[LJ2ME] The AfterMATH
If you haven't heard by now, the latest water cooler talking point is that parents have been raising contention about the difficult PSLE Mathematics paper this year that stumped their children.
From the flood of letters to the forum pages, the children were variously described as "traumatised" and "disillusioned", just two of the choice descriptives thrown up, by one particular question that was "unsolvable".
I feel my age and can see where the generation gap comes into play for in my day, if I had done the same, my parents would have shrugged and said I didn't study hard enough. I'd have been lucky the rod was spared. How pampered and molly-coddled children are these days.
What strikes me as odd however is that as Mathematically challenged these children were that they were impaired by that one head-scratcher, they are compensated by an otherwise remarkable gift of total recall, where their memory enables them to remember the entire question verbatim in order for them to report the discrepancy at home. So after even Daddy and Mummy are unable to solve the question, out comes the indignation and in goes the complaint.
Which begs one to ask, if it was this only question that your child couldn't answer, and he managed to nail the rest, so at most he gets 85, 90 marks? That's still going to get him his A or A*... The composite scores are never released anyway, so what difference does it make? What do they want? Special indication on their certificates that they were one out of only x number of students that got the most difficult question correct?
As the parents write, the PSLE is only an indicator of secondary school selection, so why make it so difficult, as the results would have no standing beyond the posting exercise. Similarly, why make such a ruckus and rumpus over the same?
Well, from what I've heard of the question, yes, it was quite a poser. And I couldn't do it. But I certainly didn't go running and crying to Mummy...
From the flood of letters to the forum pages, the children were variously described as "traumatised" and "disillusioned", just two of the choice descriptives thrown up, by one particular question that was "unsolvable".
I feel my age and can see where the generation gap comes into play for in my day, if I had done the same, my parents would have shrugged and said I didn't study hard enough. I'd have been lucky the rod was spared. How pampered and molly-coddled children are these days.
What strikes me as odd however is that as Mathematically challenged these children were that they were impaired by that one head-scratcher, they are compensated by an otherwise remarkable gift of total recall, where their memory enables them to remember the entire question verbatim in order for them to report the discrepancy at home. So after even Daddy and Mummy are unable to solve the question, out comes the indignation and in goes the complaint.
Which begs one to ask, if it was this only question that your child couldn't answer, and he managed to nail the rest, so at most he gets 85, 90 marks? That's still going to get him his A or A*... The composite scores are never released anyway, so what difference does it make? What do they want? Special indication on their certificates that they were one out of only x number of students that got the most difficult question correct?
As the parents write, the PSLE is only an indicator of secondary school selection, so why make it so difficult, as the results would have no standing beyond the posting exercise. Similarly, why make such a ruckus and rumpus over the same?
Well, from what I've heard of the question, yes, it was quite a poser. And I couldn't do it. But I certainly didn't go running and crying to Mummy...