Somthing else for the spelling police!!!
Varizo..
acsept txt message replys , like if they had to say somthing like *to
be or not to be* , the exsaminers would hav to acsept it as *2b or not
2b* and that the asnwer was still right. They hav realised at last that
ppl who use txt words r not thick , but its the ppl who cant
understand it that r thick, they should learn to keep up and be taught
wot it means, insted of creating a great big fuss and trying to stop
ppl from writing wot feels most confortabal to them!
V.
Shiflet
"Varizo.." <var...@yahoo.com.sg> wrote in message
news:1162619157.3...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
> It was on the radio in the week that exsaminers in skools hav got to
> acsept txt message replys ,
Maybe in whatever shitty area you live in, but not here.
> V.
>
theco...@ntlworld.com
It's a blatant disregard for common sense, and a basic laziness that's
overcome the youth of today.
If you can't read & write plain English, then you won't get far in this
world.
Benoīt Meulle-Stef
Ben
<theco...@ntlworld.com> a écrit dans le message de news:
1162630850.0...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Lori Pierce
"Varizo.." <var...@yahoo.com.sg> wrote in message
news:1162619157.3...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
Ahhhh the dumbing down of society.......
Lori Pierce
"Benoît Meulle-Stef" <bmsguita...@biz.tiscali.be> wrote in message
news:YPCdncbsxLB...@scarlet.biz...
You have a point there! Perhaps it would have been better to say that if
you can't read and write correctly, then you won't get far in this world.
H Duffy
"Lori Pierce" <LPI...@wi.rr.com> wrote in message
news:bc13h.49316$IO2....@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
Fortunately, it's not being accepted without a fight;
http://www.24dash.com/education/12440.htm
We _really_ need to improve the quality of basic English grammar and
spelling in our schools; I'm marking undergraduate essays and lab reports
where some of the students literally don't know ho to use full stops; this
can make it really hard to understand what they're trying to say, and
prevents them from expressing themselves clearly. This is a real shame for
some of them, who are obviously bright, but struggle to use their
intelligence.
H
Benoīt Meulle-Stef
Cheers
Ben
"H Duffy" <hester...@nospam.hotmail.com> a écrit dans le message de news:
4r3lpmF...@individual.net...
Dag
But only to a point. I'd venture that basically no matter where you
live that you will (on average) get less far these days if you can't
read and write (and speak) English. I also venture that the importance
of English is growing.
Dag
Dag
>> Ahhhh the dumbing down of society.......
>
> Fortunately, it's not being accepted without a fight;
> http://www.24dash.com/education/12440.htm
>
> We _really_ need to improve the quality of basic English grammar and
> spelling in our schools; I'm marking undergraduate essays and lab reports
> where some of the students literally don't know ho to use full stops; this
> can make it really hard to understand what they're trying to say, and
> prevents them from expressing themselves clearly. This is a real shame for
> some of them, who are obviously bright, but struggle to use their
> intelligence.
I don't understand how people can't see that they are not doing anybody
any favours by lowering standards and letting substandard work pass.
Sure these kids will pass their GCSEs and A-Levels with a lot less work
and even get into university, but then what? In the real world
presentation matters. And if you didn't learn it school when will you?
School should be about learning and improving, not just passing exams.
Personally I'm very grateful my teachers in England when I did my GCSEs
harassed the fuck out of me about my spelling. Sure they could have
gone, well he's obviously smart and knows the stuff and he is foreign so
why not let his spelling slide. But to their credit they didn't. They
went at me about it over and over again, even making me get extra
tutoring, until it reached an acceptable level. And even though it
annoyed me at the time I am very glad they did.
Dag
erithromycin
>>Lori Pierce
>>>Varizo..
[snip varizo]
>>>Ahhhh the dumbing down of society.......
>>Fortunately, it's not being accepted without a fight;
>>http://www.24dash.com/education/12440.htm
>>We _really_ need to improve the quality of basic English grammar and
>>spelling in our schools; I'm marking undergraduate essays and lab reports
>>where some of the students literally don't know ho to use full stops; this
>>can make it really hard to understand what they're trying to say, and
>>prevents them from expressing themselves clearly. This is a real shame for
>>some of them, who are obviously bright, but struggle to use their
>>intelligence.
I am a third year student at a major Scottish university and the other week
I had a lesson in which a) the use of the apostrophe was explained to us,
and b) we were told that it was based on the saying "John Smith has farm". I
objected to both of those. There are two rules. The apostrophe indicates
removed letters, and, with 's', denotes possession. The first rule takes
precedence in similar cases, such that "it is" becomes "it's" while the
possessive form of "it" is "its" to avoid confusion. Not that I don't mix
them up, but there are rules there. Even possessive forms of words ending in
's' follow this rule - when I say these are the ducks' eggs the apostrophe
shows possession, but first indicates that there is a letter missing (the
's'). At least, that's how I would explain it.
Benoīt Meulle-Stef>
>And if you ask them how many books they reed a year...
Hi! Just a quick note - round the gothic hierarchy we prefer folks to post
underneath the post they are replying to. Top-posting causes crabs, that's a
Scientific Fact.
As for how many books they read in a year, well, that would be terrifying,
wouldn't it? I smell a survey in the offing.
--
erith - murder simulator
Dr Walpurgis
> ...round the gothic hierarchy we prefer...
OOH! GET HER!
--
"The regulars in this group all come across as racist drunkards that
seem to hate any horror movie made after 1979 or isn't Italian." -
Superfly Silverman, 29/08/06
Satori
news:4r46oqF...@individual.net...
Actually, my understanding is that "its" is a pronoun, just as "his" and
"hers" are, and that's why it doesn't need an apostraphe.
Paul Ryan
Is it a way to get more chavs passing exams? :-)
--
Paul
- Yeovilnet - My web site: http://ppotter.is-a-geek.net/
- Mansfield Goths and Alternatives:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mansfieldgoths
- Mansfield Chavs - My anti-chav group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mansfieldchavs
- The Alternative Guide to Mansfield:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alternativemansfield
Superfly Silverman
feelings.
Writing a text message and writing in general, like in a news group
posting are two different things all together. It is acceptable to
truncate words in a text message but not in public writing. I believe,
my personal belief, that one should try to make their message a clear as
possible. It shows respect to others when you put forth an effort to be
as easily understood as possible.
I am far from perfect when it comes to writing and if it wasn't for
spell check my short comings would certainly show through.
Jeremiah Harbottle
Fuck off, cunt.
Superfly Silverman
expectable to do the '2b' instead of 'to be' in anything other than text
messages. If you want to believe those people you are a lost cause V.
and are most likely looking for an easy way out. Don't be that way,
strive to be better each day.
To be honest with you V. most of your messages come across like they
were written by a child. I don't know how old you are but reading you
posts I would think you are about 7 or 8 years old. That is the quality
of your writing. I have a 6 year old cousin that is light years ahead of
you. I try not to criticize you but if you are older that 7 or 8 I would
think that maybe you are brain damaged or slightly retarded by the posts
you make. So if this is not the case please try to improve yourself it
will only benefit you in the long run.
I have to deal with my own issues when I write. Being mildly dexlexic
I struggle with spelling and grammar. I am at my worst when it comes to
numbers, even though I often get them jumbled in my head I was still
able to get through 3 semesters of college calculus. It was not uncommon
for me to get a wrong answer because for some reason my brain trys to
associate 3, 4 and 7 together. If an answer was 71 I might write 31. I
fought to overcome this and made it through my classes. It was hard but
in the end it was worth it. It might not be easy for you to improve your
writing but just like for me it will be worth it in the end.
H Duffy
"erithromycin" <erithr...@ananzi.co.za> wrote in message
news:4r46oqF...@individual.net...
> >H Duffy
> week
> I had a lesson in which a) the use of the apostrophe was explained to us,
> and b) we were told that it was based on the saying "John Smith has farm".
> I
> objected to both of those.
And so you should; Tudor documents will often say "John Smith ys farm"; the
"ys" is possessive, and doesn't mean "has". And really, if they're going to
explain the use of the apostrophe to you, I'd have thought the first year
was a better time to do so.
There are two rules. The apostrophe indicates
> removed letters, and, with 's', denotes possession. The first rule takes
> precedence in similar cases, such that "it is" becomes "it's" while the
> possessive form of "it" is "its" to avoid confusion.
Well, more to the point, possessive pronouns don't take an apostrophe;
yours, his, hers, theirs, whose (not who's!), its. They're not contractions
originally, they are words in their own right, and therefore don't need
anything to indicate the missing bit.
Not that I don't mix
> them up, but there are rules there. Even possessive forms of words ending
> in
> 's' follow this rule - when I say these are the ducks' eggs the apostrophe
> shows possession, but first indicates that there is a letter missing (the
> 's'). At least, that's how I would explain it.
Yep, seems pretty reasonable.
It all gets a bit complicated when you get into proper nouns ending in "s",
because then the rules vary partly depending on how many syllables there are
in the name, and partly, apparently, on where the name comes from; I seem to
remember that Biblical and Classical names have a different rule from more
modern names.
H
Nyx
U R TEH B4K4
Jennie Kermode
> Actually, my understanding is that "its" is a pronoun, just as "his" and
> "hers" are, and that's why it doesn't need an apostraphe.
You're quite right. Erith already ranted at me about this
lecture in person; I had though he understood why his lecturer was
wrong. <sigh> Now I shall have to have words with both of them.
Jennie
--
Jennie Kermode jen...@innocent.com
http://www.triffid.demon.co.uk/jennie
Lori Pierce
"Dag" <dag...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:eii97...@news2.newsguy.com...
On the flip side, though (at least as Americans are concerned, IMO), one
should at least know some other language besides English. Can't expect
EVERYONE to know it. Then again, even English is different, depending on
where you live - like the saying goes, "England and America are separated by
a common language" :)
ReVulse
> V. don't let those idiots give you an excuse for being lazy.
He doesn't need an excuse.
> I have to deal with my own issues when I write. Being mildly dexlexic
> I struggle with spelling and grammar.
I've read your posts for ages and I never knew that. I never would have
even guessed.
The fact that your posts give no indication of your condition makes
Varizo's excuses for his spelling even more flimsy.
#Andy#
Superfly Silverman
correctly, spell check helps as well. My biggest problem with writing is
the sentence structure, I sometimes write and speak like a Cajun, to a
lesser degree Yoda. I don't make a big deal of it because I dealt with
it before it became popular to have it.
Oh! I spelled it wrong before, it's dyslexia. Didn't run that last
spell check I guess.
Matthew King
: Actually, my understanding is that "its" is a pronoun
... specifically, a definite pronoun, as the interweb has just clarified
for me ...
: just as "his" and "hers" are, and that's why it doesn't need an
: apostrophe
... which doesn't seem like much of a *reason*, though, eh?
The thing about "his" is, it already looks irregular along the lines of
"my", "mine", "our", "your", and "her"; the terminal "s" looks like a
coincidence (maybe). "Hers", "ours", "yours", and "its", on the other
hand, look like possessives formed in the regular manner, except with the
apostrophe left out to keep up the regularity of possessive definite
pronouns' irregularity. (Now that I start thinking about it, pronouns seem
like one of the strangest jumbles in the English language. "Who owns the
watch, him or her? Is it her watch or his watch? Is it hers or his?")
Matthew
--
sometime we may go back there
to the country of our defeat
but it's been a long time since
and we must enquire the way of strangers
Natascha
done!!
I think we can do anything if we really want to :-)
Natascha
"Superfly Silverman" <not...@spamguard.com> schreef in bericht
news:z1n3h.5634$lx6....@tornado.texas.rr.com...
erithromycin
>>Actually, my understanding is that "its" is a pronoun, just as "his" and
>>"hers" are, and that's why it doesn't need an apostraphe.
> You're quite right. Erith already ranted at me about this
>lecture in person; I had though he understood why his lecturer was
>wrong. <sigh> Now I shall have to have words with both of them.
Doh. I sort of knew that. I just went berserk applying the rules about
taking letters out. I have been reading about the apostrophe at work. I
think I now understand almost all of the way that it goes. Now to remember
it when I am typing in a hurry...
--
erith - it'll be easy
erithromycin
>erithromycin:
>>>H Duffy
>>I am a third year student at a major Scottish university and the other
>>week I had a lesson in which a) the use of the apostrophe was explained to
>>us, and b) we were told that it was based on the saying "John Smith has
>>farm". I objected to both of those.
>And so you should; Tudor documents will often say "John Smith ys farm"; the
>"ys" is possessive, and doesn't mean "has". And really, if they're going to
>explain the use of the apostrophe to you, I'd have thought the first year
>was a better time to do so.
Primary school! That'd be the appropriate time. Though I was ten before I
got formal schooling in components of language, though I did end up able to
conjugate the pluperfect and stuff more or less consciously. It's all gone
now, though. I believe that I will have used up all of those parts of my
brain for drinking before I have attained the age of thirty.
