smokey
Honorary Master
Either that or A levels. Tell me one thing though... does the IEB have to follow the OBE guidelines or not? I'd love to google-fu all these questions, but the PC with int. bandwidth is not in my possession atm.
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Educational Conundrums...
- Thread starter smokey
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Either that or A levels. Tell me one thing though... does the IEB have to follow the OBE guidelines or not? I'd love to google-fu all these questions, but the PC with int. bandwidth is not in my possession atm.
Fazda
Honorary Master
Yes they have to follow OBE guidelines if they want any government assistance. No school can survive without the extra government help in the coffers, so it's a Catch22 situation...being Independent no longer helps apart from a better quality teacher, and also the fact that libraries and computers are all there.
I think business economics should be compulsory. More focus should be put on preparing children for the workplace and how to interact with people in the professional world. I am not saying maths should be thrown out the window. But the focus should be on different subjects. In our school we had french. What on earth is the point of learning french? It's great to learn another language sure but it should be an extra subject not a subject that makes up your 6 subjects. I don't think Afrikaans should be compulsory as i have never spoken Afrikaans to date. History, biology and geography are also important but aren't fundamental to ensuring you pass. It just ensures you are a more well rounded individual.
Perhaps if they enforced a system whereby subjects were prioritised and different passing rates were required for different subjects. We were allowed to take Home Economics as one of our 6 subjects. Most kids took this route as it was the easy way out. How is cooking or sewing a dress fundamental?
Perhaps if they enforced a system whereby subjects were prioritised and different passing rates were required for different subjects. We were allowed to take Home Economics as one of our 6 subjects. Most kids took this route as it was the easy way out. How is cooking or sewing a dress fundamental?
smokey
Honorary Master
Well if you knew how much some people make from home baked cakes (selling to places like Traumerei, Dulce etc) then you wouldn't snark Home Ec. too much.
What is truly disturbing is that you would want a government (all governments have an agenda and will push it primarily though education) so letting them decide what are the micro-management priorities are is a huuuuuuuuge mistake.
I disagree completely with your Bus.Ec. view though. It doesn't teach you diddly squat. Rather get a job as a waiter and actually pay attention to how the manager/owner runs things. A book is no substitute for experience, much the same as experience is no substitute (wholly) for a book. You can drive a car, but you aren't a mechanic. Someone actually had to study (or become an apprentice, which is much the same, only verbal instead of written) to understand how a car works. In the same vein - whatever you learn in BE is rendered completely moot once you get a job. Your job isn't to runt he business - it's to do accomplish a certain task.
Life skills should be learnt by living. Sounds stupid, yes, but then again most true things do. Most people won't take that step that leads to self-education, then when their lives aren't all nice and dandy, expect the higher ups to do their thinking for them. Bah!
What is truly disturbing is that you would want a government (all governments have an agenda and will push it primarily though education) so letting them decide what are the micro-management priorities are is a huuuuuuuuge mistake.
I disagree completely with your Bus.Ec. view though. It doesn't teach you diddly squat. Rather get a job as a waiter and actually pay attention to how the manager/owner runs things. A book is no substitute for experience, much the same as experience is no substitute (wholly) for a book. You can drive a car, but you aren't a mechanic. Someone actually had to study (or become an apprentice, which is much the same, only verbal instead of written) to understand how a car works. In the same vein - whatever you learn in BE is rendered completely moot once you get a job. Your job isn't to runt he business - it's to do accomplish a certain task.
Life skills should be learnt by living. Sounds stupid, yes, but then again most true things do. Most people won't take that step that leads to self-education, then when their lives aren't all nice and dandy, expect the higher ups to do their thinking for them. Bah!
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Fazda
Honorary Master
You would like OBE then, because BusEd is one of the biggers subjects available.
The problem I have is that you and the government are presuming that ALL kids want to end up in business!!
You, as well as the government seem to have forgotten that not all people are going to need identical educations in their preparation for the future. the teaching of languages helps you no matter what field you go into, even if you are not consciously aware of it. French will help with the understanding of English and of language structure, for example...something you will never lose. Personally, I would find BusEd a total pain in the butt and I would probably fail it because it doesn't interest me. By forcing me to do it, you are then immediately putting me at a disadvantage.
I hope you see where I am coming from.
I understand what you are saying but surely everyone will end up in business as we all have to work for a living to survive?
Perhaps compulsory wouldn't quite work but it wasn't even an option for me in school.
You are right though we shouldn't have identical educations but i find most children just haven't a clue what they should pick as subjects so we definitely need more help in that area.
