Posts by Jan Farr
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Thanks Goodoh. Sounds like there's no shortage of love there. Is she happy? So good to know you've got a community of people around you. That's a real achievement. Next achievement as far as I'm concerned is getting rid of these wideboys who pose as government ministers.
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Ben - I agree - it is sad. When everything is focused on achievement you risk losing the enjoyable stuff. But it's nice to know you enjoyed achieving, anyway. You are the sort of student that schools used to be designed for. (I think there's more allowance for individual learning styles now - I hope so anyway).
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Hi Goodoh. I don't particularly want to know anything more about the Speaker of the House, but I'l love to hear more about your daughter.
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Marks out of a hundred, Mark? :-)
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So I'd be interested, after a bit of self-examination Jan, how you developed such cynicism towards your own education at such a young age.
That's a challenge Mark. I'll try.
It's hard, because you're a slightly bewildered child while its happening. I was bright enough. Loved anything to do with reading and writing. I was usually in the top group at primary school because literacy was seen as more important than numeracy.
Rote learning was important in those days. If you were good at it, and enjoyed it, you sailed through. Showing us the relevance of what we were learning was not a priority. it was just important that we learned it.
Many of our teachers - male in particular - were focused on physical punishment. That's quite threatening and demotivating even if you're not the recipient.
I started school post war and many of the best teachers didn't return from the war. We had an aging and scrappy lot. Primary school was boring. Home was more liberating and a lot less threatening.
At high school my lack of maths skills counted and I was put into 3F - which stood for French three times a week with a teacher who spent much of the period improving our morals: 'Don't wear short sleeves girls, it tempts the men!' (Honestly!)
Fortunately we had heaps of Art with a wonderful teacher. Because of Art and English I was allowed to sit school cert in 3 years rather than four, like the rest of 3F. I got high marks in both Art and English and did well in School Cert but by that time I was not too flash at concentrating in class, after years of dreaming out of the window, so I swatted day and night for two weeks before the exams and scraped through my other subjects.
We had one or two good teachers in that third year because the intelligent girls got the good teachers. We had an interesting, but acerbic, geography teacher. I think it was just too late for me to know how to apply myself by then though. I have done papers at University on and off for years and after a period of dramatic adjustment have hugely enjoyed them and done reasonably well.
This is a long, long, long answer - if you want the short one I'd say that, apart from my wonderful Art teacher, many of my early teachers saw themselves as baby-sitters and didn't have the skills or the desire to engage us in the excitement of learning. If some of us succeeded in that world then it was because of other influences. And those of us that achieved anything afterwards often had little to thank our schooling for.
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Well here's the education and science select committee: Alan Peachy, Chair and Roger Douglas a member. Chris Carter is Deputy Chair. Also has Maryan Street, Sue Moroney and Catherine Delahunty plus 3 more Nats.
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I agree with you Sofie, but I also worry that the so called 'cure' of national testing for a disease we don't have too badly when compared with the rest of the world, will put off the children who are currently engaged in learning. I went through primary school in the 'good old days' when tests (and strapping) were the most commonly used tools of the trade and it certainly taught me how to stare out of the window and think my own thoughts and also to see school as the place where nothing much worthwhile ever happened. Then I went on to high school where national exams like school cert were designed to show exactly half of us that we were failures and were scaled up or down to make sure that that happened. I'm literate, because my mother taught me to love stories. I can barely cope with sums in spite of, or perhaps because of, the endless repetition of tables at school. My father's rage at my arithmetical incompetence also probably didn't help. It only really occurred to me when I was bringing up my own children- because I never had a reason to want to think about it - that 'four fours are sixteen' meant that four lots of four things made sixteen things. When you think about it, getting kids to recite strings of words is a funny way to teach them about numbers of things. I'm happy they don't seem to do this any more - but perhaps Anne Tolley will bring it all back.
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Hey, to be fair that's Tolley's preferred way, not AS's.
Sorry - I hadn't picked that up.
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I give up, I really do.
You give up rather easily AS. I've read all the responses to your simple opinions. Perhaps if you'd learned to listen when you were at school instead of learning only to recite and chant you might be able to understand that your preferred way of teaching literacy and numeracy through constant national testing, is regarded by successful and caring teachers as putting at risk a real education - which of course includes numeracy and literacy because children who are inspired want to learn. Those who can't learn will always be with us - and no amount of testing will help them. But a bit of inspiration might help them reach their own potential. That's all people are saying - if you can hear that.
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Malcolm Gladwell recipe for success: a) Do work that is meaningful and inspirational to you, b) work hard and c) remember that deserved reward depends on the effort you make to achieve it.
As is the way of things B follows A. Nobody expects success at maths from someone who is inspired by painting (unless they also find maths inspiring).
One wonders, AS, whether you think any further than the school gate. Whether you actually think it is important for children to suceed - at something they can do.
If we are not inspired we are not curious and if we are not curious - if all we know is spelling lists and times tables endlessly repeated - we might be able to read 'The cat sat on the mat,' and multiply 12 by 11 - but we'll never ask why the cat sits on the mat, or how it got there - or even be enchanted with the beauty of the cat as it sits on the mat. And we'll certainly never be drawn into the intoxicating world of science and mathematics.