>>There are two rules. The apostrophe indicates
>>removed letters, and, with 's', denotes possession. The first rule takes
>>precedence in similar cases, such that "it is" becomes "it's" while the
>>possessive form of "it" is "its" to avoid confusion.
>Well, more to the point, possessive pronouns don't take an apostrophe;
>yours, his, hers, theirs, whose (not who's!), its. They're not contractions
>originally, they are words in their own right, and therefore don't need
>anything to indicate the missing bit.
I am a moron. It's obvious in retrospect that that's why 'its' doesn't have
an apostrophe, but I forgot that 'its' might have its own reason for
existing because I went apostrophe crazy.
>>Not that I don't mix
>>them up, but there are rules there. Even possessive forms of words ending
>>in 's' follow this rule - when I say these are the ducks' eggs the
>>apostrophe shows possession, but first indicates that there is a letter
>>missing (the 's'). At least, that's how I would explain it.
>Yep, seems pretty reasonable.
>It all gets a bit complicated when you get into proper nouns ending in "s",
>because then the rules vary partly depending on how many syllables there
>are in the name, and partly, apparently, on where the name comes from; I
>seem to remember that Biblical and Classical names have a different rule
>from more modern names.
My theory is that if it sounds silly, don't use it, but that's really
subjective. I'm not sure how you're meant to indicate things that belong to
Metropolis, other than to suggest that they are Metropolitan. If it's big
enough to need a rule of its own for apostrophes, it's big enough to have an
adjectival form that can be used to donate possession in a pinch.
--
erith - .sig
H Duffy
>H Duffy:
>>And so you should; Tudor documents will often say "John Smith ys farm";
>>the
>>"ys" is possessive, and doesn't mean "has". And really, if they're going
>>to
>>explain the use of the apostrophe to you, I'd have thought the first year
>>was a better time to do so.
>
> Primary school! That'd be the appropriate time.
Well, true, and Secondary school too; it certainly _should_ have been taught
well before University. But if Universities do feel the need to run a
refresher course (and since schools don't seem to bother with grammar and
punctuation and spelling these days, I can't blame them), the third year
seems a daft time to do so.
Though I was ten before I
> got formal schooling in components of language, though I did end up able
> to
> conjugate the pluperfect and stuff more or less consciously. It's all gone
> now, though. I believe that I will have used up all of those parts of my
> brain for drinking before I have attained the age of thirty.
Well, I don't think we necessarily need to know all the technical jargon, or
to be able to describe the rules in detail; learning them once is a good
idea, because we then internalise them, so we avoid the things that "sound
wrong", even if we can't explain exactly which rule they break.
>>Well, more to the point, possessive pronouns don't take an apostrophe;
>>yours, his, hers, theirs, whose (not who's!), its. They're not
>>contractions
>>originally, they are words in their own right, and therefore don't need
>>anything to indicate the missing bit.
>
> I am a moron. It's obvious in retrospect that that's why 'its' doesn't
> have
> an apostrophe, but I forgot that 'its' might have its own reason for
> existing because I went apostrophe crazy.
*grin* it is one of those things which gets harder if you think too hard
about it.
>>Yep, seems pretty reasonable.
>>It all gets a bit complicated when you get into proper nouns ending in
>>"s",
>>because then the rules vary partly depending on how many syllables there
>>are in the name, and partly, apparently, on where the name comes from; I
>>seem to remember that Biblical and Classical names have a different rule
>>from more modern names.
>
> My theory is that if it sounds silly, don't use it, but that's really
> subjective. I'm not sure how you're meant to indicate things that belong
> to
> Metropolis, other than to suggest that they are Metropolitan. If it's big
> enough to need a rule of its own for apostrophes, it's big enough to have
> an
> adjectival form that can be used to donate possession in a pinch.
I would say "The Metropolis' stuff", if for some reason it seemed
inappropriate to say "The Metropolitan stuff". But yes, the "If it sounds
silly don't use it" rule is pretty good, in general, particularly if one
has, at some point, actually learned this stuff formally.
H
Jared
Varizo.. wrote:
> It was on the radio in the week that exsaminers in skools hav got to
> acsept txt message replys
Sadly this comes too late to rescue your aborted career prospects.
Jared
H Duffy wrote:
> Yep, seems pretty reasonable.
> It all gets a bit complicated when you get into proper nouns ending in "s",
> because then the rules vary partly depending on how many syllables there are
> in the name, and partly, apparently, on where the name comes from; I seem to
> remember that Biblical and Classical names have a different rule from more
> modern names.
It's a matter of taste these days, I believe, but you are supposed to
spell it out how you say it. Bridget Jonesuz Diary, Xerxes favourite
elephant etc.
Joseph Brenner
"erithromycin" <erithr...@ananzi.co.za> writes:
> Not that I don't mix them up, but there are rules there.
All worked out after the fact to describe usage, and then
trumped up as laws to dictate usage.
Standards are all very well and good, but if the only thing
you can say for a standard is that it's standard, that's never
going to seem terribly compelling.
I don't particularly object to the usual "it's"/"its"
distinction, but like you, I often mix them up.
If the majority of English speakers mix them up, then what of
your rules?
whisky-dave
"Benoît Meulle-Stef" <bmsguita...@biz.tiscali.be> wrote in message
news:YPCdncbsxLB...@scarlet.biz...
> Even with Spanish and French? :-)
Even with crabs you won't get the job.
Doh !
whisky-dave
>
> But only to a point. I'd venture that basically no matter where you live
> that you will (on average) get less far these days if you can't read and
> write (and speak) English. I also venture that the importance of English
> is growing.
That's an important point although I think you really mean American rather
than
English. ;-)
Although when I was at college I was told to get a HNC I'd need to study 2
units of
technical German because that was going to be the many technology language
of the future.
Trouble is I knew the college had employed a German speaking lecturer that
people
couldn't really understand so rather than admit they'd employed someone
that couldn't do the job they employed him to do, they decided to invent a
new course called
advanced technical German for engineers for the final year !,
there was never a basic technical German.
whisky-dave
"H Duffy" <hester...@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:4r3lpmF...@individual.net...
>
> "Lori Pierce" <LPI...@wi.rr.com> wrote in message
> news:bc13h.49316$IO2....@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
>> Ahhhh the dumbing down of society.......
>
> Fortunately, it's not being accepted without a fight;
> http://www.24dash.com/education/12440.htm
>
> We _really_ need to improve the quality of basic English grammar and
> spelling in our schools;
But how do we do that ?
> I'm marking undergraduate essays and lab reports where some of the
> students literally don't know ho to use full stops; this can make it
> really hard to understand what they're trying to say, and prevents them
> from expressing themselves clearly. This is a real shame for some of them,
> who are obviously bright, but struggle to use their intelligence.
Why do you think this is happening, surely it would show up in school exams
and the kids wouldn't get the grade(s) to go to university.
How are these kids passing at a high enough grade to get to univ.
in the first place.
whisky-dave
>
> As for how many books they read in a year, well, that would be terrifying,
> wouldn't it? I smell a survey in the offing.
It would be interesting but I heard Newton wasn't an avid book writer
neither were most
of our most famous intelligent people, in fact Professors have always had a
reputation
of being a bit 'off the wall', crazy and not conforming to being normal,
some might call them rebels.
And as for Steven Hawking, well what can one say.
But the majority of us are brought up to obey our betters more than think
for ourselves
H Duffy
"whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
news:einf2k$pce$1@qmul...
>> spelling in our schools;
>
> But how do we do that ?
Well, ideally, the school system needs to add grammar lessons to the
national curriculum; as far as I know, pupils are not generally taught
formal grammar at any point in their schooling. In addition, good spelling
and grammar should be included as a Learning Outcome to other subjects, so
that in order to achieve full marks, a piece of writing would have to be
written clearly, grammatically, and with good spelling. Including grammar
and spelling formally would then allow and encourage teachers to correct
spelling and grammar errors in children's work; at the moment, the general
feeling seems to be "I teach history/geography/creative writing/whatever,
not spelling and grammar, therefore I can't/shouldn't/won't correct my
pupils' spelling and grammar, even when it is very poor".
In addition, I think that higher up the foodchain, in Universities, we need
to insist on a higher standard than we currently seem to get; it might take
a while, but sooner or later this should cause a sort of tricke-down effect;
schools will begin to recognise that they have a duty to provide their
pupils with the skills necessary to get into University, and therefore that
they need to provide grammar and spelling lessons.
Of course, parents can take a part in this too; reading with children, and
encouraging them to read to themselves, is an excellent way of helping to
improve a child's literacy, and playing educational games with them can also
be really useful; I have vague memories or learning to spell simple words
and the names of my family members using magnetic letters, at the age of
about three.
>> I'm marking undergraduate essays and lab reports where some of the
>> students literally don't know ho to use full stops; this can make it
>> really hard to understand what they're trying to say, and prevents them
>> from expressing themselves clearly. This is a real shame for some of
>> them, who are obviously bright, but struggle to use their intelligence.
>
> Why do you think this is happening, surely it would show up in school
> exams
> and the kids wouldn't get the grade(s) to go to university.
Well, being a new University, we don't have very high entrance requirements,
so unfortunately, this sort of problem doesn't get picked up at entrance
level. As I say, we, along with other Universities, need to raise our
standards somewhat.
> How are these kids passing at a high enough grade to get to univ.
> in the first place.
A lot of ours aren't kids; we have a lot of mature students. Also, we have a
lot of overseas students, who don't go through the UCAS entrance system, and
therefore don't have to have any particular grades.
H
whisky-dave
"Jennie Kermode" <"Jennie Kermode"@triffid.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:slrnekq8eu.5bo...@laocoon.triffid.demon.co.uk...
> On 2006-11-04, Satori <dwis...@cox.net> wrote:
>> Actually, my understanding is that "its" is a pronoun, just as "his" and
>> "hers" are, and that's why it doesn't need an apostraphe.
>
> You're quite right. Erith already ranted at me about this
> lecture in person; I had though he understood why his lecturer was
> wrong. <sigh> Now I shall have to have words with both of them.
That's when I lost interest when the head mistress refused to spank us ;-)
ReVulse
>
> "H Duffy" <hester...@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:4r3lpmF...@individual.net...
>>
>> "Lori Pierce" <LPI...@wi.rr.com> wrote in message
>> news:bc13h.49316$IO2....@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
>
>>> Ahhhh the dumbing down of society.......
>>
>> Fortunately, it's not being accepted without a fight;
>> http://www.24dash.com/education/12440.htm
>>
>> We _really_ need to improve the quality of basic English grammar and
>> spelling in our schools;
>
> But how do we do that ?
The first step would be to stop accepting and encouraging sloppiness.
#Andy#
H Duffy
"whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
>
> "erithromycin" <erithr...@ananzi.co.za> wrote in message
> news:4r46oqF...@individual.net...
>
>
>>
>> As for how many books they read in a year, well, that would be
>> terrifying,
>> wouldn't it? I smell a survey in the offing.
>
> It would be interesting but I heard Newton wasn't an avid book writer
Did you mean reader or writer? He wrote several books and lots of shorter
pieces, and was certainly extremely well-read, so either way, you heard
wrong. Well, assuming you mean Isaac Newton, who is usually the person we
think of when someone refers to "Newton". Perhaps you meant someone else?
> neither were most
> of our most famous intelligent people, in fact Professors have always had
> a reputation
> of being a bit 'off the wall', crazy and not conforming to being normal,
> some might call them rebels.
Well, yes, bt that doesn't mean they don't read; it's pretty much impossible
to become a professor (in the UK at least) without being extremely widely
read. It's a slightly different thing in the US, where "professor" is a job
title, pretty much equivalent to "lecturer", rather than an honorific, but
even so, it's not easy to secure a University teaching post without being
widely read.
> And as for Steven Hawking, well what can one say.
Do you have a point to make? Again, he's widely read.
> But the majority of us are brought up to obey our betters more than think
> for ourselves
Speak for yourself.
H
whisky-dave
"Joseph Brenner" <do...@kzsu.stanford.edu> wrote in message
news:m3k6294...@crack.obsidianrook.com...
> Standards are all very well and good, but if the only thing
> you can say for a standard is that it's standard, that's never
> going to seem terribly compelling.
>
> If the majority of English speakers mix them up, then what of
> your rules?
True but we know how to pronounce things we have the honour
of having The Queens English or at least BBC English.
I don't think any other country has such rules.
Rule Britannia I think its called :)
ReVulse
> In addition, I think that higher up the foodchain, in Universities, we need
> to insist on a higher standard than we currently seem to get;
Indeed. I get the impression that as the years go by, fewer kids pass
exams, therefore the solution has been to make the exams easier rather
than improve the quality of the education being given.
The idea of allowing text message abbreviations in exams should have never
even been suggested let alone considered.
The other day I was watching "Threads" (the film about a Nuclear attack on
Sheffield) and there is a scene set years after the attack where the kids
speak a very basic type of English due to there being virtually no
Education avenues.
Even without a nuclear war, the possibility of kids growing up like this
seems a frightening possibility and Varizo is living proof.
