One maths to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.

[Kosmik]

Just watching the morning live broadcast on SABC2 this morning. There's a professor, pushing in Parliament for the merger of all maths grades into one ie. the dropping of HG, SG and FG if that still exists. Can people not understand, that dropping standards does not solve the problem, it merely pushes out flawed workers or students into the job and tertiary market. When I was at school, higher grade maths was needed at a minimum of a D level for subjects like Engineering etc. You could get in on a standard grade c as well but standard grade was normally for people who were gearing for careers not mathematically orientated.

I don't enjoy maths. Well actually the only thing I did enjoy was complex numbers and partial differentiation. But I hate to see this happen. I can see the uni's having to extend their degree courses to force everyone into a mathematical competency standard. If the standards merge, there is no way that a D or even a C will be the same anymore, quite possibly a student will be forced to have A's only which will be a very heavy pressure.

Oh yes, and the snide little comments that they need to now revamp Grade R , that it was a root cause of the education problem. News casts like this get me mad!

 

[psichron]

Dumbing down of the school system like this just means businesses will have to start judging potential employees based on actual skill level, not according to the marks obtained at school. Universities can introduce stricter entrance exams and do away with the whole "you must have at least a C to apply" requirement, which is a good thing.
At the moment, smart students can depend entirely on the school system for education and just loaf through highschool because they have an excuse not to go out and collect knowledge on their own, so hopefully dumbing down of the school system pressures smart students to decrease their dependency on schools for knowledge. If they know school does not prepare them properly for University, they will put in extra effort to prepare themselves.

Basicly, it means smart/bright students will just have an even bigger advantage over not so bright students in the future and the most dedicated students will have far less competition in their fields locally one day. If it turns out that there's not enough self-educated people available to employ in your company, just hire some from overseas.

tldr; This is good for smart/dedicated students, bad for not-so-bright/lazy students. This will particularly hurt clever kids from previously disadvantaged communities.

Edit: This is also good motivation for schools to give the finger to the public education minister and just introduce the A-levels program.

 

[graviti]

This is dumb. I am a Maths teacher as it is. Currently we offer Maths, and Maths Literacy in the sylabus. Of course, the gap between Maths, and Maths Lit is kind of like the difference between Visual Basic, and assembly language. It's that big. We battle as it is. Many teachers feel the need for the old HG, SG, OG system to come back. Now to see some dumb moron wanting it to all become one, that disadvantages everyone actually, because the top ones are not being pushed to a high enough standard, and the low ones are being disadvantaged, as they are being given work way beyond their capability. I often wonder how much thought really goes into these ideas?

 

[R13...]

What's FG? Fail Grade?
And btw, Kosmic, you cannot get int varsity Engineering on SG straight from matric. You'd have to complete 3 years of tech and even then start at 1st year if they grant you permission.

 

[cr@zydude]

Just watching the morning live broadcast on SABC2 this morning. There's a professor, pushing in Parliament for the merger of all maths grades into one ie. the dropping of HG, SG and FG if that still exists. Can people not understand, that dropping standards does not solve the problem, it merely pushes out flawed workers or students into the job and tertiary market. When I was at school, higher grade maths was needed at a minimum of a D level for subjects like Engineering etc. You could get in on a standard grade c as well but standard grade was normally for people who were gearing for careers not mathematically orientated.

I don't enjoy maths. Well actually the only thing I did enjoy was complex numbers and partial differentiation. But I hate to see this happen. I can see the uni's having to extend their degree courses to force everyone into a mathematical competency standard. If the standards merge, there is no way that a D or even a C will be the same anymore, quite possibly a student will be forced to have A's only which will be a very heavy pressure.

Oh yes, and the snide little comments that they need to now revamp Grade R , that it was a root cause of the education problem. News casts like this get me mad!

There kind of is only one maths at highschool. I finished matric in 2008, the first group under the NSC, the only options are maths or maths lit. To me maths lit is purely there to give people a basci understanding of day to day mathamatical concepts.

 

[Archer]

Dumbing down of the school system like this just means businesses will have to start judging potential employees based on actual skill level, not according to the marks obtained at school. Universities can introduce stricter entrance exams and do away with the whole "you must have at least a C to apply" requirement, which is a good thing.
At the moment, smart students can depend entirely on the school system for education and just loaf through highschool because they have an excuse not to go out and collect knowledge on their own, so hopefully dumbing down of the school system pressures smart students to decrease their dependency on schools for knowledge. If they know school does not prepare them properly for University, they will put in extra effort to prepare themselves.

Basicly, it means smart/bright students will just have an even bigger advantage over not so bright students in the future and the most dedicated students will have far less competition in their fields locally one day. If it turns out that there's not enough self-educated people available to employ in your company, just hire some from overseas.

tldr; This is good for smart/dedicated students, bad for not-so-bright/lazy students. This will particularly hurt clever kids from previously disadvantaged communities.

Edit: This is also good motivation for schools to give the finger to the public education minister and just introduce the A-levels program.

What??? It will motivate the smart ones to do their own studying? No... Think about it, how many kids do you know that sit at home and wonder about integration, and partial differntiation, etc and think "wow, I really wanna study that right now and not play sport/pc games/a million other things."

SG + HG, thats the way to go. We all know not everyone can be rocket scientists. So if you want a career that needs lots of maths -> HG. If not, do SG so you can at least much your finances etc, useful personal stuff like that. Combining them into one is one of the worst things that can happen. It almost makes it a communist type environment. Everyone is treated exactly the same, and leaves high school no better than any of his/her classmates. That to me does not sound very promising at all.

 

[Kosmik]

What's FG? Fail Grade?
And btw, Kosmic, you cannot get int varsity Engineering on SG straight from matric. You'd have to complete 3 years of tech and even then start at 1st year if they grant you permission.

