I'm alittle disappointed there are no spare apostrophes floating around. .. sometimes known as Greengrocers' apostrophes - eg orange's, lemon's . . . anywhere there is a plural! But there's a good line in abbreviation: anyone guess what a Leb Cue is?
No, i don't know...In French, we would say: "je donne ma langue au chat" (i give my tongue to the cat)
ReplyDeleteI know but I won't tell. It's one of the many things I took a while to adjust to, along with the Rockies for Rockmelons, Toms for tomatoes etc
ReplyDeleteDear Daily Photo blogger. I'm sorry for the generic message, but I wanted to get this to as many of you as possible.
ReplyDeleteI have set up "The Daily Photo Spot" on Fanpop. If you go there, you can enter your specific City Daily Photo blog. Paris, London and Dubai are already there, so it would be great to see all of you DP Bloggers listed.
Why not Sydney too?!
Lebanese cucumbers
ReplyDeleteWhy mention greengrocers, when even graduates with a major in Endlish, Teachers and senior Rducation Department bureaucrats can't deal with what once was able to be handled by even mediocre primary level students? I noticed the spelling error above as I typed, but it struck me as not altogether inappropriate, so I kept going.
ReplyDeleteWhen I hit some "university" level people not so long ago with exercises handled with ease by bottom half 5th class primary pupils in the 50s and 60s, most of the former couldn't cope. Perhaps it wasn't (entirely} their fault; but whose fault was it? In the past, average primary school pupils could tell you, for example, why 50s and 60s didn't need an apostrophe. Today I suspect it's not only greengrocers who might have difficulty with that question?
Ah, the Golden Age. It was ever thus. My old dad (who died a few weeks ago) could still recall names of the illiterate and innumerate he was schooled with - in a supposedly Golden Age of Education.
ReplyDeleteDoes getting old inevitably mean looking back in 'rose coloured hindsight' ? I don't think it has to be so.
Kids today (my 13 year old included) are expected to do so much more than I ever was. His Maths is more difficult, at an earlier age. He has to be able to read at a sophisticated level to interpret all the text-based messages he is inundated with daily.
But Grumpy Old Age ensures the grouches will forever whinge about the shortcomings of "modern youth." Aristotle did, so why would anything be any different now?
Knocking an imaginary "Golden Ages" is a useful debating tactic, but let's look at a few of the changes which have taken place.
ReplyDeleteWhile an Education Department targeted grad student at Sydney Uni, my daughter became so amused by the self-congatulatory claims of how wonderful current standards were that she decided to take in material from 6th Class PRIMARY texts used in the post WW II era.
It included extracts from the 6th Class end of year Primary Q.C. Examinations. The Q.C, Exam had been abandoned by then, but Primary Schools continued to use the material with 6th Class pupils. These 3rd Year Sydney Uni students became very quiet. They never again raised the question of high standards.
My daughter had enrolled in First Year Arts at Sydney Uni in English and three other languages, only one of which had been done for the HSC. She switched to the Education Faculty in Second Year because [despite my warnings]she wanted to teach. She graduated as a Teacher of Italian [which she hadn't studied for the HSC] and ESL.
After seeing what was happening with language in the schools, she decided to switch to Maths because it seemed to her that it would be more difficult for the Board of Studies to destroy that subject. Despite the entreaties of her teachers, she had dropped 3 Unit Maths in Year 11, but when she enrolled for a Masters Degree, designed specifically to upgrade curent Maths teachers, she managed to complete the full time course while working full time without any difficulty. This did make her wonder about the supposed "high" standards of HSC Maths course Sally and others tell us about.
I was saddened to see someone who loved language decide she had to give up that area, but I understood. I'm now extremely grateful, however, for one bright spot which has come out of it. Her seemingly endless amusing stories of students who haven't a clue what they're doing, but still receive impressive looking marks on their HSC Certificates.
Equally humorous are tales from a bright young lass who left school at 15, and I encouraged to enroll in Arts at University a few years back. She now does regular casual teaching including Maths, and despite Year 10 being her only qualification in that subject, she regales us with disturbing reports of basic numeracy shortcomings with some permanent maths teachers in the schools she visits. She used to accuse me of being elitist, but only till she experienced the standards now accepted in education,
So am I impressed when I hear of current "high standards"? Not at all --- except of course in regard to increasing self-esteem and confidence. This exceeds anything you could find among students in my day. But I think we survived the trauma of seeing ourselves as mediocre. Although what we looked upon as mediocre, might now be deemed elitist?