Proposal Suggests UK Students Study Wikipedia and Twitter 252
An anonymous reader writes "Who needs crusty old rubbish like the Victorian era or World War II? Instead, an Ofsted report leaked to The Guardian details of proposals to teach UK primary school children how to use Wikipedia, Twitter, podcasts and blogs. Presumably they're already au fait with b3ta and 4chan. And you already can't get the kids off Bebo without a crowbar."
Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a stupid idea by people who are trying to appear "down with the kids". I can't think of anything worse to teach children than to use Wikipedia as a primary source of research and to use Twitter as a primary means of communication.
IT teaching in schools needs to improve, but from a technical perspective, not by letting kids spend a couple of hours a week in school doing what they do at home every night anyway. Far more would be gained by teaching kids how to use and administer computers than simply jumping on whatever the current internet bandwagon is and letting kids arse around with it.
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
IMHO teaching kids how to use wikipedia is acceptable, but how to use Twitter or blogs is a waste of time. It's equivalent to teaching someone how to watch tv, which serves no purpose except to entertain themselves & absorb ads from corporations.
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[I'm not trolling, I seriously want to know if society's already covered this ground.]
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Why the fuck was this posted as AC? Is Crapdot having authentication issues?
Look at it this way, at least your post didn't default to -1.
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Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Similar goes for twitter and other social media. You want to Protect The Children? Don't keep them away from the internets, teach them how to tell foe from friend, teach them how to use it.
No matter what you say or do. The Internets are a paramount part of our everyday lives and primary school was meant to teach people how to deal with their everyday surroundings. Back when we were young that meant learning to read books, now it means knowing how to tell a useful blog from SEO-ed crap.
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What's wrong with just teaching kids facts? Good, old fashion knowledge, that they can carry around in their heads. Stuff that they won't learn under their own steam.
What is the competitive advantage of educators teaching kids thing that they will learn on their own, or in the workplace?
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
What facts do you choose to teach them? You want to teach children techniques, using which they can discover the facts they need in the future. You don't want to guess what those facts might be, and try to teach them directly. History lessons, for example, are not really about memorising the dates of battles, but about learning how to compare historical sources and extract information. What facts can you think of that are both important, and will not be learnt by the children on their own?
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
What facts do you choose to teach them?
Multiplication tables, phonic and grammar rules, the US Civil War was from 1861-1864, the Sun is a star, etc, etc, etc ad nauseum.
You want to teach children techniques, using which they can discover the facts they need in the future.
Amazingly, it's possible to do both. But children need a foundation of knowledge upon which to build.
Otherwise, instead of "standing on the shoulders of giants", each child must start at the ground floor, but that's not a recipe for progress.
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Learning facts is a waste of brain capacity. Computers are perfect for storing facts, and quickly looking up the facts we need.
The facts you need all the time will stick all by themselves - and the facts you need all the time are rarely the ones you were taught in school anyway. The facts you only use once are a waste, because they will take longer to learn, than to simply look them up. And all the rest - the ones you're never going to need - are nothing but waste.
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Learning facts is a waste of brain capacity. Computers are perfect for storing facts, and quickly looking up the facts we need.
That's assuming that you always have access to a computer. And that it will work where you are. And that it's batteries will last. And you have an internet connection. And that you know what you need to find out.
Don't give me that "I've got an iPhone/whatever" response. How's that going to help you when you're down a mine and need a question answered? Or out at sea, and your boat is about to sink? Or there's a bush fire nearby which might be heading your way?
The facts you only use once are a waste, because they will take longer to learn, than to simply look them up. And all the rest - the ones you're never going to need - are nothing but waste.
The problem with that approach is that you never
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
It was Albert Einstein himself who said there's no need to memorize that which you can look-up in a book. If we were alive today he's probably substitute "internet" for book, and last I heard he's a fairly intelligent guy who managed to accomplish a lot of work in his short time span.
I agree with him. Why waste years of my life trying to memorize everything when I can simply pick-up a book or search the net or buy the necessary material from amazon.com, and find the answer. It's the same reason why I carry a calculator instead of trying to do square roots in my head.
