Children returning home? Bad news for parents!

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A quarter of young British adults now live with their parents, more than at any time since records began in 1966.

According to a new study by the London School of Economics, adult children who return to the family home after a period away – often at university – cause a significant decline in their parents’ well-being. While the study acknowledged that these “boomerang” children can be a source of emotional and practical support for parents, it found that the quality of life of the parents studied fell by an average of 0.8 points on the researchers’ scale when their kids moved back in – an effect similar to developing an age-related disability.

It’s natural that people have mixed feelings about boomerang children, but it’s not just about parents wanting a spare bedroom again, or more time for new pastimes. Putting up a grown child also “feels at some deep level like a failure for all concerned”, even if the reasons for it – mainly insecure employment and the cost of housing – are beyond their control. Meanwhile, the children may feel they have worked hard through school and university only to find themselves back where they started. The sense of injustice among the young is powerful, and that’s not a healthy situation. (adapted from an article in The Week and The Times, March 2018)

We bring them up to make friends, to be independent, to stand on their own feet, to have the confidence to apply for, get and successfully keep a job. We hope we have instilled into them a sense of honesty and integrity, a sense of humour, a caring attitude towards the more vulnerable in society, social ease, and enough mathematics to manage their own financial affairs. We have applied some of the principles of Epicurus, although mostly we are unaware of the fact. We have really tried. And we have failed.

There is something desperately wrong with this scenario, this system. Maybe socialism, the nanny State, doesn’t work and can’t be afforded, but nor can this. We can no longer afford the grave gap between rich and poor, the stagnant wages, the lack of housing, the gig economy, the insecurity and the activities of a now-corrupt capitalism that buys politicians. We may not personally see it collapse, but collapse it will, because it is not acting for the greater good, but for a tiny minority. Collapse is what happens to deeply unfair cultures. Read your history.

The sorry state of British education, part 1, GCSEs

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The first in a three-part series on the sorry state of British education. Hope you enjoy these multi-part blogs. 

I started secondary school in 2008. Then, British secondary education was in a terrible mess; the Labour Education Secretary Ed Balls was presiding over a period of serious grade inflation. GCSEs, the qualification achieved by British 16-year olds, were getting easier, and the number of As and A*s being attained was increasing.

To rectify this, Balls’ successor, the Conservative Michael Gove revamped the GCSE curriculum. The subject matter would become more difficult. There would be a greater emphasis on ‘British values’, to make a more cohesive society and combat against extremism. And instead of students being graded A*-U, they would be graded 1-9, with 9 being the highest grade. The theory was that in the event of grade inflation, the exam boards could add numbers above 9 so the most capable students would be distinguished.

But in many respects, these reforms have backfired. It’s true that grade inflation has largely ceased.  But the curriculum is in many aspects too difficult. Schools are reporting increasing levels of anxiety and other mental health issues. The increasing reliance on exams over coursework doesn’t prepare students for the real world. The notion of British values is subjective and difficult to teach: are things like freedom of speech really British values or just universal liberal values? More importantly, Gove wanted to toughen the GCSE to allow state schools to compete against the more rigorous private schools. But the opposite has happened. Private schools, which use the world-recognised iGCSE, will have a higher proportion of their students get the top grade than state schools. This amounts to a major advantage for privately-educated students when applying to university. State school children will be taking harder exams than their fee-paying counterparts, in exchange for getting worse grades and consequently poorer prospects in higher education.

The lesson from all of this is that successive governments, both Labour and Conservative, have failed to reform the GCSE. The curriculum changes too quickly, leaving teachers to struggle with each period of reform. The league tables are meaningless since private schools now refuse to participate in them. Comprehensive education was meant to be egalitarian. Yet we now face a system where the wealthiest parents buy houses in the best catchment areas, thus securing the best places in the state school system. And for those who can afford it (or are lucky enough to win scholarships), private education is as much of an advantage as it has ever been.

The obvious solution to all this is for all schools to adopt the iGCSE. It’s an internationally-recognised, demanding but fair qualification. Since both private and state schools would use it, league tables would regain their relevance. It would be difficult at first for state schools to adjust, but it would be worth it in the long term. Most importantly, it would prevent the constant meddling by education secretaries, since the iGCSE curriculum is run by the University of Cambridge. It would be a fair outcome for all students. If only the government had the humility to admit it.

Next Monday, the sorry state of A-levels, which you can now read here. 

Is a maximum maximum wage a good idea?

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Could capping top incomes tackle our rising inequality more effectively than conventional approaches to narrowing our vast economic divides?  Some while ago the Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies published “The Case for A Maximum Wage”, by Sam Pizzigati, an IPS associate fellow and the co-editor of Inequality.org.

