The crap they're teaching your kids!

[Jim_Campbell]

'We just did 2 years of reading in class, essays and homework, and then we had to just guess what the examiner wanted when we came to do an exam at the end of it. We weren't even coached in how to pass! My poor English teacher was deluded enough to think that his job was to teach us to read, understand and appreciate the texts. Wrong, wrong, wrong! It's how to answer an exam question about it that matters. It has nothing to do with enjoyment of literature or the power of ideas.

It's only in recent years, and particularly since a friend of mine has gone into teacher training and I've had the opportunity to contrast his experience with my own time as pupil/student and having two teachers for parents ... and I've come to understand the absolutely razor-sharp insight of Ian Hislop's remark about that state of the current education system: "You don't fatten up a pig by weighing it."

Cheers

Jim

[House of Usher]

It's only in recent years, and particularly since a friend of mine has gone into teacher training and I've had the opportunity to contrast his experience with my own time as pupil/student and having two teachers for parents

Specifically because I thought you might be interested, Jim: the link below is to the reader comments left on the Times Higher Education website in response to a letter attacking the Pro Vice-chancellor (PVC) of Leeds Metropolitan University and her husband, who are both education 'experts'. The letter's a bit long, but I hope the comments add something (anything) to your evaluation of current teacher training based on your mate's account and your own experiences of being taught. Does it just reflect the view you already held?

//http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=404034

[Jim_Campbell]

Does it just reflect the view you already held?

Sadly, it rather does.

The philosophical difference seems so small between the educational doctrines now holding sway and the way I was taught, that it is a simple matter to trivialize them.

As with so many philosophical distinctions, however, whether is actually is trivial is very much dependent upon your position within (or outside) the argument (transubstantiation, anyone?).

At school, I was taught -- for example -- Chemistry. I wasn't taught to pass a Chemistry O-Level, I was taught chemistry and the exams were a means of checking to see that I had been paying attention to the teaching.

Now, the cart sits firmly before the horse, and all teaching is driven by the need to ensure a good pass rate; driven by political doctrine from the Dept of Education and by economic doctrine within each educational establishment, since pass rate = league ranking = pupils = cash.

The result? We aren't educating our children. I have had the thankless task of trying to hire from the current pool of recent-ish university graduates and anyone who says that the education system isn't failing both our children and our nation should spend a few hours considering the number of graduates who have managed to spend sixteen or more years in education and yet are defeated by basic arithmetic, simple spelling and fundamental grammar.

The most startling example I have encountered to date was from a graduate that I had hired to work in my department.

As was my wont at the time, I sent out a mildly amusing e-mail to my staff on a Friday afternoon. The graduate was not amused, in fact, she was positively bemused.

When I enquired why, she responded: "Because I don't know what a porpoise is."

OK. I can accept that perhaps not all families spent as much time in front of BBC wildlife documentaries as mine did when I was growing up, so perhaps not everyone has immediate knowledge of marine mammals*.

Here, however, is the image and accompanying text:

"Please check the image below. Scientists have determined that stress can now be measured by a simple test. If you are happy, unstressed and fulfilled in your job, you will see two porpoises."



WTF? You don't need to know what a porpoise is, because the other thing in the picture is a fucking cow[/b]. It is clearly not native to a marine environment. There are two things, they are not the same and one is comically incongruous.

There is no part of this joke that requires you to know what a porpoise is in order to understand it.

However, this university graduate was incapable of making that simple set of logical deductions and inferring the meaning from the context, because she had not -- seemingly -- been challenged to do so at all during sixteen years of education.

I now work with recent university graduates. They are astonished that I read the New Scientist for fun, that I understand the basic tenets of String Theory and Catholicism, am conversant with the works of Shakespeare and 20th Century history ... all of this (bar String Theory), I knew by the time I finished my formal education.

I genuinely despair. "The kids" aren't becoming more stupid, but our society is failing to educate them, which makes me fear for the future.

Jim

*I confess, it might actually be a dolphin ... porpoise is just a funnier word.

[TordelBack]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  I work in a profession where we work on a daily basis with maps and technical drawings at different scales, from 1:1 through 1:20, 1:125 and 1:10,560 (I kid you not), right up to 1:50,000.  And only a handful of the university-educated and professionally-qualified people I work with has the vaguest clue how to go about consistently converting one scale to another, or any ready way of checking if something is the scale they think it is.  I'm absolutely terrible at maths, always have been, but how do you get through school, through a primary degree, through a post-grad degree and a professional examination, and not be able to multiply and divide?

