Hard News: The Demon E-Word
177 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 5 … 8 Newer→ Last
-
Present company excepted of course, Paul. But that is the standard bureaucratic response - to quote international studies that show our education system isnt falling as fast as the average, rather than to go down to the coal face and take a look. As people have alluded to we now have a two tier system - the successes and the failures - the average may look good but it is the average of a bimodel distribution.
Observationz - yes we have an interchange but it is unhealthy. We train great people, they go overseas and we replace them by training more or those trained to a lesser standard. You may not have a problem finding bureaucrats qualified in spamming government websites with pdfs or inventing ever more creative ways for the government to tax or regulate initiative but we have a great deal of trouble finding scientists and technicians or holding on to the great ones we've got.
Judge the outcomes - if we had had a really good education system here we would still own more of our country.
".....opportunity or salary package isn't competitive" to those offered by the government bureaucracy because that is the only career path available to many NZers unless they go overseas.
-
What's the alternative Kevin? NZ is investing more in education, is investing more in teachers, is reviewing the curriculum, is improving ICT, is improving school-to-work and school-to-study transitions and is tracking the impact against other nations... What more could/should be done?
I don't work in the compulsory sector, I work in labour market policy/regulation and what I hear from all employers for forever is that things aren't what they used to be but I can only recall a system that treated all learners pretty much the same and streamed off the top kids to go to Uni and hoped like hell the less smart (that is, apparently smart at aged 15) did ok out their in the job market.
NZ isn't as competitive as it once was not because our kids aren't but because we floated the dollar and got kicked out of the EU... there might be a few other factors too!
-
In the interests of accuracy, I think the places quoted above (although they don't clearly say it) are among English-speaking countries.
The Wikipedia article for PISA 2003 has us sixth in reading literacy (with 522 points, in a tight group of five countries between that score and South Korea on 534, with Finland out front) and fifth (and the top-performing English-language country) in problem-solving.
-
With regard to technology it’s pretty much all-pervasive. Our daughter has a Mac notebook which goes with her everywhere and everything is done on it. Again I’m not really up with all the ins and outs but it is a very tech savvy learning environment.
yes - but what happens with the stuff on the macbook - where does it go? get printed and presented or sent as emails, turned into movies, go onto online communities, where your daughter can work collaboratively, blogging for group discussions that are recorded - it's these new technologies I mean and many other newer ones that will be developed in the next 10 years.What if you can't afford a laptop or internet at home? Will work on your prepay phone be as acceptable? Why not? I want to see methods of working opened so understanding can be assessed in formats not limited to the old classroom style - much more inclusive & attractive to those learners on the periphery. It's still so old school. I reckon if it can be assessed by those qualifed to do so - ie teachers etc why not?
And tools and delivery styles that will used in life outside of formal learning establishments - at work, at home, at play - should be the norm for school as well. A 3 year old I know very well can use the remote, for the TV, DVD and stereo and knows which are which. Can log onto a computer (without a password). knows what the internet is, can answer a phone (land and mobile), play with a digital camera, and gets fascinated by the button that makes the paper spill out on the fax - do you think she will be content with sitting in a classroom, writing and watching the teacher all day - she's already out there with her own personalised learning plan - and going for it . -
Russell, I stand corrected, we can all go on holiday and leave the education system in the capable hands of those who would correct "disparities".
Honestly, yes we are averaging a bimodal distribution and yes we can hide mediocrity well when our diary exports are bringing in large amounts of lovely money to be redistributed. But when Bejing sniffs and we realise we have not got the people to drive the switch to a more self reliance then what?
Isn't it strange that we are slipping down the OECD in almost every other repect? Doesnt that get the alarm bells ringing a bit.
I think you will find the most significant part of those reports to be "The report reinforces the Government's decision to fund new and expanded assessment tools and literacy programmes in both primary and secondary schools."
Homespun at a government near you.
Our problem is not a lack of resources being put into the mediocre - we've plenty of that. The problem is a lack of resources being put into the excellence we need for long term sustainability. Look at history - look at all the great scientists and technologists of the past - they reworded their countires a thousandfild in return for their countries putting the resources into them. These are the people who can solve our problems (not me, but I work with some!).
-
It's a bit of both, actually. It's the amount of control the kids have over what they learn, and the breadth of the choices they have.
There is no limit to the breadth of choices. Hence the name of the school.
-
"learn how to learn", "dont remeber, just derive", "problem solving skills are better than memory", "method is more important than fact", "active learning" - all this BS I can remember was being held up as the way forward when I was at school in the early 70s. How long do governments need to stick to failed initives before they given it up.
Are you serious? "Learn how to learn" and "active learning" are BS and failed initiatives?! How on earth do you expect anyone to learn anything unless they learn how to learn in the first place?
As for "dont remeber, just derive" (apart from the value of remembering how to spell "remember" and deriving the reason why there ought to be an apostrophe in "don't"), that's one of the most valuable things that my mathematical education taught me. In a complex analysis exam, we'd have to reproduce long and complex proofs that were impossible to memorise, so we had to derive the proofs on the fly. Remembering and regurgitating a series of epsilons and deltas would not have been learning; but having to analyse the proofs for the salient points and techniques so that one can repeat the process later gave us much more insight into the way that mathematics actually works. Surely as someone working in science you can appreciate that?
