What is taught at school now?

[ericmark]

What is taught at school now? I remember when I was at school being the proud owner of an AVO multiminor and at home doing what we were taught in Science at school although only boys were taught science but where one sees the comment that they don’t know what a multi-meter is I start to wonder what has gone wrong.

I don’t ever remember even though I took an interest in all electrical things ever asking or being asked a question to or from a teacher where it seemed the teacher did not know the correct answer.

However by time my children were going to school I heard many times from my children how their teachers had got it wrong. My children girls and boy could work out what size fuse to fit in a plug however seemed the teachers had a problem with this and could not accept it when my daughter looking at a camping kettle (Under 1000w) selected a 5A fuse. And my son was told off for laughing at the teacher when asked what were the two types of transistor and was told he was wrong when he said it was Field Effect and Bi-polar. Seems teacher wanted PNP and NPN.

Looking at some of the comments on here I begin to wonder what does go on in school? Now with another two years to what I had to do they should be much better. Some it seems are. Having tried to brush up on my maths I was shocked at the level taught at GCSE they knew stuff I never touched in “O” level however they did not seem to know how to use a slide rule.

Yet when I went to study AS level photography I was worried about having enough back ground knowledge as I had never done an “O” level or even CSE in photography but found the school leavers were completely clueless.

As electricians we expect Joe Public not to know what the B on a B16 MCB means but I would have expected them to know approx amps given watts of an appliance. OK maybe not the formula but 3000W = 13A and 5A fuse for less than 1000W appliance but it seems they have very little knowledge derived from school.

So is it no longer taught or have people just forgotten. What is taught in school? Seems very little! Most important thing in the area I live to be able to get a job is to be able to drive. How this can be not taught in school I don’t know? OK those who live in towns may not need it. And when I was a lad we had Buses and Trains that could get one to work on time. Dr Beecham put pay to that.

How much of what we tell people goes right over their heads. And is what we try to tell them dangerous as a result?

 

[ban-all-sheds]

 

[joinerjohn]

When I was at secondary school (very early 70's), our science teacher was really into showing us how old valve tv's could give you a nasty shock. Even holding an insulated screwdriver near the end of one valve and showing us the arc of electricity coming off it.
Our Maths teacher was way ahead of his time. He built a simple computer in a cupboard. Had us soldering little logic circuits (and, nand, nor gates etc.)

It had a simple light display on the front and gave you the answers to what it was programmed to do in binary.
He used to tell us that sometime in the future, we'd all have computers and they would have tv screens with proper words and pictures on them. He even predicted the internet, speech recognition software and computers getting smaller and more powerful.

I'd love to be able to go back in time and take my computer/mobile phone and digital camera with me to show him.

 

[ericmark]

So are we blaming the National Curriculum? Teachers now have to turn out loads of the same even if they don't know that subject?

 

[LoveRocket]

Are you auditioning for "Grumpy old men"?

 

[ban-all-sheds]

He even predicted the internet

That was already going by the early '70s....

speech recognition software

So was that. OK - not very effective, but he wasn't predicting anything hitherto unknown.

and computers getting smaller and more powerful.

Which they had already been doing for decades - the IBM mainframe was into its second generation, minicomputers using integrated circuits were on sale and Intel had produced the first microprocessor. Gordon Moore's prediction of IC complexity doubling every 2 years was made in 1965 and had already been termed "Moore's Law", Alan Turing's prediction of computer memory sizes being into GB by 2000 was made in 1950...

For sure he sounds like a very knowledgeable and clued-up man, but I suspect he could have read all of his "predictions" in the pages of Scientific American and/or New Scientist and/or Communications of the ACM....

I'd love to be able to go back in time and take my computer/mobile phone and digital camera with me to show him.

Any idea when he died?

How old was he anyway? Early '70s was 40 years ago or less - he could well still be alive.

