Kevin Myres on working class mindsets.

I agree with his viewpoints also, but it would have been nice if he offered some solution to the issues he raised.
 
Education is the nearest thing to an answer that the state can offer. I’m a big fan of the idea that what we need most is investment in very early stage education; up to second class. If kids haven’t been made interested in learning by then it’s too late.

I strongly agree with Myers on another point; peer pressure, not bad teachers, class sizes or family income, is the biggest differential between children that do well and those that don’t. Basically if kids in school A get slagged for doing their homework and kids in school B get slagged for not doing it then the kids in school B will do better. Parents also have to make sure that their children do their homework and stay up to speed with what’s going on in class. If they don’t they are failing their children and doing a lousy job as a parent.

Incidentally I also believe that the group that the state has failed most over the last few years is the families that have tried to get out of that disgusting “working class” mindset of underachievement and give their children a better future.
 
Agree with you there Purple about parents being involved.

By the time I finished secondary school my mum (my dad was sole breadwinner so didn't have as much time as my mum to help) probably knew as much as I did about the curriculum from the amount of time she dedicated to helping me out and I do think that made a difference to my attitude to school and learning and putting the work in. Day in, day out she knew what my classes were and who my teachers were and what subjects I found most difficult and I found this made a tremendous difference to me. I think if I didn't have her constantly pushing I probably would've thought screw this and just been an average student.

And also agree that the earlier you start the better.
 
I agree with Purple and Myers. Early intervention is key. I think Myers uses the language he does to get debate going. If he phrased it in PC language his topics wouldn't get the attention that they do.

Another comment I'd make about the likes of Myers and O'Doherty and McWilliams - it never ceases to amaze me how people say 'Oh, I don't like X' or 'x is an a-hole', but the points they make, rather than the people themselves should be the focus of peoples ire or support. Just because you don't like someone doesn't mean they haven't got a valid point of view, or that you disagree with them on every point just because of who they are. Or perhaps people dislike them so much because what they say is often so close to the truth? Wasn't it Aristotle who said that if you are going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh - otherwise they will kill you for it.

(actually it was George Bernard Shaw)
 
Sounds like he's been kept waiting in all day by a plumber that never turned up and he's got himself so wound up about the situation it becomes a problem with the whole of Irish culture...

He almost approaches a point I would agree with but as always, destroys his own argument by attempting over intelligent prose and descending into pettiness.
 
Purple said:
Do you disagree with everything he said?
Click to expand...
Yes I do.

I was that child from a working class area with a grammar school uniform on. My friends from primary school went to different schools. Did they single me out because of the school I was going to? No. Did anyone else? No. Did any adults? No. The only people that singled me out because of where I was from were the middle class students and teachers in the godforsaken school when I got there.

And the fact that he tries to offer 'insight' (as if he could) into the working class mindset because his plumber was late is simply laughable.
 

Was that in this country? (the grammer school reference is why I ask)
 
Personnally I think he is being a bit cheeky having a rant on the "working class" like this, given that fact that it is often the well-educated university types who got us into the financial mess the nation is in, via leading the banks or the incomptent regualtors.

I would partially agree with his comments on education though. There is a mob of feral children out there in every town in Ireland, running out of control because their parents don't give a monkey about their future and see no future beyond the next social welfare payments. Why work when the state provides?
I'm not sure the issue though is the parents attitude to education, I think it is more to do with their attitide to work. I came from a small farming background, my Dad held a full time job as well. He worked 12-14 hours a day, every day of his working life and yet was also heavily involved in the community. That attitude rubs off on kids in the right way, in the same way as the attitude of many of our professional social welfare claimants rubs off on theirs. Never ceases to amaze me that there was over 100000 people on the dole during the boom years, yet all the Eastern Europeans could come over and get jobs easily. Why wouldn't the unemployed Irish take those jobs when they could have if they wanted to?
 
That is yet another wild idiotic generalisation from Myers.
 
Did Kevin's English tutor never hit him over the lughole with a copy of The Beano for spelling "CRAIC" as "crack"? Or was he talking about pharmaceuticals?


"We are more comfortable with Barrytown caricatures, with their horses going up in lifts, with their great good humour, and the endless crack." (The Indo)

Any English/Irish teachers out there to explain which is the right spelling?
 
I grew up in a rural area where none of what Myers is talking about would apply. We all went to the same schools- ie every child from every background. So what mattered was, as mpsox said, your parents' attitude to work or education leading to work. And while there was a certain deference- or more likely distance -perhaps to doctors, guards and priests ( my mother always said- be civil but strange to those three 'professions') I felt everyone else was pretty much on a level. So maybe what he said was true of only certain parts of urban areas.
 
I seem to recall Kevin Myers writing about the use of the word 'crack' before. If I'm not mistaken, his point was that 'crack' was already in use in the English langauage and became gaelicised afterwards as 'craic'.
 
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