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Are schools scuttling our knowledge economy?

10 October 2007

I recently took a look at some of the stuff our kids are being taught in school and I was horrified.

Since I've spent a good few decades of my life dealing with electricity, electronics and a raft of related theory and practice, I was gobsmacked to see that our kids are being taught stuff that is absolutely wrong.

Last night I perused some exam/study papers dealing with basic electrical theory.

In several instances, the "correct" answers (provided by the teachers) were anything but correct, which means that the teaching material is obviously flawed.

I can't help but get the feeling that, in the name of ensuring none of our little kiddies are not emotionally scarred for life by getting something other than an "achieved" or "merit" grade, we've dumbed out all the real facts from "hard" subjects like science.

Let me share a couple of examples...

A homework sheet, apparently copyright to "User Friendly Resources 1990" and extracted from their "Electrical Energy Homework Pack" includes a "word search" game in which kids are challenged to find words hidden in a grid of letters, then use those words to answer some questions.

Let's remember that we're talking secondary school kids here. Do we really have to dumb-down their learning so much that everything becomes a game? Aren't we supposed to be preparing these kids for the workplace or tertiary studies?

There are no "games" involved in learning a job or gaining a degree qualification.

Anyway, one of the words in the grid is supposedly the "unit for electrical energy".

Hands up all those readers who know the answer to this one?

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Well if, like me, you'd said watt or even joule, then you'd have been wrong and you'd still be searching for that word in that grid of letters.

According to the "correct" answers, against which the kids responses are marked, the word you were supposed to look for was "volt".

Hmmmm...

But wait, it gets even better!

Another little challenge for our kids (who are apparently incapable of dealing with the actual facts) consists of some simple circuit diagrams involving bulbs and batteries.

This paper is headed "Circuit Puzzles" (more games?) and carries the banner of "Kiwi Integrated Science", a publication by New House Educational Publishers.

The diagrams include circuits where bulbs are placed in series and in parallel, as are one or two cells.

In each case the student is required to describe the state of the bulbs, ie: dim, normal, off, or extra-bright.

Well in the course material I saw, it seems that even the teachers had a bit of trouble with these simple circuits. Some of the "correct" answers having been amended at least once to get them right and one being just plain wrong.

circuit diagram The incorrect answer related to this circuit:

The first attempt by teachers to get this one right themselves described the two paralleled bulbs (B/C) as being "extra bright" and the other bulb (A) being normal.

But then someone obviously realised this was wrong and corrected the "correct" answer to say that all the bulbs would glow at normal intensity.

Unfortunately this is still wrong -- the correct answer would be that the series bulb (A) would glow extra-bright and the two paralleled bulbs (B/C) would glow dimmer.

Now what chance do our kids have at gaining any sensible and meaningful qualifications in a subject as demanding of accuracy as science, if this is the kind of misinformation they're being taught in our schools?

I should point out that I haven't gone through reams of courseware with a fine-toothed comb to find this stuff. It just so happens that I looked at only two bits of paper and both contained these glaring errors. Are they just the tip of a rather nasty iceberg?

If we're relying on the generation that's currently passing through secondary school to drag New Zealand into the knowledge economy then we ought to be extremely worried right now.

What's been your experience with the "accuracy" of our kids education?

Are we paying too much attention to cultural issues and the Arts to do a decent job of teaching the critical subjects such as science?

I'm sure that if our kids were being taught mis-information about Maori history there'd be hell to pay and heads would roll within the halls of our education system -- but it seems that nobody really gives a damn if we turn out kids who don't know a volt from a watt and who are confused by being fed disinformation such as that I've highlighted.

Is this kind of situation simply a side-effect of the critical lack of skilled and effective teachers?

Or has someone in government decided that since they're going to make damned sure that our kids get a "pass" mark whether they deserve it or not -- then what difference does it make if we teach them crap instead of accurate knowledge?

And at what stage do we wake them up to the cold harsh realities of working life or tertiary studies where learning requires effort and hard work -- not just game-playing or playing with puzzles?

Have you checked what they're teaching *your* kids about science?

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