#Andy#
whisky-dave
>
> I don't understand how people can't see that they are not doing anybody
> any favours by lowering standards and letting substandard work pass.
But they are, they are doing themselves favours.
> Sure these kids will pass their GCSEs and A-Levels with a lot less work
> and even get into university,
Schools are the to get kids certs to enable them to go on to higher
education.
If the kids don't pass the school gets a low rating less parent send their
kids
their and the school eventually closes down.
>but then what?
The students have a lower standard on entry so the easist way
is to make sure you don't tesat them too hard and the sanme process goes on.
> In the real world presentation matters.
Yes presentation over content, red tape producing graphs, curves and
all sorts of data sutable for publication.
> School should be about learning and improving, not just passing exams.
Then why do employers use CVs to whittle down the numbers BEFORE
interviewing.
> Personally I'm very grateful my teachers in England when I did my GCSEs
> harassed the fuck out of me about my spelling. Sure they could have gone,
> well he's obviously smart and knows the stuff and he is foreign so why not
> let his spelling slide. But to their credit they didn't. They went at me
> about it over and over again, even making me get extra tutoring, until it
> reached an acceptable level. And even though it annoyed me at the time I
> am very glad they did.
It's a good idea if those aspects are important for your future employment.
But for most it isn't. I see life as 4 main elements.
Arts, Science, linguistics & sport.
I don't know anyone that's good at all of them, and I can't see why you'd
have
to be good at more than one, sure have a go at Einstein because he didn;t
know how to dress, or spell. Sure tell Van Goth he was an idiot because
he couldn't run in the Olympics.
Benoīt Meulle-Stef
Ben
"whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> a écrit dans le message de news:
einebe$p6h$1@qmul...
H Duffy
> ???
Top-posting gives you crabs.
Rather than replying above what you're replying to, snip out the bits you're
not responding to, and put your response below the text, as I've done here.
It's much easier to read and follow conversations that way.
You'll notice that quite often, people will break a long post into smaller
pieces, and insert their reply into the text; again, this makes it much
easier to follow than simply replying to the whole lot in one go.
H
Benoīt Meulle-Stef
>
> Rather than replying above what you're replying to, snip out the bits
> you're not responding to, and put your response below the text, as I've
> done here. It's much easier to read and follow conversations that way.
> You'll notice that quite often, people will break a long post into smaller
> pieces, and insert their reply into the text; again, this makes it much
> easier to follow than simply replying to the whole lot in one go.
>
Ok
Ben
Dr Walpurgis
> Top-posting gives you crabs.
Your posting gives us HEADACHE, SICKNESS and DIARRHEA.
--
"The regulars in this group all come across as racist drunkards that
seem to hate any horror movie made after 1979 or isn't Italian." -
Superfly Silverman, 29/08/06
Zareth
"Shiflet" <rshi...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:AyW2h.1055$vj4...@newsfe07.lga...
>
> "Varizo.." <var...@yahoo.com.sg> wrote in message
> news:1162619157.3...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
>> It was on the radio in the week that exsaminers in skools hav got to
>
> Maybe in whatever shitty area you live in, but not here.
>
>> V.
>>
>
>
I have not heard anything about it either. Maybe the people who do text
messaging like that should learn how to spell too.
Zareth
<theco...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
> Damn right!
>
> It's a blatant disregard for common sense, and a basic laziness that's
> overcome the youth of today.
>
> If you can't read & write plain English, then you won't get far in this
> world.
>
Unfortunately, sometimes it seems like less people are realizing that all of
the time. I am finding more and more people here in the states who are
speaking less and less english.
Zareth
"Varizo.." <var...@yahoo.com.sg> wrote in message
news:1162619157.3...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
> It was on the radio in the week that exsaminers in skools hav got to
<snip>
Yeah.....give us some actual sources here so we know you are not just trying
to justify your atrocious spelling.
H Duffy
"Zareth" <dfmnfdj...@jdfsjkldfkj.fhfe> wrote in message
news:EKJ3h.2918$qJ6.2271@trndny07...
It did turn up on the UK news, although the only sources I can find are
talking about the condemnation of the suggetsion, rather than its support;
http://www.24dash.com/education/12440.htm
H
whisky-dave
>
> "whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
> news:eing2s$pqq$1@qmul...
>>
>> "erithromycin" <erithr...@ananzi.co.za> wrote in message
>> news:4r46oqF...@individual.net...
>>
>>
>>>
>>> As for how many books they read in a year, well, that would be
>>> terrifying,
>>> wouldn't it? I smell a survey in the offing.
>>
>> It would be interesting but I heard Newton wasn't an avid book writer
>
> Did you mean reader or writer?
He wasn't into story books.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s223949.htm
"I've lost count of the great creative thinkers who had difficulties of this
kind in school. Can it be chance that the mathematical/physical line right
back to Newton shows it? Poincare, the acknowledged genius, averaged out as
an imbecile on the Binet IQ test, brilliant in some areas but dragged down
by abysmal scores in others. Very typical of these children. Lucky for him,
he was an honoured scientist at that time, not a schoolchild! Both Maxwell
and Faraday are on record as having had such problems and even Newton was
said to be 'inattentive' and 'not bookish', which probably amounts to the
same thing. Can this be chance? Is it not more likely that the brilliance of
their abstract visual imagination, their capacity to scent out the beauty
and order in seeming chaos, and their sheer inventiveness all came at a
price?"
>
>> neither were most
>> of our most famous intelligent people, in fact Professors have always had
>> a reputation
>> of being a bit 'off the wall', crazy and not conforming to being normal,
>> some might call them rebels.
>
> Well, yes, bt that doesn't mean they don't read; it's pretty much
> impossible to become a professor (in the UK at least) without being
> extremely widely read.
But they aren't reading up on how to pronounce words or the correct grammar
to
be used on a Tuesday evening.
>> And as for Steven Hawking, well what can one say.
>
> Do you have a point to make? Again, he's widely read.
I wonder if he changes pronouncation if the word starts with a capital.
Hatter
Even with sources...none the less it still remains what it is. I don't
believe in Grammarian or jumping on people for minor spelling
issues...I only have issues when said grammar and spelling gets so bad
it is getting in the way of the message.
Hatter
H Duffy
"whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
>>
>> Did you mean reader or writer?
>
> He wasn't into story books.
You do realise that the link you've provided doesn't say anything about
novels or storybooks, don't you?
> http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s223949.htm
>
> "I've lost count of the great creative thinkers who had difficulties of
> this kind in school. Can it be chance that the mathematical/physical line
> right back to Newton shows it? Poincare, the acknowledged genius, averaged
> out as an imbecile on the Binet IQ test, brilliant in some areas but
> dragged down by abysmal scores in others. Very typical of these children.
> Lucky for him, he was an honoured scientist at that time, not a
> schoolchild! Both Maxwell and Faraday are on record as having had such
> problems and even Newton was said to be 'inattentive' and 'not bookish',
> which probably amounts to the same thing.
"Not bookish" doesn't mean "He didn't read much". He did. Look up "bookish"
in the dictionary, or just type "define: bookish" into Google, and you'll
see that it doesn't simply mean "reads a lot"; rather it suggests a quiet
and stuious personality.
>> Well, yes, bt that doesn't mean they don't read; it's pretty much
>> impossible to become a professor (in the UK at least) without being
>> extremely widely read.
>
> But they aren't reading up on how to pronounce words or the correct
> grammar to
> be used on a Tuesday evening.
This is a non sequitur; it makes no sense whatsoever.
H
Jennie Kermode
> "H Duffy" <hester...@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:4r3lpmF...@individual.net...
>> spelling in our schools;
> But how do we do that ?
We could start by making it interesting. :) For too long kids
have been told that subjects like this are hard, and kindly governments,
wanting to make their lives less stressful, have gradually arranged for
them to be taught less and less, helping them grow up into appreciative
(as well as conveniently ignorant) voters. You are, of course, quite
write when you note that grammar and spelling don't make a person
intelligent, but difficulty with them can discourage people from reading
and reading is really important when it comes to empowering ourselves as
individuals, making sure we have access to independent information and
so forth.
Grammar and spelling may be tough for some kids - it's
especially important that those with conditions like dyslexia get extra
help - but overcoming obstacles and learning how to handle difficult
things can be great for developing confidence. I personally think it's
important to teach kids a bit about the historical context of words
(learning about history, with plenty of fighting and rudeness, can
easily be fun) and to teach them about the way words relate to one
another. Armed with this information, kids can make much better guesses
when they're unsure, and what they learn will make _sense_ to them,
which is really important to the learning process. The secrets of
language aren't just a set of boring lists to be memorised - they're
tools to help the user discover other things.
> Why do you think this is happening, surely it would show up in school exams
> and the kids wouldn't get the grade(s) to go to university.
If the government wants to send fifty percent of UK kids to
university, the government will do it. It has never made any attempt to
raise the standard of education (and ability) amongst that fifty
percent to something equivalent to that of the five percent who were
selected in our generation - it has simply lowered standards. This is
particularly tough on the genuinely bright kids whose good grades now
mean nothing.
Jennie
--
Jennie Kermode jen...@innocent.com
http://www.triffid.demon.co.uk/jennie
Jennie Kermode
> I don't particularly object to the usual "it's"/"its"
> distinction, but like you, I often mix them up.
>
> If the majority of English speakers mix them up, then what of
> your rules?
It's a clarity thing. Most of the time the intention of the
writer is obvious, but there are occasions when writing both word the
same way (or different but incorrect ways) can make the meaning of a
sentence unclear. Whisky Dave has made reference here before to a 'South
Park' episode in which an alien race have simplified their language to
the point where they use the word 'marklar' for all nouns. It's taking
things to an extreme, of course, but it does demonstrate what the
problem is. A reductionist approach to language can seem easier at first
but ends up making things harder.
Dag
>> We _really_ need to improve the quality of basic English grammar and
>> spelling in our schools;
>
> But how do we do that ?
The most obvious solution is to start setting standards and requirements
on both teachers and students and then hold them to them. Most
importantly stop lowering exam requirements just so that more people
will pass. Instead make people who fail get extra lessons.
Dag
Elder
Jennie Kermode <"Jennie Kermode"@triffid.demon.co.uk> says...
> You are, of course, quite
>write when you note that grammar and spelling don't make a person
>intelligent,
>
--
Carl Robson
Audio stream: http://www.bouncing-czechs.com:8000/samtest
Homepage: http://www.bouncing-czechs.com
Now Playing at home:After Forever-Strong
Dr Walpurgis
>>> We _really_ need to improve the quality of basic English grammar and
>>> spelling in our schools;
>>
>> But how do we do that ?
>
> The most obvious solution is to start setting standards and
> requirements on both teachers and students and then hold them to them.
What kind of a GOTH are you? Surely you of all people should know the
only SOLUTION for RASPERRY RIPPLES like VARHOMO is to do what YOUR
MATES DID and BRING BACK THE GAS CHAMBERS.
Jared
ReVulse wrote:
> "Threads" ... Nuclear attack ... Sheffield ...
> ...speak a very basic type of English due to there being virtually no
> Education avenues...
Surely nothing to do with the nuclear attack?
Varizo.
> If you can't read & write plain English, then you won't get far in this
> world.
Bollox! Ppl hav often mentionned Einstien as a exsampel, and theres
loads of other ppl too, but i dont kno who they are, cos i cant reerbbr
the names that got mentionned when this sort of thing ahs been talked
about befor, but i kno that loads of diffren tppl hav been talked about
who became famous for being realy good at somthing and were realy
fucking inteligent but were hoepless at spelling.
V.
Varizo.
> > You'll notice that quite often, people will break a long post into smaller
> > pieces, and insert their reply into the text; again, this makes it much
> > easier to follow than simply replying to the whole lot in one go.
Thats one thing that the fuckers cant go on at me about, i think that
im v good at replying to things, i always lieave out bits that arnt
nessesarey but do i get any credit for it?? no i fucking dont! Cunts!
V.
Varizo.
> "Varizo.." <var...@yahoo.com.sg> wrote in message
> news:1162619157.3...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
> > It was on the radio in the week that exsaminers in skools hav got to
> > be or not to be* , the exsaminers would hav to acsept it as *2b or not
> > 2b* and that the asnwer was still right. They hav realised at last that
> > ppl who use txt words r not thick , but its the ppl who cant
> > understand it that r thick, they should learn to keep up and be taught
> > wot it means, insted of creating a great big fuss and trying to stop
> > ppl from writing wot feels most confortabal to them!
> > V.
>
> Ahhhh the dumbing down of society.......
I dont think tht this is that at all, this is just moving on and
advancing things in sociaty. I dont agree wtih dumming down, either ,
that is somthing diffrent, at skool they dont care about anybody
*exsept* the real thickoes, its only the ones who are not inteligent at
all taht they bother about, they fuss over them and slow evrybody else
down for there benifit, its one reason why i refused to go , i
wouldentr go along with such fucking hypocrasey.
V.
Varizo.