And of course when die, everything I memorized disappears. Better to leave the knowledge on paper or online, so it can be passed on.
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
What's wrong with just teaching kids to research? Good, old fashion critical thinking, that they can carry around in their heads. A skill that they may never learn under their own steam. What is the competitive advantage of educators teaching kids things that they will look up on their own, even in the workplace?
Re:Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It's hard to teach. The degree to which children have successfully been taught the facts can be assessed and measured and inadequate schooling can thus be exposed.
We need to shift away from traditional subjects that can be assessed formally and shift to trendier and woolier subjects that, ideally, children already know anyway. This way ever decreasing educational standards can be concealed because there are no previous examples to compare it against and there are no easy metrics with which to judge it. Also, facts can be used to contradict and disagree with the authoritative sources of opinions and beliefs that are handed down.
THAT'S what's wrong with facts.
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This is mostly because throughout my schooling I have been taught that that one book, The Book, is all I need to pass.
I think the reason is bit more than that. Wikipedia makes information readily accessible. It's primary search engine (not itself) is the most used search--Google. Access to it is free and not encumbered by an interface that obfuscates information more than it reveals.
If nothing else, so called 'reputable' and 'accurate' sources could increase their utility by simply making the information available in an easy way.
The collective information and knowledge of humanity is incredible--it's just not readily ac
Next week (Score:2, Interesting)
This is just a joke to teach kids how to do things they already do. These days your kids know how to use your new DVD player or computer before you do. Ratherteach kids the meaning of the word "Library" and "citation needed" if they have to go the wikipedia way.
Teaching them how to admin a linux VM would be more useful
Re:Next week (Score:5, Insightful)
Teaching them how to admin a linux VM would be more useful.
That's one end node of the tree of knowledge that is computer science / IT. Far better to teach kids how to research and in what situations Wiki and Google are invaluable.
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if os == unix:
man(problem)
else
google(problem)
else
irc/forum/mailinglist/project wiki/paid support #p.s how did you get here
fi
Re:Next week (Score:5, Insightful)
you really think there are many people who know how to google?
lots of people know me for being good at finding things with google, while imo it's just thinking of good keywords and look at the results to see how to modify your search
and yet, it seems i hardly see any people capable of that, so if they could teach kids that google will only support you, and not magically give you an answer on everything from the first try with just about any keyword.
Google will work great if you give it the additional knowledge and insight of your own brain, but by itself it's fairly weak. and it seems very few people seem to understand that...
and frankly, why wouldn't it be good for the next generation to actually be good at finding information on the internet? it'll probably be even far more present than it is for us...
Re:Next week (Score:5, Funny)
ohh you are so special!
I always find what I want with Google, here is how I do it.
1) I open the Internet and it always goes to Google for me, I think my son did that. .... Google found it, I click on the first link and I am there
2) I type ebay.com into the box on my screen and click "Google Search"
3) tada
See, you are not the only who knows how to use Google
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I don't know if he was joking, but a coworker of mine told me that his nephew (a 14 years old girl) uses youtube (for watching music videos) and msn (to chat with friends) a lot, but doesn't know what an *email* is...
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How is the OP a troll? I pretty much agree with the post from my perspectives as: a parent, a School Governor, a trainer and an Instructional Designer.
Mods on crack or of school age today?
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There is nothing wrong in teaching kids how to use wikipedia ... provided they are also taught to be critical of what they read.
For most regular school work (note:school, not university), the quality of wikipedia articles are reasonable. Compared to most school books, wikipedia entries often cite other articles for further reading. Many of these are even online, so the kids have access to those articles as well.
It should, however, be linked with teaching kids how to use the internet for information search i
What kids need is hope (Score:4, Funny)
Teach them to read and write then you can teach then Genesis and Gospels. That's all they need to know. The real life isn't on earth.
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
> IT teaching in schools needs to improve, but from a technical
> perspective, not by letting kids spend a couple of hours a week
> in school doing what they do at home every night anyway.
