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The World has Gone MAD! Katharine Birbalsingh speaks the truth.


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How the hell can this intelligent woman be criticised for telling the truth?

This is from the AOL News site.

The Government’s social mobility tsar has been criticised for comments implying that girls do not study A-level science because they dislike “hard maths”.

Katharine Birbalsingh told a meeting of the Science and Technology Committee to discuss diversity in Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects that girls do not seem to “fancy” physics as much as other subjects.

She said that in chemistry, biology and maths at her school, the Michaela Community School in Brent, girls make up the majority of students at A-level apart from in physics, where 16% study the subject.

She told MPs: “Physics isn’t something girls tend to fancy – they don’t want to do it, they don’t like it. It wouldn’t be something here that they don’t choose because they feel it’s not for them, that would certainly not be the case, and it wouldn’t be the case here that they wouldn’t choose it because they didn’t have a good physics teacher.

“I just think they don’t like it. There’s a lot of hard maths in there that I think that they would rather not do, and that’s not to say that there isn’t hard stuff to do in biology and chemistry.”

Asked about why girls specifically would not do physics, she said: “In research generally people say it’s a natural thing – I mean I don’t know, I’m not an expert in that sort of thing, but that’s what they say.

“I don’t think there’s anything external – when it comes to our kids… they’re being taught very well, they are doing well at GCSE and they choose the subjects that they want to do.

“We’re certainly not out there campaigning for more girls to do physics; we wouldn’t do that and I wouldn’t want to do that because I don’t mind that there’s only 16% of them taking [it], I want them to do what they want to do.”

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Yep, I really do think the world is going bonkers.  Very few if any schools offered domestic science to boys in my day but there was not the uproar from a stupid minority.

YET the vaste majority of top chefs in the world are men. I know of one young lady who took up engineering and cause a bit of a stir when she appeared on motorway construction sites ..... she is a good looking lass but excellent at her job.    

Excellent lady and I think she is more than capable of holding here own.

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14 hours ago, Walker570 said:

I know of one young lady who took up engineering and cause a bit of a stir when she appeared on motorway construction sites

A woman I know (a parent from the kids school) is high up in  one of the engineering bodies in the UK and actually works in engineering locally.

I will say that a lack of good teaching can have a dramatic effect - my eldest wanted to do engineering but his teacher for GCSE was rubbish so he dropped Physics at A level and now doesn't know what to do with his life (and he never told us or else we could have done something about it)

My youngest started GCSE Physics and was struggling with the same teacher - she then disappeared and a new teacher started - he flew the rest of the course and finished with an A* 

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Good to hear.  I think a lot of good teachers are flying the nest and going into private schools where they are allowed to do the job clear of 'official' interference and also behaviour of a large chunk of the children attending. One I know said there was about 10% of the children who wanted to learn but disruption from the rest made it impossible.

Good to hear your kids have good parents because that is where it all stems from  .....  that's if they know their parents of course but that's another story.

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3 hours ago, discobob said:

A woman I know (a parent from the kids school) is high up in  one of the engineering bodies in the UK and actually works in engineering locally.

I will say that a lack of good teaching can have a dramatic effect - my eldest wanted to do engineering but his teacher for GCSE was rubbish so he dropped Physics at A level and now doesn't know what to do with his life (and he never told us or else we could have done something about it)

My youngest started GCSE Physics and was struggling with the same teacher - she then disappeared and a new teacher started - he flew the rest of the course and finished with an A* 

Bang on about the lack of good teaching. When I did my technology and design GCSE my teacher was outstanding. As 15-16yr olds some of us were working on lathes, mig and oxy/acetylene welding, using a small CNC mill etc etc. Trying to compare what was available to me to what my older brothers technology GCSE would have been wasn't possible, the very most they got to do was solder a few wires together.

BUT...they were a Grammar School, learning actual skills were not important, only the paperwork to get an A grade to make the school look good was important. 