The other thing NZ needs to get over is this BS that "only an academic carreer is success". The education system is highly slanted towards the "academic" rather than the "practical" because its cheaper and easier for the teachers.
Really? I've always found NZ grindingly anti-academic and dourly anti-intellectual, and that's one thing that's helped hold us back as a nation. Even in research, we tend to confine ourselves to making new types of sheep or kiwifruit, leaving small matters like understanding the fundamental workings of the universe to dreamers and eggheads overseas.
One of the great problems with the system at present is that there is this push for "independent thought", "problem solving", "individual research", active learning and the like before the pupils have even been given the tools to do this with.
Someone with greater practical experience in child development might be able to say with more confidence than I, but I'd have thought that these skills would have been kicking in by the age of two or three.
The problem is that science and technology requires discipline, memory, problem solving ability, dedication, entrapreneurship etc
I thought you'd just spent the last few comments sneering at "problem solving". I work in technology, and while I'd agree that memory is important, problem solving is vastly more so. It makes me marginally more efficient to remember that the EPSG code for the NZ Transverse Mercator projection is 2193, but if that escapes my recall I can search our wiki in a couple of seconds and I'm sorted. Not being able to understand why we should use that projection in specific circumstances, or work out a faster algorithm to re-project coordinates, or think about the most efficient and flexible way to maintain them in a spatial database, would make me pretty much useless in my job.
Similarly, being able to remember the JavaScript operator for a bitwise XOR could make someone a better code monkey, but unless he or she can understand a user's requirements, design a suitable data structure, make a conceptual leap to a more flexible algorithm and question why we're writing code from scratch rather than re-using a library, that coder will never become a software engineer or business analyst. And certainly not an innovator or entrepreneur.
-
I don't work for the government, I'm an IT consultant.
Typically the reason companies I have dealt with have failed to recruit staff is that they weren't prepared to offer the kind of salary and career package needed to hire and retain good people.
People typically migrate for a range of reasons, but most of those I know were either looking for social excitements, or wanting to pursue a specialism in some form of rocket science that doesn't exist in NZ (option pricing software, racecar engine management, etc).
-
The problem is a lack of resources being put into the excellence we need for long term sustainability
I'm all for "no child left behind". But while your primary argument is that NZ needs to educate top-flight personnel, you've also stated more than once that a major problem is the high-flyers are leaving the country because of the lack of career opportunities. How does better education stop our top people leaving?
-
...small matters like understanding the fundamental workings of the universe to dreamers and eggheads overseas...
I blame Rutherford. We're overquota on fundamental universal physics for about the next 500 years.
-
The alternative is to come up with a real alternative. Not just recycling 1970s "dont worry about facts and memory" rhetoric. The people I work with have memories you would not believe. The best people have memory/knowledge plus problem solving ability.
You mention a couple of minor reasons why New Zealand isnt as competitive as it once was. The main reason is the godzone mindset - the unbelievable idea that somehow the world owes NZ a living and that NZ owes its citizens a living. Until we can change that mindset we are doomed to slip down the OECD ladder. The EU should have been a blessing in disguise to us - a signal that the world does not owe NZ a living and that someone in Europe, or India or Africa has just as much right to struggle for existence.
Stop excusing us - yes our education system is not as bad as come of our other "systems" but it could be better. We are a democracy competing against not so democratic countries - we need to get real.
You government and bureaucrats need to listen to what is being said by people much brighter than me - they can solve the problems. As Churchill said "give us the tools and we will finish the job".
-
yes - but what happens with the stuff on the macbook - where does it go? get printed and presented or sent as emails, turned into movies, go onto online communities, where your daughter can work collaboratively, blogging for group discussions that are recorded
Yes to all of the above. The notebooks are rented so we amortise the cost over three years. In general tech costs are coming down rapidly and there's even the $100 dollar computer out there.
This is glass half full-empty stuff. Nothing's ever perfect but there are 'entrepreneurs' out there in the education system leading the way and the system now does seem flexible enough to accomodate this, even if John Minto isn't. -
One of the great problems with the system at present is that there is this push for "independent thought", "problem solving", "individual research", active learning and the like before the pupils have even been given the tools to do this with. That is why we see this dichotomy between the successes* of the system nd the failures that the archaic left-right divide needs to create in order to keep the political elite in power, and food on minto's table whatever he does for a living.
I read this twice and now need to ask. What are you saying? The success-failure gap is maintained by the radical left and right to keep the political elite (the moderate center?) in power, and Minto in food?
I looked at one of those unlimited programmes.