On an index-linked final salary pension

If you find a way to go back in time, just go back a little bit and take some lottery numbers with you

 

[maltaron]

When my son was at school about 15 years ago he had homework to to for his craft class. This was to name the woodworking planes laid out on a bench, I named them for him and he came back the next evening with only 20% correct!! I sent a note to the teacher to inform him that I was a timed served carpenter & joiner with top marks in the country for my C & G finals, and requested he gave my son full marks. He replied that the answers he had used were in his teaching notes. So it seems its not always the teachers but the numpties who write the guidance notes.

 

[joinerjohn]

BAS, I realise that our Maths teacher was clued up on computers ( this was in 1970/71) and that he probably knew about ARPANET, but he said that computers would be connected to each other worldwide and we'd be able to share information with others on the other side of the world. (as far as I know, ARPANET only connected several universities in the USA at that time)
I'm not sure whether speech recognition software had been developed that early in computers, but a lot of what he said has come true. By the way, he was about 63 yrs old when I left school in 1972, so unless he's one of the oldest people alive in the UK today, I assume he's gone to that great blackboard jungle in the sky.

PS , if I did find a way to go back in time, I surely would take the winning lottery numbers for a triple rollover with me to the very week.

 

[HERTS P&D]

Last November my little boy aged 9 wanted me to buy some fireworks, as it was 5th November. So I asked him why we do fireworks. His reply was "I don't know daddy". So I asked him who Guy Fawkes was, to my surprise he didn't know. I then asked him what work he was doing at school......."we are learning about different religions, and Diwali"

I then asked him who Winston Churchill was, he also didn't know this name either.

It appears that it is no longer part of the curriculum to learn about the 1st and 2nd World wars, or to know about Guy Fawkes. Is it wrong of me to be a little sad about this when he can tell me all about foreign religious festivals without a moments hesitation.......?

Andy

 

[LoveRocket]

This is like reading the bloody Daily Heil.....

 

[HERTS P&D]

With a name like Love Rocket................................are you a reporter from the Daily Heil..........?

All of this in an Electrical forum.........................SHOCKING!

 

[flameport]

What is taught in schools these days - apparently that unless it involves using a computer, it isn't worth knowing about.

 

[leeroy201986]

they don't seem to teach anything worth knowing thats for sure.

I left secondary school a mere 8 years ago and I had teachers who could not grasp the English language try to teach me subjects like chemistry.

College was just as bad, the entry requirements for c & g 2360 was meant to be at least 3 high grade GCSE in science, maths and English yet they were letting people on who had no GCSEs at all. 80% of the class had to do level 1 & 2 key skills along side the course. I had to do 1 session of key skill maths with them even tho i had the required grades.

In that 1 session they were trying to teach prime numbers and I was made to look like the fool as i was arguing the fact that 2 was a prime number.

Whats really worrying is from what i hear it is getting worse.

 

[AndrewDavie]

TBF, they only have so much time in the day, and there's so much junk that they keep adding to the curriculum, so something has to give.
And not all the blame can be given to the govt or the teachers, it's also the quality of the parents and the qualities of the students. It's always a combination of them so we can't just blame one or even two things.

I don't think they are doing the kids any favours by making exams easier, and there's a very simple way of solving it - The Bell Curve.
Try to make your exam so that most of them get 50%, 15% get A's, and 15% fail outright. So year to year, it won't change their grade if the exam is a little harder or easier.

 

[flameport]

80% of the class had to do level 1 & 2 key skills along side the course.

All of that 80% should not have been allowed on the course in the first place.
They were either useless at maths/english/whatever else, in which case they have no hope of understanding electrical theory.
Or they were wasters who couldn't be bothered.
Either way, they would be a huge burden to those on the course who actually wanted to learn something.

There are far too many grades, and it seems even people who are in reality utterly useless at a subject can get some form of low grade.
What should happen is the pass rate for an exam should be set sufficiently high - e.g. minimum of 70% correct answers - and anyone not reaching this FAILS and is told this.

Giving people some low grade like F or G (or even 'U') is pointless. These grades have no value whatsoever, and people who get them are given some false impression that they have actually achieved something.