| 10:41a |
All I Know To Do
I was reading in the paper yesterday that some kids these days are being failed so badly by certain areas of the education system (never mind those parents who don't take the time to help them to learn the basics of reading and whatnot at home) that you've got seven-year-olds with the reading age of a child half their age and more than ever seem to be illiterate when they really shouldn't be (there was an anecdote concerning a head of school who was rejoicing that he'd found an exam paper that year which did not require his pupils to read a book, so they'd have a shot of passing. Bloody hell).
And primary education was under particular scrutiny, because if those critical first stages are missed, that poor pupil is struggling to catch up forever unless they can get additional tutoring, and let's face it, the vast majority of learning habits are taken on by age seven, so it just gets harder after that. (If there weren't enough bloody things to learn at school without being at the disadvantage of not being at the right level to start with.) It depressed me so much I was actually tempted to retrain as a teacher and teach primary school in poorly performing areas so I could head that kind of shit off at the pass. (Yes, me, who doesn't even like children.) Of course, I would be the most patronizing, control-freakish teacher ever (and frustrated as hell if I weren't able to teach "sensible" methods which actually, you know, seem to work, like old-fashioned phonics and spelling and times tables and pointing out errors with RED PEN *gasp*), but still.
Of course, that was more depressing, so I recycled the paper and looked at vampires instead. Very pointless. But I thought I'd just let you know that sometimes I do think about other things than TV and food and Wine and sloth and geekery. Even if my thoughts are not all that well constructed on the matter...
Edit: Of course, I'm not lumping all schools in this, and the media do like to paint the worst picture so, as Caz points out, it's not all doom and gloom. I sincerely hope these examples are a very small minority. It just frustrates me to think that some (many?) kids are not getting a chance, through no fault of their own.
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