[Bouwel]

I never went to university.
I drowned in 6th form college by taking subjects I had no interest in.

I'm now in my 40's.

I know more than the graduate programe entrants we take on.
Many of my colleagues in their 20's can't hold a discussion beyond what they saw on T.V. last night.
Most of the people I work with can't add up a column of numbers.
Some of the people I work with have trouble understanding basic training materials.
Much of the material we get from Head Office has spelling mistakes, bad grammar and is poorly written.
Some require help filling in basic forms.
I've had potential employees fill out forms using 'txt spk'.

I could go on.

This is not right.

-Bouwel-

[Peter Wolf]

The govt are more interested in having CCTV in school washrooms and classrooms than having any interest in what is or isnt being taught .

Also uneducated Proles are easier to control and manipulate once they have left the education system.

Actually the Education system is no longer an accurate term of description is it ?

I think it is partly the stupidity of people as well as the failure of the education system because it doesnt seem to occur to any of these dumb school leavers or University students that they are illiterate and it therefore might be a problem to them .Do they ever stop for one second and realise that they dont actually know anything or wonder what they were doing within the education system if they have a problem filling out forms or have problems with spelling and articulating themselves ?

Probably not but an utter waste of potential all the same.

[Bouwel]

When I've asked a few of them introspective questions they've looked at me as if I farted in thier hand-bags. Most don't seem to be capable of it.

-Bouwel-

[House of Usher]

Having spent a very long time in the education system myself I find it odd that incressingly, university students don't want to be educated. What they want out of university is something quite different from education. They want to be credentialized. They want a certificate that says they have been to university and 'done' it, and now can they please have a job in advertising/marketing/journalism/hotel management/laboratory science?

Once upon a time you started at the bottom and worked your way up in these fields, or else you went and got an education first: e.g. a degree in English or history for advertising and journalism; a degree in biology or chemistry for laboratory science. Nowadays they run too many vocational degrees with next to no educative content, and many of those students who are doing *proper* subjects at university only want to know what they have to know to pass their exams rather than to have a thorough and deep understanding of their subject.

The very idea that any 18-year-old can think of going to university to spend three years studying 'marketing' makes me sad deep down inside. I've met a few marketing graduates. They always strike me as psychopathic and not very interested in knowing about history, culture or the world around them.

[Bouwel]

Marketing seems to exist in their own little private bubble world. We keep asking for different lines to sell but are told 'You don't fit the demographic to sell those items'.
When we push the matter they point out we're making our estimates so why do we need to change what we're selling. I swear some of them work for a different company.

-Bouwel-

[TordelBack]

They want a certificate that says they have been to university and 'done' it, and now can they please have a job in advertising/marketing/journalism/hotel management/laboratory science?

We regularly get job applications from people who have done a four or even six year BA/MA/MSc combo in archaeology, and despite long summer holidays have never set foot on an archaeological site - and this in a decade (now sadly past) where you just had to able to hold a shovel to guarantee yourself site work in this country.  I try to imagine what's going on in their heads all the time they're in college ('I'm doing archaeology!  I'm doing archaeology!').  How do they know if they'll be able to bear hour after hour of swinging a pick in a frozen-over puddle three feet from the wheels of a deafening choking procession of Volvo dumpers in the pre-sunrise sleet of a January morning?  Do they even know that's what they'll be doing for the five years after they graduate, and maybe the next forty if they're lucky?  I used to wonder how I would explain that the retired plasterer, the physics student, the former housewife, the Polish engineer and the ditzy artist we had working for us were all going to be ten times better at any digging job than they would because they actually spent the past few years doing archaeology rather than listening to someone else talk about it (all a bit irrelevant now, since there isn't any work for any of those people).  

I'm not suggesting that studying or indeed qualifying aren't essential parts of a career, particularly in a quasi-academic field that does require published output, but why wouldn't you have got out and got your feet wet and learnt something about your chosen profession before (or even during) completing half a decade of study?

[House of Usher]

'I'm doing archaeology!  I'm doing archaeology!'