> But the majority of us are brought up to obey our betters more than think
> for ourselves
My bitch of a mother was always trying to make me *conform*, like
exspecting me to be intrested in fucking football when i hated it, and
wanting me to hav short hair, my Dad was like let him hav it long if he
wants to, and he wasent intressted in sport and shite liek that either
thankfuly and he always encouraged me to be myself and alowd me to
breathe [if you see wot i mean] , but that cow was always going on
about wot was *normal* and wot wasent, and to her being normal ment
being some repullisv boreing sexsual stereotype, and cos this countrys
idea of a *normal* male is to be a hidious rough football obsessed
moron who goes about looking like somthing thats just come out of a
frigging cave, then i spose the old bag would of been happy if id been
like that, yet she always wanted my Dad and hes nothing liek that, but
smart and styleish , so she was a sodding hypocrittt as well as
evrything else that was wrong with her. She wouldent ever of stopped me
from being myself anyway, but she made my life hell, my Dad realy
helped me and made me ffeel better and the fact that he encouraged me
to be myself insted of suporting her vile ideas was wot caused a lot of
the arguements cos she exspected him to back her up and he never would,
and i love him even more because of that. [And some of these scumbags
on the intenet cant understand why my Dad means so much to me].
V.
Varizo.
Ive had ppl in other NGs say how much my spelling has inproved, ppl can
understand wot i say or they wouldent be abel to reply to anything that
i said, they understand alrite, its just taht i somtimes say somthign
taht they dont like so they pick on spelling insted as a way of gettign
back at me, ive been told that by nice ppl on the internet and its
true, and i can see that its true myself too.
V.
Varizo.
> "Lori Pierce" <LPI...@wi.rr.com> wrote in message
> news:bc13h.49316$IO2....@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
> > Ahhhh the dumbing down of society.......
>
> http://www.24dash.com/education/12440.htm
They show exstreme exsampels to back up there arguement and
prejudisses. Sociaty moves on, these ppl are jus ttrying to hold ppl
back and stop them from exspressing thereselves in the way that is
easiest for them , cos those ppl are *too thick* to understand it!!!
That is the problem, and its *there* problem, they should learn wot txt
words mean, insted of trying to stop ppl from using them.
V.
PS Wot i want to kno is why do ppl like talking bout this sort of
thing so much??? Its such a realy realy *boring* thing to hav to talk
about, who wants to talk about words and spelling anyway, its the
subject that is intressting, like horror movies or music or politicks
not spelling, the only reason that i ever talk about that is cos other
ppl go on and on about it so much and it gets on my nerves and when i
hear somthing encouraging like wot i heard on the radio, its like
things are moving on and times are changing and its one inprovement in
sociaty, and i dont think that that sort of thing is dumming down, its
not that that is, its other areas where that is happning , where
evrybody is suposed to acsept it to let the thickoes feel better about
thereselves and i dont agree w that happning cos more intelgent ppl are
not botherd about cos theycare so much about the thickoes, but using
txt words is *not* being thick, its being inventiv and clever, its the
ppl who cant udnerstand it who are the thick ones!!!
Shiflet
"Varizo." <var...@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:1162877104....@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> my Dad was like let him hav it long if he wants to
No surprises there.
> V.
ReVulse
But, the point is, that while they may not be good at spelling, they WERE
GOOD at something else.
So what are you good at ?
Apart from benefit fraud.
#Andy#
ReVulse
> Lori Pierce says
>> Ahhhh the dumbing down of society.......
>
> I dont think tht this is that at all, this is just moving on and
> advancing things in sociaty.
How is encouraging bad spelling advancing things ?
> I dont agree wtih dumming down,
You moron. You can't even spell "dumb". I suppose you're going to claim
that's text speak too.
> either ,
> that is somthing diffrent,
How ?
> at skool they dont care about anybody
> *exsept* the real thickoes, its only the ones who are not inteligent at
> all taht they bother about, they fuss over them and slow evrybody else
> down for there benifit, its one reason why i refused to go , i
> wouldentr go along with such fucking hypocrasey.
Your lack of self-awareness is staggering. You ARE one of the real
thickoes. In fact, you're so thick you don't even realise it.
#Andy#
Dag
> "Dag" <dag...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:eiias...@news2.newsguy.com...
>
>> I don't understand how people can't see that they are not doing anybody
>> any favours by lowering standards and letting substandard work pass.
> But they are, they are doing themselves favours.
>
>> Sure these kids will pass their GCSEs and A-Levels with a lot less work
>> and even get into university,
> Schools are the to get kids certs to enable them to go on to higher
> education.
> If the kids don't pass the school gets a low rating less parent send
> their kids their and the school eventually closes down.
Which is the kind of thinking which is a main source of the problem.
Even though this is the way it does work, it shouldn't, and fixing that
will go a long way to fixing the whole problem.
>> In the real world presentation matters.
> Yes presentation over content, red tape producing graphs, curves and
> all sorts of data sutable for publication.
What good is knowing stuff if you can't communicate it?
>> School should be about learning and improving, not just passing exams.
> Then why do employers use CVs to whittle down the numbers BEFORE
> interviewing.
I'm not entirely sure what you are getting at. A CV contains more than
just which exams you've past.
However to answer your question, because interviewing everybody would be
too expensive. I doubt you'll find an HR person who thinks the process
is perfect, but it is the most cost effective.
> It's a good idea if those aspects are important for your future employment.
Those aspects are important to all future employment among anybody with
a modicum of ambition.
> But for most it isn't. I see life as 4 main elements.
> Arts, Science, linguistics & sport.
> I don't know anyone that's good at all of them, and I can't see why you'd
> have
> to be good at more than one, sure have a go at Einstein because he didn;t
> know how to dress, or spell. Sure tell Van Goth he was an idiot because
> he couldn't run in the Olympics.
It's sufficient to be good at only one IF you happen to be among the top
handful of your generation in your chosen field (like your favorite
example Einstein was). For the 99.998+% of us who aren't, being more or
less well rounded is a necessity if we don't want to be stuck in a
highly mediocre job for the rest of out lives. Admittedly some people
are perfectly happy with mediocre jobs and lack all forms of
professionals and academic ambition and I guess that's fair enough, but
they shouldn't be forced into that position because schooling failed them.
Dag
Dag
> Both Maxwell
> and Faraday are on record as having had such problems and even Newton was
> said to be 'inattentive' and 'not bookish', which probably amounts to the
> same thing. Can this be chance?
Yes?
How many brilliant scientists and mathematicians don't have this
'problem'? How many people with similar 'problems' are at best highly
mediocre scientist and mathematicians? How many journalists have never
taken and understood a statistics class?
> Is it not more likely that the brilliance of
> their abstract visual imagination, their capacity to scent out the beauty
> and order in seeming chaos, and their sheer inventiveness all came at a
> price?"
Not necessarily no. Starting a sentence with "is it not more likely"
and then presenting a random theory, does not constitute valid proof.
Dag
Dag
> Both Maxwell
> and Faraday are on record as having had such problems and even Newton was
> said to be 'inattentive' and 'not bookish', which probably amounts to the
> same thing. Can this be chance?
Yes?
How many brilliant scientists and mathematicians don't have this
'problem'? How many people with similar 'problems' are at best highly
mediocre scientist and mathematicians? How many journalists have never
taken and understood a statistics class?
> Is it not more likely that the brilliance of
> their abstract visual imagination, their capacity to scent out the beauty
> and order in seeming chaos, and their sheer inventiveness all came at a
> price?"
Not necessarily no. Starting a sentence with "is it not more likely"
Dag
> theco...@ntlworld.com says
>> If you can't read & write plain English, then you won't get far in this
>> world.
>
> Bollox! Ppl hav often mentionned Einstien as a exsampel,
Einstein and his ilk are bad examples. First of all I have never read
any of Einsteins writings so have no idea of the quality of his writing.
Even if it is, so what, that data point is a statistical freak and
proves very little? Neither you nor I nor (at a guess) anybody else on
any of these newsgroups are comparable to Einstein.
So if you are among the handful or so of who are at the very pinnacle of
your field, and your field is suitably interesting and valid, you might
possibly be able to succeed despite lacking any kind of other skills,
but even there is no guarantee. Not being able to communicate well
both in written and spoken form will always be a handicap no matter
what. That is not to say it cannot be overcome and compensated for.
So if you want to be pedantic the original statement is overstated.
Would you be happier with "If you can't read & write plain English, then
your chances of getting far in this world are greatly diminished and you
will have to work hard to find ways to compensate"
Dag
Zareth
>Thats one thing that the fuckers cant go on at me about, i think that
>im v good at replying to things, i always lieave out bits that arnt
>nessesarey but do i get any credit for it?? no i fucking dont! Cunts!
>V.
Leaving out bits that aren't necessary like half the fucking letters in your
e-mails? What the fuck is v good?
whisky-dave
> whisky-dave wrote:
>> "Dag" <dag...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:eiias...@news2.newsguy.com...
> > If the kids don't pass the school gets a low rating less parent send
> > their kids their and the school eventually closes down.
>
> Which is the kind of thinking which is a main source of the problem. Even
> though this is the way it does work, it shouldn't, and fixing that will go
> a long way to fixing the whole problem.
But that isn't happening it's getting worse and people think the answer
is to get better educated people in where what they really need are
people that can actually teach and control kids.
>>> In the real world presentation matters.
>> Yes presentation over content, red tape producing graphs, curves and
>> all sorts of data sutable for publication.
>
> What good is knowing stuff if you can't communicate it?
yes that's the problem.
It doesn't take much to know how to alter the curves on a graph.
Here it has been suggested that we scrap the answer 3 Qs form 6,
as students don;t appear to know what the best Q to answer is for them.
We have got better overall marks by getting them to answer all 4 Qs
(yes a reduced number) and then the marker selects the best 3 Qs that
have been answered. Then there's the idea of using mulitichoice questions.
And I used to think that rounding marks off was rounding them off,
but they marks are always rounded upwards.
It migth be difficult to prove how it happens but I'm sure studetns are
leaving
understanding less, knowing less and being less capable than they were 5
years ago
but the grade structure seems to indicate we have more good pass marks
than we used to.
>> Then why do employers use CVs to whittle down the numbers BEFORE
>> interviewing.
>
> I'm not entirely sure what you are getting at. A CV contains more than
> just which exams you've past.
> However to answer your question, because interviewing everybody would be
> too expensive. I doubt you'll find an HR person who thinks the process is
> perfect, but it is the most cost effective.
Yes it's not difficult to see how cost effective it can be made.
But in most places I think you'll find that if you employ 1 person you'll
need another to do the administration.
>> It's a good idea if those aspects are important for your future
>> employment.
>
> Those aspects are important to all future employment among anybody with a
> modicum of ambition.
Which doesn't really mean much does it.
>> to be good at more than one, sure have a go at Einstein because he didn;t
>> know how to dress, or spell. Sure tell Van Goth he was an idiot because
>> he couldn't run in the Olympics.
>
> It's sufficient to be good at only one IF you happen to be among the top
> handful of your generation in your chosen field (like your favorite
> example Einstein was). For the 99.998+% of us who aren't, being more or
> less well rounded is a necessity if we don't want to be stuck in a highly
> mediocre job for the rest of out lives. Admittedly some people are
> perfectly happy with mediocre jobs and lack all forms of professionals and
> academic ambition and I guess that's fair enough, but they shouldn't be
> forced into that position because schooling failed them.
That's, why a lot of people improve after leaving school more commonly
know as late starters. Not everyone needs a degree so why expect such
a large percentage send to universities.
Compare the UK with most of the top Eurpoean countries (yes it's been done)
and we don't come out too well in anything. The reason for this is those in
charge
of the how the country is run.
H Duffy
"whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
>> though this is the way it does work, it shouldn't, and fixing that will
>> go a long way to fixing the whole problem.
> But that isn't happening it's getting worse and people think the answer
> is to get better educated people in where what they really need are
> people that can actually teach and control kids.
Well, yes, but part of the problem there is that teachers have very little
power these days in the classroom; even if a child physically assaults them,
they can't even fight the kid off or restrain them in any way, or they could
face a massive law suit and possibly even an assault charge. Even just
shouting at kids is frowned upon, and certainly humiliating or embarrassing
them is right out. And given that an awful lot of parents will side with the
children rather than the teachers, it does mean that the teachers don't have
many options when it comes to controlling kids.
Which is a shame, because it means that the kids who want to learn can't,
because their lessons are disrupted by the ones who don't want to learn but
haven't left, while those who _need_ the most help and education don't even
turn up to school at all, and therefore don't get any help, and end up with
no jobs, no qualifications, and no clue, living off benefits and causing
trouble.
>> What good is knowing stuff if you can't communicate it?
> yes that's the problem.
> It doesn't take much to know how to alter the curves on a graph.
> Here it has been suggested that we scrap the answer 3 Qs form 6,
Could you put that into English?
> as students don;t appear to know what the best Q to answer is for them.
