HRS,

Well let’s just leave it at that. I know nothing about factories and you know even less about teaching and schools.

I'll let you whinge to someone else until they too become frustrated with your repetitive and boring Fordist analogies.

Your poor defence and evasion of key questions put to you by myself and others is evidence enough for me to know that you not only intellectually challenged to engage with the topic at hand but too stubborn to admit it.

Perhaps this is the reason other teachers gave up on you? You're just a know it all who knows nothing but who then blames schools and teachers for this lack of self reflection. But to you it makes complete sense, poor thing.

Perhaps some intensive cognitive psychotherapy? Sorry, it’s all I can think of.

Rainier,
All you have offered is the suggestion that parents are no good. That is just excuse making but not problem solving.

As far as my teaching qualifications go, I am also a qualified trainer after undertaking a very elaborate TAFE course that qualified me to become a TAFE teacher. Many other supervisors in industry have that type of qualification as a basic or first level qualification.

I have supervised many people doing an extensive variety of tasks, and I have been involved in many projects within industry.

I have also been on 2 P&C committees over a period of about 8 years.

As far as I am concerned, the school systems are very backward and non-sophisticated. Many of the teaching systems I have see being used in schools (from primary schools through to Universities) were tried and eventually discarded a long time ago by companies outside of the education system. Those same systems were found to be too ineffective and non-reliable to be used within industry.

You have offered nothing Rainier, and from what I have seen, any teachers who are full of themselves and want to live in their own little worlds and are not interested in continuous improvement are very much a part of the reason why students have not improved their marks in now 30 years.

Also if you are a male teacher in the education system, you are an endangered species.

HRS - Several things.

Firstly, schools are teaching CHILDREN. And they are not just teaching them process A then process B. They are teaching them how to figure out what process A is, how it might be better, if there is another way of understanding it, and is process B then the next logical step, or is there another way the idea could go?

Children are not little economic cyphers, they are full of imagination and personality, and different goals and aims. People in a factory have a single aim - to complete their job in the most productive manner and to get paid. School children - be they five or fifteen years old - are at school to learn certain skills, and to socialise, learn how to fit with their world, and discover who they are.

Secondly, you keep insisting that 'grades have not gone up' - how do you figure this? Surely the top 10% of every year will still only be 10% of the available grades? We cannot all gain A+'s, and increasing the number of A's available does not indicate more skill gained, it indicates a de-valuing of what the standard should be amongst that particular group.

Frankly, your continued insistance on the applicablility of training methods of industry for use in schools is baffling. I am not a teacher (although I do volunteer work with primary-school-aged children), and nor am I a parent, but somehow it is quite clear to me that turning out good factory workers is not what education should be doing. We should be turning out people with the ability to think for, and be, themselves. And from what little contact I've had with my brothers' and cousin's friends (17-20 yrs), that is exactly what our system is doing. And quite well, too

HRS stated.

"As far as I am concerned, the school systems are very backward and non-sophisticated".

Well I've got to concede this to you; I've got no counter point to this at all. It’s as clear as day that you know everything about being backward and unsophisticated. In fact I suggest you undertake doctoral studies in this area. Kevin Donnelly needs some company.

Laurie,
I’m not talking about the number of student’s with A’s. I’m talking about the number of students who fail to even gain a C. Those are the students at risk, and there are an increasing number of those students amongst boys.

Teachers such as Rainier would know all about this, as the number of boys going on to higher education is gradually declining in time.

That is how good the current education system is.

Rainier and HRS. In some respects each of you is right. The problem with the education system, at least here in Victoria, is that it is too academically orientated for a lot of students. We used to have technical schools which trained non-academic students in the practical skills they needed to become tradesmen. Then some bright sod decided that all students should have the opportunity to become academics. Now we have a system that is very deficient at meeting the needs of the non-academics. If I am not mistaken, this is the area where HRS would like to see some improvement and I am sure there are many others who feel that way too. My impression is that boys in general are better equipped to follow this path, and male teachers are more effective in this area too. I have a friend who teaches in the TAFE system and he now finds it very difficult to get boys who are doing apprenticeships motivated. This was not the case when we had technical schools.