You've just reminded me of the C.21st students at my university who used to proudly (and smugly) state 'I'm doing genetics!' who didn't know much about physiology, ecology, fungi or plant biology. In short, they were biology students who didn't have much knowledge of biology. They would turn up to non-genetics practicals, wait for the register to appear, sign it and then go. They weren't bovvered about their low grades for practicals. They were doing genetics, be-otch, and they were going to be in demand as laboratory menials for the first 3 years after graduation, because they had been shown how to do PCR.

[Proudhuff]

HoU, this should cheer you up'''//http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7933690.stm


I feel that you can't really blame the students themselves for this, if you don't follow the prescribed course you fail, and end up doing jobs like some of mine, if you do get the bit o' paper a whole level of work opens up to you, don't tell me it doesn't because not having a degree (regardless of subject) decent jobs, although I have the experience asked for, are often automatically out of bounds for me and I'm down at the first fence.

Hence students learnt behaviour: 'What LO do I need? okay give me that, bye'. and this is from an early age now, (Minihuff is just finishing primary school, Midhuff entering college), this is what they are taught is education, not as said above, learning to do it or indeed learning how it works which doesn't help with the LO or the league tables.

[Mikey]

That's the thing isn't it? I've seen many jobs advertised for graduates - just having a degree is what's required, not any specific knowledge of a subject, so students are at University to get a degree, not an education. I can't help thinking that everyone going to university isn't just there for the paper and to a certain extent was it not like that in years past? I didn't go to a brick university along with my cohort; I got a job (eventually) doing lab work and have moved on from there, getting a degree on the way. As far as i could tell, most of my former friends were at university for a laugh and few ended up with (IMO) much to show for it. I now earn more than most of them - but there you go.

There have been many comments about how little some graduates know - and I've seen it myself - about what is apparently their subject area but I find it jaw dropping that archaeologists come to employment without field experience! Surely that's the basis of most of the discipline!

I can be a bit wary of the 'dropping standards' argument as I don't want to sound a bit Daily Mail  - as Huff pointed out, it's all relevant really. My brothers did O Levels and I did more GSCEs than their combined O levels, but I think the work load was likley the same overall.

But standards are lower than when I were a lad!

M.

[House of Usher]

Learning Outcomes are evil. They reduce learning to a basic, mechanistic and instrumental operation. And they're championed by the aforementioned Pro Vice-chancellor of Leeds Metropolitan University. And the gimps who taught my PGCE.

At the moment I'm teaching 3 different GCSEs and a bunch of psychology-based adult education leisure interest courses. There's a fairly marked difference in the attitudes of the GCSE students and the leisure interest students. The GCSE students by and large accept it when I tell them they have to learn something, because it's on the curriculum, because it's in the core textbook and because it might come up in the exam. The leisure learners are more likely to ask "why do we have to know this?" because they do written work each week that meets some vague criteria set by the accrediting body, which do not constitute a syllabus, and as a consequence the tutor has to invent one. When you give them something to learn about because it's interesting, but it doesn't correspond to assessment criteria, they get fidgety.

The only GCSE students I have who question what I ask them to do are my English Lit. students when I give them 9 essays to write in 9 months but they only have to hand in 3 pieces of work for coursework. "What are the other 6 for if they're not assessed for our final grade?" - "They're to help you develop ideas and practice essay writing in preparation for the exam, and to give you a greater choice of coursework pieces to submit for coursework." - "Oh. But that makes more work for us." - "Yes, but the writing practice may make a difference to the grade you get if it helps improve your exam performance."

(Cue "I'm not doing the exam now; it's too hard...")

HoU, this should cheer you up'''

I followed the news link; cheers for that. I've just seen them talking about it on the BBC news at One. I have mixed feelings about it. I'm insulted by the suggestion teacher training can be rushed through in 6 months. I'm angry that it looks like a hastily-set up escape route for impoverished city dealers, but it's just as likely the government desperately trying to get just *anyone* into teaching who can do maths. And part of me welcomes the news, because it's a potential future route for me into salaried school teaching, whereas at the moment my adult education qualification would only allow me to do supply teaching.

[Old Tankie]

Ush, why would we want city dealers teaching Maths, hasn't it just been proven over the last few months that the b*****ds can't add up!!??