Literacy Standards : Irish Indo (Unison) Hits the nail on the head

How will this impact on teachers at their next benchmarking review?
Will it just be the English teachers whom take a pay cut or will the whole lot of them be brought to book? After all they were the reason we had the Celtic tiger boom in the 90’s (nothing to do with the .com boom or low tax rates. It therefore follows that it is there fault that our literacy level is very low.
 
Before oral French was introduced the exam was more theoretical and required some essays to be written, now to some extent it's a fill in the gaps exercise. This can make the exam more a test of logic than of language skills. Haven't looked into other changes to other courses in detail but I believe that similar simplifications have happened.

Introducing practical exams like the orals sound good but in practice the range of questions and answers will be limited and fairly predicable.

The shortfalls of the language training become apparent as soon as you set foot in France. There are 8 hour CD courses available which teach more than a couple thousand hours of secondary training. Having useless secondary courses ends up favouring the offspring of the well off and well informed since they'll make sure that their children get up to date training.

Sadly some of the other secondary courses are as bad, it just that for most people it's the foreign language course that is ever actually put to use. Anybody who need maths for their 3rd level course will usually spend the first couple months learning the maths that they thought they learnt for the leaving.

Claims of our education system being the best in the world, "brightest and best etc.", make me wary of any similiar claims made for other Irish institutions.
 
CCOVICH said:
2st????????
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hands up and shoot me for this bad - i am the dotty auntie who cannot remember what chass she is in, communion is now in 2nd and not 1st class so i got mixed up.

It won't happen again.
royth?
 
purple - good luck with that!
my teacher friend was the first to tell me that she reckoned 4 out of her 20 teacher school should be put out to pasture as they are failing their students because their teaching standard is so poor, some chance of that happening though.
 
CCOVICH said:
2st????????
Click to expand...
hands up and shoot me for this bad - i am the dotty auntie who cannot remember what class she is in, communion is now in 2nd and not 1st class so i got mixed up.

It won't happen again.
royth?
 
Henny Penny said:
I think we do not fully comprehend the scale and extent of the literacy problem in this country. In a study by the dept of Education in 1997 it was revealed that 25% of the population were essentially illiterate.
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I would argue that the word "essentially" here is wrong. An OECD study showed a high level of "functional" illiteracy, in which 25% of the population could not answer questions based on text from an aspirin box. These were questions like "What is the maximum number of doses you can take in a day?" and "Name three conditions that you should contact your doctor about while taking this medicine". (I may not have these exactly right, but the gist is there.)

I do think, however, that spelling and grammar aren't essential. I work as an editor, and my spelling and grammar is ok. (Don't go rereading past quotes from me though!) My problem is that I go on (and on and on) far too much!

I'm currently doing a course preparing to become a tutor for adults with literacy difficulties, and just last night we were discussing this particular Indo story. One suggestion was the problem of computers - not just the use of spell-checkers, but on a more basic level the ability to organise your thoughts coherently. Essentially we felt that when you write on a PC, you are less conscious of the need to put a structure on your writing. You can reorganise, copy and paste, all your text as you write it and later on as well once you are finished. Perhaps the reliance on the humble PC is reducing our ability to organise as well as spell?
 
my teacher friend was the first to tell me that she reckoned 4 out of her 20 teacher school should be put out to pasture as they are failing their students because their teaching standard is so poor
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I'd bet that despite her opinions on their ability she would stand at the gate with a placard if they were actually sacked.
Rightly so IMHO, after all, there are the people who created out booming economy. They are the source of all that is good and descent in this country. Teaching is the biggest "profession" represented in the Dail. Everyone knows that's the reason our politicians are so effective and dynamic.
 
I suffered at the hands of bad teachers and excelled in the hands of good teachers. Personality played a big part for me...if the teacher was a bit bubbly, a bit of a rebel, or an effective communicator then great but if the teacher was boring, too academic to teach to our level, used violence to resolve my inability to recite poetry they should be turfed out. Too many teachers were in it for the pension and not for the love of teaching.
 
DrMoriarty said:
Why the past tense?
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i know 4 girls in my year who went back to do the post grad primary (with science degrees as it happens) and it was mainly for the pension.

The teacher unions would be the reasons for folks out with placards not conviction.
 
I can still remeber my English teacher in 1st year in secondary school giving us a class in grammar, and I can still remember the glassy-eyed stares he got when he mentioned such arcane terms such as subjunctive clauses and interrogative cases etc..Ithink he gave it up as a bad job there and then!

d
 
daithi said:
I can still remeber my English teacher in 1st year in secondary school giving us a class in grammar, and I can still remember the glassy-eyed stares he got when he mentioned such arcane terms such as subjunctive clauses and interrogative cases etc..Ithink he gave it up as a bad job there and then!

d
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Perhaps he should have learned how to teach.
 
It was my German & Irish teachers who taught me about grammar in English and all other languages. While it was part of the curriculum in English when I was in secondary school, it was never tested so I assume the teacher concerned simply glossed over the topic.

I find it astounding that in my current position (secretary/pa) I am obliged to correct other members' of staff work and amend correspondence before it goes to clients as I would have a better standard of english. Particularly as I am one of the few in my company without a college degree!
 
daithi said:
I can still remeber my English teacher in 1st year in secondary school giving us a class in grammar, and I can still remember the glassy-eyed stares he got when he mentioned such arcane terms such as subjunctive clauses and interrogative cases etc..Ithink he gave it up as a bad job there and then!

d
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Did you not do grammar in primary? I still remember getting slightly less than 100% on parsing and analysing the sentence: "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" in 5th class. I lost points for putting 'dog' down as common gender. The teacher maintained it was male, as bitch was the female form. I still maintain I'm right! (I left primary school in 1970 so the curriculum probably changed since then.)
 
What did the teacher say about 'fox', as opposed to 'vixen'..? ;)

The curriculum has moved substantially onwards (and downwards) from the days when students could be expected to parse a sentence — or even understand the term.

In some parts of South Dublin you might still hear 'Parse the remote control, will you, Mum?'
 
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