[LINK] Re: Link Digest, Vol 175, Issue 9

[Stewart Fist]

Glen replied to Daniel:
> 
>> Strange things are going on with our society, I wonder if they can be traced
>> to
>> a decline in education standards in the west over the last 3 or 4 decades, or
>> if there's a different cause.
> 
> You are pulling my chain, right :-)
> 
> My eldest is in Year 12 in South Australia. Her tasks for the weekend:
> to write a short essay evaluating the pre-Revolutionary reforms
> in France and Russia; revise DNA variability and self-repair;
> collate and analyse the survey she conducted on social attitudes
> and behaviours towards charity and social justice.

I totally agree with Glen.  I was at school in the decades after the War (as
in WWII, not WWI) and the standard of teaching was unbelievably bad, and the
curriculum even worse. We had one Lithuanian teacher who could hardly speak
English, and our German teach was French, but he'd learned a smattering of
German during the occupation.


I've been involved in education and I've seen a steady improvement in
teaching quality in the last few decades -- with the exception, perhaps of a
decline in English (which I failed repeatedly in school, before becoming a
full-time writer) and such pendantic crafts as speling, which Linkers will
apreciate, don't figure high on my personal adgenda.



-- 
Stewart Fist, writer, journalist, film-maker
70 Middle Harbour Road, LINDFIELD, 2070, NSW, Australia
Ph +61 (2) 9416 7458