The Failure Of Schools To Educate - Article

[butterfly_warrior]

Hehe BW, don't get me started on our need for tech schools.

I'm a FIRM believer in them myself! I can't prepare a student for life in a university setting and the skills they will need to cope there at the same time as I prepare a student for an apprenticeship or the like.

What's the point in forcing someone who's bound for TAFE or a trade to sit through the HSC exams and write essays on history or Shakespeare, play with trig identities or deal with chemical equilibrium equations? How does poetry help the student who aims to be a mechanic? How does poetry help the student wanting to become a doctor for that matter?!

One of my biggest frustrations is that so many students are forced into doing the final two years of academic schooling when it is really just putting them in a holding pattern and putting them, us and the other students through misery!

Yes, it was a frustrating day with my senior students.

BW

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

I do agree that people who wish to learn a trade should be able to opt out earlier.

But the need for poetry shouldn't be underestimated! It's not about rhyme and meter (although that is a part of it) - it's about the joy of words. About communication. About being heard and understood. About getting your feelings out. About enjoying and feeling and just being. You can't write a good poem if you aren't there, if you don't REALLY feel it.

About half of what the initial article was about LOL. Maybe we should bring in more poetry, and earlier, and that would solve all our problems. Oh yes, and learning and reciting poetry can help defend the brain against aging diseases and dementias, just as being able to do crosswords, play chess and do maths can. Chemical equations may not feature in your adult life, but having the mental power to do them will mean a LOT because you've started to use your brain a bit. Altogether now: 'Twas brillig...

[Astrid]

I'm a FIRM believer in them myself! I can't prepare a student for life in a university setting and the skills they will need to cope there at the same time as I prepare a student for an apprenticeship or the like.

What's the point in forcing someone who's bound for TAFE or a trade to sit through the HSC exams and write essays on history or Shakespeare, play with trig identities or deal with chemical equilibrium equations? How does poetry help the student who aims to be a mechanic? How does poetry help the student wanting to become a doctor for that matter?!

One of my biggest frustrations is that so many students are forced into doing the final two years of academic schooling when it is really just putting them in a holding pattern and putting them, us and the other students through misery!

Yes, it was a frustrating day with my senior students.

BW

That is what I liked about the Tassie system when I went through it. Years 11 and 12 in the public system were seperate from high school. At the end of year 10 you decided whether to do your HSC at college, go to Tafe, find an apprentiship or just drop out in the hope of finding a job. Not sure if it is still like that, but I hope it is.

Got to get back to this, Miss 3 is calling.

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

Can I just ask a REALLY stupid question?

In the UK we leave school at 16, having taken as many GCSEs as the school deems we will pass. We can then go on and do A-levels (or whatever they are becoming now) until 18 and then go to uni or get a job. We can do NVQs and GNVQs from the age of 14 (I think, but 14-16 is still in school alongside GCSEs - this is not a bad thing IMO) and learn trades that way. If you are doing a childcare or business GNVQ then you don't do various other topics such as technology or languages (WHY? Child carers NEED to know how to cook and speak IMO) but you do more practical-based learning with no exams, just coursework. Our year 11 is age 15-16 and compulsary education ends there. Years 12 and 13 are still called sixth form, thankfully, and that's a student's choice (or a student's parents' choice as is becoming more frequently the case).

So what happens in Australia? Do you stay on for all the sixth form (age 18 when you leave) or do you stop at 16? And if you have to stay on, when are your exams? Do you do your basic exams at 16 then specialise until 18 or is it a prescribed curriculum until 18 with a mix of subjects?

[butterfly_warrior]

It varies from state to state, RF.

In NSW compulsory schooling ends at the end of year 10 (16 years old, usually). They sit an external exam and get their School Certificate. Maths, English, Science and something that I can never remember the name of that encompasses history, geography and "civics and citizenship" are compulsory. They are starting to include a compulsory computing part of it now, but I don't know much about it beyond the maths part of things. They have verious electives which must be studied for a certain number of hours as well.

Year 11 and 12 are not compulsory, English is the only compulsory subject, but there are rules about how many subjects you can have from two separate key learning areas. The final Higher School Certificate exams are geared towards university entrance (you get your HSC and a UAI, if you've done the right number of units in the right areas). It's possible to do various VET courses at this point, which link in with TAFE studies, but it's not an area I know a lot about. It's possible to get your HSC without getting a UAI (universities admissions index).

The problem is that a lot of apprenticeships are now requiring students to have completed their HSC, when there's really nothing that is gained by it except a lot of frustration. The entire system of the final two years is focussed towards university entrance, and while there are some changes, there's not enough! The outside world is starting to demand the HSC more and more often, when there's nothing really to be gained by doing it for many careers and trades.

Clear as mud?

BW

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

Cheers, BW. Quite different to the UK then!

IKWYM about normal jobs requiring further education - a lot of ours seem to and IMO there's little point in the A-levels if you don't want to go on to Uni. If you work in a shop then do you need English Lit A-level? Or do you need A-levels to pull pints? Sure it may have been fun but so much frustration with exams and learning things you never need (I can talk, degree in medical genetics and working as a typist... ah well).