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5 hours ago, Rob85 said:

Bang on about the lack of good teaching. When I did my technology and design GCSE my teacher was outstanding. As 15-16yr olds some of us were working on lathes, mig and oxy/acetylene welding, using a small CNC mill etc etc. Trying to compare what was available to me to what my older brothers technology GCSE would have been wasn't possible, the very most they got to do was solder a few wires together.

BUT...they were a Grammar School, learning actual skills were not important, only the paperwork to get an A grade to make the school look good was important. 

That's the same for me.  We had all those engineering machines that we used on a regular basis.  None of the school's around me have these now because of H+S concerns.  As such no one experiences anything like this. But back then there were local garages wnd small engineering shops to find jobs in but now no one even mends a wheelbarrow.  All the local villages are being buried in new private housing developments and the prices are telephone numbers but where are there any jobs. The houses certainly are not for first time buyers. 

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On 28/04/2022 at 16:37, Gordon R said:

Saw it. She explained her view quite well and I am astonished at the outrage, although in this day and age, it is to be expected. 

I'm not astonished, when most of our MPs and media organs won't even define what a girl is, they certainly won't define a 'girl' as being biologically or intellectually averse to anything. 

We need to stop looking for common sense answers in our new world. 

They are becoming quite rare. 

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On 29/04/2022 at 18:51, Minky said:

That's the same for me.  We had all those engineering machines that we used on a regular basis.  None of the school's around me have these now because of H+S concerns.  As such no one experiences anything like this. But back then there were local garages wnd small engineering shops to find jobs in but now no one even mends a wheelbarrow.  All the local villages are being buried in new private housing developments and the prices are telephone numbers but where are there any jobs. The houses certainly are not for first time buyers. 

Not just recently...my schooling was back in the 1950s and I went to a Grammar scraped in on a 13 plus... we had a great woodowrk teacher and art teacher but that was it.

The High Scool down the road had metal work lathes etc etc etc to play with.  In those days you got channelled either into Uni higher education or into an apprenticeship with an enginnering firm .... Grammar ..... High   I did get a good all round education but wished many times I was at the High Scool for those practical reasons.

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2 hours ago, Walker570 said:

Not just recently...my schooling was back in the 1950s and I went to a Grammar scraped in on a 13 plus... we had a great woodowrk teacher and art teacher but that was it.

The High Scool down the road had metal work lathes etc etc etc to play with.  In those days you got channelled either into Uni higher education or into an apprenticeship with an enginnering firm .... Grammar ..... High   I did get a good all round education but wished many times I was at the High Scool for those practical reasons.

I was the same, but being in the 'A' stream, I did Latin and didn't even have the woodwork option until I persuaded the woodwork master to let me have a go when I had a free period in the sixth form. I did my formal learning of my machining skills in a "Machining for model makers class" at a local tech college evening class in my 30s.

90% of us were motorcyclists making bits for our bikes.

Strangely, I can't recall the last time that I looked at Catullus.

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Quote

I did Latin 

As did I.  We were only allowed to take 9 "O" levels and after the mock exams, we had to drop Latin or Physics. I dumped Latin, which would have been another "O" level, as I was top of the Latin class.

Complete waste of five years' Latin lessons on a useless subject.

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1 hour ago, Gordon R said:

.........Complete waste of five years' Latin lessons on a useless subject.

Oh, I don't know, at least you know what "Ne illegitimi carborundum" means :lol:

Edited by amateur
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14 minutes ago, amateur said:

Ne illegitimi carborundum

Sero! 🙂 

In my experience Secondary School physics teachers were physics / science grads who didn't quite make the grade in industry - far from inspiring for anyone. It wasn't much better for Mathematics and Computer Science, the latter of whom seemed to be Mathematic teaching rejects. I got thrown out of the Computer Studies class for being disruptive - what that actually meant was the teacher was embarrassed by my constantly correcting his workings.

As they say there's only 10 types of people in the world - those that understand binary and those that don't, he clearly didn't... 

Things generally got better as the level of education increased.

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