It’s A-Level results day, and that means the SJWs at the Guardian are at it again, excusing failure and blaming the system.
In an excruciating piece, Dr. Frances Ryan is telling us to “ditch the platitudes” as “results matter” but also, if you were a lazy git who choked on your A-Levels it’s the fault of your social class.
To make her point, Ryan gives examples of encouraging rich people who failed their A -Levels.
She’s lazy as hell herself, saying that Toby Young only got in to Oxford by mistake because his daddy was rich. In fact, Young resat his A-Levels and O levels at a comprehensive school and did get a letter making him a lower offer than normal because he went to a comprehensive. She also says:
Of course, a formal education is no guarantee of a fulfilling career or decent wage, and disappointing A-level results are not the end of the world (really, they’re not).
This is exactly what the right-wingers she dislikes so much say, too.
The problem is not systemic. A-Levels have been debased, with grades pathetically easy to get, so much so that A* had to be introduced. If a pupil has failed their A-Levels it is not “systematic oppression” but lack of intelligence or laziness, or sloppy teaching. Pupils unsuited to A-Levels should focus on vocational training. Others should work harder.
Literally nowhere in her piece does Frances suggest that poor A-Level results might be the fault of the pupil.
The “systematic” failure is that of the left to understand that teenagers are responsible for their own achievements, or lack of them. As a sixth former, I got three As at A-Level after mixed O levels. I also came third in the Peterhouse, Cambridge, national historical essay competition, resulting in offers to read history at Cambridge and English at Oxford. I chose the latter. I had previously sat the Oxford Colleges entrance exam, in Mediaeval English which I taught myself from a book, and had an offer therefore of two grade Es.
I worked my arse off for all of the above, going so far as to record a timeline of the French Revolution (one of my A-Level history topics) on a cassette recorder and play it back to myself every night. The historical essay I wrote over a summer, 5,000 words on “we shall not understand political history if we treat it as merely a branch of economic history”. Although I went to a private school, none of that kind of effort came from my lessons. It came from me.
The left should not be telling pupils with lousy A-Level results that the system is at fault. They are.
As many of my school reports used to say, Must. Try. Harder.