Not every kid knows how to effectively use Wikipedia or Google for that matter. I did spend time learning how to effectively search Google (but that's because I'm a geek), and my high school and college study was more efficient worthwhile for it. Even today (3 years after grad), I often get comments like "I don't know how you find the answer to crap so fast" from colleagues. It's not a secret; it's effective use of the Web coupled with an understanding of how to corroborate information you've found.
These are not "automatic" skills. The idea that you SHOULDN'T teach shit that is actually useful (ie, they do in their every day lives) is completely backwards.
We would be much better off right now, for example, if there was a class in the curriculum about personal finance and money management. Everyone must manage money and make finance decisions on a daily basis, but MOST PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS when it comes to personal finance, and that has made the current crisis that much more painful and increased the need for reliance on government.
But I guess if I'm broke because I have no savings and high debt, I can always fall back on my understanding of the functions of each organelle in the animal cell.
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My kids have known how to use a phone (landline first, cellphone later) from about the age of 6. I don't think even I, as a forty-something geek with an electronic engineering degree, could tell you many of the details of how a modern digital telephone system operates. We only need a tiny fraction of the population to understand these things. We need a greater fraction of the population to support and maintain the infrastructure of the telephone system.
"..and the Wicihta lineman is still on the line".
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Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
"The Morlock began his life in these birth farms and nursery communities - the whole of the earth, to my painful recollection had been given over to one such - and there, in addition to the rudiments of civilized behavior, the youngster was taught one essential skill: the ability to learn. It is as if a schoolboy of the nineteenth century - instead of having drummed into his poor head a lot of nonsense about Greek and Latin and obscure geometric theorems - had been taught, instead, how to concentrate, and how to use libraries, and how to assimilate knowledge - how, above all, to THINK. After that, the acquisition of any specific knowledge depended on the needs of the task in hand, and the inclination of the individual."
Ever since the first time I read this, I have pushed my own children to learn for themselves. Let them determine what they were interested in, in order to teach them how to learn, not WHAT to learn.
Twitter is pretty retarded (Score:3, Informative)
It's basically a blog for people who are not able to write enough good stuff for blogs.
"I just took a dump" and other messages are basically the essence of Twitter and I can do exactly the same on a random IRC channel.
Wikipedia on the other hand is more interesting because it shows what perception can do to people and how that combines to an article. I teaches checking the sources instead of simply copypasting your info(although some people still do that).
Twitter has none of those redeeming values and is outside the study of microblogs or something similar(like speed of information) a completely useless research subject.
Re:Twitter is pretty retarded (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Twitter is pretty retarded (Score:4, Funny)
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Hell, just earlier this week I got a job offer because I was venting on twitter about how insanely unfair my project manager was being.
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I guess Twitter the service and Twitter the Slashdot user have something in common. They're both pretty pointless.
There's a few people who can use Twitter well, but mostly it's just an overload of useless information. But some people seem lost without it.
Re:Twitter is pretty retarded (Score:5, Insightful)
But it is not only Slashdot. Lance Armstrong [go.com] is doing it, I heard about it the other day on television, something in the lines of "Lance Armstrong informed the public that it may miss the Giro using this novely service, Twitter". Actually, even Associated press "noticed the trend" (or is propagating a well thought press release, depending on what really happened) and released a list [google.com] with the nicknames of some of the celebrities that uses the service.
That reminds me of what happened last year, lots and lots of stories (even on Slashdot) about Second Life, how people were making money on Second life, virtual property on Second Life, virtual child abuse on Second Life, and so on and so forth, lots of stories with several things in common: lots of mentions of the service name, stock footage of people using it, a long description of the service in question, fake and minor controversies.
Sometimes I wonder if it is only a fad, a hype that is propagated naturally by the collective hysteria or if there are really people in the Marketing business powerful and competent enough to orchestrate a press campaign so pervasive and organic that looks like genuine public interest.
Re:Twitter is pretty retarded (Score:4, Interesting)
Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher ! (Score:2)
"Lance Armstrong informed the public that it may miss the Giro using this novely service, Twitter".
Why would anyone forget to pick up their dole cheque after using Twitter ?
