Raging here, raging...
Primary school pupils should learn how to blog and use internet sites like Twitter and Wikipedia and spend less time studying history, it is claimed.
What? What? WHAT? Are they kidding me? Are they frakkin' kidding me here? I can't even begin to... RAGE. RAGE. What the fucking fuck?
*boggles*
I'm sorry for the eye-rolling and the foaming of the mouth rage here, but I just cannot believe this. How can you...for fuck's sake, how can you begin to think that Twitter and bloody MySpace are important than our own country's history? How? It just...I cannot even begin to underestimate how important history is. It's not just dead and dusty facts and figures. It's important. It explains how we are, who we got here, where we're going. It puts into context so many of the world events whose ramifications are still being felt today. How can you just toss that aside in favour of fucking MySpace?
Yes, media communications and ICT have their place, and I'm not denying that, but I don't think that place is in the primary school curriculum. If you have to shove history aside in favour of something, let it be, you know, literacy. I see kids at college every day with the most basic reading levels, kids of sixteen, seventeen who are struggling to read the kinds of books I was reading at six or seven. I know secondary school teachers who are having to spend half of their time teaching kids the kind of reading skills they should have learned in primary school, and then getting blasted by the government and watchdogs for not being able to get these kids up to SAT and GCSE level. Not that it matters because they just lower the passrates, because God forbid any child should suffer the indignity of failing.
This is quite apart from the sheer idiocy of having the government having this kind of influence over the curriculum at all. I am very uncomfortable with any government interfering in what can and can't be taught to children. What the hell do politicians know about teaching? Hell, you wouldn't get dentists making laws or doctors formulating military strategy, so why should politicians have any say in the educational curriculum?
Gah. Angry here. Can you tell?
What? What? WHAT? Are they kidding me? Are they frakkin' kidding me here? I can't even begin to... RAGE. RAGE. What the fucking fuck?
*boggles*
I'm sorry for the eye-rolling and the foaming of the mouth rage here, but I just cannot believe this. How can you...for fuck's sake, how can you begin to think that Twitter and bloody MySpace are important than our own country's history? How? It just...I cannot even begin to underestimate how important history is. It's not just dead and dusty facts and figures. It's important. It explains how we are, who we got here, where we're going. It puts into context so many of the world events whose ramifications are still being felt today. How can you just toss that aside in favour of fucking MySpace?
Yes, media communications and ICT have their place, and I'm not denying that, but I don't think that place is in the primary school curriculum. If you have to shove history aside in favour of something, let it be, you know, literacy. I see kids at college every day with the most basic reading levels, kids of sixteen, seventeen who are struggling to read the kinds of books I was reading at six or seven. I know secondary school teachers who are having to spend half of their time teaching kids the kind of reading skills they should have learned in primary school, and then getting blasted by the government and watchdogs for not being able to get these kids up to SAT and GCSE level. Not that it matters because they just lower the passrates, because God forbid any child should suffer the indignity of failing.
This is quite apart from the sheer idiocy of having the government having this kind of influence over the curriculum at all. I am very uncomfortable with any government interfering in what can and can't be taught to children. What the hell do politicians know about teaching? Hell, you wouldn't get dentists making laws or doctors formulating military strategy, so why should politicians have any say in the educational curriculum?
Gah. Angry here. Can you tell?