Posts by Ross Mason
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You missed it guys. In lieu of a tax cut, the Gummint wants to use alternative income streams to fund New Zilinda's welfare.
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Oh, and Jack, we share a similar hand-writing history.
6 primary schools is wot I done. Printing at one (using pencil) , italics (fountain pen), cursive (pencil), printing again(ballpoint), .......get my drift......I now print scribble that gets more and more indecipherable......
Thank Dog for keyboards!! I have diarrhea now....
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I note the example "Plunket graph" in the*National Party* pamphlet assumes that no child starts school at the beginning of year 1 more than "just below standard" but as the years go by there is great scope for them to fall "well below standard".
Also, looking at the graph...what happens at year 5 when there is a sudden break in the curve both up and down? Year 1 everyone is in the shade and inside 1 level. By the time Year 8 turns up they are spread over 2 1/2 levels.......
And we haven't even started....
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The Yellow Daily Mirror. I too remember the Profumo affair within those pages. For some reason I vividly remember a story of a woman who was ambushed in her car by a bloke who forced her to drive all over the place. The story told of her trying to attract attention by pushing the brake pedal and morse coding SOS. Noone picked it up but she apparently survived the ordeal by jumping out. I was always amazed that so much mayhem could occur in one place!
Psst. I also got Tiger and Lion with Roy of the Rovers and 101 ways of saving money if I didn't smoke.
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I'm thinking it's been a long time since you did group assessment in a scholastic environment.>
I would probably be right in saying that I don't think I did any group learning in any of my education settings let alone assessment. I'm too old! But my point was, experience as a "grownup" and having experienced grownup group discussions, the apparent need to be seen to contribute equally has at times been overwhelming.
If assessment of groups takes that into account today then I applaud it.
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if the Montessori method is so good, why isn't everyone using it?
As with Steiner, I am rather hesitant about basing an entire educational philosophy on one perception (or the ideas of one guru) about learning.
Given the input from all the above, I think that there are grounds for optimism in this country afterall. "We don't know how lucky we are Frederick".
As long as we can have a system that does take into account the individual through the whole system then the heading is in the right direction. Gordon's "Group Therapy" works wonderfully - even for grownups - and there was one comment that got close to the no hopers in groups riding on the "success" of the others in their group. Welcome to the individual again. The fact that one or two of a group seem to not contribute "equally" does not mean they have not contributed value. And that is an assessment issue and that assessment has to take into account that their input may be minor but it may have influenced some others thinking. And that could be priceless!
Time for a laugh.
YOU - ME! -
Having just spent the last hour tracking links across from the Peter Principle I came across this. About half way down. It is talking of USA.
Close it was to what is the topic. Standards etc:
Strangely enough, after Dr. Peter’s book was published, Dr. Parkinson wrote a scathing and not-funny review of it – as I recall, in the Sunday magazine of The Los Angeles Times. I suspect that he saw Dr. Peter as infringing on his turf.
In the section on hierarchical regression, Dr. Peter wrote:
One [school] administrator told me: "I wish I could pass all the dull pupils and fail the bright ones: that would raise standards and grades would improve. This hoarding of dull students lowers the standard by reducing the average achievement in my school."
Peter recognized, as did the administrator, that this extreme policy would not be tolerated by the public.
So, to avoid the accumulation of incompetents, administrators have evolved the plan of promoting everyone, the incompetent as well as the competent. They find psychological justification for this policy by saying that it spares students the painful experience of failure.
The problem is this: every day, you and I must deal with the results of this comprehensive policy. So must every employer. Students who stay in high school for four years probably graduate. But they cannot all read.
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And I am terrorised that somebody might come up with the genus "plonker" some time in the near future.
What makes you think they are not here already. Alive, kicking about, deciding what standards should be applied.....
What was that about competence???
And don't forget to link to the Dilbert Principle on the page.
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I think Gio may have hit a big button:
Another aspect of the scientific approach to the social is that it tends to focus on what is defective. Again, because it's easier to measure.
In a way this is a result of little money.
To quote someone else on Widgets. If I had to make sure that I was producing good widgets I WOULD concentrate on the "defective".
Moving to childrens education. If I wanted to improve the "measure" of children's "education" I would concentrate on the lower ranked surely. That way there is a guarantee the average will rise. Lots of political gain.
Perchance if we had enough money to do the whole spectrum. The average would not change as - presumably - we would insist that progress was spread out. Half below, half above. There is no political gain here.
I also suspect that concentrating on the under achievers (love that phrase) we have pandered to our social roots in trying to ensure those at the bottom have a better chance of "making it".
I still think that "Civics" and a course on "What might be good for your future child" may be a good place to start to decrease the underachievers by educating future parents in simple social and life skills without the need to invoke any religious teaching.
Somewhere in the cycle there has to be the link to break it.
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It's not that in the hard sciences you measure only easy things, but those measurements are expected to be repeatable. You can't do that with education. You can pretend to do that, wrapping your "results" in the language of the hard sciences, with usually calamitous results.
What is the annoying bit in assessing of humans is the fact that .....surprise....we are all different. There is a spectrum of results of students - and teachers - from incompetent to competent. Pass, average, fail, or if you will, could be somewhere between from 0 to 100. Although I concede it is open ended, but more to the competent end I suspect. So we have to look at group dynamics in the measurement and the stats say there is a large uncertainty in any measurement you wish to make.
How you move bulk students from fail to pass makes interesting philosophical discussion....and open ended.
What happens when everyone moves up in competence? The average shifts and a whole bunch who were competetent now move to incompetent....oh dear...I hate stats.
So. Where do you set a level of 'competence" then? ...Hmmm. We could have some standards maybe......but then again....that probably ain't gunna work either.