New Zealand's poor education system
Studies have shown that we, as a country, have one of the worst education systems in the developed world. What's more, it's only getting worse.
People, in New Zealand, don't learn grammar at school beyond the absolute basic. And by absolute basic I mean, a noun is a naming word and a verb is a doing word. That's about all you get; sentence structure is virtually ignored; the only punctuation kids learn is to put a full-stop at the end of a sentence and a capital letter at the beginning (although most of them don't know where the end of the sentence should actually be since that is missed out of the curriculum).
The lack of grammar isn't the worst thing about our education system though. Somewhere along the line someone important decided that having people grow up obsessed with facts was a bad idea. I can see where they were coming from. We have enough trouble keeping our kids in school without overwhelming them with useless information that they find boring yet are expected to learn by rote. Unfortunately it has been taken to the extreme and even useful facts are being left out. One study surveyed a group of students at Auckland University and found that just over half knew which direction the sun sets in and a quarter thought that the Vietnam War preceeded the Korean War. While these are not vital facts, they certainly should be considered well-known ones.
The absolute worst statistic of the study was one that looked at the entrance test to a diploma of teaching. The test was compared to a high school entrance test in the US and found to be about the same level. Scary, scary stuff. I mean, sure the test was for those wanting to teach at primary school level, but you would still expect it to be a proper tertiary level test. 19% of people sitting the test could not even measure the length of a pencil correctly! And these people are going to be teaching a new generation of our children? (Admittedly, I don't know how many people were taking the test. That 19% could actually have only been 1 or 2 people. But it's still scary.)
It makes the idea of homeschooling your kids seem a lot more tempting, that's for sure!! share this: facebook
People, in New Zealand, don't learn grammar at school beyond the absolute basic. And by absolute basic I mean, a noun is a naming word and a verb is a doing word. That's about all you get; sentence structure is virtually ignored; the only punctuation kids learn is to put a full-stop at the end of a sentence and a capital letter at the beginning (although most of them don't know where the end of the sentence should actually be since that is missed out of the curriculum).
The lack of grammar isn't the worst thing about our education system though. Somewhere along the line someone important decided that having people grow up obsessed with facts was a bad idea. I can see where they were coming from. We have enough trouble keeping our kids in school without overwhelming them with useless information that they find boring yet are expected to learn by rote. Unfortunately it has been taken to the extreme and even useful facts are being left out. One study surveyed a group of students at Auckland University and found that just over half knew which direction the sun sets in and a quarter thought that the Vietnam War preceeded the Korean War. While these are not vital facts, they certainly should be considered well-known ones.
The absolute worst statistic of the study was one that looked at the entrance test to a diploma of teaching. The test was compared to a high school entrance test in the US and found to be about the same level. Scary, scary stuff. I mean, sure the test was for those wanting to teach at primary school level, but you would still expect it to be a proper tertiary level test. 19% of people sitting the test could not even measure the length of a pencil correctly! And these people are going to be teaching a new generation of our children? (Admittedly, I don't know how many people were taking the test. That 19% could actually have only been 1 or 2 people. But it's still scary.)
It makes the idea of homeschooling your kids seem a lot more tempting, that's for sure!! share this: facebook
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on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 8:02 PM.
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