Do Lieberals control the school system in Alpha Centauri?
If anybody knows about school in Alpha Centauri I am SURE it would be you!
Here is an article illustrating the faults in LIE-beral education ministry. With some comments of my own in brackets):
Time to change the way kids are taught math
BY SUE-ANN LEVY, TORONTO SUN. FIRST POSTED: MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 04, 2017 03:31 PM EDT | UPDATED: MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 04, 2017 04:17 PM EDT
A student is pictured completing a math problem on an iPad at an Oshawa high school. (VERONICA HENRI, Toronto Sun)
(Oh- there is the first problem- too many kids using calculators and such and not learning the basics!)
Ontario reviewing school curriculum in wake of poor math results. It’s like the definition of insanity: Doing something the same way and expecting a different result. In this case, it’s the touchy-feely provincial math curriculum that is not teaching students what they need to know to function beyond the classroom.
Throwing more money at the problem adds up to nothing if the provincial government and school boards insist on teaching math the same old way, say education experts.
Education consultant Doretta Wilson, commenting on the pathetic performance of Ontario students on the 2017 Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) standardized tests, said the $60 million the education ministry plunked into a Renewed Math Strategy a year ago, has not and won’t “solve the problem” unless the government is prepared to go back to square one and ditch the “discovery method.”
Ontario students desperately need to be taught basic math skills first, she says.
(This use of `rote` learning- memory style learning is despised in Ontari-owe schools as it is a BORING way to teach- it bores kids who find the memory work and repetition dull- it bores teachers who must push kids to do that boring work and it bores parents who to often have to take up the slack at home and help kids learn in the evening the stuff they did not learn while day dreaming at school! This is certainly my experience and it is the conclusion of the expert from England who came onto TVO/The Agenda to say just that about 15 years back! And the guy was ENTITLED to comment since he was one of the CREATORS of this child centred learning that is bedeviling us! The guy has had a chance o see his method operating in the real world and now recognizes that child centred learning and its more recent incarnation as discovery learning are a disaster!)
In discovery-based instruction, a staple during the Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne years, teachers function as facilitators to students while they sit around in groups and solve problems.
(This child centred learning- the traditional name for it- is not a bad system for kids who are motivated and intelligent- AS WELL AS LITERATE- as this teaching method relies heavily on reading skills- if your kid is not doing well in English class- your kid will ALSO struggle in math- unable to read the problems being posed! It also helps if your kid is mentally disciplined- kids who have not had breakfast, who are worried that parents will be unemployed when they get home, who have parents whose language skills are to limited to help the kid with homework, or kids who are convinced by reverse racist parents that the white world is out to get them will not participate fully in “child centred learning” as they have other matters occupying their minds! LIE-berals do understand that kids bring problems from home wirh them to school and it affects their performance- so WHY are LIE-berals screwing up our immigration system and bankrupting us with debt? IT HURTS KIDS AND PARENTS!)
“There’s nothing wrong with memorizing the times table so it becomes automatic,” Wilson says, likening the repeated practice to learning how to golf properly.
The EQAO scores, released last week, show among other things, that only 50% of Grade 6 students met the provincial standard in math and 79% did so in writing.
In high school math, 83% of students enrolled in the academic stream met the provincial standard while a mere 44% of those in applied courses were able to function to the province’s standards.
Retired Hamilton elementary school teacher Teresa Murray, who tutors math-illiterate students of all ages, says the latest results are not the least bit surprising because the curriculum has the “same weaknesses” — that is, students are not taught to add, subtract, multiply and divide properly, nor is a topic like fractions learned thoroughly before a new one is introduced.
(With kids lack of progress MASKED by routine use of calculators in all grades and especially by report cards that sugar coat lack of progress in an utterly mis-guided effort allegedly to “bolster” kids egos! But a cynical parent will ask if it is the kids ego being bolstered or that of the teachers? Teachers believe they are honestly earning those wonderful salaries and solid gold pensions and having to admit they have a string of dunces learning little or nothing in their classes erodes their sense of entitlement- hence the report cards that tell us NOTHING about our kids real progress! It is exactly this problem of unreality in report cards that prompted the Harris govt to implement the EQAO testing program- the one teachers now INSIST is no longer necessary- in spite of falling academic scores!)
“There’s a whole lot of new bureaucracy ... Too much money is being spent on all of this and the results are still poor,” she said.
Murray adds that the results are poor despite the fact that the EQAO tests largely “problem-solving” in math and the fundamentals like fractional arithmetic and division are not “well-tested.”
(In other words, teachers are actually testing kids reading skills and their ability to decipher the question rather than actual mathematical skill- obtaining the right number answer!)
She feels the standards are not very high either for writing and based on her experiences tutoring children in writing and reading, the actual instruction of writing is “neglected.”
(Spelling, grammar and syntax are another set of BORING topics- and such things are routinely ignored these days! In more `primitive` times, a badly written history paper would be marked down- now poor English skills are glossed over.)
“The format of the test has become simplified over the years,” she says.
(What a surprise that the LIE-beral fix is in! LIE-berals dumbing down the test to cover for their teacher allies- so they can justify those shipments of Hog gravy! And dumbing down the test to cover for all the immigrants selected by LIE-berals because of their penchant for supporting LIE-berals rather than their capacity to excel in Cdn society or academically! If the parents have no education it often follows that they cannot motivate or aid their kids either! LIE-beral immigration policy is loading up our schools with kids who are heavily handicapped by language limitations and attitude problems- and this is slowing up the progress of other kids who DO posess the needed skills, motivation and attitude! The class must move forward as a group and the slow ones hold back the brighter ones- with no way to separate out the slow from faster.)
Wilson says in the case of Ontario high school students in the applied stream, poor math and literacy scores are the result of a failure to address problems in lower grades which compound as kids get older.
“Many know very little arithmetic by the time they get to Grade 9 and become very disillusioned by this and other factors in their lives,” she says, noting that often those taking an introductory college math course study the same material they should have learned in Grades 5, 6 and 7 (!).
(I can say that many college students end up taking remedial English classes as well and they too end up going over work they should have learned many years back!
The dismal results were so upsetting to Maureen Somers, former co-chair of the Ontario Coalition for Education Reform (a provincial education lobby group that was behind many of the educational reforms in Ontario schools during the 1990s), she came out of retirement to comment.
Somers says there is plenty of documented research and data — six commissioned reports — compiled by successive provincial governments, which concluded the cause of steady decline in literacy and math scores was “directly related to instructional techniques.”
(Instructional techniques refers to that child centred learning that has been repudiated on TVO by one of its major creators!)
She said the endless studies showed reading and math skills need to be taught using “direct instruction” methods and parents expected “clear standards of achievement” that show students truly know core skills.
(“Direct instruction” equals learning by rote- memory work that many teachers SCORN! Teachers are on record as SCORNING the “NEED TO TEACH TO THE TEST:_ that is too make sure kids CAN pass the EQAO educational standards- the ones teachers are saying are NOT NECESSARY! Teachers claim they are doing their job “for the kids” but the truth is they are doing it TO the kids- screwing them over for GRAVY!)
“Noting complicated, easy to implement,” she says. “Fifteen years later, parents and taxpayers are left scratching their heads over the (EQAO) scores.”
Slevy postmedia