bogarde73 wrote on Apr 30
th, 2013 at 10:54am:
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Robert, you are too hard on the kids from my point of view. It's all very well to say the test does what it's supposed to do, weed the good students out from the bad. But what does it say about our society that you are setting 8-9 year-olds up to fail . . .and that's what it looks like to me. The vast majority, unless there is cheating, will score badly and that is not the way to promote an enjoyment of education, which is what we need to have.
It is not society that sets them up to fail but their own families. What is schooling about in a literate society if not mastering reading and writing (of letters and numbers)?
It's not about watching tele or playing computer games. If the family doesn't apply the necessary discipline to make sure that a kid learns to read and write properly then the school alone - or especially despite the family - cannot do it.
This is where all the Gonski nonsense is revealed - education is not like medicine, where new and expensive and ever more sophisticated equipment is always coming into use and needs massive funding.
Reading, writing, maths, debating, critical thinking, the ability to focus doesn't require more and more equipment. If anything, all the electronic 'equipment' is there to distract and stupefy. If you look back over the last few decades, education standards have been going down commensurately with the amount of electronic gadgetry introduced into education.
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