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But twitter ? Everytime I read something about twitter I have the feeling that I missed something... I thought it was just a gimmick to enter a short message, timestamp it and put it on a website. Is there something I am missing ? Why is it called a social network ?
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Most twitter access isn't via website.. it owes more to MSN I guess than blogs, except it's searchable and you can be friends with someone without them being friends with you back (in that sense it also behaves like RSS as well - I'm following several websites that way).
I'm not sure what makes it so useful.. critical mass plays a huge part - once all your friends are on it to not be on it you're missing out. That was the same thing that made facebook popular before it.
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Being able to use a wikipedia (as in edit) is also valuable to learn. There are plenty of times when a private wiki would be useful if everyone knew how to edit one, create pages, etc. Instead, we get masses of emails with hundreds of recipients and no organization.
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Funny thing is, I ignored Twitter for a long time and then decided to give it a go. Sure a lot of the stuff is banal, but I found that if I used a selective, real-time filtering service such as Twitterfall, I can keep an eye out for things that are relevant to my interests - for example, I setup a few tech search terms: Centos, Linux, Asterisk, Draytek etc., and among other things, caught sight of someone mentioning a very useful script he had jusst finished for monitoring the state of SIP VoIP trunks, and
Learn how to learn (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I'm not really for skipping learning about WWII, but learning how to use Wikipedia and how to blog sound like excellent things to teach kids. Should we really teach kids that knowledge comes from a single authoritarian figure like a teacher, or should we tell them that they need to investigate numerous versions of the view of history?
Learning how to use Wikipedia, including how to read the discussion page sounds fantastic. Take a topic, show how there are a lot of varied opinions about it. Show how consensus is formed and most importantly show that we can't always trust consensus.
Blogging including micro-blogging like Twitter is also a very good idea. It's almost impossible to get kids to see the relevance of writing. Read some blogs. Show how poor writing makes someone look like an idiot. Show how good writing makes someone look smart.
Now granted, they probably won't teach it like that. But they *could* and I think it would be a very good idea.
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Re:Learn how to learn (Score:4, Funny)
They'll get round to the Second World War later on when they're at an age to study it with better understanding. It's not being skipped. Just delayed.
Thank god for that. I was beginning to worry that future generations of "England" football fans would not know what to chant in the England vs Germany matches.
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The internet is probably the last place you'd want to use to teach someone the importance of good writing. The amount of people who think it's cool to type in text speak, deliberately spell certain words incorrectly and various forms of leet speak mean that kids will think that a good writing style doesn't matter.
Add to that the differences between US and UK English, also entries posted by non-native English speakers it's certainly possible that relying too much on the internet will affect a students writin
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Back in my GCSE days I got an A in English. I really do believe since then my English skills have suffered immensely from reading a lot of online forums.
Point taken, since I think you made at least three errors in your post, the worst is "student's writing skills"
I got an A too. I think my written English has suffered because
1a) I don't read anywhere near as much fiction as I used to.
1b) I didn't read much good quality non-fiction, like a decent newspaper. I read BBC News online too much, and their target reading age is quite low.
2) I often don't bother to expand my vocabulary. If I come across a word whose meaning I'm unsure of, I ignore it.
3) No one puts
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*shrug* GCSE English Language has about as much to do with writing and in using your own language skills as maths does. 50% of my marks came from re-entering the same coursework as I did for English Literature. Being able to disassemble and critique someone else's writing does not teach you how to work with the language yourself.
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OK, I see in the report where they suggest increasing student exposure to new media entities such as Twitter and Wikipedia, but where exactly is the bit about cutting history subjects?
This seems to have been an element invented by reporters to make a good story.
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Yeah right (Score:2)
Or perhaps we should teach kids about libraries. Where dozens of books are found on the same subject, each with a different view. Not constrained by size or editors who insist that their view is the neutral view.
Libraries, Wikipedia without the trolls, random edits and shallowness of the net. An amazing invention and they are right there in your neighbourhood.
Wikipedia is a tool, but don't pretend that it is any more then an extremely shallow encyclopedia. This is important. If you want to know about a su
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The critical part there is "if".