> We have got better overall marks by getting them to answer all 4 Qs
> (yes a reduced number) and then the marker selects the best 3 Qs that
> have been answered.
Ah, the "form" is meant to be "from", yes? You mean that the current (or
recent?) version of exam papers offered them six questions, of which they
had to answer three, but it has now been suggested that they should be
offered four, and that they should have to answer all four, yes? But that
only three would then count toward the final grade?
If that's the case, won't they just answer three of them, rather than four?
Certainly on one of the courses I teach, the students are supposed to
complete six practicals over the year, of which the best four count. The
majority of our students don't bother submitting all six; they just do four.
>> I'm not entirely sure what you are getting at. A CV contains more than
>> just which exams you've past.
>> However to answer your question, because interviewing everybody would be
>> too expensive. I doubt you'll find an HR person who thinks the process
>> is perfect, but it is the most cost effective.
>
> Yes it's not difficult to see how cost effective it can be made.
> But in most places I think you'll find that if you employ 1 person you'll
> need another to do the administration.
That's just clearly not true, is it? If it were true, "most places" would
have a staff which consisted of 50% admin, and 50% other, and that's clearly
not the case.
>> It's sufficient to be good at only one IF you happen to be among the top
>> handful of your generation in your chosen field (like your favorite
>> example Einstein was). For the 99.998+% of us who aren't, being more or
>> less well rounded is a necessity if we don't want to be stuck in a highly
>> mediocre job for the rest of out lives. Admittedly some people are
>> perfectly happy with mediocre jobs and lack all forms of professionals
>> and academic ambition and I guess that's fair enough, but they shouldn't
>> be forced into that position because schooling failed them.
>
> That's, why a lot of people improve after leaving school more commonly
> know as late starters. Not everyone needs a degree so why expect such
> a large percentage send to universities.
Absolutely; that's part of the problem with the University system.
University attendance (as in, proportion of the population who go to
University) has risen from about 5% in the 60s to something like 30% or so
by the end of the 90s, and it is continuing to rise. Which, of course, means
that standards are falling.
I think a large part of the problem is that Blair and his chums feel that
non-University qualifications are somehow less valid than a degree. So where
once upon a time, people trained as a plumber, and got certification or
whatever, and could then go and work as a plumber and be proud of it and
make a good living at it, now, they feel they ought to have a degree in
"Domestic hygeine systems engineering" or some such. Which is ridiculous, of
course. Vocational courses are perfectly respectable and valid, and don't
have to have a University label attached to them.
H
whisky-dave
>
> "whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
>>> spelling in our schools;
>>
>> But how do we do that ?
>
> national curriculum;
Any particular language.
> as far as I know, pupils are not generally taught formal grammar at any
> point in their schooling. In addition, good spelling and grammar should be
> included as a Learning Outcome to other subjects, so that in order to
> achieve full marks, a piece of writing would have to be written clearly,
> grammatically, and with good spelling.
The trouble is that could hold back truly talented people.
The other problem is a multicultural society, I doubt you saw
the news about the Stratford school, 1`80 pupils 120 languages.
It's going to get worse still, I wondering whether anyone actually realises
that looking at a teachers lips for the formation of words, and any
accompanying
expressions actual are of any use.
> In addition, I think that higher up the foodchain, in Universities, we
> need to insist on a higher standard than we currently seem to get; it
> might take a while, but sooner or later this should cause a sort of
> tricke-down effect; schools will begin to recognise that they have a duty
> to provide their pupils with the skills necessary to get into University,
> and therefore that they need to provide grammar and spelling lessons.
The trouble is universities use to take the top 2-3% and distributed
funds between then now we take 50% and it isn't working very well.
Universities aren't;t graded on the ability of the students we eject into
society.
We tend to use results, and the grades of those teaching them.
> Of course, parents can take a part in this too;
When the kids know how their parents are.
> reading with children, and encouraging them to read to themselves, is an
> excellent way of helping to improve a child's literacy, and playing
> educational games with them can also be really useful; I have vague
> memories or learning to spell simple words and the names of my family
> members using magnetic letters, at the age of about three.
And I remember trying to take the scaleelctic apart and later
trying to find out how to make the cars go faster.
Skills should be encouraged but it should start and stop with arranging
letters on a page.
>>> I'm marking undergraduate essays and lab reports where some of the
>>> students literally don't know ho to use full stops; this can make it
>>> really hard to understand what they're trying to say, and prevents them
>>> from expressing themselves clearly. This is a real shame for some of
>>> them, who are obviously bright, but struggle to use their intelligence.
>>
>> Why do you think this is happening, surely it would show up in school
>> exams
>> and the kids wouldn't get the grade(s) to go to university.
>
> Well, being a new University, we don't have very high entrance
> requirements,
That is one of the problems making colleges Universities takes more than
just
a change of name.
> so unfortunately, this sort of problem doesn't get picked up at entrance
> level. As I say, we, along with other Universities, need to raise our
> standards somewhat.
And if you do that what happens to you realsie you are funded according to
numbers
bums on seats.
>
>> How are these kids passing at a high enough grade to get to univ.
>> in the first place.
>
> A lot of ours aren't kids; we have a lot of mature students. Also, we have
> a lot of overseas students, who don't go through the UCAS entrance system,
> and therefore don't have to have any particular grades.
So you accept students from overseas without accessing their educational
suitability, you don';t even ask for a CV of some sort.
whisky-dave
"ReVulse" <ReV...@psychaoticREMOVE.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:pan.2006.11.06....@psychaoticREMOVE.fsnet.co.uk...
> On Mon, 06 Nov 2006 13:58:45 +0000, whisky-dave wrote:
>
>>> We _really_ need to improve the quality of basic English grammar and
>>> spelling in our schools;
>>
>> But how do we do that ?
>
> The first step would be to stop accepting and encouraging sloppiness.
AT school level ?
At university level the univ gets funding according to how many studetns we
attract
less studetns less money, it's as simple as that. get overseas one and you
get
even more money.
whisky-dave
Won;t work. If out prospects states that less people pass their exams here
than at a place down the road where do you think next years students that
want
to get a degree will take their custom, to a univ. that fails more students
or one that
accepts a higher standard at the same grade cert.
as I say we need to know what';s happening in the real world
Studetns go to the univ. with the higher pass rate stats not the lower.
That's the real world.
H Duffy
"whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
>>>> spelling in our schools;
>>>
>>> But how do we do that ?
>>
>> Well, ideally, the school system needs to add grammar lessons to the
>> national curriculum;
> Any particular language.
Let's see if you can work it out, Dave; you asked how one might improve the
quality of basic ENGLISH grammar and spelling in schools, and I suggested
adding grammar lessons to the curriculum.
Which language do you think might prove most helpful for that?
Having said that, learning foreign languages can be very helpful in
improving a person's grasp of their own; Latin seems to have fallen off the
curriculum in most schools, which is a real shame, as it can be extremely
helpful both from the point of view of grammar and also in terms of
vocabulary; because quite a lot of our language comes from Latin, having a
grasp of Latin can often help one to understand unfamiliar (Latin-based)
words, and to remember how to spell them too.
>> as far as I know, pupils are not generally taught formal grammar at any
>> point in their schooling. In addition, good spelling and grammar should
>> be included as a Learning Outcome to other subjects, so that in order to
>> achieve full marks, a piece of writing would have to be written clearly,
>> grammatically, and with good spelling.
> The trouble is that could hold back truly talented people.
How so?
>
> The other problem is a multicultural society, I doubt you saw
> the news about the Stratford school, 1`80 pupils 120 languages.
Yes, it is a concern, and it does make it very difficult to proceed.
Obvoiusly we can't segregate schoolkids according to whether they speak
English as a first language or not, but I tend to be of the opinion that in
an English school, kids should be speaking English, even if that's not the
language they speak at home. Clearly we need to be providing more ESL
facilities within schools, but I think they should be in addition to, rather
than instead of, normal lessons. Perhaps we need to address the issue by
streaming people by ability rather than age (so you don't move from year
three to year four until you have passed some sort of "end of year three
standard"), and perhaps also we should introduce a german-style split school
system, so that those who are more academic can go to an academic school
while those who are more suited to vocational courses can study them and get
good, meaningful qualifications in them, without those qualifications being
looked down on as somehow less worth while than the academic ones.
>> In addition, I think that higher up the foodchain, in Universities, we
>> need to insist on a higher standard than we currently seem to get; it
>> might take a while, but sooner or later this should cause a sort of
>> tricke-down effect; schools will begin to recognise that they have a duty
>> to provide their pupils with the skills necessary to get into University,
>> and therefore that they need to provide grammar and spelling lessons.
> The trouble is universities use to take the top 2-3% and distributed
> funds between then now we take 50% and it isn't working very well.
Is it as high as 50% now? I know it went from about 5% in the 60s to about
30% at the end of the 90s; it may have hit 50% by now, I don't know.
> Universities aren't;t graded on the ability of the students we eject into
> society.
> We tend to use results, and the grades of those teaching them.
Well, no, not really; Universities are graded on the quality of their
teaching and of their research, not on the grades of their graduates.
>> reading with children, and encouraging them to read to themselves, is an
>> excellent way of helping to improve a child's literacy, and playing
>> educational games with them can also be really useful; I have vague
>> memories or learning to spell simple words and the names of my family
>> members using magnetic letters, at the age of about three.
> And I remember trying to take the scaleelctic apart and later
> trying to find out how to make the cars go faster.
> Skills should be encouraged but it should start and stop with arranging
> letters on a page.
Is there a missing "not" in there?
If so, I agree, reading and writing isn't the be-all and end-all. But those
are very basic, very important skills to learn. You'll be able to adapt your
scaletrix set more effectively if you can read the manual, and you'll be
able to tell your friends how to do it more effectively if you can write
clearly and in a way which can be understood.
>> Well, being a new University, we don't have very high entrance
>> requirements,
> That is one of the problems making colleges Universities takes more than
> just
> a change of name.
Absolutely.
>> so unfortunately, this sort of problem doesn't get picked up at entrance
>> level. As I say, we, along with other Universities, need to raise our
>> standards somewhat.
> And if you do that what happens to you realsie you are funded according to
> numbers
> bums on seats.
Well, partially, yes. Which is a big part of the problem.
>> A lot of ours aren't kids; we have a lot of mature students. Also, we
>> have a lot of overseas students, who don't go through the UCAS entrance
>> system, and therefore don't have to have any particular grades.
>
> So you accept students from overseas without accessing their educational
> suitability, you don';t even ask for a CV of some sort.
Well, they have to fill in an application form, which takes the place of a
CV, but it doesn't assess (is that what you meant, rather than "acccess"?)
their language skills.
H
Superfly Silverman
prestige, ones that are viewed as having the best graduates. These
schools are going to be tougher to get through because the schools know
that more will be lined up to enter. The university in the city I live
has people waiting to get in and they have tough standards. People fail
classes all the time and still more are lined up at the door. That's the
real world. Your world seems to be filled with slack jawed whiners.
Graduates from your world will be well prepared to run the deep fryer at
any number of fast food restaurants.
H Duffy
"whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
>> on both teachers and students and then hold them to them. Most
>> importantly stop lowering exam requirements just so that more people will
>> pass. Instead make people who fail get extra lessons.
>
> Won;t work. If out prospects states that less people pass their exams here
> than at a place down the road where do you think next years students that
> want
> to get a degree will take their custom, to a univ. that fails more
> students or one that
> accepts a higher standard at the same grade cert.
> as I say we need to know what';s happening in the real world
So we need to look at, say, how many people apply to Universities like
oxford and Cambridge, and how many apply to, say, UEL.
And if you actually look at those real world figures, you'll find that
Oxford and Cambridge have _far_ more applicants than they can handle, while
UEL has far far fewer.
Which suggests that your theory needs rethinking; actually, better
universities with higher standards are more desireable than those with lower
standards.
>
> Studetns go to the univ. with the higher pass rate stats not the lower.
> That's the real world.
No, Dave, it isn't. That's your theory, but it is contradicted by the facts.
H
whisky-dave
>
> "whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
>>>> It would be interesting but I heard Newton wasn't an avid book writer
>>>
>>> Did you mean reader or writer?
>>
>> He wasn't into story books.
>
> "Not bookish" doesn't mean "He didn't read much".
I never said that did I.
> He did. Look up "bookish" in the dictionary, or just type "define:
> bookish" into Google, and you'll see that it doesn't simply mean "reads a
> lot"; rather it suggests a quiet and stuious personality.
He never thought much of the Bible did he ?
he also said something about
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth"
H Duffy
"whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
>>
>
>> "Not bookish" doesn't mean "He didn't read much".
>
> I never said that did I.
You said he wasn't into story books, and that he wasn't an avid book writer;
I assume you actually meant "reader" rather than "writer"? Where did you get
these impressions from?
>
>> He did. Look up "bookish" in the dictionary, or just type "define:
>> bookish" into Google, and you'll see that it doesn't simply mean "reads a
>> lot"; rather it suggests a quiet and stuious personality.