People now need a degree - any degree - to manage a shop. How will a degree in History help you manage a shop? Anyway, just because the system is daft doesn't mean it's going to get sensible just because I say it should.

Sorry for that aside.

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

OK, so do we now drop science to teach more language? Or do we look at moving away from continual assessment to actually letting the children enjoy and explore their schooling, chat more about books than sit and write vacuous work-sheets on them (In act I scene ii of Henry IV pt 1, what does Hal's speech about "the sun from behind a cloud" indicate his plan is? Six marks.) and learn from it?

Then, having decided on the latter option, how do we bring it about? Do we give every 11-year-old a miniature library - maybe 15 books - so they can read at their own pace and learn about life more from that? I like that idea, more books is always good. But how do we encourage the children to read these books if the parents don't read themselves?

And there's nothing humble about Australian literature! I've read some fantastic stuff - recently Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career which was so amazing and yes, you do feel like you learn more from that than a history lesson! Sure, some of it is dross but some of all literature is rubbish and your nationality isn't going to change that.

[Smoke Jaguar]

RH - I meant that compared to a lot of other literature traditions, ours is short and in that sense, humble. Australian literature is also notoriously self-deprecating, so I've probably inherited that in my own writing style. Cultural context and all
Yes, we drop all science and teach only literature. That's my master plan. That is how DS will live his life I don't have the attention-span (boy related) to disseminate my ideal education system, nor (as I previously stated) do I have the pedagogical expertise to promote a delivery method for the things I think are important to learn. Just because I write that I believe something could be taught because I think it's important does not mean I'm opposed to other educational subjects and that I think they are redundant. It makes for a really tedious thread to participate in. Do we have to be rendered to polar opposites or denigrate someone's idea by extrapolating the ridiculous lengths to which an idea could be taken? Please don't do this; it's taking the fun out of it.
I really do believe there is more than one way to skin a cat (love this saying..what the hell does it actually mean??) - you can live a fulfilling life without going to uni and learning about Chaucer (I have a great love of English literature...Chaucer does not make the cut!), molecular biology or phycology. The biggest lesson I can teach my DS (well, one of many perhaps!) is to follow his heart. Yep, I'm a big, fat bleeding-heart!

[Smoke Jaguar]

I see a lot more value in poetry than just letting feelings out. Learning about poetry written by the great poets can also provide a rich history lesson, as can literature studies, and in this was poetry appreciation increases. Even humble Australian literature furnished me with a better understanding of our history as a country than the pathetic curriculum of Australian Studies and lower school history ever did at school.
But, you know, if these things are going to interest you, then they'll still be there after school! DP was labelled and canned at school as a 'failure', so his formal learning is not remembered with any fondness...until he went to a village school that let him learn what interested him! And he may not have learned about a lot of 'essential' things at school, yet it doesn't stop him from learning about it now. The village school taught him how to follow up his interests, even if it didn't introduce him to all his potential interests in those short years. He now has a great appreciation of ****ens, railway history, chemistry, horticulture, politics (you'd never know by looking at him on the street between Monday and Friday) and even art. Being pushed these things at school would have finished them off for him - he'd never have looked at them again. I even now have him appreciating the contribution of the Bronte sisters, and he's versed with Patrick White and Peter Carey. I think a solid foundation in learning HOW to learn is more important than cramming traditionally 'important' subjects into kids.
I do agree that communication teaching needs huge improvement. Kids these days have very little appreciation of proper sentence structure and this will affect how they learn other languages...and increasingly important reality in a globalised and intercultural world. Language is probably one of the most important things to teach in schools because that is the interface for learning.
Language conveys what it is we need kids to know. It strikes me that even spending more time fleshing out the lessons in literature could address a lot of what this guy is saying. Relationships and intimacy? Literature. Communication and people skills? Literature. You got a life lesson you want to teach a child? Someone, somewhere, has written about it!
I'm glad my DS has a pretty good balance of both worlds. DP lives by his hands and still has time for more abstract ideas, and I live by my head and can apply myself practically where applicable. He can model both of these. A lot of kids are not so lucky in this respect. Also, there are parents who do not WANT to take on responsibility and will expect schools to teach their kids things like life skills. What do we do with those kids? Leave them in limbo so that they can screw up their lives royally and pass their ill-education onto their kids? There is a place for this kind of teaching philosophy and it would be nice if it were accessible to kids who really need it. But we all know that the kids who really need things rarely get them without a lot of toil and tears on the behalf of enlightened individuals.
My nieces and nephews will get a second-rate education because their parents can't afford to pay for schooling (well, that's debateable, but they have decided that paying for education is not on their priority list), and they are brilliantly smart kids. They will have some street smarts because their parents have lived hard and fast at times. They have the aptitude for more than this, yet through no choice of their own, they will find it an uphill battle to access learning of the finer things that could furnish their minds in a formal education setting.
There are still two tiers to this world. Have and have not.