Not entirely misplaced (Score:3, Insightful)
Kids need better practical web education. They need to know that a prince in Nigeria isn't going to give them $1m, that the 11 year old girl who wants to meet them in a quiet street at 9pm alone probably shouldn't be trusted.
From keeping online and offline persona seperated to avoiding libel on forums there proper nettique needs to be addressed in education. When I was at school pretty much the only 'how to act on the net' education we got was "if you use capitals, it looks like you're shouting". Of course that was a time when few people were on the net as you were charged by the minute.
Re:Not entirely misplaced (Score:5, Funny)
the 11 year old girl who wants to meet them in a quiet street at 9pm alone probably shouldn't be trusted.
Shit, now you tell me ! :(
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brb, church!
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None of this is new. I remember back when CB radio was a fad in the UK, I was chatting to a girl and arranged to meet in town. She told me she was 14, but she looked barely 12 when I met her, so we spent a boring hour in the arcades and then went our separate ways. I was 14 or 15 at the
When I Was a Lad... (Score:3, Interesting)
Y'know, when I was a schoolkid, we were required to keep a daily journal in some English classes. I don't see a fundamental difference between that and blogging as a method of developing writing skills.
We were also taught how to use encyclopedias, and allowed to use them as source material. Given that the error-per-word rate in Wikipedia is lower than Encyclopedia Britannica, I see nothing wrong with using it. Better, Wikipedia lists primary sources, something I don't recall from ink-and-paper encyclopedias. Teaching kids to use it well seems like a fine idea to me.
Twitter and podcasts? Not so much. I don't see the educational value in these. I could see a school doing a podcast as a class project, I s'pose, but as part of a formal curriculum?
Like anything else in life (Score:2)
Like anything else in life, kids learn more by observing the actions of the people important to them, than by what they might say.
If dad is helping with a homework assignment and his first instinct is to go to Wikipedia, then that behaviour will be picked up on. A generation ago, adults might have looked up the family encyclopedia or gone down to the local library to get info. Now, that course of action might seem like the 'proper', old-skool way to go about things but just consider how limited those resour
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Kids need help with teh Web (Score:2)
What next? Skipping rope lessons? Running and screaming lessons? Dipping a ball in dogshit and throwing to someone lessons?
Those who do not learn from History are condemned to repeat its mistakes. But of course, they won't know that.
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Knowing the latest cool buzz websites and understanding how to use technological tools effectively and responsibly for a productive purpose are two entirely different things.
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Yeah, like kool kids (Score:2)
Fantastic idea! Since they gave up teaching children grammar, spelling, written communication skills, good manners, literacy and so on, this at least gives them something to do during all the free time they now have.
I just thank deity that my children are not in the UK...
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Yeah if much rather be from a country where you can leave school believing in creationism as science.
On a positive note... (Score:2)
If this practice were instituted in the U.S., American school kids would be able to get more out of NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday.
But they already know about them... (Score:3, Insightful)
'And this is Twitter.. it's an instant messaging protocol that allows us to share our thoughts and dreams with the world. Isn't that marvellous, children."
"Nah miss.. it's just a way for me to chat shit to my mates, innit. Look.. it's on my phone."
RT@Ofsted: "Primary schools to teach Twitter and W (Score:2)
Primary school pupils should learn how to blog and use internet sites like Twitter and Wikipedia [today.com] and spend less time studying history, says a review of the primary school curriculum in England by Sir Jim Rose of Ofsted.
Students will also be required to familiarise themselves with podcasts, the iTunes store, the Pirate Bay, b3ta and 4chan. They will gain fluency in handwriting and keyboard skills and learn how two use a spell chequer proper Lee. Literature classes will involve young adult novels written en
They're going to learn this anyway (Score:2)
However, the draft plans will require children to master Twitter and Wikipedia
What kid isn't going to learn how to use Twitter (or whatever) on their own? So what is the point of devising and delivering curriculum that kids don't need to learn, because they've learnt it already on their own?
Wow - next we'll be teaching them how to breath and walk.
As a side note, by the time the Twitter curriculum is ready to go, Twitter will be passe and The Next Big Thing will be hip. Internet service popularity moves faster than the speed of curriculum development, at least in my experience.