>
> He never thought much of the Bible did he ?
On the contrary, he thought an awful lot of it, and indeed said "I have a
fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who
were inspired. I study the Bible daily."
What gave you the impression that he didn't?
> he also said something about
> "Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth"
Good for him; I wholeheartedly agree with him.
H
Dag
> "Dag" <dag...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:eipnh...@news1.newsguy.com...
>> whisky-dave wrote:
>>> "Dag" <dag...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>>> news:eiias...@news2.newsguy.com...
>>>> In the real world presentation matters.
>>> Yes presentation over content, red tape producing graphs, curves and
>>> all sorts of data sutable for publication.
>> What good is knowing stuff if you can't communicate it?
> yes that's the problem.
> It doesn't take much to know how to alter the curves on a graph.
> Here it has been suggested that we scrap the answer 3 Qs form 6,
> as students don;t appear to know what the best Q to answer is for them.
> We have got better overall marks by getting them to answer all 4 Qs
> (yes a reduced number) and then the marker selects the best 3 Qs that
> have been answered.
You know what I was saying about what good is knowing stuff if you can't
communicate it? Well that above paragraph perfectly illustrated my
point. I have no idea what you just said.
> It migth be difficult to prove how it happens but I'm sure studetns are
> leaving
> understanding less, knowing less and being less capable than they were 5
> years ago
> but the grade structure seems to indicate we have more good pass marks
> than we used to.
Are we talking about highschool or university here? Because while it's
probably true for highshool, I'm not convinced it's true for most
university degrees.
> That's, why a lot of people improve after leaving school more commonly
> know as late starters. Not everyone needs a degree so why expect such
> a large percentage send to universities.
Here I actually agree with you. We need to stop this idea that
everybody should go to university. What I'd like to see are more 1-2
year vocational schools, that focus on purely job related skills in one
specific field. Keep the theory to an absolute minimum and focus on the
practical as much as possible. Leave universities for those with a more
academic interest.
Dag
Dag
> Studetns go to the univ. with the higher pass rate stats not the lower.
> That's the real world.
I disagree. The reason why, for example, MIT get far more applications
than they can handle is certainly not because it's easy to pass. Low
pass rates are often seen as a sign of quality which attracts people,
because they know a degree from there will be worth more.
Dag
Dag
> Ive had ppl in other NGs say how much my spelling has inproved,
To be fair your spelling seems to be better than it has been in the
past. It does however seem highly variable. Some posts are almost
acceptable while others are just atrocious. It seems that if you take
your time you are able to write passably, but that you don't always take
your time.
Dag
whisky-dave
>
> "whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
> news:eiqdnb$t0$1@qmul...
>>
>> "H Duffy" <hester...@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:4r8ucsF...@individual.net...
>>>>> We _really_ need to improve the quality of basic English grammar and
>>>>> spelling in our schools;
>>>>
>>>> But how do we do that ?
>>>
>>> Well, ideally, the school system needs to add grammar lessons to the
>>> national curriculum;
>> Any particular language.
>
> Let's see if you can work it out, Dave; you asked how one might improve
> the quality of basic ENGLISH grammar and spelling in schools, and I
> suggested adding grammar lessons to the curriculum.
> Which language do you think might prove most helpful for that?
Depends on the students. But the first task is to get them to turn up for
school.
> Having said that, learning foreign languages can be very helpful in
> improving a person's grasp of their own; Latin seems to have fallen off
> the curriculum in most schools, which is a real shame, as it can be
> extremely helpful both from the point of view of grammar and also in terms
> of vocabulary; because quite a lot of our language comes from Latin,
> having a grasp of Latin can often help one to understand unfamiliar
> (Latin-based) words, and to remember how to spell them too.
True but then again the employment market hasn't much use for such skills
as reading latin.
>
>>> as far as I know, pupils are not generally taught formal grammar at any
>>> point in their schooling. In addition, good spelling and grammar should
>>> be included as a Learning Outcome to other subjects, so that in order to
>>> achieve full marks, a piece of writing would have to be written clearly,
>>> grammatically, and with good spelling.
>> The trouble is that could hold back truly talented people.
>
> How so?
never heard of doctors handwriting.
But writing is a particular skill, not in the words you produce but the way
you write them.
I always had difficulty with joined up writing and my father could rarely
write in lowercase
and his spelling is worse than mine. My mother is a very good speller, but
hopless at math.
Ask her to cut a cake in 3 and she couldn't do it, but my dad could.
My mother is left handed and was beaten at school for being left handed.
>> The other problem is a multicultural society, I doubt you saw
>> the news about the Stratford school, 1`80 pupils 120 languages.
>
> Yes, it is a concern, and it does make it very difficult to proceed.
> Obvoiusly we can't segregate schoolkids according to whether they speak
> English as a first language or not, but I tend to be of the opinion that
> in an English school, kids should be speaking English,
You sound like a rebel.
> than instead of, normal lessons. Perhaps we need to address the issue by
> streaming people by ability rather than age (so you don't move from year
> three to year four until you have passed some sort of "end of year three
> standard"), and perhaps also we should introduce a german-style split
> school system, so that those who are more academic can go to an academic
> school while those who are more suited to vocational courses can study
> them and get good, meaningful qualifications in them, without those
> qualifications being looked down on as somehow less worth while than the
> academic ones.
We did run that system until the some idiots started to control such
processes.
Lots and lots of books were written about it, lots of theories put forward,
lots of people made money from changing the system.
Perhaps it's time to find out where it all went wrong, some knew
when it started.
>>> In addition, I think that higher up the foodchain, in Universities, we
>>> need to insist on a higher standard than we currently seem to get; it
>>> might take a while, but sooner or later this should cause a sort of
>>> tricke-down effect; schools will begin to recognise that they have a
>>> duty to provide their pupils with the skills necessary to get into
>>> University, and therefore that they need to provide grammar and spelling
>>> lessons.
>
>> The trouble is universities use to take the top 2-3% and distributed
>> funds between then now we take 50% and it isn't working very well.
>
> Is it as high as 50% now? I know it went from about 5% in the 60s to about
> 30% at the end of the 90s; it may have hit 50% by now, I don't know.
I'm not sure but the aim was higher than 50% they wanted to match
what other countries were doing, but they didn't really understand their
systems,
and how the social structure in the UK wasn't quite the same.
>
>> Universities aren't;t graded on the ability of the students we eject into
>> society.
>> We tend to use results, and the grades of those teaching them.
>
> Well, no, not really; Universities are graded on the quality of their
> teaching and of their research, not on the grades of their graduates.
Check out how the Times ES and other such publications access universities.
>> Skills should be encouraged but it should start and stop with arranging
>> letters on a page.
>
> Is there a missing "not" in there?
Yep a n't actually,
> If so, I agree, reading and writing isn't the be-all and end-all. But
> those are very basic, very important skills to learn.
And some can't.
Some can't paint (as in pictures, like myself).
> You'll be able to adapt your scaletrix set more effectively if you can
> read the manual,
But I can read a manual and write them as I have done, but as you'll notice
I might leave words out, I don't notice I've not typed them, even after
reading it back.
> and you'll be able to tell your friends how to do it more effectively if
> you can write clearly and in a way which can be understood.
That's one of the point I've been complaining about on our students
behalf the labsheet may have correct grammar and be perfectly spelt
but as for clarity they leave a lot to be desired because those writing
the labsheets have never done the lab they are writing about, they have
only done the theory and teach the theory.
>>> Well, being a new University, we don't have very high entrance
>>> requirements,
>> That is one of the problems making colleges Universities takes more than
>> just
>> a change of name.
>
> Absolutely.
wow, then I wonder what genoisu thought it would.
Must have been someone far cleverer than us then.
>>> so unfortunately, this sort of problem doesn't get picked up at entrance
>>> level. As I say, we, along with other Universities, need to raise our
>>> standards somewhat.
>> And if you do that what happens to you realsie you are funded according
>> to numbers
>> bums on seats.
>
> Well, partially, yes. Which is a big part of the problem.
Which is why we squeeze as many in as possible we haven't even got enough
stools in the lecture rooms, and when we let them do practical in groups of
between 5-7 that really should be done in pairs it doesn't help either.
I remember at school reading Kes, I actually found it quite interesting,
but there were 3 of us to one book, we had to wait for each other before the
page
could be turned, we were 3 kids sharing 2 desks, but we did have 3 chairs.
I should have started school in spetember but beign a W I started in jan.
Not a good start they didn't have enough classrooms.
whisky-dave
>
> "whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
> news:eiqcpo$j7$1@qmul...
>>
>> "Dag" <dag...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:eipnh...@news1.newsguy.com...
>>> Which is the kind of thinking which is a main source of the problem.
>>> Even though this is the way it does work, it shouldn't, and fixing that
>>> will go a long way to fixing the whole problem.
>> But that isn't happening it's getting worse and people think the answer
>> is to get better educated people in where what they really need are
>> people that can actually teach and control kids.
>
> Well, yes, but part of the problem there is that teachers have very little
> power these days in the classroom; even if a child physically assaults
> them, they can't even fight the kid off or restrain them in any way,
And we all know who's to blame for the fuckwits with their stats that
indicate a child that receives discipline via a smack will end up a bully or
murder
and want respect the authority of others. This pathetic attitude has been
going on
amongst the so called intelligent for year, not because it's true but
because it sold books
and gave people a high profile for their careers.
> or they could face a massive law suit and possibly even an assault charge.
Yep that's one reason why a friend of mine left teaching .
>Even just shouting at kids is frowned upon, and certainly humiliating or
>embarrassing them is right out. And given that an awful lot of parents will
>side with the children rather than the teachers, it does mean that the
>teachers don't have many options when it comes to controlling kids.
Yep welcome to the real world, it's been like this for 10 years or so
if not slightly longer, the must not smack kids lot are to blame and of
course
all the fuckwits that supported them.
>
> Which is a shame, because it means that the kids who want to learn can't,
yep nothing knew in that, but you'll only learn that from the observations
of those in
the classrooms.
>>> What good is knowing stuff if you can't communicate it?
>> yes that's the problem.
>> It doesn't take much to know how to alter the curves on a graph.
>> Here it has been suggested that we scrap the answer 3 Qs form 6,
>
> Could you put that into English?
In order to increase results we found that when the students had a choice of
answering
say 3 questions from 6 they didn't pick those that they could get the most
marks for,
but chose to answer those they could talk most about or think they knew
best.
So the plan is/was to not let them choose but get them to answer say all
say 4 questions rather than 3 from 6 and the marker would use the best
3 to set the mark for the test or paper.
I'm not saying it's an outright fiddle but it seem a strange way of going
about things.
>
> Ah, the "form" is meant to be "from", yes? You mean that the current (or
> recent?) version of exam papers offered them six questions, of which they
> had to answer three, but it has now been suggested that they should be
> offered four, and that they should have to answer all four, yes? But that
> only three would then count toward the final grade?
That's pretty much it, although not for exams as far as I know.
> If that's the case, won't they just answer three of them, rather than
> four?
well if they are told to answer 4 and they don't should they loose marks ?
> Certainly on one of the courses I teach, the students are supposed to
> complete six practicals over the year, of which the best four count. The
> majority of our students don't bother submitting all six; they just do
> four.
I wonder what an employer would think of that.
If the course says the students do 6 practical and they only end up doing 4
that means
two aren't being done. If they pass the corse does that implie that they can
do
the practicals that they have missed.
I don't think we quite go that far here, I don't think we're that bad as
yet.
> >> I'm not entirely sure what you are getting at. A CV contains more than
>>> just which exams you've past.
>>> However to answer your question, because interviewing everybody would be
>>> too expensive. I doubt you'll find an HR person who thinks the process
>>> is perfect, but it is the most cost effective.
>>
>> Yes it's not difficult to see how cost effective it can be made.
>> But in most places I think you'll find that if you employ 1 person you'll
>> need another to do the administration.
>
> That's just clearly not true, is it? If it were true, "most places" would
> have a staff which consisted of 50% admin, and 50% other, and that's
> clearly not the case.
Take as look at the NHS, and univs.
Our admin staff have increased in number far more than any teaching staff.
>> That's, why a lot of people improve after leaving school more commonly
>> know as late starters. Not everyone needs a degree so why expect such
>> a large percentage send to universities.
>
> Absolutely; that's part of the problem with the University system.
> University attendance (as in, proportion of the population who go to
> University) has risen from about 5% in the 60s to something like 30% or so
> by the end of the 90s, and it is continuing to rise. Which, of course,
> means that standards are falling.
So degrees are worth less than they were.
> I think a large part of the problem is that Blair and his chums feel that
> non-University qualifications are somehow less valid than a degree.
Yep, although I'm not so sure it's just down to politicians.
> So where once upon a time, people trained as a plumber, and got
> certification or whatever, and could then go and work as a plumber and be
> proud of it and make a good living at it, now, they feel they ought to
> have a degree in "Domestic hygeine systems engineering" or some such.
yes a system designed by educators to suit educators.
