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Today's Youth

I live in Australia and it's amazing how today's standards of mathematics,grammer and spelling have been allowed to slide down the scale where children these days are finishing high school not much smarter then when they started school.
The sad thing is that we make allowances for it in society, we see it as acceptable for today's society. Think people these are children are our future lawyers, doctors, teachers etc.

Lets look at an example, the other day I brought an item for say $465 I gave the young person $500, now the simple answer is $35 change 'NO' I had too wait while she found a calculator to work it out.

Todays spelling is disgusting, (now I don't profess to be the greatest at spelling but I try my best) but with texting theses days on the phones kids actually think some of these shortcuts(only way I can describe them) are actually the correct way to spell and it's not getting any better.

I know parents who say why should their kids have to do homework that's what school is for, come on think about it, in today's society if you want to get somewhere you have to pay your dues, put the work in, that extra 20 minutes of unpaid work. School is the same you want to get somewhere you have to earn it, put the time in.
Then we get the attitude of parents 'well we're both not the brightest so don't expect too much', HELL where does that leave the kid, next to no chance of achieving high marks at school to improve themselves for later on in life.

Do we blame the government for removing the old teaching methods for the advancement of technology or can there be a balance where our children learn to spell, learn to calculate figures in their minds.
Do we blame the parents for not putting the time into helping their own children improve in life,
or
do we say this is the future get over it and move on, you'll probably have a doctor look after you one day who can't add 35+65, can't spell 'thanks' because to them it's 'thx'.

Posted by Randomthoughtsofreality on 2009-07-10 08:04:21 | Rating:

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I carnt agree moore. Speling has deklined in recent years...sorry, just a bit of joke there...I can spell as well as the next man or woman! But to be serious, it's not just in Australia, but in the UK as well. Educational standards are dropping faster than a speeding bullet. Our government point proudly to the league tables and tell us standards have never been higher...just look at the exam results..hardly a student fails his/her GCSE's. But the simple truth is they have made the exams so easy to pass that an eight year old from the seventies could have passed those exams.

When I looked at the Maths papers for GCSE and compared to the exams I sat for GCE 'O' Level I am scared. Scared because the maths content is so shallow. It's barely adequate for the modern technological world. People might say, well why do we need to do mental arithmetic when we have electronic calculators? Surely knowing how to perform the calculation is performed is more important than actually throwing up the answer? True on both accounts except that electronic calaculators lead mental laziness and sloppiness. What do you do when you are in a situation in which a calcuator is not available...count on your fingers...heaven forbid!

Our governments have to return us to traditional teaching methods and stiffen up the exams and get out of this politically correct thinking that childeren must be allowed to fail or feel failure.

We need to have failure in our lives to learn to deal with it and to use it to spur us on to greater efforts and better performances.

Anyway, sorry for the rant but I couldn't agree more with the sentiment!

Posted by ignominius on 2009-07-10 08:50:00