Security awareness (Score:2)
Teach them how to use Tor, OTR and PGP encryption, as well as basic counter-surveillance. The way our privacy laws are going, they're going to need it.
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Sage goes in every field. ... duh.
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They aren't teaching them how to "use" Wikipedia in the sense of editing it, they are teaching them to apply critical thinking skills. That is to say, to analyze an article for themselves, determine whether or not it is valid, to use it as a springboard for jumping off into other resources, etc.
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If only that were the case. Most teachers don't have this facility, and so are incapable of teaching it. Most children won't ever learn these skills, and actually couldn't care less about them. Sad, but true.
As a result, can't we just stick to basic education, at least until a reasonable age, say 16, where the dumbasses who are destined for a life on the dole start skipping school most of the time ?
Re:critical thinking skills (Score:3, Funny)
Most teachers don't have this facility, and so are incapable of teaching it.
[Citation needed]
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History lessons in the UK include work on analysing a source for accuracy and bias.
I see a lot of Americans on here complaining about bad teachers and the failure of the system to remove them, but I don't see the same from British posters. But I went to a school with mostly very good teachers, and I'm not going to assume that's the case everywhere.
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"Idiocray" ? Is that a really dumb 1970s supercomputer [cray.com] ?
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I guess your honors English didn't cover spelling. Check your title.
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I thought slash editors used to correct grammar and spelling mistakes?
You must be new here....
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You're not really supposed to start sentences off with conjunctions.
You are mistaken. Even in formal writing, starting a sentence with a conjunction is acceptable. But do so carefully; it's easy to write an unclear or poorly-structured sentence that way.
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But who says so?
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But who says so?
And why do they say it?
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It has gone back to being acceptable.
Yes, whenever someone says "don't start sentences off with conjunctions" I always think of William Blake's "Jerusalem" and how much worse it sounds if you drop the "And".
Re:Grammer Nitpick (Score:5, Informative)
And then came the Grammar Nazis. But for them, we would be able to carry on conversations without pointless interruptions.
Speaking as one who spent about five years as a professional editor, it is perfectly fine to start sentences with conjunctions. Like anything, it shouldn't be overused. But I will take a sentence that begins with "but" over one that inserts "however" as a clause any day. "However" reads weak. Similarly, if you can start a sentence with "and" where the only alternative would be to use a longer word or phrase, go with "and." People use it that way all the time in normal speech, and written text that sounds like natural speech is almost always preferable to a string of long words that were chosen out of a desire to sound "proper."
And by the way, starting sentences with conjunctions is not even a new practice. "But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?" It's just difficult to teach young writers to do it properly, which is why most high-school English teachers stick to the (false) rule. Your writing will be better if you don't do it at all than if you do it badly.
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But I don't follow the 'rules' either and I'm glad you've taken the time to highlight the point.
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When I was at school in the UK on of the important aspects of history class was not just what happened in the past but we were supposed to think about the various sources of historical evidence and consider their reliability as a source.
The idea was to promote the fact that all sources would have some bias. You should look at evidence from all sources and consider what possible bias exists in each. e.g. look at both English and German newspaper articles published during the war, etc.
I think the critical thi
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Private school perhaps? One of the worst things about state schools is they teach facts not critical thinking.
All we learned were dates. 1066 was drummed into our heads. Henry VIII having a number of wives. Something about the Romans and the Vikings.
We didn't do WWII.. it wasn't in the curriculum then (this was 20 years ago though).
Maths was worse - I remember getting a detention for calculating the 12 times table rather than rote learning it. Actually working stuff out was a punishable offence!
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Private school perhaps? One of the worst things about state schools is they teach facts not critical thinking.
I call BS.
My 14yo daughter is taking history at a state school and the very first thing they learn is how to separate the wheat from the chaffe in written anecdotes from the past. For instance, they're taught to question why someone might have a particular bias against another segment of the community. They're taught how such a bias could have arisen as a result of previous events. Yes, specific aspects/eras of history are examined (it is after all impossible to teach everything) but at the same time, the f
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it wasn't in the curriculum then (this was 20 years ago though)
Don't you think the curriculum might just have changed since 20 years ago? Private schools don't teach much different to state schools anyway, the children will be taking the same exam at the end of it. (The difference is the teacher can concentrate on making sure they know how to answer the hardest questions on the exam.)
