The "problems" with our educational system

[AChimp]

The problem that's happening here is that there's too much one-on-one evaluation. In the last few years, early grade school teachers have been forced to evaluate each child independently, rather than using a test to see how the entire class is doing overall. Thus, each child gets attention for a little while as the class goes largely ignored.

Of course, it should also be noted that the vast majority of teachers are complaining about this process, but they are required to do it or they will loose their jobs. The school divisions here hired some egghead learning coordinators with psychology degrees to come up with a new action plan, and the fact that this failure has stuck around so long just shows that a few people somewhere don't want to admit they are capable of making a mistake.

Standards testing here is still relatively low compared to other places I've heard about. I was one of the first groups to hit all the initial tests--I suppose that makes my class the guinea pig. We had a general science test in Grade 4 (which they have now moved to Grade 3), and a Math test in Grade 9. In order to graduate, you must pass a provincial English and Math exam, both of which are ridiculously easy. There's probably more testing now, but I don't really know about it; I've been out of the grade school loop for quite a few years now.

One of the problems with poor reading levels is the techniques used to teach reading to young kids. Like I said before, I was among one of the first groups to go through the "new system," but my Grade 1 teacher was an old woman who'd been teaching for 40 years.

We all learned how to read phonetically, as I'm sure most of the older Mockers here did. You know, sounding words out and stuff.

Now they teach it more like memorization. "C, A, T is cat. Remember it." I was taught the difference between a hard C and a soft C, "at" is pronouced "aaht," etc.