Pizzigati docusses how egalitarians worldwide are demonstrating that a “maximum wage” could be both economically viable and politically practical. One major American city is already socking a higher tax rate on companies with wide divides between worker and executive pay. Activists in other jurisdictions are working to deny inequality-generating enterprises government contracts and subsidies.

Governments could go further still and start using their tax systems to enforce fair income ratios between rich and poor across the board. The ultimate goal ought to be a world without the super-rich. His analysis explains why we need to create that world — and how we could speed its creation.k

Moderate Epicureans would probably support a maximum wage. Every unequal society in history has either descended into violence or otherwise collapsed, so there is an historical backing for quickly doing something about excessive income and wealth. Why does the owner of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, need $143.1 billion? How can he possibly spend even $1 billion of it? How can he justify the low wages and poor working conditions in his company? Yes, I have done my little bit to put him where he is – customers love the sevice. But the key is “moderation” – he has none.

The problem comes with implementation. Studies have shown how insecure rich people actually are. Few believe they have enough money and want even more. They are willing to spend some of it to protect their store of wealth, and this means lobbying and the suborning of ambitious people who are prepared to curry favour in return for hard cash. Hard to stop this, but in America a more intelligent Supreme Court could do marvels. It’s why American democracy is descending into farce. The people involved are focussed on themselves, not the nation. Corruption is the name of the game and we are mired in it.

Genuine complaints received by from customers by Thomas Cook Vacations

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1. “On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don’t like spicy food.”
2. “They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax.”
3. “We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish.”
4. “We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our own swimsuits and towels. We assumed it would be included in the price.”
5. “The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room.”
6. “We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as white but it was more yellow.”
7. “It’s lazy of the local shopkeepers to siesta in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during ‘siesta’ time — this should be banned.”
8. “No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared.”
9. “Although the brochure said that there was a fully equipped kitchen, there was no egg-slicer in the drawers.”
10. “I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts.”
11. “The roads were uneven and bumpy, so we could not read the local guide book during the bus ride to the resort. Because of this, we were unaware of many things that would have made our holiday more fun.”
12. “It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair.”
13. “I compared the size of our one-bedroom suite to our friends three-bedroom suite and ours was significantly smaller.”
14. “The brochure stated: ‘No hairdressers at the resort.’ We’re trainee hairdressers and we think they knew and made us wait longer for service.”
15. “When we were in Spain, there were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners.”
16. “We had to line up outside to catch the boat and there was no air-conditioning.”
17. “It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel.”
18. “I was bitten by a mosquito. The brochure did not mention mosquitoes.”
19. “My fiancée and I requested twin-beds when we booked, but instead we were placed in a room with a king bed. We now hold you all responsible and want to be re-reimbursed for the fact that I became pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked.”

These quotations rxplain a lot. Too much for one posting.

The difference between being educated and being cultured.

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“Culture is only really culture when it has diffused itself through every root and fibre of our endurance of life. Then it can become wisdom, a wisdom that can accept defeat, and turn defeat into victory. It can render us independent of our weakness, of our surroundings and of our age, a fortress for the self within the self, and a universal thing, breaking down of barriers of race, of class, of nation”. (John Cowper Powys (1872-1863), British novelist, philosopher, literary critic, educator and poet).

Powys thought that this kind of culture should permeate the soul, otherwise what passes for culture is a falsehood devoid of humanity. Just being intellectual or an aesthete is not enough, for culture without human goodness is “weird and even terrifying”. Culture reminded him of horticulture: the problem is how to graft the subtle and the exquisite upon the deep and vital. “Only by this grafting can the sap of the natural give life and strength to the unusual, and the roots of the rugged sweeten the distinguished and rare”.

The grafting is the true task of philosophy: to add to a person’s cleverness and erudition an inner identity that can withstand the jungles of brutality, greed, stupidity, self-interest and self-regard. The innermost self, the fortress, should be a source of real feelings and sensations of kindness, true thoughtfulness for others and concern for the welfare of the community.

Tom Wolfe said, “The more culture a man has the more austerely – though naturally with many ironic reserves – does he abide by his own taste“. In other words he is an authentic person who lives his philosophy of life. He is not an intellectual or a snob – he treats every man and woman with politeness and respect. He smiles a lot, he knows how to conduct a conversation, can give and take, and can diffuse a tense atmosphere with humour (something rare, a sense of humour!) He can cope with opposing “truths”, comment without anger or snide remarks, listen and charm. It comes easily because he has internalised it as part of his daily life. To philosophise is not to read philosophy; it is to feel philosophy.

On this blog we encourage readers to learn about Epicureanism – not so different from organised religion, but without the supernatural, the dogma, the preachers and the sects.
Let it’s principles be your “fortress”.