it seems to me that our current eduational system does nothing to educate people but merely teaches them how to take notes, remember them and rehash them into an essay or exam.

This seems pointless. Particularly because most subjects have absolutely nothing to do with the job market.

The only purpose it seems to serve is to split up those who will tuen up and work at school from those who don't. I suppose this is the new form of social control and natural selection.

I cannot believe that we live in a world where we teach kids absolutely pointless subjects and they come out with little or no gained knowledge on life.

Some subjects need to be taught but is there any justification to make people do Maths after teaching children how to add/subtract etc?

We do not teach or children to ctritically assess but to quote others who have critically assessed. Free expression and thought is suppressed and there is no stimulation for wider reading. To be frank in a lot of subjests you'd learn a lot more by reading books.

The ciruculum is a joke. Teachers are being scared away from the profession by the beaurocracy.

If you want to have an educational system purely designed to provide skilled workers for the job market then surely most of the courses need to be changed to be more relevent and vocational?

If the educational system exists to provide fully rounded individuals with the intellegence and skills to adapt to different jobs then you ned to abolish the curiculum and replace it with a system where people lear and not just dictate.

It is no wonder that homeschooling is becoming more popular. If I ever had children (God forbid) I'd ever home school them or send them to private school (which I totally hate but its the only way for them to get a descent education)

Why do schools have to dum it down to suite the least able. Surely it would be better to try and drag the underachievers up than the overachievers down?

It would help if all the kids in the class spoke English I think.
That would stop some holding others back.

I know I'm gonna get swatted with a rolled up guardian for that statement - bring it on :rolleyes:

Originally posted by Don_Kiddick
It would help if all the kids in the class spoke English I think.
That would stop some holding others back.

I know I'm gonna get swatted with a rolled up guardian for that statement - bring it on :rolleyes:

I wouldn't want to be hit with a rolled up Guardian on a Sunday :help:

Current qualifications hold such little worth and value compared with earlier times. Someone in my family has taken the most ridiculous A-Levels...things most people would not even undertake as a hobby. S/he has done really well in them, obviously, as she was not made to think or test herself, or provide thoughts and ideas. How on earth can these qualifications be seen as on a par with the more traditional subjects? Subjects for which people have to work their arses off. Not sure what this family member's next move will be. Uni perhaps. Doing a course s/he is not too interested in, but one that exists just to get more people's money invested in to a place of Higher Education, and keep him/her from having to go out in to the real world and find a job. Exams today don't seem to separate any wheat from chaff. People are so afraid to say 'sorry mate..you don't make the grade...FAIL', and, instead, would rather devalue the results of those who are truly talented and hard-working and WANT to go further and achieve all that they possibly can. Why should both sets of people be in the same 'results table' so to speak?

I also think the entire system wants looking at robbie. Without giving it too much thought, students leave school/college and university without the degree of common sense needed for today. I think there is an element of teaching to pass rather than teaching a subject and linking it to todays world. Therefore making a subject more difficult isn't really the answer.

Maybe more work experience is required in the last few years before leaving school, i'm not sure.

I do think schools are under more pressure to produce results which is one of the reasons we are seeing what we are. Also teachers are afriad of beaurocracy and the children rule rather than the teacher.

Funniest thing I heard recently is that we can no longer say that a child is failing in a subject rather their lack of ability is "deferred success" rather then failure.

Ridiculous.

It's also been reported that the average "life" of a Newly Qualified Teacher is now only 5 years before quitting the profession. 1 year to go for me!!!

There is an education system that works towards a more desirable outcome.

It is also going to be available in Sheffield in the near future. It has always been a private form of education but we are making proposals for it to be state education.

The government have also recently commissioned research into it and the findings were favourable to support it being state education. http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,5500,1517494,00.html

For more information see
http://www.steinerwaldorf.org.uk/
http://www.freedom-in-education.co.uk/Steiner.htm
http://hem.passagen.se/thebee/waldorf/

You can also PM me with your email address if you would like to become involved in making this happen.

Bonny

Originally posted by robbie
I wouldn't want to be hit with a rolled up Guardian on a Sunday :help:

It's probably had crap on it since Saturday - The Observer is thicker - ;)

There were talks on introducing the International Baccalaureate, but Ruth Kelly (Education - Lab.) claims that GCSEs will be stayed, but merely reformed.

(Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1744998,00.html)

I read somewhere the students are coming out illiterate and innumerate even after completing A-Levels.

With the IB, there's none of this HT and FT - it combines both GCSEs and A-Levels into one lengthy system.

Will students still leave with poor English and mathematical skills - I for one, came out with diabolical mathematical skills, but have reasonable English skills.

:)

Originally posted by absynthfairy
Funniest thing I heard recently is that we can no longer say that a child is failing in a subject rather their lack of ability is "deferred success" rather then failure.

Ridiculous.

It's also been reported that the average "life" of a Newly Qualified Teacher is now only 5 years before quitting the profession. 1 year to go for me!!!

That's absurd - stop farting about, if the student is (weak) thick in area, then tell them - no point boosting their morale, and saying it'll be all right, when clearly it won't be.

Originally posted by robbie
it seems to me that our current eduational system does nothing to educate people but merely teaches them how to take notes, remember them and rehash them into an essay or exam.
.

If you want to have an educational system purely designed to provide skilled workers for the job market then surely most of the courses need to be changed to be more relevent and vocational?



Those points that I've kept in the quote are interesting - I've always thought it a good idea to teach things such as finance and business (which is optional), as it will teach people how to work with money - how many people at sixteen know what an overdraft is? - very few, and the amount of people that believe that a credit card is to be maxed out and ignored is probably high.

These sort of things need to be taught - maybe build into that joke-of-a-subject Citizenship. For older people, it replaced PHSE, lasted for circa an hour, and talked about politics, newspapers, councils, and generally how the world works. For most people an opportunity to chill out and do very little.

I'm currently head of RE at a sheffield school and am feeling the pressure to rehash my subject into citizenship to make it more "marketable" to pupils... and then I hear on the radio today that edexcel, my exam board of choice, have been letting their secretaries mark the RE GCSE papers this year...

I stand no chance....makes my blood boil!!!