Stone me, this explains a lot about the Esteemed Customers' approach to stuff.

[NibblyPig]

It makes you wonder, when kids can do stuff like:

The Raspberry Pi is succeeding in ways its makers almost imagined

"How’d this girl - all of eleven years old - learn to do this?"

Computers hard!!! Bash mammoth easy!! UG

[SueEllen]

Oddly enough the OED is putting words back into the dictionary that were used centuries ago in the UK but common abroad.

So in another 50 years "whilst" will be back in due to some other English speaking region using it.....

[cojak]

You are aware that that article is from Australia (it took my a while to work it out but the grandfather who lives by himself, lives by himself in the outback)...

Yes I was. I was simply hoping that that UK kids (from whom I've seen lots of great problem-solving examples on twitter) stay that way.

[eek]

This is fantastic.

I read somewhere that the difference between most US and UK IT entrepreneurs was that US people wanted to solve problems. They solve one problem and then go onto the next.

UK IT entrepreneurs want to build businesses. And then sell them to the US entrepreneurs who see the business as a solution to a problem.

Google being a case in point.

Let's hope that kids stay problem solvers.

You are aware that that article is from Australia (it took my a while to work it out but the grandfather who lives by himself, lives by himself in the outback)...

[cojak]

It makes you wonder, when kids can do stuff like:

The Raspberry Pi is succeeding in ways its makers almost imagined

This is fantastic.

I read somewhere that the difference between most US and UK IT entrepreneurs was that US people wanted to solve problems. They solve one problem and then go onto the next.

UK IT entrepreneurs want to build businesses. And then sell them to the US entrepreneurs who see the business as a solution to a problem.

Google being a case in point.

Let's hope that kids stay problem solvers.

[original PM]

indeed - but then how else will the state keep control if the educate people to learn, understand and then extrapolate logic conclusions.

much easier to just spoon feed them the 'facts'

...


pretty sure my grandparents died in the war to stop this sort of thing?

[DimPrawn]

Youngsters today get all the coursework off the Internet. Copy/paste and change a few bits. If you need anything more specialised, you pay someone to do it.

That way, they get the passes the college is looking for, and the student gets uninterrupted FaceBook, Twitter, NetFlicks, Sky, Playstation, iCrap exposure.

Then after college, they go on the dole or flip burgers, and the real work is done by immgrants.

Everyone is a winner.

[zeitghost]

The curious case of the French boy who failed AS-Level French - Telegraph

But what is the exam testing?

When my children were at school I remember being asked for help in physics homework.

I tried to explain, it was not a difficult question, and if you understood the principle you could easily answer other questions on the same topic.

"No, no" was the response, "just tell me the answer".

They also learned by heart essays for the exams, then all they had to do was adapt them to the given title.

I was very shocked. This was a good private school, which boasted of its great results and is one of the top schools in league tables, and they were cramming their pupils to pass exams.

I don't think this is education, I can only suppose that to stay in business, schools have to go along with this system, encouraged by the tick-box way exams are marked these days.

My other daughter often got poor marks for English, mainly because if she was given a topic for an essay she used this as a springboard to develop her own story in a rather creative way, not sticking strictly to the topic.

There was no way the system allowed or encouraged anyone to be creative.

The topic was prescribed, guidelines were to be followed, presumably because this allowed the item to be marked by ticking boxes.

How boring!

So it must come as a bit of a shock when you're expected to work stuff out from first principles without being given the answer to parrot. (No, not that parrot, heaven forfend).

I can't disagree with the sentiment of the article.

We need a problem solving based education system not a rote learning one.

I struggled at school because I was the child that asked the difficult questions and read the books including those beyond the subject area.

I was not satisfied with learning the 'what', I wanted to learn the 'why' and more importantly the 'how' both how something works, how something came to be as it is, and how it can be applied.

When I eventually got to university after first being laughed at by the head of the six form who refused to give me an application form because it was a waste of everyone's time, I excelled at university, first class degree, highest marks in every module I took, and two masters with distinction, and currently finalising my PhD plus I already have publications in peer review journals.

The difference between high school and university is that you are rewarded for original thought and going beyond the topic of what is taught in class, while at high school you are punished for doing more than the bare minimum to get your grade.

Seems to have changed a bit over the years.

Skool didn't used to be like this.

I blame all those dumb ejumakashenists from the 1960s on.

Hang 'em all.

I find it very odd that teaching the times tables, the old method of long division, hundreds tens and units** etc. is seen as a dreadful throwback and damages young minds, whilst* essentially changing secondary education to mere learning by rote which is even worse than the times table thing.

At least knowing your tables comes in handy in later life.

*"whilst" is one of the banned words which must not be used, being archaic, according to instructions handed down from on high at the tuliphole where I "work". I kid you not.

**they don't know what hundreds tens and units are, and they have this weird diagonal table thing for doing multiplication and possibly division which looks more obscure than the old method.

Found this out 3 years ago when a class looked totally baffled when asked to do some simple sums of multiplication.