In '96, '97 you could, although it was expected that you took a supplementary maths course to ensure your up to standard. FG was functional grade fyi.

I knew the subjects had been split into Maths and Maths lit but are these not graded? ie: HG,SG? Been a loooooooooooooooooooong time since I was in school.

 

[S1ght]

Was in a faculty of Science meeting yesterday where they showed us all these graphs comparing the old and new syllabus maths and then how those students cope in 1st year university. The pass rate in Applied maths dropped from 70% to 45%, Maths 1A dropped, Physics dropped. They also showed us a bar graph showing the symbols people got in High School compared to uni, basically on the old syllabus people stopped passing uni maths completely if they achieved a D or lower in school. On the new syllabus most people got A's but barely any of those are actually passing 1st year.

 

[psichron]

What??? It will motivate the smart ones to do their own studying? No... Think about it, how many kids do you know that sit at home and wonder about integration, and partial differntiation, etc and think "wow, I really wanna study that right now and not play sport/pc games/a million other things."

Doubting that kids can be motivated to do their own studying is wrong and just a side-effect of the current set-up where we expect kids to be almost entirely dependant on schools (and sometimes Discovery Channel) for education. There are far better sources of knowledge available today than in the past. I think it's entirely reasonable to expect that kids should be able to learn about things they find interesting on their own, whether that is maths, science, woodwork, art or whatever.

Edit: What I'm saying is that if passing highschool maths is no longer sufficient to allow entrance to University and Universities instead adopt a strict entrance-exam program, then kids can easily boikot the school's math programs and organize to be taught proper maths instead. This means matriculation excemption will become no longer important, which is a very good thing. It means kids can decide to receive proper education and not have to suffer at the hands of incompetent education ministers. Let those who don't know any better suffer, less competition means more money.

 

[murraybiscuit]

hmm. what to do.
i have a 3yo daughter and i'm wondering what to do for school in future. the educational system is a mess.
i'm not even sure that private schools offer any decent alternative any more.
and i'm worried that by the time she gets to varsity, the lecturers there will have come from the current failed system.
which is great, until you want to get a job overseas or even one locally.
let's face it, communist-style education doesn't work and i don't want my child to be the guinea pig while the government completely stuffs it up.
i want her to be able to have the option of traveling and getting a job overseas when she grows up, but i don't see that happening unless i do something radical now.
anyone in the same situation?

 

[psichron]

hmm. what to do.
i have a 3yo daughter and i'm wondering what to do for school in future.

Public school with A-levels. Cambridge certified.

 

[Nom Chompsky]

You already need a couple of As to get considered into good degrees like engineering, medicine and commerce. For example I needed a minimum of 3As and 3Bs to get into my course at university, with an A in maths as a pre-requisite. Having said that, however, people are still getting into these courses who are totally inadequate in dealing with university standard-level work. That's mainly because they choose easy subjects [IT, Geography, Accounting] which basically gift you an 'A'.

 

[psichron]

For a government concerned about empowering the poor they sure are doing a bad job of it. This will only have the effect of increasing the divide between the rich who can afford quality education and the poor who are stuck with whatever whim our education board comes up with.

 

[ponder]

In my day (yeah it's been a while) we had Advanced Math which was a totally separate optional subject besides the normal math on HG & SG.

I see old Std.8 content in today's Matric papers, scary stuff indeed. You poor sods are being dumbed down to the extreme. Wonder where we features in global maths skill levels.

 

[dlk001]

What's FG? Fail Grade?
And btw, Kosmic, you cannot get int varsity Engineering on SG straight from matric. You'd have to complete 3 years of tech and even then start at 1st year if they grant you permission.

At UCT, you could not get into engineering without HG maths/science at all. Selected HDI's were accepted with 'E' and 'D' HG but had to enroll for ASPECT programme. For mainstream engineering, even a "C" on HG was not a guarantee.

 

[R13...]

At UCT, you could not get into engineering without HG maths/science at all. Selected HDI's were accepted with 'E' and 'D' HG but had to enroll for ASPECT programme. For mainstream engineering, even a "C" on HG was not a guarantee.

True, I went to Wits and it was at least C on the HG... But all HDI were encouraged to go through Engineering Support because even with an A in both Maths/Science the failure rate at 1st year is still hectic. And failing 1st year meant exclusion from engineering.

 

[dlk001]

True, I went to Wits and it was at least C on the HG... But all HDI were encouraged to go through Engineering Support because even with an A in both Maths/Science the failure rate at 1st year is still hectic. And failing 1st year meant exclusion from engineering.

The Engineering support programmes at Wits and UCT were very successful. The failure today must be more hectic. The problem with so called "lower standards" means that fewer engineers, CA's etc will graduate. Its already hard enough to even get PrEng status.

 

[badtrev]

What's FG? Fail Grade?
And btw, Kosmic, you cannot get int varsity Engineering on SG straight from matric. You'd have to complete 3 years of tech and even then start at 1st year if they grant you permission.

You can actually, but the requirement is a SG A not a SG C

 

[Nom Chompsky]

In my day (yeah it's been a while) we had Advanced Math which was a totally separate optional subject besides the normal math on HG & SG.

I see old Std.8 content in today's Matric papers, scary stuff indeed. You poor sods are being dumbed down to the extreme. Wonder where we features in global maths skill levels.

There is still Add-Maths except your school has to register you with the IEB board. The government exams don't do Add-Maths anymore - probably because it wasn't politically correct. The last Add-Maths (govt.) exam was in 2007.

 

[Kosmik]

You can actually, but the requirement is a SG A not a SG C

Didn't do SG so wasn't sure but I know you could use it