I did my GCSEs in 2002. I learnt hardly any dates and couldn't name more than a couple of Henry VIII's wives, but in the exam we were given multiple sources -- sometimes contradictory -- a
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Learning 'enquiry skills' was certainly part of my (ordinary Scottish comprehensive school) Standard Grade history class [scotborders.sch.uk], and there wasn't much emphasis on dates at all. Really, being able to remember dates isn't much use if one book has one date and another book has another date. What matters is knowing which book to trust.
I didn't do WWII either, I somehow managed to get right through both primary and secondary school without studying it. We did study WWI quite extensively though. The above link shows
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When i was in secondary school (that's what we call high school in the UK), the GSCE's (the exams you take in 5th form at around 15/16 years old) hadn't been around long, so for practice exams we mostly used the old O levels. When we came to sit the actual GCSE's, particularly the sciences, we couldn't believe how easy they were compared to the old exams. And at that point the GCSE's were at least proper exams, since then they've brought in large amounts of continuous assessment, with students able to re-t
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You're able to re-take modules? Hell. I didn't realize it had got that bad.
It's long since passed the point where I as an employer (I do interview occasionally) would take a GCSE or A level at face value, which is a shame - in the drive to create a 'nobody loses' culture they've devalued the one thing that allowed the bright students to stand out, so now *everybody* loses because without other experience your CV now goes in the bin.
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You're able to re-take modules? Hell. I didn't realize it had got that bad.
It hasn't just yet for GCSEs, but you can keep trying to improve written coursework for some subjects.
It's long since passed the point where I as an employer (I do interview occasionally) would take a GCSE or A level at face value
I think I'd look the other way round (although I don't employ anyone). If someone doesn't have good grades for GCSE Maths, English and Science then something's wrong. (But presumably it's difficult to compare someone who did GCSE Maths in 1980 with someone who did it in 2008?)
I got all A*s and As with pretty much zero effort, but I know others who worked really hard to get their As. I agree that the grades
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It's also a problem that if a teacher doesn't think a student will achieve a decent grade they wont enter them for the exam or will only enter them for an easier paper (where they can't attain higher than a certain grade. In my day D was the highest possible for a foundation paper. Useless).
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The problem with UK schools is that they are increasingly trying to meet government targets. It's getting more difficult for kids to fail.
A child can work really hard, learn a lot and get good grades. Those grades are deserved and that kid will be better set up for later life. They will also be able to study at a more in depth level if they work hard, they just wont be tested on it so it's not compulsory for the teachers to teach that material. However, a kid can also scrape by with minimum effort and still
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For starters the summary is bullshit nobody is suggesting replacing history with wikistudies (what they are doing is removing a lot of the bullshit regulations,targets & goals), just that teaching kids how to use internet resources wisely (e.g not wasting time arguing on slashdot) is a good idea, just think of all the times you tell somebody to just fucking google it. they also say
It emphasizes traditional areas of learning - including phonics, the chronology of history and mental arithmetic
Which are much more useful that a list of facts i learn't about the Tudors when i was 12.
Additionally the proposal is NOT b
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Even that's recent - when I went to school the only thing we did was an hour on WW1, and that was just that someone shot Archduke Ferdinand and Britain went to war over it.. which doesn't even make sense (but as a child you don't question, and this was pre-internet and definately pre-history channel so we didn't have any other sources).
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IIRC from 12+ years ago, history then is tied in to the other subjects. For instance, for really young kids they might make Roman mosaics, or paint pictures of ancient houses. Reading and writing could become non-fiction about when Vikings invaded Britain.
I remember going to the museum in the nearest city, and looking at the Roman mosaics that had been discovered, the 2000-year-old ruined walls, and seeing the old armour and weapons.
Also, a man came to the school dressed as an 18th century soldier. I volunt