> Which is ridiculous, of course. Vocational courses are perfectly
> respectable and valid, and don't have to have a University label attached
> to them.
So why did we get rid of all the old polytechnics then, are you saying the
people that
did this weren't;t the cleverest available, perhaps you should check their
CV
then you may actually realise what a CV really is most useful for.
H Duffy
"whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
>
> "H Duffy" <hester...@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:4rbsvqF...@mid.individual.net...
>> the quality of basic ENGLISH grammar and spelling in schools, and I
>> suggested adding grammar lessons to the curriculum.
>> Which language do you think might prove most helpful for that?
>
> Depends on the students.
In what way? Under what circumstances might a student's grasp of English
grammar and spelling be improved more by lessons in the gramar and spelling
of some language other than English, than by lessons in English grammar and
spelling?
>> Having said that, learning foreign languages can be very helpful in
>> improving a person's grasp of their own; Latin seems to have fallen off
>> the curriculum in most schools, which is a real shame, as it can be
>> extremely helpful both from the point of view of grammar and also in
>> terms of vocabulary; because quite a lot of our language comes from
>> Latin, having a grasp of Latin can often help one to understand
>> unfamiliar (Latin-based) words, and to remember how to spell them too.
>
> True but then again the employment market hasn't much use for such skills
> as reading latin.
You didn't understand anything I said in that paragraph, did you? Learnign
Latin can (pay attention now) _improve one's facility with written English_.
It can help students to (here's the science bit) _better understand English
grammar and improve English spelling_.
A lot fo subjects are not intended to be vocational studies; rather, they're
aimed at improving our overall ability to think, and to communicate.
>>> The trouble is that could hold back truly talented people.
>>
>> How so?
>
> never heard of doctors handwriting.
That's irrelevant, we're not talkign about handwriting, we're talking about
spelling and grammar. Dont' go off on a tangent.
You said that giving marks for spelling and grammar and clarity could hold
back talented people; please can you explain how?
>> than instead of, normal lessons. Perhaps we need to address the issue by
>> streaming people by ability rather than age (so you don't move from year
>> three to year four until you have passed some sort of "end of year three
>> standard"), and perhaps also we should introduce a german-style split
>> school system, so that those who are more academic can go to an academic
>> school while those who are more suited to vocational courses can study
>> them and get good, meaningful qualifications in them, without those
>> qualifications being looked down on as somehow less worth while than the
>> academic ones.
>
> We did run that system until the some idiots started to control such
> processes.
Erm, well, not to the same extent as the Germans we didn't.
>> Is it as high as 50% now? I know it went from about 5% in the 60s to
>> about 30% at the end of the 90s; it may have hit 50% by now, I don't
>> know.
>
> I'm not sure but the aim was higher than 50% they wanted to match
> what other countries were doing, but they didn't really understand their
> systems,
> and how the social structure in the UK wasn't quite the same.
Do you have a cite for any of this?
>> Well, no, not really; Universities are graded on the quality of their
>> teaching and of their research, not on the grades of their graduates.
>
> Check out how the Times ES and other such publications access
> universities.
Do you mean "assess" rather than "access"? Could you provide a cite for what
you're talking about, as you're not explaining it clearly at all?
>
>
>>> Skills should be encouraged but it should start and stop with arranging
>>> letters on a page.
>>
>> Is there a missing "not" in there?
> Yep a n't actually,
Do you see why proofreading is important, Dave? You've written exactly the
opposite of what you meant to say. If you'd read it before sending it, it
wouldn't have said the opposite of what you meant.
>
>> If so, I agree, reading and writing isn't the be-all and end-all. But
>> those are very basic, very important skills to learn.
> And some can't.
Very few people actually aren't capable of learning to communicate clearly.
There are some who have severe learning disabilities, but to be hoenst, not
being able to read and write is the least of their problems. The _vast_
majority of people can, if they actually put the effort in,a dn if they
receive decent teaching.
>> You'll be able to adapt your scaletrix set more effectively if you can
>> read the manual,
> But I can read a manual and write them as I have done, but as you'll
> notice
> I might leave words out, I don't notice I've not typed them, even after
> reading it back.
Right. And that can mean that you say exactly the opposite of what you
actually mean. Do you see why learning to write clearly is important?
>> and you'll be able to tell your friends how to do it more effectively if
>> you can write clearly and in a way which can be understood.
> That's one of the point I've been complaining about on our students
> behalf the labsheet may have correct grammar and be perfectly spelt
> but as for clarity they leave a lot to be desired because those writing
> the labsheets have never done the lab they are writing about, they have
> only done the theory and teach the theory.
Does that matter, particularly? I'm currently marking a whole load of lab
reports; I haven't personally done the research that they're writing about,
but I'm still perfectly able to grade their reports, and I'm perfectly
capable of teaching them how to do the research adn how to write the
reports.
>>> That is one of the problems making colleges Universities takes more than
>>> just
>>> a change of name.
>>
>> Absolutely.
> wow, then I wonder what genoisu thought it would.
I don't think anyone thought any such thing; what makes you believe that
someone did?
H
H Duffy
"whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
>
> "H Duffy" <hester...@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:4rbrokF...@mid.individual.net...
>> little power these days in the classroom; even if a child physically
>> assaults them, they can't even fight the kid off or restrain them in any
>> way,
>
> And we all know who's to blame for the fuckwits with their stats that
> indicate a child that receives discipline via a smack will end up a bully
> or murder
> and want respect the authority of others.
Well, no; actually it's more to do with litigation than the potential
effects of smacking. The end of corporal punishment wasn't immediately
followed by a severe down-turn in behaviour in schools, so clearly it's not
the threat of a smack that kept children from misbehaviong (or at least, not
just that).
>>Even just shouting at kids is frowned upon, and certainly humiliating or
>>embarrassing them is right out. And given that an awful lot of parents
>>will side with the children rather than the teachers, it does mean that
>>the teachers don't have many options when it comes to controlling kids.
> Yep welcome to the real world, it's been like this for 10 years or so
> if not slightly longer, the must not smack kids lot are to blame and of
> course
> all the fuckwits that supported them.
Well, no, they're not. As you say, the Anti-smacking lot have been around
for a long time, while, again, as you say, the severe disciplinary problems
that we're talking about here are, on the whole, more recent; schools in the
UK started phasing out corporal punishment in the 60s, and it was entirely
banned by 1987 (but most schools had given it up long before then). If the
abolition of corporal punishment were to blame, the problems would have
started as soon as smacking was abolished, back in the 60s, but actually,
that's not the case. So clearly the fault doesn't lie with the anti-smacking
lobby, or at least not purely with them.
>>> It doesn't take much to know how to alter the curves on a graph.
>>> Here it has been suggested that we scrap the answer 3 Qs form 6,
>>
>> Could you put that into English?
> In order to increase results we found that when the students had a choice
> of answering
> say 3 questions from 6 they didn't pick those that they could get the most
> marks for,
> but chose to answer those they could talk most about or think they knew
> best.
The implication there seems to be that the six questions didn't all carry
the same number of marks; is that correct? That is, some of them were worth
more marks than others?
>> Ah, the "form" is meant to be "from", yes? You mean that the current (or
>> recent?) version of exam papers offered them six questions, of which they
>> had to answer three, but it has now been suggested that they should be
>> offered four, and that they should have to answer all four, yes? But that
>> only three would then count toward the final grade?
> That's pretty much it, although not for exams as far as I know.
>
>
>> If that's the case, won't they just answer three of them, rather than
>> four?
> well if they are told to answer 4 and they don't should they loose marks ?
Not if the marks are only being taken from the best three answers, no; why
should they? It's ridiculous to ask them to answer more questions than they
will get marks for.
>> Certainly on one of the courses I teach, the students are supposed to
>> complete six practicals over the year, of which the best four count. The
>> majority of our students don't bother submitting all six; they just do
>> four.
>
> I wonder what an employer would think of that.
> If the course says the students do 6 practical and they only end up doing
> 4 that means
> two aren't being done. If they pass the corse does that implie that they
> can do
> the practicals that they have missed.
No, it means they've passed that course. Gettig a pass grade on a particular
practical implies that they can do (and indeed have done) that practical.
>>> Yes it's not difficult to see how cost effective it can be made.
>>> But in most places I think you'll find that if you employ 1 person
>>> you'll
>>> need another to do the administration.
>>
>> That's just clearly not true, is it? If it were true, "most places" would
>> have a staff which consisted of 50% admin, and 50% other, and that's
>> clearly not the case.
>
> Take as look at the NHS, and univs.
> Our admin staff have increased in number far more than any teaching staff.
Are 50% (or more) of your staff admin staff?
>> Absolutely; that's part of the problem with the University system.
>> University attendance (as in, proportion of the population who go to
>> University) has risen from about 5% in the 60s to something like 30% or
>> so by the end of the 90s, and it is continuing to rise. Which, of course,
>> means that standards are falling.
> So degrees are worth less than they were.
Some are, yes. But not all, because people still distinguish between degrees
from different Universities, and in different subjects. For example, in
Psychology, a degree from Oxford is worth far more to prospective employers
than a degree from UEL.
>> So where once upon a time, people trained as a plumber, and got
>> certification or whatever, and could then go and work as a plumber and be
>> proud of it and make a good living at it, now, they feel they ought to
>> have a degree in "Domestic hygeine systems engineering" or some such.
> yes a system designed by educators to suit educators.
I don't think it is designed by educators, actually; I think it's designed
by politicians.
>
>> Which is ridiculous, of course. Vocational courses are perfectly
>> respectable and valid, and don't have to have a University label attached
>> to them.
> So why did we get rid of all the old polytechnics then, are you saying the
> people that
> did this weren't;t the cleverest available,
I think they had an agenda, and that they hadn't necessarily considered all
the consequences of what they were doing.
H
Jennie Kermode
> "H Duffy" <hester...@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:4r8ucsF...@individual.net...
>> included as a Learning Outcome to other subjects, so that in order to
>> achieve full marks, a piece of writing would have to be written clearly,
>> grammatically, and with good spelling.
> The trouble is that could hold back truly talented people.
It could, but there are ways to work around that. Allowances
could be made where a student has been certified dyslexic, though this
would need to acknowledge that most dyslexic people are as capable as
anyone else of learning proper grammar.
> The other problem is a multicultural society, I doubt you saw
> the news about the Stratford school, 1`80 pupils 120 languages.
As Dag pointed out, thorough teachers with high standards can
be a very positive thing for people studying in a non-native language.
Jennie
--
Jennie Kermode jen...@innocent.com
http://www.triffid.demon.co.uk/jennie
whisky-dave
>
> "whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
> news:eit045$6u8$1@qmul...
>>
>> "H Duffy" <hester...@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:4r99iaF...@individual.net...
>>>> He wasn't into story books.
>>>
>>
>>> "Not bookish" doesn't mean "He didn't read much".
>>
>> I never said that did I.
>
> You said he wasn't into story books,
There you go see easy isn't it.
How did you manage to re-arrange what I said to say he didn't read much.
>>> He did. Look up "bookish" in the dictionary, or just type "define:
>>> bookish" into Google, and you'll see that it doesn't simply mean "reads
>>> a lot"; rather it suggests a quiet and stuious personality.
>>
>> He never thought much of the Bible did he ?
>
> On the contrary, he thought an awful lot of it, and indeed said "I have a
> fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who
> were inspired. I study the Bible daily."
>
> What gave you the impression that he didn't?
the link you gave.
He said that if God did not exist then man would have invented him.
Paraphrasing as at least I admit I may not have remembered
the text exactly.
>> he also said something about
>> "Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth"
>
> Good for him; I wholeheartedly agree with him.
Makes you wonder doesn't it, oh sorry I should have know,
you have no way of thinking for yourself.
whisky-dave
Which in itself proves nothing. Yes the top few % will hope to go to MIT
etc.
whisky-dave
>
> "whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
> news:eiqe4e$15q$1@qmul...
>> as I say we need to know what';s happening in the real world
>
> So we need to look at, say, how many people apply to Universities like
> oxford and Cambridge, and how many apply to, say, UEL.
>
> And if you actually look at those real world figures, you'll find that
> Oxford and Cambridge have _far_ more applicants than they can handle,
> while UEL has far far fewer.
>
> Which suggests that your theory needs rethinking; actually, better
> universities with higher standards are more desireable than those with
> lower standards.
Yes they are that's why one Oxford lecturer was charging £30,000 and he'd
guarantee a student a place.
You'll also notice that these most wanted univ. also have higher funding.
I went on a coursde with someone that did basically the same job as me but
at cambridge.
He had a budget of £100,000 for equipment every years. we don;t actually get
a budget at all
this year we splashed out and spend nearly £4,000 on lab equipment.
>> Studetns go to the univ. with the higher pass rate stats not the lower.
>> That's the real world.
>
> No, Dave, it isn't. That's your theory, but it is contradicted by the
> facts.
No it's not.
Check the 'social standard of say the top univ. with your UEL.
