I watched the first Lord of the Rings film at the cinema on a first date. Every second of the three hours or so it dragged on for seemed like a week. I have never seen anything as dull before or since. I only stayed till the end because I thought I might get laid. I did not.

He's experimenting with political dogma, probably something he read in a book at University - problem is that those kids who's lives he affects will be affected for the whole of their lives, the Secondary Modern system was bad but its saving grace was that the country needed lots of manual workers in those times and Secondary Moderns were ideal at churning out hundreds of thousands of potential manual workers every year to businesses that were far more prepared to actually do some training of those school leavers into something that could possibly develop into a career, not to mention formally approved trade apprenticeships where your employer would pick up the tab for your five year training scheme.

Somehow we seem to have lost sight of those facts.

You'd have been better slinging a few halfs of Stella down her neck if you wanted to get inside her pants than taking her to watch that bollox.

Top post.

I passed the exam taken at an arbitrary age. My sister didn't. So I've seen it from two sides of the coin. I don't think the problem was grammar schools themselves, but an attitude that anything other than that was inferior and didn't need to be invested in properly.

There was an interesting point made, some time ago, by Andrew Neil, noting how many politicians from working class backgrounds actually came up via the grammar school system. The way education is arranged now, there is still a division – but it's not based on some exam, but on parental funds, which is part of why we have decreased social mobility and, indeed, the number of politicians from genuinely working-class backgrounds.

You could also point out that our top two architects, Foster and Rogers, came from northern, working-class backgrounds and progressed through the grammar school system. So it wasn't just about enabling political careers to be built.

I think that what we've seen in the last 30 years is a recognition that, with much manual industry gone, there needs to be a change to the education system to 'bring up' (if you will) many of those who would have gone into those manual jobs to be much more conversant with IT, for instance.

Universities complain that rigour in the groundings of such subjects as the sciences has been neglected.

That's not the fault of the pupils or the teachers, though, but – as I mentioned earlier – constant political tinkering.

Agreed. Let's face it, you could analyse Janet & John to tell you something about the social times in which those books were used.

I don't know whether JRR himself thought of it as literature or not. What has tended to vex me – since my own moment of release from this cult, as mentioned earlier – is the idea that LOTR is great literature, which is why it is so often voted into the top few in polls of great literature. IIRC, it was second in a huge poll at the end of the millennium.

I think your critique of it is spot on – but it seems to occupy a place that is way beyond that.

On only a very slightly different note (and also bearing in mind Rock God's comments) – it's going to take three films to tell the story of the The Hobbit? Talk about milking a gullible audience.

From everything I've read about JRR he didn't set out to write literature and didn't perceive the book to be anything of the sort. The famous quote about it being 'a tale that grew in the telling' appears to be literally true - he set out on an intellectual exercise and ended up with something greater.

I think the place it hold now is somewhat down to it being a mould-breaker. Prior to LOTR fantasy fiction was either childrens stories or Conan clones. He practically invented the modern Epic or High Fantasy genre. He was certainly responsible for me getting into fantasy (via being made to read The Hobbit at school) when I had previously ignored the entire genre, and I think a lot of other people followed the same path. I've since read many, many fantasy novels that are superior but LOTR still holds a special place for me as my introduction.

I completely agree about the movie adaptation of The Hobbit BTW. As much as I enjoyed the first installment I really can't see how it will manage three movies without serious padding.

As far as I understand it the 3 films will be filled with content Tolkien hinted at in his appendixes in the LoTR. Look at the new scene with Gandalf, Galadriel and Elrond as one example.

The film was all her idea. Had I known then how things would ultimately turn out, I'd have left her the taxi fare home and fvcked off after twenty minutes.

And now thanks to Gove's meddling it looks like NI and Wales will have a different examination system to England.

If he was in front of me now I think I would knock him out. It looks as though OFSTED have been briefed to ensure all non academy schools are deemed failed as soon as possible.

My daughter was informed at 10am yesterday that 3 OFSTED inspectors will be turning up at 8am today to do a 3 day inspection, targetting the SATS groups (SATS are this week as if they didn't have enough to contend with). They were given a list of things that the inspectors would need to see, which would include literacy and numeracy workbooks from 2 kids at, below and above the required levels, these books would have to be marked up and all paperwork complete up to finish of business yesterday.

Because these are not needed for this weeks SATS the teachers were going to do them over the half term closure (they no longer regard these breaks as holidays as they tend to work everyday of them), but she (and her colleagues) started to do them last night. At around 9:30pm her head teacher got in touch to say that the inspector in charge had rang to say that they now needed to see ALL numeracy and literacy workbooks at 8am along with a stack of other work that would generally not be required until after the next half term, which now means they will have to get into school at 5am to get this done.

Last year her school was given 'outstanding' status and my daughter was rated the same having averaged a 6 point improvement as an average across her kids, but because of the make up of the school very few had achieved 'expected levels' for their ages (over 70% are from overseas and have English as a second language, some of the girls from Islamic countries have had NO education whatsoever up until a few months ago). Gove has now changed the goalposts and ALL kids must be at the required level no matter what the circumstances, so my daughter will now be benchmarked against a teacher from a leafy, middle class suburb of Surrey and whose kids can probably read and write when they enter pre-school at the age of 4. Some of my daughters 6 year old hadn't heard a word of English until they enrolled at her school and a high percentage are in desperate need of an SEN assessment (which is refused most of the time).

She has been tapped up by a few schools where she would have an easier time of it in areas of mostly middle class families with little or no SEN needs, but she has always refused because she knows these kids she teaches need good teachers who care and she is reluctant to abandon them, but she fears that although they know they have maintained (or bettered) there standards since last year it is inevitable that they will be deemed a failing school under the new Gove directive and be forced (against the will of parents, teachers and governors) into academy status.

I am no educational expert, but I think Gove is a danger to the future of our kids, especially those at the bottom of the academic pile as these academies will be able to pick and choose who they want and a kid from a third world country who cannot speak a word of English and have some form of SEN such as autism will not be high on the agenda for a place.