Here's a couple of things they're teaching:
Fighting Fantasy
Braden Faavae
We're studying 'Star Wars' as a film study and then beginning our own journey to build a web-based fighting fantasy game like Dungeons and Dragons. First however it is to a galaxy far, far away. Spaces will be limited to twenty.Fantasy Adventure Games
Brent Silby
Enter a world of fantasy. In this world, you become a valiant knight on a quest to vanquish an evil wizard who has enchanted the land with treacherous monsters and demons. In this option we will explore the world of Fantasy Adventure games. We will compare the story in these games with some traditional fantasy stories. By the end of this course, we will have produced our own Fantasy Adventure game.I don't know to what extent those have educational value, but man I would have signed up for that when I went to school. Bet it's newbie D & D stuff, no where near the geek wet dream that a hard core gamer would have wanted.
For those that are ragging on Minto:
Bling Bling!!!
Katie Ward
Ever found yourself thinking about money??... Well this course might just be for you! In this class you will get a nice taste of different markets around the world. We will find out why our systems of exchange are what they are like today and learn some basic commercial / economic terminology. Although other blocks in this course will focus more on entrepreneurship, this class is strongly economics based which will set you up with a good understanding for the rest of the year.(There's more traditional content as well).
-
Kevin, I think I've worked out where and why we disagree. You seem to think that our declining terms of trade are directly related to our education system and government and I do not.
You comment that we need to invest more in excellence sounds great, what does it mean? More money in Unis or more for St Kents? If it's the Unis, we'll that's never going to come exclusively from the public purse. How about the private sector ponies up the way they do in the US? If it's St Kents, then I completely disagree.
-
My intro to entrepreneurship 101 would be something along these lines:
Kids, if you want to make lots of filthy lucre, don't become an entrepreneur, join a corporate and clamber up that ladder. However, if you would like to try it, don't hold back.
Sorry to disabuse Mr. Minto of his cherished beliefs.
As an employer I am pretty happy with the calibre of students we see - problem solving, learning to learn, being able to assess the worth of different evidence are all critical skills and I am pleased to hear these will be propagated further.
I am concerned that KevinHicks describes himself as a university educator because his promotion of gut feel over evidence is the opposite of what I want. His arguments lack coherence - I thought at first that he was going to be a huge supporter of these curriculum changes but it appears not to be the case. It is not clear to me why.
That being said, most of my primary education was spent in class sizes of over 60 children, so what would I know?
-
Obervationz, thats exactly what I've been saying, except that NZ companies cant afford to pay more. We need to move our economy towards one that can afford to attract our top people back.
All we are asking is for the government and bureaucrats to trust us and let us get on with the job.
Tom, Unfortunately I'll have to come back and deal with you later but being a maths graduate I can see the usefulness in deriving but maths isnt the only thing in the world.
Heather, the logical outcome is to poor $10 mil of taxpayers money into the slowest learner - thanks a million. This "outing" or "mainstreaming" bollox is another rort we should face as a nation.
-
Heather, the logical outcome is to poor $10 mil of taxpayers money into the slowest learner - thanks a million. This "outing" or "mainstreaming" bollox is another rort we should face as a nation
Kevin, with every line you write, I understand you less.
-
Paul, yes for example we should have at least one elite university where you have to sit double blinded exams with no identification allowed and externally audited marking to get into. We should put more effort into giving people a good broad general education until say the end of the fifth form and them guide them on the basis of double blinded audited assessments, knowing that you can change tracks if you suddenly get passionate and are prepared to work hard enough.
Scholarships should be handed out on the basis of blinded objective assessment only so that our best and brightest dont have to take out loans when unemployed who have never had academic interests go for free. What a message to send our kids - you may as well just say to them - piss off and never come back!
-
NZ companies can't afford to pay more
(apostrophe added, "can't" is a contraction of cannot and thus takes an apostrophe)
Often they can. In my field, a high-end resource can be several times as productive as an average person. But most companies won't pay their staff because it disrupts the salary structure and/or sticks in the craw of an owner/manager who sees the money coming out of their own pocket.
-
We are a democracy competing against not so democratic countries - we need to get real.
Personally, the whole 'we need to be better so we can compete against other countries education system graduates' reason for having a better school system bugs me.
I don't mind that we have an education system that does that, in fact, it's a good thing. I can just think of ten more important reasons for having a good education system than keeping up with Britain/Australia/Korea/Canada/China whoever else. Personally I don't send my son to school so that he can beat someone somewhere else for a job later in life. Why is it almost always the first (and often only) reason that people troop out?
-
double blinded exams
So neither the examiner nor the student would not what paper they were studying?
-
cant... poor $10 mil of taxpayers money into the slowest learner... another rort we should face as a nation... double blinded...
"University educator" my arse.
-
This "outing" or "mainstreaming" bollox is another rort we should face as a nation.
What the hell is "outing"? Do we have a large number of gay teenagers falling through the gaps?
Slow down with the posting and breathe ; )
-
Where on earth did anyone ever come up with the idea that it is fair an equitable to pour(!) more into one person than the other which is the necessity if you have the "no child left behind" system (which we do have in NZ even more so than the US so I dont know where she's been - its called mainstreaming here).
As I tried to say above - the problem is not in the system. The problem is in the attitude that that child is left behind and the paternalistic and condescending belief that you are so omnipotent that you can determine which child is left behind. I know many people who you guys would say were "left behind" and they brighter and lead happier lives than me.
-
blinded objective assessment
LOL
Post your response…
This topic is closed.