I bet most of yuor studetns have a job that they have to do in order to
get through univ. I don';t think that is true of some of the top univ.
whisky-dave
"Superfly Silverman" <not...@spamguard.com> wrote in message
news:zN34h.232$mR4...@tornado.texas.rr.com...
> You are not very knowledgeable on this. People go to universities with
> prestige,
>ones that are viewed as having the best graduates. These
> schools are going to be tougher to get through because the schools know
> that more will be lined up to enter. The university in the city I live has
> people waiting to get in and they have tough standards.
Which one is that then ?
whisky-dave
>
> "whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
> news:eit3d8$82d$1@qmul...
>>
>> "H Duffy" <hester...@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:4rbsvqF...@mid.individual.net...
>>> Let's see if you can work it out, Dave; you asked how one might improve
>>> the quality of basic ENGLISH grammar and spelling in schools, and I
>>> suggested adding grammar lessons to the curriculum.
>>> Which language do you think might prove most helpful for that?
>>
>> Depends on the students.
>
> In what way? Under what circumstances might a student's grasp of English
> grammar and spelling be improved more by lessons in the gramar and
> spelling of some language other than English, than by lessons in English
> grammar and spelling?
You yourself said an understanding of Latin could improve understanding
of the English language. I'd also assume if you were studying Egyptology
then an understanding of Egyptian may well be an advantage.
And perhaps and understandign of Hebrew might help to understand
the original Bible scripts. History scholars might find anciant languages
useful too.
You've even answered your own Q below.
>
>>> Having said that, learning foreign languages can be very helpful in
>>> improving a person's grasp of their own; Latin seems to have fallen off
>>> the curriculum in most schools, which is a real shame, as it can be
>>> extremely helpful both from the point of view of grammar and also in
>>> terms of vocabulary; because quite a lot of our language comes from
>>> Latin, having a grasp of Latin can often help one to understand
>>> unfamiliar (Latin-based) words, and to remember how to spell them too.
>
> A lot fo subjects are not intended to be vocational studies; rather,
> they're aimed at improving our overall ability to think, and to
> communicate.
That is true hobbies and interests can also do that.
>>> than instead of, normal lessons. Perhaps we need to address the issue by
>>> streaming people by ability rather than age (so you don't move from year
>>> three to year four until you have passed some sort of "end of year three
>>> standard"), and perhaps also we should introduce a german-style split
>>> school system, so that those who are more academic can go to an academic
>>> school while those who are more suited to vocational courses can study
>>> them and get good, meaningful qualifications in them, without those
>>> qualifications being looked down on as somehow less worth while than the
>>> academic ones.
>>
>> We did run that system until the some idiots started to control such
>> processes.
>
> Erm, well, not to the same extent as the Germans we didn't.
yeah but don't forget who won the war. ;-)
>>> Is it as high as 50% now? I know it went from about 5% in the 60s to
>>> about 30% at the end of the 90s; it may have hit 50% by now, I don't
>>> know.
>>
>> I'm not sure but the aim was higher than 50% they wanted to match
>> what other countries were doing, but they didn't really understand their
>> systems,
>> and how the social structure in the UK wasn't quite the same.
>
> Do you have a cite for any of this?
you could look yourself but I actually remember some of the ideas
and aims being banded about by government spokes persons.
>>> Well, no, not really; Universities are graded on the quality of their
>>> teaching and of their research, not on the grades of their graduates.
>>
>> Check out how the Times ES and other such publications access
>> universities.
>
> Do you mean "assess" rather than "access"? Could you provide a cite for
> what you're talking about, as you're not explaining it clearly at all?
You don't have teaching quality assessments ?
>>>> Skills should be encouraged but it should start and stop with arranging
>>>> letters on a page.
>>>
>>> Is there a missing "not" in there?
>> Yep a n't actually,
>
> Do you see why proofreading is important, Dave? You've written exactly the
> opposite of what you meant to say. If you'd read it before sending it, it
> wouldn't have said the opposite of what you meant.
But you worked it out didn;'t you.
>>> If so, I agree, reading and writing isn't the be-all and end-all. But
>>> those are very basic, very important skills to learn.
>> And some can't.
>
> Very few people actually aren't capable of learning to communicate
> clearly. There are some who have severe learning disabilities, but to be
> hoenst, not being able to read and write is the least of their problems.
> The _vast_ majority of people can, if they actually put the effort in,a dn
> if they receive decent teaching.
There's another problem in itself.
>>> You'll be able to adapt your scaletrix set more effectively if you can
>>> read the manual,
>> But I can read a manual and write them as I have done, but as you'll
>> notice
>> I might leave words out, I don't notice I've not typed them, even after
>> reading it back.
>
> Right. And that can mean that you say exactly the opposite of what you
> actually mean. Do you see why learning to write clearly is important?
Yes, and also reading clearly of course.
>>> and you'll be able to tell your friends how to do it more effectively if
>>> you can write clearly and in a way which can be understood.
>> That's one of the point I've been complaining about on our students
>> behalf the labsheet may have correct grammar and be perfectly spelt
>> but as for clarity they leave a lot to be desired because those writing
>> the labsheets have never done the lab they are writing about, they have
>> only done the theory and teach the theory.
>
> Does that matter, particularly?
Yes I think it does, well in Electroincs it does.
>I'm currently marking a whole load of lab reports; I haven't personally
>done the research that they're writing about, but I'm still perfectly able
>to grade their reports, and I'm perfectly capable of teaching them how to
>do the research adn how to write the reports.
But do the reults matter, or is it just an excercise.
>>>> That is one of the problems making colleges Universities takes more
>>>> than just
>>>> a change of name.
>>>
>>> Absolutely.
>> wow, then I wonder what genoisu thought it would.
>
> I don't think anyone thought any such thing; what makes you believe that
> someone did?
So what made them change it about ?
whisky-dave
"Jared" <bi...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1162851027.9...@h54g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
> ReVulse wrote:
>> "Threads" ... Nuclear attack ... Sheffield ...
>> ...speak a very basic type of English due to there being virtually no
>> Education avenues...
>
> Surely nothing to do with the nuclear attack?
could be a typo we used to have a department of nuclear engineering,
we even had our own reactor, shhhh though it's still about I think.
anyway we always refered to it as unclear engineering ;-)
whisky-dave
> whisky-dave wrote:
>> "Dag" <dag...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:eipnh...@news1.newsguy.com...
>> It doesn't take much to know how to alter the curves on a graph.
>> Here it has been suggested that we scrap the answer 3 Qs form 6,
>> as students don;t appear to know what the best Q to answer is for them.
>> We have got better overall marks by getting them to answer all 4 Qs
>> (yes a reduced number) and then the marker selects the best 3 Qs that
>> have been answered.
>
> You know what I was saying about what good is knowing stuff if you can't
> communicate it? Well that above paragraph perfectly illustrated my point.
> I have no idea what you just said.
Well it's not that difficult.
>> It migth be difficult to prove how it happens but I'm sure studetns are
>> leaving
>> understanding less, knowing less and being less capable than they were 5
>> years ago
>> but the grade structure seems to indicate we have more good pass marks
>> than we used to.
>
> Are we talking about highschool or university here?
well everywhere from what I can make out, but I am talking mainly about
university.
> Because while it's probably true for highshool, I'm not convinced it's
> true for most university degrees.
really, I suggest you ask around then.
Evebn Hester agrees with me to a certain point on this.
>> That's, why a lot of people improve after leaving school more commonly
>> know as late starters. Not everyone needs a degree so why expect such
>> a large percentage send to universities.
>
> Here I actually agree with you. We need to stop this idea that everybody
> should go to university. What I'd like to see are more 1-2 year
> vocational schools, that focus on purely job related skills in one
> specific field. Keep the theory to an absolute minimum and focus on the
> practical as much as possible. Leave universities for those with a more
> academic interest.
Yes that's what I did, but now everything is going over to software
and the student just don;t understand hardly anything about hardware.
whisky-dave
>
> "whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
> news:eit3dt$82h$1@qmul...
>> And we all know who's to blame for the fuckwits with their stats that
>> indicate a child that receives discipline via a smack will end up a bully
>> or murder
>> and want respect the authority of others.
>
> Well, no; actually it's more to do with litigation than the potential
> effects of smacking. The end of corporal punishment wasn't immediately
> followed by a severe down-turn in behaviour in schools, so clearly it's
> not the threat of a smack that kept children from misbehaviong (or at
> least, not just that).
Why would you expect such a turn down. These things take time a generation
in this case would be a settling time.
And why just refer to corporal punishment , I'm talking about parents
smacking
their kids not headmasters bending little boys over their knee.
>> if not slightly longer, the must not smack kids lot are to blame and of
>> course
>> all the fuckwits that supported them.
>
> Well, no, they're not. As you say, the Anti-smacking lot have been around
> for a long time,.
What would you say is a long time ?
> while, again, as you say, the severe disciplinary problems that we're
> talking about here are, on the whole, more recent; schools in the UK
> started phasing out corporal punishment in the 60s, and it was entirely
> banned by 1987 (but most schools had given it up long before then). If the
> abolition of corporal punishment were to blame, the problems would have
> started as soon as smacking was abolished, back in the 60s, but actually,
> that's not the case. So clearly the fault doesn't lie with the
> anti-smacking lobby, or at least not purely with them.
Do you really think the stats are that easy to explain.
corporal punishment may have been phased out as a term, but I've seen
smacking going on throughout that time, and still today.
>> In order to increase results we found that when the students had a choice
>> of answering
>> say 3 questions from 6 they didn't pick those that they could get the
>> most marks for,
>> but chose to answer those they could talk most about or think they knew
>> best.
>
> The implication there seems to be that the six questions didn't all carry
> the same number of marks; is that correct? That is, some of them were
> worth more marks than others?
No that wouldn't make much sense would it,. any more than muitichoice
questions
each being worth a different mark.
>>> Ah, the "form" is meant to be "from", yes? You mean that the current (or
>>> recent?) version of exam papers offered them six questions, of which
>>> they had to answer three, but it has now been suggested that they should
>>> be offered four, and that they should have to answer all four, yes? But
>>> that only three would then count toward the final grade?
>> That's pretty much it, although not for exams as far as I know.
>>
>>
>>> If that's the case, won't they just answer three of them, rather than
>>> four?
>> well if they are told to answer 4 and they don't should they loose marks
>> ?
>
> Not if the marks are only being taken from the best three answers, no; why
> should they? It's ridiculous to ask them to answer more questions than
> they will get marks for.
It is, but if they do, does that show intelligence, that is would a student
that
answer 4 questions when the paper says answer 3 be thought of as
more intelligent because they didn't understand the instructions they were
given.
>> Take as look at the NHS, and univs.
>> Our admin staff have increased in number far more than any teaching
>> staff.
>
> Are 50% (or more) of your staff admin staff?
depends what you mean by my staff.
>> So degrees are worth less than they were.
>
> Some are, yes. But not all, because people still distinguish between
> degrees from different Universities, and in different subjects. For
> example, in Psychology, a degree from Oxford is worth far more to
> prospective employers than a degree from UEL.
So degrees aren't about a specific level of education then.
so if two people have degrees of the same subject and both have a 2:1
then they aren't necessarily equal as far as the cert. goes.
>>> So where once upon a time, people trained as a plumber, and got
>>> certification or whatever, and could then go and work as a plumber and
>>> be proud of it and make a good living at it, now, they feel they ought
>>> to have a degree in "Domestic hygeine systems engineering" or some such.
>> yes a system designed by educators to suit educators.
>
> I don't think it is designed by educators, actually; I think it's designed
> by politicians.
Do many polititions have degrees in politics my ex-school teacher friend has
one in Politics and one in English.
>>> Which is ridiculous, of course. Vocational courses are perfectly
>>> respectable and valid, and don't have to have a University label
>>> attached to them.
>> So why did we get rid of all the old polytechnics then, are you saying
>> the people that
>> did this weren't;t the cleverest available,
>
> I think they had an agenda, and that they hadn't necessarily considered
> all the consequences of what they were doing.
I wonder what idiots employed those that did this, what could possibly have
been on their CVs or perhaps at the job interview.
I wondered if anyone actually checked.
It seems rather strange to me that these people were employed
who would be stupid enough ?
H Duffy
"whisky-dave" <whisk...@final.front.ear> wrote in message
>
> "H Duffy" <hester...@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:4refgnF...@mid.individual.net...
>>
>> On the contrary, he thought an awful lot of it, and indeed said "I have a
>> fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who
>> were inspired. I study the Bible daily."
>>
>> What gave you the impression that he didn't?
>
> the link you gave.
>
> He said that if God did not exist then man would have invented him.
> Paraphrasing as at least I admit I may not have remembered
> the text exactly.
That doesn't mean he didn't believe in God, or that he didn't think much of
the Bible.
In fact, as you can see from that quote, he was a devout Christian and a
Biblical scholar.
Do you see that perhaps you've misunderstood what he meant by saying that if
God didn't exist, we would have to invent him?
H