With a steady trickle of murders by young people on the streets of the UK (last night, a 23-year old man with learning difficulties was beaten to death in Sunderland by a group of youngsters), the Edexel examination board has voiced concern over the sickening level of violence in essays written by GCSE students. The most common title was "The Assassin", apparently. Apart from the violence, the essays excelled in shallowness, with little plot or character development. Worse than that, the examiners failed to comprehend the high marks awarded to such poor work by schoolteachers, who, in some cases, appeared to grade the work according to quantity, not quality. High marks were awarded to essays, riddled with spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors. Finally, plagiarism remains a problem as well, but schools do appear to be on the ball there.
I feel that this places the high percentages of passes in A-levels into perspective. I do not want to denegrade (sic) the genuine achievements of students, but I agree with the Edexel board that standards are there to be maintained by teachers. If they pass 'slasher' essays with high marks, because a pupil has filled A4 upon A4 with murder and mutilation, then that is a cause for grave concern.
Finally, it was reported in the last few weeks, that employers are despondent of school leavers who have insufficient command of the three Rs: reading, writing and arithmatic. This whole issue is demonstrative of a larger problem, which extends beyond unruly pupils pupils, poor teaching or truancy.
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Definitely cause for concern. There is enough violence in the world without teachers giving it a heads up as well. (Hugs) Indigo
ReplyDeleteThis is very worrying Guido. We are living in worrying times. Bryan came home from the pub a good while ago, he hardly bothers thes days, and found himself telling off a group of lads for trying to cause damage to the 'Traffic Island' keep left sign in the village. He shouted at them and they ran off....who knows what might have happened if they weren't so easily moved along.
ReplyDeleteI told him off for getting involved ( you hear of men having heart attacks afterwards from confrontation) but he is one of the old school where a cuff on the ear from a policeman or passerby or neighbour would stop them from their wayward ways. Not so now. They know they rule in fear when they move about in feral gangs.
Examples should be made of their parents (and them) for neglecting their upbringing. Keeping the family unit together should be the priority it once was. Not this easy going in and out of relationships with their offspring having different fathers. Social Security money is too easily aailabe to some of these parents they have no need to work!
How can any child feel confident in being loved and cared for in this sort of environment?
I could go on about this subject...but I wont.
Jeanie