Vocal Voices

The latest idea from the great and the good is to get 60 or so maths teachers from China to come and teach our maths teachers how to teach maths. This, it is said, will sort out the country's dismal performance in maths.

I must have missed something, but I though that the job of our teacher training colleges was to teach students how to teach their subjects; and that those students could only qualify as teachers if they were competent to teach.

Could it be that the Chinese are better at maths (other subjects are available) because their education philosophy is different from ours?

The problem is that the people now coming into teaching are themselves the product of poor teaching As long as 25 years ago I was rolling my eyes at the poor standard of the homework being set for my eldest "Chris they haven't corrected your spelling here" "No need Mum, it isn't an English homework, they only correct spellings in English......."

Not that I think we want to ape the Chinese model of teaching - don't they 'cram' the children and have them at their desks for ridiculously long hours?

What is wrong to going back to the models of teaching used when we were children - we all seem to be reasonably well edumacated

Or could it be that discipline is better and back-up from parents is far better?

In China, you mean?

Probably a fair element of that too!

The Chinese teachers are coming here to teach our already qualified maths teachers how to teach their subject effectively.

Surely if they do not know how to teach then they shouldn't be teaching, and that goes for any subject.

It's all part of Gove's love affair with the Far East.
There is great pressure on students in places like Korea. Korea also has the highest rate of child suicide in the world.
Is that what we want?
Or might we care to look at how they do things in Scandinavia or Germany, where the child doesn't start in formal education until six or seven? No one ever asks Mr Gove this question.

Absolutely right Cromwell!

By all accounts we rate 28th in the educational survey for maths. It makes one wonder "if the Truth were known" what other subjects we have been so shockingly down graded in..We are aware that corect spelin ain't considired . Nesacery today in the school curriculum
It also makes one wonder just how many teenagers are qualified to enter University. This also goes for the teachers.
We are constantly informed of the lack of communication skills by companies who are willing to employ these "Graduates" .

Rodo wrote:Or could it be that discipline is better and back-up from parents is far better?

Absolutely right. Rodo. Move to the top of the class.

Of course, discipline is now a dirty word in our country - and we are witnessing the inevitable results.

The education I received back in the 1930s was absolutely marvelous - and that was at a state school.
I never went to secondary school but continued my professional education at night school, and later on
by day release at a technical college. But the successful progress of my career throughout my working
life was, without a doubt, a consequence of the basic education I received between the ages of 4 and
14, plus the support and involvement of both my parents.

I first became aware of the inadequacies of the State education system way back in the 1980s, when I
discovered, to my amazement, that the curriculum at the Technical college, where we sent our young
apprentices on a day-release engineering course, included (surprise, surprise) compulsory English lessons.
I wonder if that subject is now compulsory at Teacher Training Colleges? It should be.

Tony Blair's "Education, Education, Education," didn't do much, did it?

I still have a report from when I went to the Infants school in the 1940's
There were separate exams for English, Spelling, Arithmatic and other subjects. They were all taught by the same teacher, a lady. We sat in rows facing the front with the blackboard behind the teacher.
I can still recite the 12 times table.
Rote learning made you remember basic information in many subjects.