Perhaps compulsory wouldn't quite work but it wasn't even an option for me in school.
You are right though we shouldn't have identical educations but i find most children just haven't a clue what they should pick as subjects so we definitely need more help in that area.
smokey
Honorary Master
That is already happening. It's a load of bollocks. How the heck can you pass with anything less than 60% (imnsho)? Less than 60% just means you do not know what is potting. OK... I can understand why this is 50% in most cases, where you could say that someone is half-n-half at something.
smokey
Honorary Master
When did you matriculate? Whoops. sorry for that... 
Woman's age and all that
I matriculated in 2001, and the pass rates were different for languages and for Higher/standard grade subjects. IIRC...
Woman's age and all that
I matriculated in 2001, and the pass rates were different for languages and for Higher/standard grade subjects. IIRC...
Fazda
Honorary Master
Strange that you think that "everyone" will end up in business!!
There are many ways of making a very comfortable living without having to go through the deadly boredom of Business Economics, trust me!!
If your Guidance teacher is functioning correctly you should have no problem deciding what subjects to do...again, however, you cannot generalise, and some kids know exactly what they want to do from they day they first went to school, whereas many others (please note I said MANY others) haven't the foggiest idea what to do even after they have written Matric.
A good Guidance teacher will assist you in your choice, but that doesn't always mean that it will be the correct one, nor does it mean that you will enjoy the subjects that you choose.
That's true. The bottom line is (and this is not ever even taken into consideration because it's not politically correct and therefore not factual) probably only one in every thousand blacks is actually educatable.
smokey
Honorary Master
That's solely due to the lack of fundamentals in the education system. I don't think my education helped in the slightest. The most I ever learnt was from my moms library (she's an English teacher - degree in English, majored in linguistics) and has a library of around 8000 books. Problem is, not many blacks have that and the education they do receive is really really bad.
km2
Expert Member
Not all children may use everything they learn, but you have to expose them all to it to make sure you have a good selection of skilled people in future. It's like you have hundreds of thousands of kids all playing soccer, but out of that only a few hundred are good or interested enough to become professional. That same thing applies to many technical fields where you don't need too many skilled people, but if you have shortages of them the development of your country can grind to a halt.
We've already got a chronic shortage of Maths HG students passing matric and going on to sciences in university, we don't need to reduce that any further.
Well I can comment to a degree, my son who is 6 is going to school here in the UK and in my opinion the school system here is probably worse off than in SA in some respects. Bear in mind I was my sons age almost 30 years ago so there's a big difference I'm sure, however when I was in grade 1/grade 2 I could read, I cold write (obviously not novels etc, my son, can, however if he struggles they glance over it, instead of helping) I played sport, I wrote tests (not so much in the lower years) In the UK they keep taking these tests and making them easier, and easier. Unless you have a real chronical problem you can never really fail a year in primary school. This is due to their acute fear of singling out an individual and offending etc etc.
They've taken away competitiveness, not many schools play sport against each other, there's no discipline instilled in the kids at school either, two very big contributors to the current state of affairs with the "yoof" here in the U.K.
In general I think maybe the standard of teacher is better here in the UK but, they are severely restricted as to what they can or can't do in the classroom
smokey
Honorary Master
Listen, that's all well and good, but I did A Level maths with a private tutor and while it wasn't exactly rocket science, it beat our maths hands down. How they go about it in public schools is a different matter altogether. We are talking about the fundamentals here. What do they have to learn. Whether the kid actually knows his **** properly is up to the kid/parent personally, not so much the overly scared teachers who could get fired for hugging a student who is feeling sad.
Like I said I can only comment to a degree...My son's six, ask me again in a few years when he gets to the juicy maths and science bits
Agreed it's up to the kid/parent, but the classes are dumbed down to a degree so all pupils are included equally...And that's a problem
smokey
Honorary Master
Like I said I can only comment to a degree...My son's six, ask me again in a few years when he gets to the juicy maths and science bits
Agreed it's up to the kid/parent, but the classes are dumbed down to a degree so all pupils are included equally...And that's a problem
Buy him some decent (eg: not crappy rushed low budget) educational software. Or make it interesting for him to learn by himself. Not that I have a child, but my mate who had one very early did it and his kid practically uses school for social time (playtime, learning how to deal with people... which is why homeschooling is so bad as it doesn't have this) and learns most of the stuff on his own time. Then again, my friend has a pretty huge library as well. Not sure on your time constraints, but seriously, leaving education up to an institution that is targeted at a majority is a bad idea. Then later on, the kid will be more prepared. Dunno about your time constraints though so...