone contracts for the rest of your life, then I imagine your academic life wouldn’t be as easy as somewhere where that doesn’t happen.
Hello BTW.
Call centre training at school…WHAT THE FUCK?
To some extent I share your horror at this ‘Brave New World’ kind of social and economic planning, but if you are from that area (with its long-term high levels of unemployment and general deprivation) then I daresay those for whom it is intended are happy enough. In that area I imagine that the big employers are now the DSS and Nissan, since the mines closed. Maybe some of them will use the IT skills they gain on this course to go and do more IT training. It’s sad when people ‘aspire’ to work in a call centre, but that will (whatever you or I think about it) be the destiny of many of them, assuming that not all of these jobs are outsourced to India, etc.
[...] that fell by the wayside, at least until Justin reminded me of what I’d intended to write with these observations. The other day, I wrote a ‘joke’ that, at the end of the new Harry Potter book, Hogwarts is [...]
Yes,Justine is spot on the country is full of predictable arseholes and initiatives to go with them.
We have subscribed to a collective fantasy and lack the reasoning capacity to extricate ourselves therefrom.
How do I get on that call centre training course?