One of the teachers unions has had the barefaced cheek to claim that spelling tests for children discriminate against what they describe as 'creative children'.
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| Bad Teachers Are Sometimes Easy To Spot |
They also claim that those children who are 'dyslexic', which a presumably those that are not being described as being 'creative' are also discriminated against by the same spelling tests.
Now when I was aged seven, I was also what could be described as a 'creative' speller, when I had singularly failed to learn how to read and write, but thanks to the persistence of a very dedicated teacher (from the old school of the profession), called Mrs Higley, by the following year it had suddenly all clicked, and I shot up from a reading age of a five year old, to one classed as a thirteen year old by age nine. After that I out scored the reading age, returning an 'adult' score whenever I was tested, which was up to about age thirteen as I recall.
So this claim would be totally laughable if it wasn't in fact so deadly serious .... its a fact that the teaching unions (backed up by the Blair witch project aka the Blair/Brown last Labour government), undid all Tory governments attempts under Thatcher, to repair the earlier damage done by teaching unions in the 1960's and 1970's, and now, once again, despite a Tory government, our children are heading towards the bottom of all the International Leagues for most school subjects.
In maths for example, the UK ranks a poor 26 out of 64 countries in Mathematics, which puts us behind Vietnam, Estonia and Poland and with one in five of our teenagers failing to even reach Level 2 in arithmetic. This level 2 is a base level of mathematics that is required to participate fully in modern society, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Our results in other disciplines are equally as poor, if not actually worse, and are consistently driving us backward as a nation, but still the teaching unions try to ensure that we do nothing to stop the rot. The same debate is raging in the USA where 'Common Core Standard' teaching methods in maths in particular, have stirred up debate about 'new teaching methods'.
Its now generally recognised in the UK, that the current 'A (Advanced)' and 'O (Ordinary)' Level qualifications are now two grades, over scored than those obtained 25 - 30 years ago. Which for those of you under the age of 30, means that when you got an 'A' grade in your 'A Level', that would have only got you a 'C' (or even 'D') grade in the 1970's and 1980's, OR looked at another way, a third more people got a basic pass (grade obtain grade 'E' or above), in those qualifications, than would have done in the past.
And therein lies the key to the dumbing down exercise, the fact is that the Labour Government of Blair/Brown wanted more teens to get exam passes, even if in order to achieve this, it meant devaluing the exams actual worth. This of course was a far easier exercise, than raising teaching standards in the classroom, where the teaching unions held sway:
(a) This meant that they could (at least for a short while until those who actually were bright spotted the fallacy inherent in the facts), claim that exam standards were the same, but that teaching standards had risen. This of course suited the teaching unions who claimed pay rises on the back of this 'fact'.
(b) It spread a 'feel good factor' amongst all those parents whose little Johnny or Kylie, had perhaps rather unexpectedly suddenly obtained an exam result, or a better exam result. These happy parents would continue to vote labour (well until the clouds rolled over and Brown was the unelected PM).
(c) It allowed many of the labour ministers to send their own children to private schools, in leafy Tory boroughs, where the new teaching 'standards' were not applied, without getting too much flack from their own left wing (who were also doing it) - See Ms Abbot.
Now imagine if the current teaching unions and their PC driven multiculturalist, all inclusive, political teaching agenda had held sway back then ... Mrs Higley would almost certainly have not been in the profession, and I would have spent the rest of my life claiming that I was either too creative to be able to spell, or that I had dyslexia .... in either event, I would have failed, and my life may well have gone on to be one of singular failure.
So this claim would be totally laughable if it wasn't in fact so deadly serious .... its a fact that the teaching unions (backed up by the Blair witch project aka the Blair/Brown last Labour government), undid all Tory governments attempts under Thatcher, to repair the earlier damage done by teaching unions in the 1960's and 1970's, and now, once again, despite a Tory government, our children are heading towards the bottom of all the International Leagues for most school subjects.
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| Good And Bad Teachers have Always Been With Us .... |
In maths for example, the UK ranks a poor 26 out of 64 countries in Mathematics, which puts us behind Vietnam, Estonia and Poland and with one in five of our teenagers failing to even reach Level 2 in arithmetic. This level 2 is a base level of mathematics that is required to participate fully in modern society, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Our results in other disciplines are equally as poor, if not actually worse, and are consistently driving us backward as a nation, but still the teaching unions try to ensure that we do nothing to stop the rot. The same debate is raging in the USA where 'Common Core Standard' teaching methods in maths in particular, have stirred up debate about 'new teaching methods'.
Its now generally recognised in the UK, that the current 'A (Advanced)' and 'O (Ordinary)' Level qualifications are now two grades, over scored than those obtained 25 - 30 years ago. Which for those of you under the age of 30, means that when you got an 'A' grade in your 'A Level', that would have only got you a 'C' (or even 'D') grade in the 1970's and 1980's, OR looked at another way, a third more people got a basic pass (grade obtain grade 'E' or above), in those qualifications, than would have done in the past.
And therein lies the key to the dumbing down exercise, the fact is that the Labour Government of Blair/Brown wanted more teens to get exam passes, even if in order to achieve this, it meant devaluing the exams actual worth. This of course was a far easier exercise, than raising teaching standards in the classroom, where the teaching unions held sway:
(a) This meant that they could (at least for a short while until those who actually were bright spotted the fallacy inherent in the facts), claim that exam standards were the same, but that teaching standards had risen. This of course suited the teaching unions who claimed pay rises on the back of this 'fact'.
(b) It spread a 'feel good factor' amongst all those parents whose little Johnny or Kylie, had perhaps rather unexpectedly suddenly obtained an exam result, or a better exam result. These happy parents would continue to vote labour (well until the clouds rolled over and Brown was the unelected PM).
(c) It allowed many of the labour ministers to send their own children to private schools, in leafy Tory boroughs, where the new teaching 'standards' were not applied, without getting too much flack from their own left wing (who were also doing it) - See Ms Abbot.
Now imagine if the current teaching unions and their PC driven multiculturalist, all inclusive, political teaching agenda had held sway back then ... Mrs Higley would almost certainly have not been in the profession, and I would have spent the rest of my life claiming that I was either too creative to be able to spell, or that I had dyslexia .... in either event, I would have failed, and my life may well have gone on to be one of singular failure.
There are only 10 types of students, those that understand binary and those that don't.
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