Quote:
Originally Posted by marki
Matt, standards have both fallen and risen depending on where you look. The kids do maths that used to be considered university level only. Chemistry is the same as when I went to school. English has become sociology and there is much less emphasis on the 3 R's and more on the ability to analyse and form an argument supported by work of previous authors. Physics has been contextualised and much of the math removed. Why, not enough girls were taking up engineering so they changed the sylabus to suit what they thought girls would be interested in. This has failed, no more females take up the subject and boys can't write essays, their one out (maths) has been taken away from them. Society and environment is dead, kids just don't care anymore. Much of this has stemmed from silly academic claptrap being forced into schools. They want kids to be working at abstract levels of thinking without giving them a chance to learn the basics. If you read some of the english assignments my kids have to do you would cringe, I know I do. I often sit down with my chem kids and a dictionary after class. Together we try to work out what they have been asked to do in english.
Mark
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Well, there you go, Mark.
Perhaps it's time to go back to the 3 Rs and teach them in their purest form, unpolluted with all the neo-educational claptrap.
We can take care of the other stuff like sociology, analysis and argument/debate in their own subjects or minor studies.
Don't water down the basics. Don't fiddle with them to suit the times.
Core is core.
