Australian School System

[taiga]

I disagree with the language issue. I do agree that given most of us undertake about 9 years of lote, it is pretty disgusting that at the end you can come out knowing next to nothing, but being an English speaking country I do not think it is necessary to learn another language. Other countries generally learn English as it is essentially the world language, yes it may be useful to learn something like French, but even if you do end up moving to a French speaking country (odds are it would be for an international
 Organization), knowing french will not benefit you anywhere near as much as someone from France moving to an English speaking coutry. There are so many more important issues with education in Australia which need t be addressed before we focus on languages.

and nacho, there are a few regions in India where they speak French :p

Typed on an annoying touch screen so excuse the typos.

[nacho]

and nacho, there are a few regions in India where they speak French :p

mind = blown

[Water]

Just would like to emphasize that Australia needs to reorganize the education sector and toughen up on learning and teaching, cause after the mining goes out, we're screwed to some extent, gotta keep up that high dollar for what its worth

[pi]

australian schooling = little stress = great

We'll see come november

[taiga]

I don't think Australian Learning System = little stress holds for the bulk of people. We give kids 11 years of fuck all work to do, and then up it suddenly, which does result in stress.

Other countries give their students heaps of work to do from their first year of primary schooling, so when they reach exams they are in a much better position to deal with exams (though the exams are damn hard, so it essentially evens out).

[lexitu]

Not sure where this idea came from that you need to force kids to do work... I actually learnt the most during three years of primary school where times tables were not the main focus. 

[taiga]

Not sure where this idea came from that you need to force kids to do work... I actually learnt the most during three years of primary school where times tables were not the main focus. 

Not everyone's as amazing as you Lex

I'm not sure whether you're addressing my way of seeing it, but I think it's more in the sense that kid's aren't made to learn and apply concepts anywhere as near as much as they should in primary school. It's moreso just touching on things, having a good time (not against this), and moving on to the next bit. Very little application.

That's why I think Sports (particularly tactical ones), Music (more focus on actually playing what you have learnt), and a few other things (Chess, board games, puzzles etc.) tend to have an impact on whether kids can pick up things faster in other areas.

[slothpomba]

kids don't learn anything in the same method in which you are required to learn in VCE from prep-10. Having done shit all "learning" during these years is what lets them down. Imo it is why you find that kids who are made to learn instruments, certain sports, even cooking, can pick up other subjects a lot faster, because they can actually take in information.

I think some of the general knowledge stuff is rather useful though.

The stuff mainly lumped under "Humanities"/"SOSE" i'd dare say is the most useful thing to take away from high-school, well, besides practical things like IT skills, woodworking maybe, ect.

If it wasn't for this kind of humanities subject in earlier years a lot of the kids going through highschool would barely know anything about politics or the political system in Australia, our history/world history/WW1&2, ect. Sure you might be a whiz at mathematics or something in the earlier years but still know nothing about world history or how our political system works at all. I don't really think that leads to a well rounded person. Knowledge is power and hopefully telling kids about the horrible things during the world wars and how the political system works they can protect themselves from some of the darker sides of human nature out there or the government screwing them over.

English - Did a decent job to be honest, i mean its not like we can get rid of this anyway. I don't really have any criticisms but i don't think its absolutely outstanding either.

Science - Almost none of the kids paid attention in the science classes at my school, made it horrible for the teacher and the other students who wanted to learn. Most of the science was really basic or just rote learning anyway.  I would of liked to of seen a bit of an introduction to things at a VCE level to help these kids decide on their VCE subjects. I thought i hated biology from my pre-VCE experience but once i took it in VCE i loved it. Not sure if other schools are like that but ours was really horrible with providing information on VCE subjects or giving us a taste of them. Really bad. All we had was a name and maybe a couple lines of description, thats it! Nothing else. I hear they've fixed this up recently.

The science wasn't full of a lot of content, my school had a forensics unit, i'm not sure if this is in the curriculum or they just did it of their own accord but everyone rather enjoyed that.

Math - Don't really have any comments here.

Can't think of the other things we did in high-school..... I think it does a decent job but a lot of the time, in retrospect, it just seemed like work for the sake of work rather than actually learning.

[nacho]

australian schooling = little stress = great

We'll see come november

i still think, comparatively it's little stress.
i know my cousins will feel the same stress i will come november, despite being 3 years younger. that's ridiculous